I loved Anne Lamotts post on neck-lifts so much that I wrote my own body-part themed piece ;-) I got fat in my mid-twenties. It was abnormal because, from puberty up until that point, I had been a reasonably lanky guy with a modest amount of yoga-boy muscle, most of which was concentrated in my legs and in my, um, trunk. Girls with twist braids and Afro puffs used to grab me and tease me in middle school for having a black boy booty. A girlfriend and former roommate of mine even gave it a nickname, the Willass. Its too bad I didnt really know what I was packing; being out-of-the-closet in theory but socializing almost exclusively with my straight friends in bars with bands and cheap pitchers, it was the randy, whisky-drinking hipster gals (and some of the over-served men) who copped a feel when I stepped up to the bar for another round. I had always been a little embarrassed - yet secretly proud - of my chief asset. I just hadnt discovered how and where to market it. But by the time I hit the middle of my 26th year, a desk job that I wasnt really fit for and some unchecked eating and drinking behaviors caused a serious spread. I remember trying on a pair of jeans I was prepared to drop real money for (retail therapy helps when youre trying to avoid food-related rewards), and declaring to the mirror and the guy helping behind me, These jeans look like they got caught and cant find any place to hide! Except right up the middle of my rear end. Its painful, looking back over your shoulder and realizing you left your comfortable, privileged, picture-of-health 31 waist way back a few years ago before you discovered beer and rediscovered cheese. I was a pure and chaste vegan for 2 years in college and kept trying to get Back to the Garden for years thereafter. In real life, I was more of a freegan, because Id eat moms hashbrown casserole or your leftover ice cream if you werent super invested in it. And I really wasnt all that chaste, just terrified of dating the wrong gay guy and ending up a stereotype. Because there are no happy, well-adjusted Mrs. Nelly Bottoms in the world?! So I hid in straight society and ate and drank my feelings until it just made more sense to leave the society part out and just do the pizza-and-a-mag-of-Shiraz thing. Because thats a thing. Two years of my lifes worth of a thing. Work, then food and wine, then wine and Will and Grace reruns. And Queer as Folk when it came to Netflix, so I could cry and mourn my wasted youth (I was 26, remember) and bemoan the fact that a Brian Kinney would never find me attractive now that was too old and too fat to be a Justin Taylor. It was never even a consideration that I could perhaps be a Brian Kinney myself. So it was Emmett or Ted. So I guess that made me Ted. Except I didnt like opera. And I really did enjoy dancing and an over-the-top print, like Emmett. But the reality was by that time I had grown a beard and started wearing my hair shaggy and long, so I was really more Brian Wilson than Brian Kinney or anybody else on QAF. Back to the original intent of this post, and saving the Saved By the Bell, the Big Years, saga for a later installment, I found that, amidst all the other strategies that I tried to lose the weight and get back out there, one thing that really worked, especially while I was still attempting to prove myself at that desk job, was to get up every 30 minutes or so and just MOVE. I started just getting up and taking a walk from one end of the building to another. Then I walked a lap around the building. Then a started doing 25 jumping jacks here and there, maybe a plank or two if I wasnt too nervous about anybody walking in or getting sweaty before an upcoming meeting. I started to feel better, and gradually I started to look like what I wanted to look like. This was in addition to making myself walk a little bit further outside my apartment in Hillcrest day by day by day. A couple of weeks ago, two or so days before Christmas, I was dog sitting in Hillcrest and had occasion to walk the dog through a particularly hilly area of Lee Avenue. I was near the crest of THE hill approaching Pulaski Heights Middle School before I realized, with a mixture of awe, gratitude, a little sadness, and triumph, that it was the very spot that I avoided for months and attempted only with the greatest mounted resolve and surmounted ultimately with the most ragged of breaths. Yet on this chilly, grey day in December 2014, it was just a simple, afternoon stroll. No biggie. I was floored. I thank Gehrig the rescue dog for getting fixated on a particular clump of muddy grass and affording me the moment to witness this milestone. So, when people now ask me what I Did, to lose all the weight, I want to just tell them, I had to move my butt. I mean, I tried a little of everything, but basically what did it was I started to move again. I was stuck, and I got unstuck by moving. There were many, many epiphanies and deep un-earthings, but what it really took was action. Get up. Go over there. Jump up and down. See if you can raise 1 leg in the air. Now the other leg. Now both legs. Get outside and do something. Get outside and look up instead of down at your feet. Get outside and say Hi, to someone as you pass. Get outside and go to a yoga class. Get outside and go to the party you were invited to. Get outside and go to a gay bar and dance just a little bit, even if it feels like EVERYones watching. Be willing to return that guys eye contact even though fear makes you want to look away. Be willing to move a little more, as in across the room, and introduce yourself (something that still terrifies me). For someone who has always thought, I would love to do/be _____________, but..., what Ive learned is that becoming happy, joyous, and free can start with just moving your butt. As a wise friend has told me often, If you dont go, you dont see. So go, move your butt, and see what happens. I mention any of this at all because, after a few weeks of being blindsided by a seasonal depression the likes of which I have not seen since that period in my mid-twenties, I am finally moving again, and it feels wonderful. I was of course seized with fears all during that three-week period that my ass was spreading exponentially, because when Im in that addled state I believe that the wages for the sin of depression is fat. It was probably more likely because all I seemed to be doing was playing piano for holiday parties and mainlining sugar and fantasizing Pet Sematarying a relationship that died prematurely last summer. Nothing feeds the bloat worse than getting inventive with relationship roadkill. Now, in this first full week of January 2015, I have met with my new, amazing trainer twice, practiced yoga with a new friend (who is really cute and I was therefore trying to impress and therefore overdid it), and moved all of my worldly belongings across town into my new house I am renting with two musician friends. The result is that I feel more alive than I have in months and that the Willass is super sore. You have no idea. Near to its former glory in its college heyday of 2-hour Ashtanga yoga sessions and biking as nearly my only form of transportation, but with the dull, sober ache of experience. Lets face it, there is something to this whole Over 30 thing. But you dont have to act it. And you dont have to look like its kicking your ass. Move your butt. Seriously. Not me, though. Not today. Im taking a day off. My butt hurts. Every part of my butt. No mid-workday squats, no improvised step routines on the benches at work, no lunge breaks outside, no office-floor planks. Nope. Im sitting right here for just a liiiiiiiiiiiiittle bit longer. -- John Willis
Posted on: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 21:45:55 +0000
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