I happened to listen to this one during a particularly rigorous workout at the gym yesterday, so I found myself identifying with King (every time he mentioned the pain I felt it too---and for the first time, I didn't mind it) and Steve in the outro. I too am of the somewhat geeky persuasion who has found himself trying to lose a bit of weight and improve overall health.
And like Steve, I didn't join the gym for reasons of vanity. I was a bit overweight, but still smaller than many of the people around me. I was also quite healthy---the only measurements that would indicate otherwise were my weight and girth. However, I knew my weight wasn't great, and it seemed to be growing quicker than it ever had before.
Like Steve, my geekiness found a way to motivate me. I remember lying in bed one morning thinking that, ideally, I needed to lose about fifteen kilos. I figured fifteen kilos by Christmas wasn't a bad goal. That worked out to about 100 grams per day. That seemed easier. Of course, I needed to keep track of that properly, which meant weighing myself in much the same clothing and at the same time every day. I needed to record that, so I'd need to set up some sort of tabular file on the computer. I like to visualise things, so I'd need to be able to export the data to a graph... hmm, I thought. That gives me plenty of options. Which would be the best? So up I got out of bed and started to look at the various software on my computer which would take a list of numbers and dates and graph them appropriately. I also needed a line on the graph that could tell me how I was going with the 100 grams weight loss per day.
Here's the beauty of it---it was completely useless without data. The only way to get data was to weigh myself every morning before breakfast and record what I weighed. If my weight started to get away from my target line, I had to review what I'd been doing---had I been eating correctly? Had I exercised enough? A geeky obsession with keeping this graph up-to-date has had the very useful side effects of keeping my weight under control, and a healthier lifestyle all around.
Oh yeah, I liked the story.