When I started
my diet I had me a
plan, to cut down my weight
and to get me a man. So I ignored
all my cravings for ice cream and cake
and dogged through the days
when my belly would ache.
Now my
flabby
old fat
is the
thing that
I miss...
...cause I
ended up
looking
exactly
like this.
my diet I had me a
plan, to cut down my weight
and to get me a man. So I ignored
all my cravings for ice cream and cake
and dogged through the days
when my belly would ache.
Now my
flabby
old fat
is the
thing that
I miss...
...cause I
ended up
looking
exactly
like this.
During my life, I've never not been overweight, and so reading this poem always made me laugh out loud, as the ridiculousness of someone being angry about being skinny was just too much for me, as fat kid, not to find terribly amusing. I've come to realize, especially after coming to grips with my sexuality, that being overweight sucks, it's not healthy; it can cause all sorts of other sucky things, like sleep apnea, high blood pressure, etc. And being gay and overweight, well that's almost a mortal sin in the eyes of the gay community.
Now, I'm not saying that all gay men are shallow, judgemental, body-centric piss-elegant queens, because that would be a rude generalization of my queer peers. It's more like 97.5% of them are shallow, judgemental, body-centric piss-elegant queens, in my opinion. The rest are either chubby chasers who are into chubby guys or are fat like me and so they're about as screwed as I am in these days of the Aberzombie and Felch crowd.
Since I was very young, I've always wanted to have a nice thin body. I've always wanted to be able to look down and see a flat plane from my chest to my ankles (with of course, *ahem* one somewhat large protrusion *ahem* about mid-way down.)
This dream of slimness however, was not to be. Though I spent hours of my summers swimming, playing running, jumping, climbing, and everything else that I could do in Western PA, I was always kinda chubby and the weight never came off.
When I was a senior in High School, I joined Nutri-System and lost about 65 lbs, which, although was a goodly amount of weight, was about half of what I needed to lose at the time. (and I suspect that most of the weight that I lost at that time was a combination of fat and muscle.)
After I stopped eating the food, however, the weight came back, mostly during my freshman year at college. I discovered that the "Freshman 15" was a bit of a myth, as I packed on some 30-40 lbs during my first year in college. Fifteen would have been a blessing compared to that.
During the fall of my sophmore year, my folks and I talked and we decided that perhaps I should try Jenny Craig, so for the next year, I religiously followed the Jenny Craig foodplan... and it worked well. I went from 270 lbs to 205 lbs. (I remember that I never was able to break below 200 lbs, no matter how much I tried.)
As if a life-changing diet isn't enough for a 19 year old guy, I was in the midst of discovering my sexuality, which was a bit of a trial for me, especially when my freshman year roommates decided to put a bug in my sophmore year roommate's ear that they believed I was gay. My sophomore year roommate, a redneck from Maine, who is now a redneck lawyer from Maine, processed this rather poisonous news and proceeded to make my sophmore year a living hell for me, culminating in me moving out over Christmas break. It was a sucky time for me, but, on the bright side, that kind of severe depression can sometimes lead to some RIGHTEOUS weight-loss!
After I went on maintenance with Jenny, the weight stayed off for some time, but slowly came back during my junior and senior years. After I graduated and got a job, I found that one's first job can be somewhat dietetic, as employers hire cheap and you sometimes go hungry if you want to make ends meet. I was also biking from my lovely group house on S Street to Georgetown each day to go to and from work, so I had calves like iron and was able to keep my weight down pretty well.
That all ended when my then-newish boyfriend John got a call from his previous employers asking him to come to North Carolina and work for them again. We moved down here together, him to his new job, and me to a computer services and custom printing coordinator position similar to what I left in DC with Kinko's. I tried to bike once after we moved here, biking to Franklin Street from Southern Village, and found that if the Everest-like hill between Southern Village and Franklin Street wasn't enough to kill me, the psychotic drivers that had a penchant for "nudging" unsuspecting bikers off the road as they flew by at 50 mph would certainly be happy to finish the job.
So, as my iron-like calves began to rust, and my waist size began to increase in direct proportion to my salary and love for North Carolina barbecue, John and I decided to join the local gym (which was a much nicer hell-hole than it is today, now that it's been sold twice over and has yet to be remodeled or fixed up.)
However, when my weight began to touch 300 lbs in 2000, I decided to try something else. My work was offering discounted "Weight Watchers" classes, and both my partner and I decided to put our chins (several of them) to the grindstone and start losing weight... and we did. I got back down to a 38 waist, and my partner lost so much weight that he had to jump around in the shower to get wet.
Again, this success was fleeting. By 2004, my weight had shot up to over 340 lbs, and this time, because I was no longer a spring chicken, it had brought up my blood pressure with it. They call high blood pressure the silent killer, well, it's true. I never knew my blood pressure was excessively high until I went in for a doctor's visit in 2004 and, after the nurse had to go forage for an extra large "thigh cuff" to fit around my rather huge arm, she pointed out that my blood pressure, at 160/120 was not so good. Having gotten a degree in exercise and sport science, I tried not to say, "Uhhh... DUHHHHH!", but it was something that scared me. My doctor started me on some meds to bring it down and insisted it was weight and some "white coat hypertension", meaning I am a bit anxious around doctors, so my blood pressure tends to skyrocket around them.
In 2007, I had nearly the same blood pressure and had decided that, maybe 3 years into the same meds, that he needed to try something else. Having spent some time reading up on blood pressure issues for this very reason, I suggested he try me on some ace inhibitors, as he'd only been trying beta blockers on me until that point. He was hesistant at first, but then prescribed both a cheap generic ace-inhibitor and a water pill to see what it would do for me.
I think that was the start of something. Since then, my blood pressure has been 128/84 (give or take a point or two, but not much more) and I've been feeling remarkably better. My partner and I have also decided to go back on the wagon. This time, we were lured back to NutriSystem for two good reasons... (1) It's cheaper for us to buy NS food than it is to cook or go out, and (2) We're kinda lazy, and having pre-proportioned foodstuffs in the house is really awesome!
Since joining a month ago, I've lost 24 lbs. I didn't notice that I'd lost it, actually, because let's face it, I was 365lbs when I started and 24 lbs doesn't even begin to put a dent in that amount of fat (or so I thought.)
Although NutriSystem food is pretty good, we cheat every now and again, and go off the diet and have dinner out at a restaurant. Usually it's for something we've been craving, and usually it's not anything that's really dietetically terrible for us.
Last week we had dinner out at Mami Nori's Peruvian Chicken in Durham with our former neighbor Susan. Susan is an amazing woman who unfortunately got the cold damp, fuzzy end of the lollipop in her divorce and child custody battle last year with her... uhh...ex-(I don't want upset her if she were to read this blog post by trashing that heartless, cheating *insert multiple descriptive epithets here*, who is unfortunately also the XY chromosome provider for her two absolutely wonderful boys, they got all the good genes from her, of course.) In a sad turn of events early this year, she had to move away from our neighborhood to cheaper diggs on the other side of town.
Well, Susan showed up at the restaurant and grinned at me and the first thing she said, "Wow... do you look amazing! You've lost so much weight."
*pause* *SMILE*
Yeah... Weight loss is hard and it really sucks, like the first part of that MAD poem says, but Susan's words at that restaurant made it all totally worth it!
And you know what, this is only the first 20 or so pounds so I'm just gettin' started! I am going to keep with it and see if I can get under 200 lbs this time, and you know what, if I get close, I'm going to get some nip/tucking done because I can afford it and then I won't look like someone let the air out of me like a balloon, or like Peter Griffin from that episode of Family Guy where he wishes all his bones away and becomes an amorphous blob.
This time, I'm gonna make more of an effort to keep it off because (tho I don't like to admit it) I'm not gettin' any younger and I don't want to have to go through the whole "heart attack/bypass" thing my dad went through when he was in his 40s.
But let me tell you something, if I ever get so thin that I look like that second part of the poem, I can GUARANTEE that you won't hear me bitchin' about it!
Now, I'm not saying that all gay men are shallow, judgemental, body-centric piss-elegant queens, because that would be a rude generalization of my queer peers. It's more like 97.5% of them are shallow, judgemental, body-centric piss-elegant queens, in my opinion. The rest are either chubby chasers who are into chubby guys or are fat like me and so they're about as screwed as I am in these days of the Aberzombie and Felch crowd.
Since I was very young, I've always wanted to have a nice thin body. I've always wanted to be able to look down and see a flat plane from my chest to my ankles (with of course, *ahem* one somewhat large protrusion *ahem* about mid-way down.)
This dream of slimness however, was not to be. Though I spent hours of my summers swimming, playing running, jumping, climbing, and everything else that I could do in Western PA, I was always kinda chubby and the weight never came off.
When I was a senior in High School, I joined Nutri-System and lost about 65 lbs, which, although was a goodly amount of weight, was about half of what I needed to lose at the time. (and I suspect that most of the weight that I lost at that time was a combination of fat and muscle.)
After I stopped eating the food, however, the weight came back, mostly during my freshman year at college. I discovered that the "Freshman 15" was a bit of a myth, as I packed on some 30-40 lbs during my first year in college. Fifteen would have been a blessing compared to that.
During the fall of my sophmore year, my folks and I talked and we decided that perhaps I should try Jenny Craig, so for the next year, I religiously followed the Jenny Craig foodplan... and it worked well. I went from 270 lbs to 205 lbs. (I remember that I never was able to break below 200 lbs, no matter how much I tried.)
As if a life-changing diet isn't enough for a 19 year old guy, I was in the midst of discovering my sexuality, which was a bit of a trial for me, especially when my freshman year roommates decided to put a bug in my sophmore year roommate's ear that they believed I was gay. My sophomore year roommate, a redneck from Maine, who is now a redneck lawyer from Maine, processed this rather poisonous news and proceeded to make my sophmore year a living hell for me, culminating in me moving out over Christmas break. It was a sucky time for me, but, on the bright side, that kind of severe depression can sometimes lead to some RIGHTEOUS weight-loss!
After I went on maintenance with Jenny, the weight stayed off for some time, but slowly came back during my junior and senior years. After I graduated and got a job, I found that one's first job can be somewhat dietetic, as employers hire cheap and you sometimes go hungry if you want to make ends meet. I was also biking from my lovely group house on S Street to Georgetown each day to go to and from work, so I had calves like iron and was able to keep my weight down pretty well.
That all ended when my then-newish boyfriend John got a call from his previous employers asking him to come to North Carolina and work for them again. We moved down here together, him to his new job, and me to a computer services and custom printing coordinator position similar to what I left in DC with Kinko's. I tried to bike once after we moved here, biking to Franklin Street from Southern Village, and found that if the Everest-like hill between Southern Village and Franklin Street wasn't enough to kill me, the psychotic drivers that had a penchant for "nudging" unsuspecting bikers off the road as they flew by at 50 mph would certainly be happy to finish the job.
So, as my iron-like calves began to rust, and my waist size began to increase in direct proportion to my salary and love for North Carolina barbecue, John and I decided to join the local gym (which was a much nicer hell-hole than it is today, now that it's been sold twice over and has yet to be remodeled or fixed up.)
However, when my weight began to touch 300 lbs in 2000, I decided to try something else. My work was offering discounted "Weight Watchers" classes, and both my partner and I decided to put our chins (several of them) to the grindstone and start losing weight... and we did. I got back down to a 38 waist, and my partner lost so much weight that he had to jump around in the shower to get wet.
Again, this success was fleeting. By 2004, my weight had shot up to over 340 lbs, and this time, because I was no longer a spring chicken, it had brought up my blood pressure with it. They call high blood pressure the silent killer, well, it's true. I never knew my blood pressure was excessively high until I went in for a doctor's visit in 2004 and, after the nurse had to go forage for an extra large "thigh cuff" to fit around my rather huge arm, she pointed out that my blood pressure, at 160/120 was not so good. Having gotten a degree in exercise and sport science, I tried not to say, "Uhhh... DUHHHHH!", but it was something that scared me. My doctor started me on some meds to bring it down and insisted it was weight and some "white coat hypertension", meaning I am a bit anxious around doctors, so my blood pressure tends to skyrocket around them.
In 2007, I had nearly the same blood pressure and had decided that, maybe 3 years into the same meds, that he needed to try something else. Having spent some time reading up on blood pressure issues for this very reason, I suggested he try me on some ace inhibitors, as he'd only been trying beta blockers on me until that point. He was hesistant at first, but then prescribed both a cheap generic ace-inhibitor and a water pill to see what it would do for me.
I think that was the start of something. Since then, my blood pressure has been 128/84 (give or take a point or two, but not much more) and I've been feeling remarkably better. My partner and I have also decided to go back on the wagon. This time, we were lured back to NutriSystem for two good reasons... (1) It's cheaper for us to buy NS food than it is to cook or go out, and (2) We're kinda lazy, and having pre-proportioned foodstuffs in the house is really awesome!
Since joining a month ago, I've lost 24 lbs. I didn't notice that I'd lost it, actually, because let's face it, I was 365lbs when I started and 24 lbs doesn't even begin to put a dent in that amount of fat (or so I thought.)
Although NutriSystem food is pretty good, we cheat every now and again, and go off the diet and have dinner out at a restaurant. Usually it's for something we've been craving, and usually it's not anything that's really dietetically terrible for us.
Last week we had dinner out at Mami Nori's Peruvian Chicken in Durham with our former neighbor Susan. Susan is an amazing woman who unfortunately got the cold damp, fuzzy end of the lollipop in her divorce and child custody battle last year with her... uhh...ex-(I don't want upset her if she were to read this blog post by trashing that heartless, cheating *insert multiple descriptive epithets here*, who is unfortunately also the XY chromosome provider for her two absolutely wonderful boys, they got all the good genes from her, of course.) In a sad turn of events early this year, she had to move away from our neighborhood to cheaper diggs on the other side of town.
Well, Susan showed up at the restaurant and grinned at me and the first thing she said, "Wow... do you look amazing! You've lost so much weight."
*pause* *SMILE*
Yeah... Weight loss is hard and it really sucks, like the first part of that MAD poem says, but Susan's words at that restaurant made it all totally worth it!
And you know what, this is only the first 20 or so pounds so I'm just gettin' started! I am going to keep with it and see if I can get under 200 lbs this time, and you know what, if I get close, I'm going to get some nip/tucking done because I can afford it and then I won't look like someone let the air out of me like a balloon, or like Peter Griffin from that episode of Family Guy where he wishes all his bones away and becomes an amorphous blob.
This time, I'm gonna make more of an effort to keep it off because (tho I don't like to admit it) I'm not gettin' any younger and I don't want to have to go through the whole "heart attack/bypass" thing my dad went through when he was in his 40s.
But let me tell you something, if I ever get so thin that I look like that second part of the poem, I can GUARANTEE that you won't hear me bitchin' about it!
