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That's exactly a pound a day, since the diet started 29 days ago. 7.7 pounds in the last week. I guess political activism agrees with me.

It helps that--aided by the 25,000 steps in the three full days we spent in Washington--I averaged something over 6,000 steps a day. Add to that the three-times-weekly workouts with our personal trainer, and I'm a fat-burning machine.

But what's even better than the weight loss (and that's pretty good, don'tcha think?) is the results of another "body composition analysis" I had at the weight loss clinic today. The first analysis, which was done a week before I actually started the diet, showed that I weighed 274.5 pounds, of which 177.0 was lean body mass--muscle and water--and 97.5 pounds was body fat.

Well. Today, the numbers were 250.0 pounds total, 185.4 lean body mass, and 64.6 pounds of body fat. I've lost 32.9 pounds of fat, and actually gained "dry lean mass" (that is, muscle weight) of 2.3 pounds--from 47.1 to 49.4 pounds.

People aren't supposed to gain muscle mass when they're on one of these diets. The doctor and the nutritionists stress over and over how you're supposed to exercise (and eat all of your protein meal replacements) in order to avoid losing too much muscle. The dietitian I talked to said my numbers were just about the best she'd ever seen.

So, I'm doing it right.

I've got 41 days to go before Halloween, when I plan to go into a bit of a maintenance mode for the holiday season. My personal goal for that is to get down to 230 pounds. Considering that that means another 20 pounds in 41 days, that seems like a very reachable goal.

Now if you excuse me, I've got to go out and walk for an hour. Halloween is right around the corner!