Resolutions

2009 wasn't a very good year for New Year's resolutions. Typically I give myself pretty achievable tasks, but this past year apparently was too rough to even achieve those. Of course, the biggest thing was my weight. The entire year, I waffled between 235 and 250 pounds like a car stuck in the mud.

No more of that, though. I'm tired of faltering. From this day on, I'm putting myself on a strict diet. I'm not going to speak much of it, because I know the more I talk about it with others, the less I will be motivated to stick with it. I will, though, definitely talk of the progress that results from it, of course.

I've set up an Excel file to track my calories each day and week. If I don't hit my minimum by a certain time at night, I have to make an emergency run to Burger King or something and get what I need. No excuses. Time to get firm with myself.

I managed to snag my father's Gorillapod for my camera, so I'll be able to take some more exciting photos. I'm going to be taking a lot of progress photos, if this all goes to plan.

2010 will be the year I hit 300.

Outerwear

I used to really hate winter. Well, I still do (what's the point in snow now that it can't cancel class?), but I used to hate winter because it forced all the studly college boys to cover their bodies with bulky jackets and such. Now, I don't mind so much. A truly large guy's size is actually accentuated by a nice jacket or hoodie, I've found. Plus it also makes me look bigger than I actually am.

I went to work last week and was chatting with my boss with my jacket and scarf still on. I happened to catch myself in his window and really liked what I saw. I don't know if it was just compared to my boss (a 5-foot-nothing little guy), but I thought I looked pretty big. My mother got me a nice white Under Armour hoodie, and that coupled with a scarf and my backpack... I don't know, I was just impressed with myself. I ended up puffing out my chest a little bit, and I think I missed most of our conversation after that point.

Needless to say, that day turned out very well. It's amazing what a little boost in self-confidence can do for your productivity.

Hunger

A huge side effect of all this beer drinking and binge eating seems to be an increase in my appetite. I tend to be hungry a bit more often, but when I am it's quite noticeable. Like audible gurgling noticeable. I don't really see it as a problem--I'm almost proud of how often it occurs--because it forces me to eat more often. The only trouble is when I am in, say O'Hare airport where all the food costs me an arm and a leg, I have to just deal with the pangs as best I can.

It is quite powerful, these hunger pangs. As an example, it used to be before tests and such, I am usually a nervous, anxious mess. I can't even stand the thought of eating, when I'm like that. But before the test that I took on Sunday (and believe me, I was nervous), the hunger seemed to overpower it. I had to make several food stops before and after it! I was quite impressed with myself.

The only trouble is, if I have to ignore the hunger for too long, it almost seems to go away. If I had a graph of my hunger over time, it would spike immediately and slowly taper off. This, I assume, is a product of my childhood where I would frequently ignore meals out of laziness. I need to learn to act on my hunger immediately, not only to take advantage of a large appetite, but also to decrease the amount of time until this gut starts rumbling again.

Diary of a Gainer

I'm quite disappointed in myself. Back when I first started this blog, I promised myself that I would stick to it and not let it collect dust like every other Blogger blog out there. It was quite easy to maintain that promise while I was still gaining weight like crazy and attracting so much attention. Granted, this blog has already outlasted the majority of blogs on the web, but as the pounds stopped piling on, there was less and less to talk about.

It is entirely my fault, this dust-collecting. I tried too hard to make it interesting to you, the readers, to read. It's hard to not become infatuated with the attention I've been given over the years. But unfortunately, that meant if I couldn't think of anything worth writing about, I didn't write anything at all. So, in an attempt to reignite my desire to chronicle this experience of mine, I've given the old blog a new coat of paint and I've decided to change up the tone a bit.

So, from now on this is more of a journal than a blog. The main reason I keep this place alive is that I want to be able to look back on my experiences. I want to be able to remember what it was like to be that skinny, pale 140-pound teenager yearning for a body he could be proud of. While I would hope it were interesting enough for folks to check on a regular basis, I'm going to stop worrying about that and focus more on keeping my motivation alive.

It has been tough lately, though. I have a huge test tomorrow up in Chicago that has taken up almost every ounce of my attention over the past few months, and I'm not even sure if I can pass this year! On top of that, my boyfriend was generous enough to share his (swine?) flu with me here in our shoebox apartment, so I'm not even going to be at 100% mental strength for it. Despite this, I've been in oddly good spirits. I feel as if my belly has grown in the past few weeks, even if the scale says no change in weight. Every morning, I'm greeted by a shapely form that I cannot resist hefting and wobbling in the shower. It's sparked quite a bit of creativity in me, as well--I've been doodling occasionally and have some very creative story ideas floating around my head just begging to be written down.

It is amazing what being happy in your body does for your esteem. The only thing that bums me out is that I haven't been to the gym since graduating college in May. I've been doing occasional push-ups and curls with milk jugs, but somehow it's just not quite the same. Hopefully by the time it gets warmer around here again, I'll have a job and enough income to start going to a real gym again.

Then again, I've said something along those lines almost every month. Who knows what'll happen this time.

Beer Belly

About two months ago, my boyfriend and I were out at Sonic getting a late-night snack. On the way back, we passed a nearby night club that was absolutely packed with people. As we creeped along in front of it, careful not to run over the stumbling clubbers making their way in and out, I spotted next to the door the largest man I'd ever seen. He was definitely the bouncer of the place, perched on a stool with a gut that went out to his knees.

Of course, I was blown away at the sight, but more surprisingly my boyfriend seemed to be as well. He made a comment about how many beers I'd have to drink to get a gut that size and challenged me to start drinking a few every night.

Now, these events are rare for my boyfriend. He loves big men, but rarely does he see someone in person that strikes his fancy. So I promised him and myself I would start doing just that. Because we're still low on funds, I settled for cheap stuff like Budweiser but I've grown used to the taste (as many Americans have, I assume) and took to drinking a little more each night.

I had never drank beer before in such quantities, as I wasn't such a partier in college, but I had visions of soon being able to chug a pitcher of the stuff in one go, a la that movie Beer Fest. So over the past weeks, that's what I've been going for. It has gotten a lot easier to chug as I go along--right now I can do about a half a can before the 'beer shivers' set in (or whatever they're called).

There've been a lot of articles on whether or not drinking beer really leads to abdominal obesity. In 2003, this BBC article reports on the Czech (my ancestors!) study of beer drinkers and found no link between the amount of beer they drank and their waist size. A year later though, they reported that there was a link found between waist size and binge drinking. So basically, drinking beer doesn't necessarily cause a beer belly, but drinking large amounts in one sitting can.

I can certainly see the reasoning behind this. Drinking six or seven beers really stretches my stomach to new limits. I feel absolutely enormous when I do it (here's some lazy mirror shots--I don't know if you can tell a difference, but I certainly felt bigger than I looked), and on top of that it seems to increase my capacity to eat. It's an absolutely wonderful thing to experience and hopefully these results will only get better.

Vertical Stripes

If you haven't noticed by the clothes I typically wear in photos, I'm not much for formal attire. In fact, I'd much rather be unemployed than work somewhere I'd have to wear a tie at. This internship I have is at a rather high-end skyscraper downtown, so I was begrudgingly forced to buy some nicer clothes. And while I have to suffer through wearing a belt that digs into my belly when I sit and uncomfortable shoes, I got myself something I think all big guys look good in: vertical striped dress shirts.

They don't have to have stripes, but those certainly add to the appeal, in my opinion. I bought myself two extremely comfortable shirts and damn if I don't feel extra attractive when I wear them. Something about how they drape over a belly, with just the slightest bit of pressure on the buttons... it's a total weakness. And that's just the start of it.

I snapped a couple pictures of myself in one of them, as well as an old size M shirt I used to wear to church or something back in the day. They sure show off any progress I may have made in the past weeks, if any. They both seem sort of ill-fitting, as I was pretty bloated with beer that evening--I suppose that makes it a better example of what I was talking about, though.

Recovering

Boy, I missed writing on here. Thank you to everyone who asked how I was doing and sent their regards. I apologize profusely for sort of disappearing so suddenly (as bloggers tend to do), but so much happened that gaining was so far back in my head that I couldn't even bother thinking about it.

Shortly after that last post, my childhood cat Joey (who made a cameo in that last photo) stopped eating. He was fifteen years old and seemed to be on his way downhill. I had to take him to the vet, find out the grim news that there was nothing they could do and put him down. Watching him being put to sleep was by far the hardest thing I had to do in my life. He had been my best friend since I was seven years old.

I was extremely depressed for a while after that. No appetite, no motivation--nothing. Coupled with that, I was desperately searching for a job with no results. Things finally started getting better though, and these days I'm doing alright again. I managed to land myself an unpaid internship, and my parents offered to help me out until it leads to something with income.

I have thought about gaining again. I haven't been able to mention gaining on Twitter, as my sister and subsequently my mother found me on there, so I have to keep that mum over there. But, I do really want to continue, I just cannot at the moment. Since I've graduated, I no longer have gym access and because the job is unpaid I have no money for food. I'm sorry I haven't posted, but all I would talked about was what I wish I could do and complain, and I know no one is really interesting in hearing that.

Things are getting better though. I'm still hovering around what appears to be my new base weight of 240. I'll be back before too long.