Introductions are in Order

Hello, gentle reader(s?) Please allow me to introduce myself...boy, that was a great song. My name is John, and I'm taking my first tentative step into the blogosphere as prompted by a co-worker of mine who's done the same recently in blogging her pregnancy and the impending birth of her first child. We are both pop cultured individuals who help keep one another sane in a hostile work environment (overworked, underappreciated, you know the story) through occasional emails, and she suggested I blog about my weight loss efforts which is a primary aspect of my life right now (among others) so, here we go.

Unlike the other weight loss blogs out there (of which I've read zero), this blog is going to be saturated with many rather unique aspects of my personality (multiple aspects, not multiple personalities). I'd like to share this blog with you in hopes that my musings outside the mainstream of weight loss thought and process will help me achieve the goals I set for myself, and I welcome your feedback, advice and support and hope to provide the same in kind. If something I write here inspires you, makes you think of things from a new perspective or ticks you off, please leave a comment and we'll discuss. If you have a fundamental (or fundamentalist) problem with who or what I am, however, you see that Next Blog button up on the top of the screen? Click on that and see where the blog Wheel of Fortune takes you (away from here).

That being said, here's some brief background in no particular order. As I said before, my name is John, I live in New England in a first floor apartment with one tabby and three black cats. I'm presently an executive assistant for a non-profit organization, have a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. My parents have been married for 46 years and live 10 minutes away and my sister, divorced with two young sons, lives 20 minutes away.

Physically, I'm 39 years old, 6'2", and as of tonight's weigh-in (which happens every Thursday night at the gym wearing a T-shirt, shorts and socks with my keys in one pocket and my wallet in the other), I now weigh 331 pounds. To date, since I began walking, working out and making better food choices back in April of this year, I have lost a total of 47 pounds (I actually lost 49 pounds so far but after last week's vacation I found two of them again and kept them this week). Since that's my only gain in the past five months, I think I'm doing okay.

For those of you who did the math, I weighed 378 pounds when I went back to my doctor this April, and after a physical exam and blood tests was reminded that losing weight, along with five medications, would be a good idea for my Type II diabetes and hypertension. I will go into my exercise and food routines in later blog entries, by my progress so far has been great and I hope to drop a couple medications after another blood test this October. In the meanwhile, I am writing here as a stopgap measure to keep momentum towards my end-of-year weight loss goal: to weigh 300 pounds by January 1, 2010.

This will be my third (and hopefully last) major weight loss effort. I was a fat kid who started compulsively eating when I was about 12 and continued to do so until I weighed 338 pounds at age 21. I joined Weight Watchers with my mom in 1991 (yep, she's an emotional eater, too), and after sticking to their pre-Points program and going to weigh-in meetings every Wednesday to be inspired by our counselor, Candy (!), I lost 19 1/2 lbs. my first week, 120 altogether in the next eight months, and then took a picture standing beside a woman in the group who actually weighed what I had lost! I lost a woman! I looked great in my tux at my sister's wedding but I kinda looked like a deflated inner tube underneath, and when I asked my counselor why that was after I'd lost so much weight, she said "Well, you have to exercise, too." I know I was naive back then, but I don't recall any mention of exercise while I was there, just working the food program. And since I couldn't imagine eating by their food program for the rest of my life and was required to get to 188 pounds to attend maintenance meetings for free, my mom and I quit, made a beeline for the nearest KFC, and in the next two years I gained that woman back plus another 25 lbs.

About six years later after my first relationship ended, I consoled myself up to 454 pounds and managed to be diagnosed with Type II diabetes right along with my mother. My doctor suggested gastric bypass surgery but I felt that was too sci-fi for me and I needed to get myself under control. I started painfully walking a quarter a mile a day to THE SUNDAE SHACK (though I actually never bought ice cream there) and back to my apartment, and by progressively increasing my walking and cutting down on what I was eating, I lost 173 pounds over the next 2 1/2 years and got down to 281 pounds before...I again stopped walking regularly and eating properly. Not quite sure why that time, but I crept back up to 380 pounds, which I guess was my set point because I hovered there until this April.

So, in this first entry, I would like to explain why I call this is "A Big Bear's Blog". I became an emotional eater because I realized I was homosexual at about 12 years old and began 10 years of shame and secrecy in dealing with my sexuality. I have since "come out" to family, friends and more recently co-workers, and although "chubby chasers" have shown interest in me in the past and I was a member of Girth and Mirth, an organization that caters to large men and their admirers, I self-identify as and am attracted to Bears.

Bears, who originated in San Francisco in the mid-eighties during the AIDS crisis, hearkened a return to "men who love men who are men" with all the masculine trappings as an alternative to the effete, gym-toned, shaved and coiffed majority of "Chelsea boys" and "twinks" that dictated what was in vogue and acceptably desirable for gay men at the time. Another archetype was born of a masculine, bearded, hairy MAN who walked his talk and appreciated the company of his fellow men. I have always been attracted to and aspired to be this type of man, and about three years ago a Southern Bear, five states away and 11 years my senior, found me on the Internet, came to visit, put his paw print on my heart and we've been in long-distance love ever since (with occasional conjugal visits).

Well, the Witching Hour approaches (oh, yeah, I'm a Witch, too, but we'll talk more about that later). I hope you enjoyed this first entry and will come back for more. Thanks for your time. Good night, Woof, and Blessed Be.

Big Bear at the Bronx Zoo, 331 pounds