Starting weight: 230 lbs
Current weight: 220 lbs
Target weight: 185 lbs
Re-de-bigulation complete
Overall debigulation: 22% complete
Okay, so far so good, I guess: I’m back on track, having reached the lowest weight I hit last year, the lowest (for me) since college. Which is definitely a qualified measure of success, since the highest weight I hit in college (216) caused me to have conniptions and embark on a three-month stairmaster crusade in order to get back to 185 then. Which I was able to do, mostly because Earlham had one of those stairmasters that looks like a pulpit where you’re actually climbing stairs and you’re up above everyone else, continually climbing climbing climbing (very evocative), which I did for 45 minutes a day for three months. So getting back to my “OMG CONNIPTION!” weight is not a bad thing, but definitely not time to start resting on my laurels yet, especially since there’s no stairmasters on Amtrak. Though I am looking for a DVD copy of the 1991 Tamilee Webb Abs of Steel video. Don’t laugh. Okay, fine, laugh, but that video was badass. Not that I’m going to do it on the train; I thought I might do it in the evening to get my metabolism up. Though the shrieks of pain might wake the baby.

Anyhow, the summer of, uh… 1994? I went to Newfoundland to help build a house with my brother Sam. Over the course of that next year, I put on a lot of weight — when I went back to Trinity the next year, I walked through the front door and the Bellows exclaimed (imagine a rolling Newfie accent) “John, my son, you look like the old Elvis!” (It’s impossible to take offense in a Newfie kitchen: nobody gives a damn what your weight is, they’re just happy to see you; you could walk through the door with a second head on your shoulders and they’d simply clap you on the back and say “Ah, John! How are you? So, what’s that rig for then?”)

Anyhow, I’ve been at the “old Elvis” weight for over ten years now, and the Union Theological Seminary entrance photo (1994, young Elvis weight) — which is also on my Citibank credit card, so I see it often — was starting to look like a distant memory. Hopefully, no more!