The Adventures of QueerPenguin

Weight Units: XX

I know it's a bit Bridget Jones, a bit self-indulgent, a bit LiveJournal - but fuck it, I'm gonna do it: I'm gonna start an online weight diary.

You too, will be able to follow along at home: I'm not yet game enough to specify what the 'XX' represents to the public (although it IS indicative of my weight still being in double digits, so the super-smart folk can deduce I weigh neither <9kgs,> 100kgs), but I will be offering a weekly round-up, along the lines of 'Current weight: XX-(however many kilos I've lost that week)' or 'Current weight XX+(however kilos I've...*sob*...you know)'.

I always vowed never, ever to become one of those queens who lets himself go once he's partnered up. And while it is true that the Boy is nothing less than completely supportive of me, I'm angry with myself that I have allowed myself to grow a little...erm...lethargic.

That is, since I met the Boy, I stopped going to the gym on a serious level, and as neither of us is typically fag in the kitchen - we have fridges purely for storing wine - we've enjoyed fine dining in some of Sydney's most effluent restaurants, at a cost of depleted bank accounts and (in my case, not his) expanded waist lines.

To look at me, I probably don't look significantly heavier than usual (or maybe I do and my friends and family have just been too polite, grrr), but as that odd-looking belly dancer warbles, the hips don't lie. Neither do pants. And the scales definitely don't. No single man has been able to reduce me to tears in many years - but you don't reckon my bitchy scales didn't slap me down into a blubbering mess with but a flickering number it spat in my face last week.

The reason it gets me down is that I once was the weight I currently am, prior to my 21st birthday, when I dropped around 16kgs. Now, I know gym work since that time would account for some of this weight gain, but if it were all muscle, my stomach would have a far more harmonious, less fractured relationship it currently endures with some of my jeans.

I'm resolved not to be a Sydney gym bunny - there's too many of them anyway. And I'm also resolved not to be one of the pretty, gay, gym bod bloggers, many of whom seem to orbit Rye's site (his comments section is often not unlike flicking through DNA mobile phone desktop icons). I still chuckle recalling the time a certain unnamed blogger, upon seeing my photo, expressed his surprise, as 'he always just assumed gay political bloggers were fat and ugly' (or sentiments to that effect). I know more than enough politically-astute gay male bloggers to know this is just not the case, but it's still a standard to live up to (or not live up to, as it were).

Don't worry, I know all the cliches: Lose weight for yourself, nobody else. Pay attention to your clothes, not your scales. Everything in moderation. Have a bit of dust. I actually once was a Weight Watchers regular, complete with a Kath Day-Knight-esque WW group leader who used the word 'trim' a lot. I'm doing this for all the right reasons and I will know when to stop.

So today, the weight loss begins in earnest. Celine Cuisines for lunch and dinner, daily walks home (city to almost Bondi Junction), tennis once a week and - shut up - boxing twice a week.

I'm mainly blogging about this for posterity more than anything else. I want to return to these archives in a few months' time and see how I (hopefully) stayed on track. Besides, once it's in public I can't deny my commitment. That is my theory, I own it and it's mine.

The overweight penguin you knew is dead. From now on, I'm a big (not-fat) dynamo!! And where's that cake??!! Oh, wait.

posted by Sam @ Monday, November 06, 2006