A bag of balls (Revised & edited 1/27/2018)

Imagine if you will, walking into your local bowling establishment. You meet your friends, rent the shoes and go to the rack of available balls. Adult bowling balls typically weigh 16 lbs. each. A single rack may hold a dozen or more balls for the patrons to use. The racks are bolted to the ground and secured to a wall to keep them in place. Carrying that many balls is precarious. The rack itself must be sturdy to secure it’s cargo.

The human skeleton is a remarkable piece of workmanship, capable of carrying hundreds of pounds of muscle, internal organs, liters of blood and fat wrapped in a skin. “Dem bones” are held together by ligaments, connective tissues and muscle; they support the weight of that body for a lifetime.

A friend in my small group asked me how long I’ve been BIG. In junior high I was a small kid who wrestled at 90 lbs! As I look back I think my ideal body weight would have been in high school. As soon as I put on that wedding ring my weight started to climb. In our first years of marriage Terri and I were relatively active people. I remember before kids, playing volleyball at the park district and participating in the annual turkey bowl through our church. But slowly, imperseptibly I strapped on one bowling ball after another. Eventually I dubbed myself “fatguy” because of the freqency of excuses. I got accustomed to the weight. I accepted the sacrifices the weight forced me to make. My size became a tyrant. When I add up the total extra weight I’ve been carrying it is comparable to stuffing in my skin a dozen bowling balls. I’ve been carrying this bag of balls around for a decade or more. It’s with me when I sit and when I rise. It’s resting on me when I sleep. In fact, I could loose that dozen balls and still be the same person. Just 160 lbs. lighter. Today, I am down more than 40 pounds in the Halftheman Project! That’s more than two bowling balls in 45 days. Only ten balls more to go.

Update: And now, after a year of controlling what goes into the pie hole and becoming more active in running, cycling and swimming I’m down 85 lbs. For those of you keeping score that would be more than 5 adult bowling balls of weight loss. I feel much better but I’m still carrying around 5-7 extra balls in this skin sack. I still think of my extra weight in these terms. It really wouldn’t take too many more balls lost to begin to sport a healthy looking and feeling body.