From here on

The first step on a journey is usually in front of you, but that seemingly simple feat only works well when you know where you are going. I don't. Just as the canary stares pensively at the chessboard, I spent the past week or so on what to say, and learned that only the truth will suffice.

I am fat. That is more than just something to say. According to calculations by a higi machine, a digital fitness device at the place where I go to check my weight, I am nearly 49 percent body fat. To fitness experts that means I am morbidly obese, which a 2007 Rand study marked as  three times the growth rate of other kinds of U.S. weight issues. Obesity might be medically bad, but it is not the reason I am making this journey.

I am not on a program to lose weight. Dropping pounds is about as useful as putting a fresh coat of paint on a termite-ridden house. The things that fester beneath the surface will still bring down the structure. My goal is to paint what can stand, rip out what is rotten and replace the parts that are outdated. The journey is about the struggle to be a new person, not a fixed-up version of the old.

Even as I wrote those words, now I have the concept. I know what to tell you from here on - about going to someplace in my heart, mind, body, and soul that I have never seen.

Welcome aboard.