Back up a pound this week to 235, giving me a total weight loss of 62 pounds. After talking it over with the staff at Dr. Harris's office today, I have decided that -- after next week -- I'm going to start weighing in every other week rather than every week. I seem to be having one up week followed by one down week, so maybe this will show the progress is a smoother way.

But I'll keep updating this column every week, of course.

Stephen raises some interesting points about doctors now treating obesity as a disease, reated to this article in Wired:

My thought is that there is no down side to classifying any physical problem that medicine can actually help as a disease. Notice that qualification. When medicine couldn't treat certain problems (alcoholism, obesity, depression, and at present aging), it was not particularly helpful to think of those problems as diseases. Better to tell the sufferer to get some backbone and put down the bottle, drop the fork, and cheer up because we ain't getting any younger.

But to the extent that medicine can help a problem, what harm is there is classifying it as a disease?

I agree up to a point. If by treating it like a disease, we mean paying attention to it and constructively engaging patients to help them overcome it -- as my doctor has -- I'm all for it. I also don't have any objection pharmacalogical solutions, and when a reasonably safe and effective "fat pill" makes it to the market, I'll certainly consider it.

Where I draw the line is major surgery. I'm not saying that it isn't the right solution for some people, but I would personally rather be fat than have intestinal by-pass surgery. Whatever damage obesity may have done to my body, I would have a hard time believing that subjecting myself to that kind of trauma could help somehow.