I suppose I could say the last pound is the hardest one to lose, but I don't really think of the 100th as the last one.

[caption id="attachment_616" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The kid at 181"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/DSC_0430.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-616" title="DSC_0430" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/DSC_0430-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" /></a>[/caption]

For the last three or four days, I have weighed 181 pounds (except for one day I bounced up to 182). That means I'm down 99 pounds since late April, and the fanciful goal I set for myself of losing a hundred pounds is about as close to being achieved as it can be.

But I never really thought of weighing 180 as the end of this. For one thing, I have made a point to myself of saying that the changes I have made this year are not temporary ones for the sake of losing weight, but permanent ones for the sake of changing my life.

I certainly don't plan to start eating "normally" again. That's the mistake I made in past years, and that's why despite getting down to 159 in both 1985 and 1989, I weighed 280 pounds a little less than five months ago. I made the decision this time that I had eaten the last Milky Way bar of my life, and that fast food was also something of which I wouldn't be partaking anymore.

I fully intend to count calories -- both the ones going in and the ones I'm burning -- for the rest of my life, or at least until I know that I won't relapse and start gaining weight again. I fully intend to step on the scale -- and to record the results -- every morning for the rest of my life as well.

But 180? Hey, it's a lot better than 280, but by the weight charts I grew up on, 180 is still overweight. Right now at 181, my Body Mass Index is 25.2. I need to lose three more pounds to have it down to a number that is no longer considered overweight.

Realistically, I need to get my weight down to 170 and work to maintain it there. That means I have lost 99 pounds out of a needed 110, which puts me at the 90 percent mark of the work I need to do.

Ninety percent is pretty good, but it's the final 10 percent that will really matter.

Tally ho!