but heavier than I’d ever been.

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But no weight loss program has stuck. Maybe I just haven’t found the right approach,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], or the right balance of diet and exercise. Or worse, I have wondered, maybe it is just me — something about my personality,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], my upbringing, my temperament, my body chemistry that prevents me from losing weight.
On my last visit, about three months ago, my doctor had told me that as a 6-foot-tall, 39-year-old man, I should weigh around 180. At 217, I was not just overweight, but heavier than I’d ever been.
What will it take to get that man back?
“Hmmm,” my doctor said.
“Yes,” he said.
But I fought hard against the suggestion that I engage in team or individual sports, roughhousing, fighting, exploring or anything else that required competition or physical exertion, or that could result in a bloody nose or dirty hands. The only time I enjoyed exercise was when my mother enrolled me in Jazzercise at the tenderly awkward age of 14, when the scale read 210. (I actually enjoyed those workouts, with the New Wave moves and short shorts and leg warmers.)
Erik Piepenburg, a senior Web producer at The New York Times, will write regular updates in the coming months about his efforts to lose weight.
I wasn’t exactly surprised. I’ve struggled with my weight since I was a kid. My doctor urged my parents to motivate me, an only child, to play outside more.
“Yes,” he said.
“No,” I said. Pause.
The answers were painful: “I’m fat. I’m abnormal. I’m not like the other boys. I’ll be unwanted.” I felt betrayed and cheated by my chubby gay-boy body. In many ways I still do.
I knew exactly what he meant. “Hmmm,” I replied, and stepped off the scale.
When my teenage peers were discovering their easy athleticism and the allure of girls, I was asking silently, usually in the dreaded confines of the boys’ locker room: “Why am I not like you? Why don’t I look like you?”
“No,” I said.
With histories of diabetes and high blood pressure in my family, the consequences of keeping on the weight are becoming more dire, especially as my 40th birthday is on the horizon. My goal here is to explore what’s standing between me and the 168-pound man I once was, the man who felt so at ease in his body that he was able ― finally! ― to take off his shirt in public. I realize that going shirtless is something many men do without thinking , but for me, it was an act of power, confidence and freedom.
Still, was it possible I had really gained a whopping 50 pounds in what seemed like a few short years? That I had gone from a Size 33 to barely stuffing my belly into Size 36s?
Growing up gay added another complicated layer to my body issues. I lived the stereotypes. I liked staying indoors, by myself, to play with my Star Wars figures, read “Gone With the Wind,” watch “Search for Tomorrow.”
I lost the most weight in my life around 2003, after spending about a year religiously adhering to Weight Watchers. With the accountability of weekly meetings and weigh-ins, I was motivated enough to reach my goal weight of 177, and dipped below that to reach 168 for a few weeks.
Food has been a comfort and an enemy. I’ve been a vegetarian for 23 years, but I have a ferocious sweet tooth that stops roaring only after it’s been fed the King Size Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups from the vending machine. Cheese pizza, French fries and fettuccine Alfredo are all vegetarian, and favorites of mine. Portion control has never come easy.
But then I thought I could do it alone, so I stopped going to meetings and stopped counting points. I went back to a few meetings to restart the program after the weight started returning. But something had changed. The program got boring, maybe. Or the counting got monotonous. I stopped going altogether and, eventually, stopped fitting into my jeans.
“Oh,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], my God,” I whispered as I retreated from the scale. Then my doctor turned to the front of his thick folder with my name on it, and delivered the real bombshell: When he first started seeing me, in 2002, I weighed 168 pounds.
My doctor had just finished nudging the little black weight rightward on that big metal monster until it rested, mercilessly, on 217.
My lifetime weight-loss repertoire has taken many forms. In addition to Weight Watchers I’ve tried diet books, gym memberships, nutritionists, veganism and more. Since the beginning of this year I’ve tried, and forsaken, at least seven different attempts at weight loss, including dance classes, a personal trainer and a raw-food regimen.