gitbigger

I’ve officially lost 100 pounds from my highest weight, now.  Down to 212 in a bit over a year.  45 of those came off in the past three months, according to BodySpace.  No one ever believed me that I was fighting a crazy metabolism, but now I have proof!  Take that!

(You can tell a lot about someone’s weight by their ankles!)

So, I think I’m officially not a fat guy anymore.  I’m still technically ‘obese,’ but I’m at the point where I can suck in my belly and look normal.  On the flip side, though, I’m in that frustrating ‘oh dear, he’s let himself go a bit’ zone for people that don’t know the situation.  For the people that do (like coworkers), I’m a freaking miracle worker.  Seriously, they won’t shut up about it.

Despite everything, I’m feeling good.  A complicated kind of ‘good.’  It’s hard to explain, but I’ve been thinking about how I can articulate it. The best description I can come up with at the moment is that while I feel good, but I don’t feel good.

I feel amazing.  I haven’t gotten winded in ages.  We spent two days in New York and walking every which way was cake.  I haven’t snored at all.  I’m able to buy clothes in actual stores. Of course, it’s dumb to sing the praises of not being overweight, everyone knows you’re healthier thinner.  Losing weight hasn’t solved all my problems though. I still get heartburn, I still have acne (probably until I die—I will have a big honker in the casket and everything).

Despite all that, I just don’t… feel very good.  I sincerely and earnestly miss feeling good about how I look.  It was something I never imagined I would be able to experience.  Being around 300 pounds was the first time in my life I had ever genuinely liked the way I looked.  I was happy to look in the mirror, and I was very proud of myself.

So, I really miss the way I felt.  I don’t miss the way I felt though.  If that makes sense.  Regardless, this whole experience has helped me to try and measure my confidence and esteem from places other than my physical appearance.  I still have goals for my body—I think I’d be lost without them—but I’m getting better about that being so critical for my happiness.

That being said, I don’t think I could take losing much more weight.  200 is about my minimum.  I’m going to start bulking at the gym again here soon, and I’m excited to see what I end up looking like by the end of the year.

So last month, my boyfriend and I ended our ‘bulking’ phase of building muscle at the gym.  He began a diet in an effort to lose some fat weight before the next bulk (as is what you do), and I was left a bit torn between two paths.

I was still set in my resolve not to bother with gaining weight for now.  I didn’t want to continue bulking as I enjoy doing it with him, and I would probably burn out at the rate we were going.  I am at the point that I am maintaining pretty well, based on my eating habits, so I could have just twiddled around until he was ready, but I don’t particularly enjoy doing nothing.

The other option I had was to cut with him.  I won’t lie, it seemed like a no-brainer decision.  I can’t not be making progress, no matter what direction it’s in.  I’m the kind of guy who will drive a longer route that takes more time just to avoid sitting in traffic.  I can’t stay still.

And to be perfectly honest, I was happier with that decision.  With the circumstances I’m in right now (and for most people, I’m sure), life being skinnier is a million times easier than being bigger.  I haven’t sweated through my shirts once, my feet have never been sore, people continue to be impressed with my weight loss and I feel like I’m being taken a bit more seriously.  Best of all, my boyfriend can sleep and doesn’t have to hear me complain all the time.

All of that is great, but I still felt strange about it.  It wasn’t that I felt as though I was giving up (because I haven’t… yet), but the fact that I was so much happier being skinny made me feel like I was having an identity crisis.  For the past nearly six years, I’ve identified myself as a gainer.  Someone who loves big guys and was working to become one.

Lately, though… I mean, I’ve taken breaks before—lots of them—but nothing has felt quite like this one.  This time I knew it was going to be a while before I could ever try again, and I had so thoroughly burned myself out that it felt as though I was losing my desire.  I wasn’t fantasizing about it, I wasn’t drawing fat guys, I wasn’t chatting on Grommr.  I was happy to see my love handles melt away (though they’re very much still here, the bastards), I was happy to be able to run and catch the train without looking silly or losing my breath for an embarrassing amount of time.

Every so often, I worry that I may be over it.  I mean, it’s not like I didn’t know what I was getting into with this. That maybe I got my fill, and now the excitement is gone.  I was disappointed that I couldn’t put up with the downsides anymore—it didn’t feel worth it.  Maybe it was just a phase, and all the stuff I’ve spouted over the years about how this is who I am wasn’t true.

So, I was (and still am) having an identity crisis (combined with issues that I have with the bear community, as well).  I’m not sure what to make of myself anymore.  Can one identify as a gainer if he’s actively losing weight?  What am I, at this point, if not a gainer?  Just some guy?  Will I ever get the spark to gain back?

I really don’t know, at this point.  I’m still figuring it out.  I still have very powerful waves of wanting to be fat again.  Moments, like now, that I look at my old pictures and have a very powerful, somewhat painful yearning.  But those moments used to be constant, now they are somewhat fleeting.

Regardless of all that, I feel oddly content.  I’ll continue to go with this flow until I can figure out what it is I truly want.  Hopefully that doesn’t take too long.

I’ve been recording my New Year’s resolutions since 2006, the first New Year after meeting my boyfriend.  My routine is to make five resolutions, and then check how I did when I write the next ones.  It’s quite nostalgic to look back on all those old dreams, I highly recommend it.

2011 was a great year for resolutions. 2012 also went pretty well, I’d say:

• Continue gaining into new territory: failed.  While I did enter new territory (295 being where I left off in 2011 and 312 being my highest), I couldn’t maintain it for more than a month or so, and when I tried regaining on two separate occasions, I couldn’t break 295 again.  So I ain’t countin’ it.  Oh well!
• Get a promotion: success!  And I’m potentially on track for another one.  That’s what’s keeping my butt in this town, really.
• Go on a cruise: success!  And thankfully that itch has been scratched for a WHILE.
• SOMETHING VERY PRIVATE: success! (Sorry!)
• Produce more colored drawings and attempt at least one comic: sort-of success!  I did force myself to color more, but I never did get to that comic.

So, not bad!  I call that a 3.5/5 (sort-of successes counted as a half point).  2011 was my best record at 4/5.  2009 was the worst at 1/5.

Here’s to 2013 being a good one!

Every once in a while, someone will point out that I look nothing like my pre-gaining self.  Usually it’s harmless, but sometimes they’re genuinely skeptical that that’s me in those old pictures. The most notable time was that CollegeHumor incident some of you may remember (it’s still online, if you can believe it!), I love reading some of the comments on that.

I have all the proof in the world that that lanky 140-pound twink of a kid was indeed me at one point, but every time someone brings it up, I can’t really be bothered to prove it—I like that it’s a hard sell!

I bring this up because I remembered I had a anecdote from the cruise that I forgot to tell because of all this break hooplah.

I got my first passport in 2003 for a vacation that my family ended up never taking.  It was during my typical awkward high school phase, where I distinctly remember not wanting to show my teeth when I smiled because of my braces. 

For the cruise, I needed either a passport or a birth certificate, and since the passport is still good until next April, I just decided to skip the expensive process of getting a new one and used it.  I had a concern, though, that there’s probably some rule that you have to look like the photo on your passport (otherwise what’s the point of there being a photo on there at all, right?), so I brought both, just in case.

When we got off the boat, we had to go through their stupid, endless disembarking / customs process.  The exhausted boyfriend and I made it to the last part of the ordeal, where agents checked your documentation.  We lucked out and got in line for the biggest, manliest looking ex-jock beast of a man I’d seen in a long time.  His frame was wide as hell, and he sported a gut so massive it took every bit of willpower I had to not sneak a picture on my cell phone.

He took my passport and gave me that look.  I laughed nervously, as he glanced back and forth between my photo and my face, visibly struggling.  For a good 5 minutes he did this, even asking his coworkers for a second opinion.  I expected trouble, but the longer it took, the more concerned I got.  He was a nice guy about it and all, but dear god he was scaryhuge.

Finally he conceded and told me I needed a background check.  I was sweating bullets as he led me to a back room, but also crazy proud that he thought there was nothing about that photo that looked like me (not to mention thrilled that I was getting more time with this beast of a man).  In the back, he loosened up a bit as he told the background check guy my deal.  They both kept going on about how I look like a completely different person, and I started to lose myself in the moment.  The burly guy complimented my body and my shirt and all that so much that (and I feel like this is exaggeration at this point, but still) I started to feel like he may have even been hitting on me.

Regardless of whether that’s true (I don’t trust my brain when I’m put in situations like that!), the check came back clear—thanks in large part to my bringing my birth certificate as a backup—and I was free to go.  I walked out of that room with the biggest fucking head you’d ever seen.  I had just been bombarded with unintentional compliments from a guy who was basically manliness incarnate, you’d’ve thought I was floating as we left the terminal.  Definitely one of my top 10 moments.

So yeah, if you’re suspicious about my old photos, I guess I can’t blame you.  But, as I like to say, that’s the whole purpose of this little quest of mine.  I am not and will never again be the awkward kid in that photo—physically or mentally—and for that, I couldn’t be happier.