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This is not a weight loss blog.

I bought a bathroom scale because I wanted something like accountability. Say what you want about eating this way or that, exercising this way or that, muscle mass versus body fat, a bathroom scale is still a pretty good way to get a good idea how things are.

They might not be so good if you're a little heavy or a little light, just a few pounds either way, but if you're way off, if you know you're way off, a bathroom scale is a compass and sexton to help you set a new course.

For almost as long as I can remember, I've been heavy. There are pictures of me when I wasn't. Most of them go back before fifth grade. I'm not sure what happened in middle school, but something. By my memory, I was a pretty healthy kid. I was active. I played soccer in the spring, swam all summer and did basketball in the winter (I practiced, but mostly rode the bench during games).

I walked everywhere.
 
I don't remember my mom suddenly deciding to add heaping helpings of lard to our diet. We seldom ate meals out. There weren't a lot of options in the town where I grew up, anyway --a Pizza Hut, a Dairy Queen, eventually a Hardees.

We ate well, but not particularly rich. 

My father was a health nut, a long distance runner, a track coach and had turned the backyard into a vast garden. He'd have added a couple of sheep or a cow, if my mother had gone along with it.

I don't remember there being a tremendous amount of sugar in the house, no sweetened breakfast cereal and no big bottles of soda. We got ice cream sparingly. It was a treat. We got potato chips every now and again. It was a treat. Candy was mostly available at Halloween and Easter or when we went to Grandma's house.

Across the road, the Santollas, shift workers at the local plant and my family's best friends, their fridge was packed full of the traditional American diet. They had the chips, the potted meat and the Captain Crunch cereal with the crunch berries.

But I was a chubby kid, oily looking, and swelling in my clothes like canned biscuit dough cooking in the back window of an old car.

In high school, at the age of 13 and full of self-loathing, I put myself on a diet. For almost three months, I ate rice once a day, six days a week. I started with two cup of rice, loaded with butter. I switched to soy sauce because it had fewer calories. By the end, I was eating a single cup a-day, flavored with a bouillon cube.

Once a week, I'd eat fish, fruit and a few leafy vegetables.

I started running. It was the only exercise I knew.

By the end of it, I'd lost almost 50 pounds, about a third of my body weight. I'd gone from 150 pounds to 103, but it cost me. I started having hot flashes. Bright spots would appear before my eyes and I'd get dizzy. My hair got thinner. I was starving.

Friends my age, just kids, worried about me. An assistant coach I hadn't seen since football season months before asked if I'd been sick. My mother considered having me committed at a nearby hospital, but then I backed away from it.

I stopped the diet, kept the running up, and slowly regained some of the weight.

I stayed mostly healthy through high school, but quit running after a couple of injuries. I took up weights, which made me feel stronger, more powerful and less concerned about my weight.

By the time I graduated high school, I was approaching 200 pounds --not exactly all lean, but not flabby either.

In college, exercise was replaced by beer, smoking and Sunday morning brunch buffets at the school cafeteria. I tacked on 40 pounds in four years, while at the same time, deciding to give up meat.

I was a vegetarian who ate a lot of cheese and drank like a gunslinger. 

My senior year, I spent several hundred dollars on a professional weight loss plan. It worked. I lost 40 pounds again; dipped down to 190 pounds; did it over the summer; old friends didn't recognize me.

But I was healthy. I felt good, but the weight crept back.

The worst shape I was in was 12 years ago. While writing for Graffiti, I did a story on the local plasma center. I was going to go through the process, sell blood and write about the experience. They turned me away due to high blood pressure. I got it checked out with a doctor, who confirmed it and put me on pills. I went on another diet, started exercising and quit the meds after less than a year.

Success, but again, temporary.

I started getting heavy again about three years or so ago. I like to kid myself and say that part of it is because of the weight lifting, but if so, it's probably a small part. My clothes don't fit me. I feel bloated and can hardly stand to look at myself most days.

So, I bought a scale.  It's about accountability and finding my way back to where I want to be.

This is not a weight loss blog.