THE COUNTER
Starting weight (January 4, 2006): 370 pounds
Last weigh-in (March 6, 2008): 269.8
Total pounds lost: 100.2
Pounds until 240: 29.8

It’s hard to figure out how to begin this post.

Do I go back to the first step in the road on Jan. 4, 2006 when I began the 100 Days quest? Do I got back even further to that night in Dec. 2005 when I lay in bed at 2 a.m. thinking how grotesquely oversized my body had become?

That night I made a decision to lose weight. That night will go down as one of the most important of my life. I could start there.

But do I go back to the slow evolution in Colorado, where I went from merely obese at 325 pounds to impending heart attack fat at 370? Or do I go back to life as a kid in Detroit, when I started eating more than any 5-year old should?

Maybe I go back only a week, when I crept back up to 275 and began my “Assault on 270.”

Maybe I shouldn’t go back at all. Maybe I should just continue working toward the future, when all this will settle in behind me and my transformation will be complete.

If this sounds like a self-congratulatory, ego-filled rant, well, I guess it kinda is.

But I don’t mind congratulating myself today, because I saw the number 269.8 on Thursday. Sorry, but I couldn’t help but celebrate the loss of 100 pounds.

Yep, I made it. Yep, I’m proud. Please let me gloat, let me have this so I can figure out a way to frame it and put it on the wall in my room. Let me take this day and consider it one of my finest, the day that I hit a milestone I’ve pined after for more than two years; a milestone I all but abandoned on my first try.

It started with the idea of 100 pounds in 100 days. Ok, so that theory was proven wrong. But you gotta admit, 100 pounds in a very roundabout 796 days ain’t so bad now, is it? Plus, if the theory was 100 pounds in 800 days, I would still have four to spare.

I hope by now you know the history. You know that I lost 95 pounds in five months the first time around, and then crept back up near 300 in late 2007. You know this is my second blog on the subject, and that I’ve been looking at 100 pounds as one of my main goals.

But you also know that the specific goal this time isn’t to get under 270. No, it’s 240. And that’s what makes this a little bittersweet. Perhaps it is a little bit remarkable that the 100 pound benchmark also signifies the halfway point for the Fortress. I suppose it is fitting that as I put my initial goal behind me, I am turning the corner on the homestretch of my ultimate prize.