Dan Nied's Fortress of Weight Loss: Day 12

What I ate today:
I don’t have calorie or fat counts. But my guess is not that many calories, and a little more fat than usual.

What I ate:
Breakfast

• 7 slices of turkey bacon (20 calories, no fat per slice!)


• 2 servings of Wheaties with skim milk

Lunch

• 1 Salmon steak


• 2 slices of wheat bread with fat free mayo

Dinner:

• 1 Tuna steak

Snack:

• 1 tub (4 servings at 80 calories each) of fat free cottage cheese.

THE COUNTER
Starting weight: 299
Current weight: 290.0 (unofficially)
Total pounds lost: 9
Pounds until 240: 50

Exercise: None. I stayed in and watched football all day.

Today was fish day! The salmon was better than the tuna. The tuna tasted like it was from a can. I don’t understand that. It was fresh from the Safeway, and we all know Safeway has the best seafood. The salmon was great, I’ll buy that again. Not the tuna. Still, I have no clue what the nutritional value of frozen fish is, which makes me a little nervous.

But it must not be that bad, because I lost four pounds during the day. I weighed in at 294.4 in the morning (same as Saturday) and then, after a late-night shower, weighed in again for fun and was down to 290 on the dot; a stunning loss for an exercise-free day.

Weight is based on a series of variables, you see. Sunday, it seems, everything lined up perfectly. I think I know what happened, and I think it has a lot to do with water weight. Now, I don’t particularly understand the idea of water weight, other than the idea that water has volume and it makes you weigh more when it is in your system. But I don’t really understand why drinking more water helps you get rid of water weight. (Yes, I know you pee more, but then, aren’t you just peeing out what you simply put into your body?)

I guess the idea is that water helps flush your system of anything you might have left over from before. Anyway, I know that I drank liquids pretty much from wake to sleep on Sunday. Coffee, diet Mountain Dew, water, green tea, more diet Mountain Dew, more water. It just went on. I probably pissed 13 times on Sunday. Meanwhile, everything I ate was high in protein and generally low in sodium (I am guessing), which means that all the water I was retaining by eating sodium-rich food such as condensed soup and canned spaghetti probably was flushed from my system.

This is what I am guessing.

Meanwhile, a fairly brisk workout on Friday night, and some decent eating on Saturday (not great, but good enough to maintain my weight exactly), probably contributed to what may just be the first official breakthrough of the Fortress. It is almost certain that when I weigh in on Monday morning, I will be under 290 pounds, meaning it will be the first real milestone of this journey. It will also provide some proof that this is working as I had hoped.

The key, however, is to realize that my goal wasn’t to get under 290 and that I still have 50 pounds to go. I should also realize that this will be the easiest 10 pounds to lose.

But a rapid weight loss now moves me closer to getting out of weight purgatory. That’s my term for the first 24 pounds on this quest. My low weight before was 275, so right now, I am just losing weight I’ve already lost and then gained back. It won’t get truly exciting for me until I hit 274 (the real first pound) and then 270 (the 100-pound mark from when I began two years ago).

After those milestones, this could really start to get fun. I can’t wait to see myself at 260 or 250. I surely can’t wait for 240. And honestly, right now those numbers don’t seem all that far off.

Of course, there will be times when they seem very far off. And I have no clue if I will reach them within two months or four months or eight months. I have a frame of reference for going from 370 to 300 -- 100 days exactly -- but not from 300 to 240. That could take a while.

So I am not looking too far ahead right now. If, as I assume, I am under 290 by the time you read this, I need only to look as far as 285 for real motivation. That’s the next increment in what is surely going to be a slower process than I would like.

Certainly, I’d like to wake up tomorrow at 240, write a nice, emotional farewell entry and hit San Francisco looking for chicks, but that’s not gonna happen. So I’ll be happy if I am 289 tomorrow.