As some of you who follow this blog may know, I’ve been a bit preoccupied with my past lately.  In particular, that time in my life when I was just starting to come out to myself as a gay male.  Those were awkward, uncertain times for me, compounded by the fact that I had absolutely no confidence in my physical appearance.  This was in no small measure, I am beginning to realize, due to the family atmosphere I was raised in.  We were New England Baptists and of all the sins you could name (never mind for now, the ones you couldn’t), vanity was among the very worst.  To take an excessive interest in your appearance was frowned upon.  To dress to attract eyes to yourself, to your body, with all the sins of the flesh contained therein, was highly discouraged.

I look back on photos of myself from that time and to my astonishment now, I see a very cute young gay male who is dressed so plainly it is painful to look at.  For some reason, I managed to allow myself to wear nicely fitting blue jeans.  But I never dared ornament them as I sometimes saw the other gay guys doing…  I’ve seen that there butterfly you’ve got tatooed on your pants…I’m gonna get me some of that…as the Aerosmith song goes…  Yeah…I had fantasies of being that flagrant but I never went there, let alone tear my jeans just so.  My shirts without exception were either white, or some dull solid earth tone.  I never wore any jewelry.  I let my hair grow long, but never took a great deal of care of it, so it was always a bit ragged in appearance.  Deep down inside I would envy the beautiful male peacocks I saw during Pride Day.  But I was too insecure about my looks to even think I could ever be beautiful myself.  From the time I was a toddler I’d been taught not to want to be beautiful, or to want anyone to look at me.  

Fast forward to the present.  I’m 53 years old, and a senior systems software developer for the Space Telescope Science Institute.  That means two things.  First, I don’t have the metabolism of a twenty-something anymore.  Second, my job has me sitting down most of the time.  Alas, I still have my twenty-something appetite for junk food.  So there I am, eating all the things I always have, cookies, chocolate bars, potato chips, burgers, fries, and more of the same all day long.  Oh…and sodas…lots and lots of soda.  Time was I could pack that all in and still stay 114 pounds and wear size 28 pants.    Not anymore.  Several weeks ago I got on the scales and they read 170 pounds back at me.  I was 114 pounds almost until I was 35.

Several weeks ago I managed to re-establish a very tentative contact with the classmate I’d had my first big crush on…the object of my affections in my cartoon series, A Coming Out Story.  It’s unlikely we’ll be having any face to face time in the near future…if ever.  But one thing that really bugged the hell out of me for days after we chatted for the first time in 35 years, was what if we did meet?  What would he see, were he to lay eyes on me after all those years.  I had to reckon that the first thing he’d have noticed wouldn’t have been my graying hair…long as it still is.

Well somehow when I put it to myself that way, mentally picturing my first crush stepping forward in time to behold me as I appear now…it got me motivated.  Okay…I’ll never have my twenty-something body back again…not without killing myself in the process.  Middle aged guys just don’t look like that.  But, I decided, I can look better then I do, and it was worth working for.  I’m single, I’m lonely, and you don’t get invitations to go on dates if you don’t advertise.  I realized looking at all those old photographs of me way back when, that I Was beautiful, I Was desirable…and I began to think that I could still be so again…at least to other guys in my own age group.  If I could be the cutest looking guy in the room full of guys about my own age, I might still have a chance.  

So for the first time in my life I decided to go on a diet, and join a health club where I could firm my body up a tad…

…and maybe in the process start feeling better overall too.  I’d been having terrible problems in recent years with insomnia, and I was just too damn tired all the time.  Every weekend practically, when I was trying to get things done around the house, I was napping instead.  I felt as if my life was being napped away.  So, as I rationalized it, if a diet and some regular exercise helped with those problems, all the better.  That helped with the Baptist side of me, that still feels uneasy about paying too much attention to my looks.  I could rationalize it as a health issue too.

But mostly, I wanted to feel good about my looks.  And its beyond merely wanting Mr. Right to notice me.  I know I will never be most people’s idea of a stunning beauty.  And that’s fine because I don’t think I would handle being gawked at all the time very well.  But it isn’t vanity to want to be beautiful.  It’s a matter of having inner self confidence and pride, and pride is only bad for you when it’s shallow.  I look at those photos of me back then, and I wonder if I’d still be single today if I’d only given myself permission to be beautiful in the way I always wanted to be.  

I decided to start my diet simply…one thing at a time.  First thing I did was cut out all the between meal sugary fatty junk snacks.  Swear to God that was All I Did…and within 5 day’s I’d lost 8 pounds!  And no…it wasn’t water weight either that I’d lost.  I was still constantly drinking ice tea all day long.   8 fucking pounds in 5 days and all I did was stop snacking constantly on junk.

That gave me real pause.  See…I’d never thought of myself as being an overeater.  I didn’t eat breakfast most days, and only had smallish lunches and dinners.   I knew my diet wasn’t wonderful…and…sure…I wasn’t as physically active as I should have been.   But somehow I’d never figured I was eating too much.  But I’d come to rely on the junk food in the morning, the candy bars and sodas and such, to jolt me awake, and again in afternoon, to give me enough of a jolt to get me though the day.  

When I stopped eating junk, I Did get pretty hungry mid morning and mid afternoon.  Not horribly so though.  And I would allow myself one lo-cal granola bar in the morning, and one in the afternoon and take a short walk around campus after lunch.  My natural walking gait is pretty fast, people are always telling me to slow down, and I think Does burn off some calories.

Once upon a time I asked Keith, my ex, about the various diet plans out there for loosing weight.  He scoffed them all off.  He’d been to chef school and he told me that it was all just a matter of calories in, verses calories out.  Nothing more magical then that he said.  So now, for the first time, I started adding up all those calories in my daily intake.  I was still putting down my weight gains to my physical inactivity through most of the day, and I really didn’t think my calorie intake amounted to all that much.    But I’d lost so much so quickly from just cutting out the junk that I wasn’t sure anymore.

The fast food joints don’t make it easy to tell what you’re eating, and sometimes the labeling on the junk food items are deceptive (you have to pay close attention to what they regard as a “serving”.  Some candy bars are listed has having two or more servings per bar…).  Doughnuts…burgers…fries…  I never ate all that much of any of it.  But as it turned out…I didn’t need to.  I was ingesting tons of calories anyway…nearly 4000 a day!  

No fucking wonder my body was complaining!  Never mind the waistline I’d built up over time.  Once upon a time I wore 28 waist jeans.  Then it became 31 inch.  Then 32.  It stayed at 32 for a while and then it became 33.   By the time I saw 170 on the scales the 33s were getting tight.  And my body was telling me it didn’t like it very much either.  I couldn’t sleep right.  I was tired all day long no matter how much sugar I ingested.  By mid afternoon I was getting too tired to think straight, and it was affecting my work.  Weekends I would nap almost all day.  I went so far as to go to a sleep clinic, and try using a CPAP machine.  Nothing worked.  My stomach would cramp up suddenly after a meal.  My bowels too.  I put it all down to middle age.  But now I was loosing weight, and suddenly all that stopped.

I sleep a thousand percent better now.  My stomach and gut do not complain anymore.  I am Much more active during the day then I’ve been in years and it’s not even that I’m working at it.  Paradoxically, by eating less, I feel like I have so much more energy.  It’s been an amazing change.  In almost five weeks now of moderate dieting…nothing extreme at all, just watching my calorie intake basically…I’ve lost fifteen pounds, I’m back in my 32s, and I can see getting back into my 31s again.  For the first time in ages, I can wear low risers and my stomach doesn’t hang over the belt buckle.  My torso still isn’t as tight as I’d like it…but that’s muscle building, which will take time and persistence.  But by spring I may even be able to walk along the beach without a shirt on, and not feel ridiculous.  

I’m sure I’ve had it easier then other people, whose bodies for whatever reason, just want to be larger.  I think the reason I lost weight so quickly is that my body just doesn’t want to be that heavy.  Males in my father’s side aren’t, and in mom’s side they are only if they’re sedentary.  I was cramming tons more calories into my body then it wanted and it got a bit cranky, as well as overweight.  Other folks, whose bodies just want to be heavy in the first place, probably won’t loose weight as quickly or as easily as I have.  But this convinces me for now, that all the weight gains I’ve been writing off as an artifact of middle age, aren’t necessarily.  I just wasn’t eating right for my age.  And at my age, and with the job I have, I have to make an effort to be physically active.  I can’t just rely on metabolism to burn off what I take in because I don’t have that metabolism anymore.

The pain for me probably comes with the building abdomen muscle part of my plan.  I need that now, more then when I was younger, because there is fat in there that probably won’t go away just from dieting alone.  And they say you need a good set of abdomen muscles to prevent back injury as you get older.  But I’ve never worked at building muscle before in my life, and it’s not something I’m looking forward to now.

But I only have to think about my first high school crush seeing me now, to get on with it.  And…it just feels so good to be able to look in a mirror and think “yeah…I’d date that…”

This is me this morning.  Those are Levis 527s.  I really like the way the boot leg cut looks on those.  I couldn’t possibly have worn those just four weeks ago.  The hourglass is coming back…but I still have some work to do on it, and that’ll probably involve mostly muscle building.  No I will not dye my hair.  I’m not trying to look like a twenty-something again…just be good looking for my age.