August 2003

There came a moment when I looked down at the treadmill and it was no longer an option to be speed walking at 4.2 mph.

I had lost 75 pounds and was teetering at 199. I had just weighed in and couldn't believe the number. My heart pounded at how science worked. Less calories in, more calories out equaled weight loss. It wasn't just clever advertising by those makers of exercise and food in moderation. I was smiling. I had never done that in a 24 Hour Fitness.

I was wearing my funny t-shirt, "Somebody in Bakersfield Loves Me" that I bought the night I went to go see Gallagher on the way home to Folsom from Burbank with my mattress in the bed of my truck. I walked toward the locker room, and a guy that I had always seen in the gym asked me, "So, um...I see your shirt...and, um, who's the lucky person?" He giggled. I stood silent. 199 meant that people could see me.

I was supposed to lift weights on this day, but the visibility and the success of my shrinking person scared me. I went to the back of the gym and I got on a treadmill in a semi-private room. I tuned the belt to 3.5 mph and I walked on my one percent incline hill. Rob Thomas sang on the TV screen. The song was "Unwell" and I ignored it. I sped up to 4.2 for Baby Bash "Suga, How You Get So Fly?" and I had to ask myself the same question. Almost a year ago I had not been fly at all. The closest I had been to fly was Dumbo, soaring above the Frontier Wok ready to eat all the Pan fried Noodles I could find.

And then it happened, and when people ask me how I lost 100 pounds I can't tell the story without mentioning this moment. This new song came on called "Hey Yeahhhh" by Outkast, and I couldn't help but put the speed of the treadmill to 5 mph. I was running. My thighs itched, but I didn't care. I lost my breath, but I leant them some sugar, I am yo' neighbor! I wanted nothing more than to match the mid-tempo beat of a song about nothing with my galloping legs, and that made me celebrate in a way I hadn't celebrated since Kool and the Gang's "Celebrate" at a recent Mexican wedding I'd been invited to by Heather.

Outkast was the male version of the girl trio in Little Shop of Horrors and they made me run at 5.3 mph by the middle of the song. When he asked what's cooler than bein' cool, I answered back the second time. "Ice Cold!"

I was up to 5.6 mph when my shoelace came loose. I was shakin it like a Polaroid picture, and when it was time to get on the floor, I did, (I knew what to do-ooh-ohh) by stepping on my shoelace.

I fell off the treadmill and skinned my knee. People looked and they laughed and I died a little, but it was hilarious and I was still 199 pounds, and that's not nearly as embarrassing as being 275 and falling down, but it's close. Falling down sucks. On any other day, I'd have canceled my gym membership. But with "Hey Yeahhhh" I got right back up and joined all the Beyonce's and Lucy Lius.

And that was the day I discovered a weight loss anthem that I still rock to today. And I realized how important good music is to exercise, and thus how important it is to not dread the whole process, but to make it fun--because when you are loving yourself, (and exercise is loving yourself) just thinking about how much better it will be in two months or two years after you've just run 10 miles every day from now to then isn't enough. I would have failed if I hadn't found Outkast that day because I had been too focused on showing Rich I could become everything I wasn't.

You've got to have a reason to get up and dance during the process, because dancing is what gets people up when they fall down and the final two months of my 100 Pound Weight Loss had plenty of steep, nasty falls....