Week 3 Progress Report: Dropping Balls and Casting Stones

Start Weight:	289.6
Original Target:*	297.2
Adjusted Target:	287.8
Actual Weight:	286.6
Actual Loss:	3.0
Average Loss/Wk:	5.3
* Original Target — Calculated from beginning weight of 302.6 lbs. at a loss rate of 1.8 lbs/wk.

I bowl in a league on Sunday nights. I’m not a very good bowler — average 137, although I can occasionally throw over 150 — and I’d like to be better, but I bowl because I enjoy it and it gets me out of the house to socialize for three hours every week. It keeps me from being too much of a recluse. It keeps me human.

As of today, I’ve lost 16 lbs. I throw a 15-lb. ball. So it figures that this simile would occur to me:

Imagine you’re carrying a bowling ball in front of you, in a frame that distributes the weight properly all over your torso. And you have to carry it with you all day, even when you sleep. It’s inconvenient and, even with the frame, it’s still a little tiring to carry all day long. It drags you down.

Add another. And another. And yet another. Each time you add a bowling ball, you have a different frame to distribute the weight. But it still takes more and more energy and strength just to do ordinary tasks, like housecleaning, yard work, fixing meals, even sitting upright. Imagine all the things it would make difficult. Imagine all the things it would eventually make impossible, or at least impractical.

That’s what obesity is like.

Once this simile occurred to me, the British convention of the stone (counting weight in 14-lb. increments) made a lot more sense.

When I started this program, I was carrying just over the equivalent of nine 15-lb. bowling balls. So far, I’ve dropped one. Eight more to go.