Secret to my weightloss

People have expressed great surprise that I have lost 8 pounds (8.8 actually) in 3 days.

Logically, that should be impossible given;

A) My start and end weights were accurate

B) I am not currently dehydrated

C) I did not experience any truly epic bowel movements

Let me explain. To lose 8.8 pounds of tissue with A, B, and C all being true should be quite impossible.

There are only two ways to lose weight. One must either cut caloric intake, or burn lots of calories up. At my size, if I cut my eating to nothing, that would total a hair under 7500 calories in three days. I ran yesterday and the day before for about 1500 calories, and used up about 2000 at Jiu-Jitsu class.

That would add up to 6000 calories. As each 3500 calories burned uses up about one pound of tissue, that means that even without eating a thing, I could only have dropped about 1.7 pounds. What gives?

However, my actual totals are not as impressive, and so should have produced a weight loss of only 1.2 pounds as I didn't cut my eating anywhere near that much.

There has to be a magic trick.

There is, but not one that is under my control.

While away with friends, we ate a lot of yummy food, but it wasn't calories that got my weight so artificially high. Our meals at their home were bigger than any of us eat normally, but they didn't do much. It was our many, yummy restaurant days eaten over a ten day period. There were a lot of calories, but again that wasn't the issue.

It was salt. Neither my wife, nor Lola, nor Bernie are salt junkies. I am attracted to it more than them, but only on certain foods we prepare at home.

Yesterday, for example, I fried some pork. I added salt as I cooked it, but as the meal wasn't large, not much salt was consumed.

Our friends didn't cook with salt at all. It was the restaurant chow.

Salt is what controls our body's signals regarding fluid. If our bodies get too salty, receptors interpret this as meaning we are dehydrated, and cause our bodies to retain fluid. Most people's issue with this if the effect it has on blood pressure. My pressure is freakishly low, so no problem there. I do, like anybody else, retain fluid.

That means I was very well hydrated when I weighed in at home three days ago. You could call it super-hydrated.

My secret has been to diet and to exercise to handle any real weight gain from our trip, and to let time leak out all the extra juice I accumulated. Salt doesn't stay in the body terribly long.

I'm back to normal.