Okay, John. Now, what are we going to do about this weight?

That's the first thing my doctor said to me yesterday when he came into the examination room for my physical. When the nurse weighed--I was fully clothed in shorts, polo shirt, and Nikes--it weighed exactly 260. That's a gain of 6 pounds, according to my medical chart, since I last visited him in January to discuss whether or not I was healthy enough to embark on an exercise program.

Anyway, so I told him about the six-week core fitness class I've been taking, and he seemed less concerned about it, because I'm obviously getting stronger. I told him I'm enrolled in a spinning class, two days a week, starting September 1, to go with two more days per week with the Core Fitness. Because what I really, really need, he said, is some hard core cardio to take the weight off.

Because, it seems, my diastolic blood pressure was about 5 or 6 points too high. He told me losing the weight should knock it down. We made an appointment for December to see if another six months of working out, this time adding serious cardio to the mix, will fix it.

Otherwise, though, I was given a clean bill of health. My pee looked well--I'm not diabetic--and my blood work was awesome. My lipid panel was frankly fantastic: LDL=94, and my HDL was 59, which greatly impressed my doctor. So no heart disease or arterial sclerosis for me.

Tomorrow is the last day of the 6-week class. We're doing assessments, to see how far we've progressed. In terms of weight loss, I've maybe lost 2 lbs, which, as someone pointed out to me, you can lose that much just sitting on the toilet. But my shirts are all baggy now, and I'll post a comparison of how I did on the first day of class. We were assessed in three areas: how long we could hold the plank position, how many pushups we could do, and how long we stay in a nice defensive stance, a.k.a. by hippies as the "Glass Horse."

My original scores, which were pretty awful, are on a sheet held by the instructor. I'll be sure to write them down tomorrow and report back on how awesome I am compared to the first time.