It all started because my wife got a Wii Fit.

I was not in the habit of weighing myself (for some reason), but I assumed I was resting comfortably at an incredibly unhealthy girth of about 250. I’d been 250 for ages. Years. And I was wearing the same circus tent sized clothes I’d always worn, so I figured nothing had changed. And I was successfully ignoring the fact that my knees were killing me for no reason, my face turned bright red whenever I took a sip of wine, and I had developed crippling pain in my heel.

So I hopped on the Wii balance board and watched in horror as the animated Mii version of myself ballooned into a distorted and grotesque caricature of a caricature of me. The words “morbidly obese” flashed on the screen. Sirens went off. The surgeon general sent a team of Navy Seals to put yellow caution tape around my house. Richard Simmons wept. I was 285.

285! Which I immediately just rounded up to 300. I walked around (slowly) for a couple days thinking, “I weigh 300 fucking pounds…”

So I bought some Reebok shoes with zig-zag soles. (Turns out all the cool second-graders are wearing them.) And I bought a book called “The Runners Handbook” which I didn’t read. Then I went for a run. And then I lay on the floor with tears in my eyes and ice on my knees for two days.

Decided I was too heavy to run, so I blew the cobwebs off my mountain bike and road it to the top of a small hill behind my house, threw up, rode home.

This started last July – these olympic dreams of mine…I’ve somehow managed to stick with it, eventually dropped enough weight to start running and now I’m doing both. That coupled with eating a lot less and no fast food  or soda and the fat has melted away like butter. Like sweet, delicious butter….

I’ve dropped about 80 pounds at this point. I’m pretty happy, though I am tired of people constantly asking me how I’ve done it.

“Eat less and exercise.”

World’s shortest self-help book.

My only other complaint is that I’m freezing. I’ve lost my protective layer of manatee blubber that kept me warm in the winter. I can’t wear enough sweaters.

This Sunday marks the beginning of the 2012 Formula 1 season with a race in Australia. To say I’m excited is a massive understatement. I’m bloody dreaming about it. It’s true. The other night I had a dream that Michael Schumacher won the Australian Grand Prix and I was whooping with joy. (A boy can dream…)

To say I’m alone in my enthusiasm for F1 is likewise an understatement. Watched all over the world by millions of people, yet none of my friends watch it, nor my family, nor anyone I know. My wife watches a little, but I think it’s mostly out of kindness to me, bless her heart.

I’m not bothered that no one I know is a fan. I’m happy to wake up early on a Sunday to watch a race, trying to keep my enthusiasm in check so I don’t wake up the rest of the family. The problem is that when people find out I watch F1, there is generally a sniff of derision coupled with a baffled expression and the question: “Why?” I’m pretty sure that if I said I was a college football fan, no one would ask me why. If I admitted to watching hockey, no one would react with confusion. But F1 is apparently baffling.

I’m pretty sure it’s because I’m American. Here, auto racing begins and ends with NASCAR. I’m not a NASCAR fan. So when I tell people I like F1, they generally ask me if I like NASCAR, and when I tell them I don’t, the confusion grows: Aren’t they the same?

No.

So here, in as few words as I can muster, I will attempt to explain why I love Formula 1:

It’s an international sport: The drivers and teams are from all over the world. They race all over the world, too. This season, there are 20 scheduled races, in such diverse locations as Belgium, Korea, Hungary, Malasia and the US. Just like the olympics, when the field is open on a global scale, you truly get the best talent in the world competing at their peak.

There are many subtle and complex levels to the competition: There are 12 teams. Each team has two drivers and runs two cars they’ve designed and built themselves. There are of course a lot of regulations regarding how the cars are built, but they’re far from identical. The competition among the various engineers and designers is probably my favorite part of the sport. The cars are incredible: Rocket ships on the ground. And the way they are able to tweak their designs to get literally tenths-of-seconds more from them is astonishing.

Beyond that you have the competition between the two drivers on the team. It’s one of the more unique aspects of F1. As a driver, you are working with your teammate to score as many points as you can to help the team, but you also want to beat your teammate in the race. (On some teams, you want to beat your teammate more than anyone else on the grid.) Makes for a lot of tension, drama and really interesting strategy.

And finally there’s the race itself: A lot of auto racing focuses on stamina and reliability (the 24 Hour Le Mans, for one), whereas F1 is mainly focused on speed. (Reliability is an issue, to be sure. The car has to make it to the end of the race.) Most Grand Prix’s are about 90 minutes long with the cars, pit crews and drivers all going full-on to the checkered flag.

There’s a lot of strategy unfolding in each race, and it’s fascinating and exciting to watch. One of the most annoying comments non-fans make is, “isn’t it just watching cars go around and around?” In truth, there’s so much going on in every lap, it’s actually hard to take it all in and process what’s going on. There’s different tires to use on different tracks in different weather conditions (they race rain-or-shine), not to mention deciding when to change tires. There’s fuel management (no re-fueling in F1, so the cars start out heavy – with about 300 lbs of fuel – that burns off as the race progresses. Makes the car faster, but you have to make sure you don’t run out of gas). There’s qualifying strategy, passing strategy, cornering strategy, dealing with the straightaways, when to use your Kinetic Energy Recovery System for a quick boot of speed, occasional safety cars and debris on the track….not to mention the mental and physical strain of driving 200mph for an hour and a half and doing your best not to die – a genuine concern in all motor sports.

Finally there’s the endless drama among the personalities in F1. The drivers and team principles are all larger than life characters, replete with heroes and villains, tragedy and struggle, cheating, backstabbing, underhanded management, triumph over adversity and the thrill of victory. It’s a soap opera. I admit it. And I can’t help getting swept up in it every year.

So I hope this little essay clarifying things a bit. And if I’ve somehow enticed you to give it a try, set your DVR for the Australian Grand Prix this Sunday. It’s on the SPEED channel at 1AM (EST).

And if you’re looking for someone to cheer for, root for Mark Webber. He’s an Australian driver who races for Red Bull, and deserves the win.

This is the best 17 minutes I’ve had today. Do yourself a favor. Stop whatever you’re doing, and watch this…