When I entered my freshman year of high school in the fall of 1982, I weighed 115 pounds and was about five feet five inches tall. I had spent the summer cycling thirty or more miles a day preparing for a week of bicycle camp. During that week, I biked for five days and went over 200 miles.

All the cycling stopped when I entered high school. The demands of classes kept me studying much of the time. Also, I lived in New Hampshire and the weather eventually turned cooler. The perfect storm for gaining weight.

The weight came on quickly. I felt like someone was holding a bucket over my head and pouring the weight on me. I was adding one to two pounds a week. Sure, I was perhaps a bit underweight, but suddenly I was becoming fat. By early spring, I had put on twenty-five pounds. My mom was perplexed at my weight gain, but decided to try and help me out. She signed us up for aerobics classes. Aerobics was the thing in 1983.

I hated those classes. I felt awkward and stupid. My mom didn’t care for them much either. The one thing the aerobics classes did do was stop more weight from coming on. I didn’t lose any weight, though. We went to those classes two or three times a week.

At the end of my freshman year, I weighed 140 pounds.

Summer was upon us. Every summer my family would move to the lake house. During that summer, my mom and I would do a routine of calisthenics in the morning and a walk every evening. Of course, I did a lot of swimming and kayaking as I did every summer. I lost 10 pounds before my sophomore year started.

During the next three years of high school, I did put those ten pounds back on, but I also grew two more inches. I ended my high school career weighing 145 pounds.