A brief history of Joe's weight:
When Joe was in second grade, he weighed 101 pounds. This was discovered a few years ago from some old school record the nature of which he has now forgotten.
When Joe was in fifth grade he played his only year of organized football. Although he was only 9, he played "Mighty Mites", which was for 10- and 11-year-olds. The reasons were twofold--having skipped a grade, he was with his classmates in Mighty Mites. More importantly, "Termites" has a weight limit of 90-something pounds, which he never would have made. Mighty Mites had a weight limit of 111 pounds; Joe made weight for exactly one game and played one uneventful offensive series and an equally uneventful defensive series at tackle.
When Joe started 11th grade he weighed 295 pounds. That January he started lifting for sixth months and doing karate. He got down to 270 pounds, but was back to about 290 by the start of college.
During Joe's first two years of college he had a 19-meal-per-week meal plan with only all-you-can-eat cafeterias available for that meal plan. The less said about this the better.
During the summer after Joe's junior year of college he worked at Kennywood Park. On one 95-degree day he got a mild case of heat exhaustion and went to the hospital as a precaution. At the hospital he stepped on a scale, the upper limit of which was 350 pounds, and he was off the top end of the scale. For no particular reason, he decided in his mind that he weighed 370 pounds and considered that his weight for the next six years, during which time he did not step on a scale.
On June 21, 2000, Joe went to the USC fitness center and sought help. For the next two years he worked with a personal trainer. During the early part of that time he continually stepped on the 350-pound-limit scale with no result.
At some point in May 2002 Joe was taken into the depths of the USC P.E. Building semi-surreptitiously and put on a special scale that indicated his weight at 360 pounds. Joe and trainer Omar guesstimated that Joe had lost 50-60 pounds during the previous two years, which would have put him at a weight he doesn't even want to think about. This number is a total guess, but it seems right.
During the July 2002-August 2003 Beallsvonian Captivity, Joe did not exercise or particularly watch his calories. After the Captivity ended, Joe returned to Southern California and the gym and found that he weighed 361 pounds--a net push, although the relative fat and muscle ratios no doubt changed in very negative ways.
At that time, Joe was given a computerized readout of his projected progress if he follows his program. While Joe knows deep down that these numbers are fairly arbitrary and that the apparent "science" behind them is merely a faux precision for marketing/motivational purposes, seeing on paper a projection that would theoretically lead in 96-to-115 weeks to a 215-pound version of Joe was like a Kuhnian paradigm shift--seeing a whole new world of possibility completely changed his outlook and, truth be told, has been a major reason why he has been able to get up at 5 a.m. every weekday to do the things he has to do.
On October 21, 2003, Joe stepped on the scale after his workout and checked in at 349.75 pounds. There is nothing particularly magical about this number, except that it was verifiable proof that Joe has reached his lowest weight since he was (at the most recent) 20. Joe realizes that the difference between 349.75 and, say, 351 is a good BM and a shave, but nonetheless considers this to be a watershed day in his program.
Joe will re-emerge from Rickeyspeak mode next time, but desperately needed to get this all out and somehow found the third-person slightly less difficult.