Monday, March 6 wasn't actually the beginning of Lent this year - but it was the day I started this journey.  The previous Wednesday, March 1, was the official beginning of Lent.

I'll admit, that even with the preparation I'd made to begin yet another attempt at losing weight, I was waffling.

It's often said of sports teams with losing records or that give up leads late in a game that they "just don't know how to win."  Losing will do that to a team, especially if there have been several preceding seasons without success.  Over time a culture of losing takes hold and it becomes very hard to break that cycle.

That's why sports are such a good metaphor for life.  You can get caught in cycles of dependency, abuse, failure, bad habits and other destructive elements that after a while become second nature.  You lose sight of what it felt like to be any different than you are and so you stay there in that rut.

That's where I'd been for years.

There was a time when I wasn't fat - and I've got the pictures to prove it.  But everytime I looked at them it was as if I were looking at another person. 

We have this picture that was taken on our honeymoon in May of 1990.  The Golden Gate bridge is in the background and right there, front and center, is Jennifer (who still looks like she hasn't aged one day) and this decent looking guy with a big smile on his face, like he'd just won the lottery (he had).

Whenever someone used to see that picture I'd joke and say, "That's Jennifer's first husband.  We're not sure what happened to him."

But it was no joke.  I really was a "whole" different person.  By March of this year my weight (365 lbs.) was more than double what it was in that picture (180 lbs.).

So, my confidence was shot, in the crapper, buried under 16 years of bad habits and self indulgence.  I'd started and failed so many times before that I was losing my nerve to even try to start again.  I'd missed the beginning of Lent, but then I decided that since it was 40 days from March 6 to Holy Saturday (the day before Easter) I could go ahead and give a try.

So, beginning on March 6, I cut out all sugar, bread, alcohol and eating after 8:00 p.m. in order to get started on the induction phase of my plan.  That evening  I heard that Kirby Puckett had died from a massive stroke he had suffered the day before.

Kirby had been, on the field, an athlete for everyman.  Short and wide in stature, he didn't look like a Hall of Fame baseball player.  But between the lines he was pure poetry, appearing in 10 All-Star Games, winning two World's Series and finishing with a .318 lifetime batting average.  He was an inspiration to vertically challenged "stocky" guys like me.

After his playing days (he retired in 1996 due to glaucoma, which left him blind in one eye) Kirby had several problems off the field and evidently let himself go physically.  It's reported that he weighed well over 350 lbs. when he died.  He was only 45 years old, just like me.

As I struggled through the first few days and weeks of this journey, never backsliding but often wanting to cheat, Kirby's face kept popping in my mind.  He had an infectious ear-to-ear grin. 

Just like that guy in the picture standing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge in May of 1990 with his arm around the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.

Kirby's smile was gone forever.  But his didn't have to be.  And it isn't.

Tim Adams

ps - Happy Birthday to my oldest son, Samuel Gladen Adams, who turned 11 today.  I'm lookin forward to many, many more birthdays with Sam, Elizabeth, Will and Ellen.