Trying to Un-Chub

It took me about two and a half years to gain 23 pounds. Like debt, fat is something you're not conscious of until you've accumulated enough of it to say, "How did this happen?" You unconsciously try to stand and walk a certain way to minimize the extra weight. You suck it in. You tilt your head up in photographs so your double chin straightens out. You don't want to see people you knew from five or more years ago. You realize the ridiculousness of America's obsession with weight, yet the barrage of diet ads on tv, in the supermarket and in your e-mail box has an effect on you. You're fat? You suck. Lose 20 pounds in 20 days. You hate yourself?and shouldn't you, after all?

Not that I hadn't been doing anything about it. I'd been exercising for 20 years. Weights, in-line skating, biking, walking, the works, six, seven days a week. Once upon a time, I'd been svelte enough to do naked test shots for the editor of a skin mag. At various times, I'd belonged to Gold's, Bally's, the Y and about four other gyms since age 18.

Looking back on my metamorphosis, I see what happened was relatively simple; I'd gone from 10-odd years of post-high-school blue-collar work?active, on your feet, hauling ladders and drywall and paint cans and 70-pound containers of joint compound all day?to full-time writing. I adored my new gig, but for some reason I thought I could eat the same amount of food and get the same amount of exercise, and nothing would happen.

After a few attempts at losing weight through commercial diets and failing to keep off the marginal amounts of weight I'd lose, I started feeling like a boob. Everything else in my life was going so well, but these pounds would not take a hike. To be sure, an extra 23 pounds on a once-slim man does not turn him into a sideshow freak. But I started feeling like I was stupid, just like I used to hear overweight people complaining and think they were stupid. All it took was exercise and proper diet, right?

In desperation, I finally made appointments with liposuction guys, even though I knew they charged thousands of dollars I didn't have. One guy grabbed the fat on my stomach and said, "Oh, YES, you've got a LOT here!" Another guy said he wanted me to lose some weight before he'd do the operation. I thought, well, if I could lose weight, I wouldn't need you, would I? There was something skeevy and creepy about these guys; they seemed phony and as plastic as the surgery they advertised.

I don't know when the shift happened, but it had something to do with a series of shirtless pics I took of myself. I had a new body and I wanted to see what it looked like without the harsh judgment of my own eyes when I looked in the mirror.

My pics, which were front, side and back, looked a lot better than I expected. I had a strong, muscular, guy's body. A little round around the edges. Those gym years weren't for nothing. And?gently, almost inexplicably?I found it within myself to relax about the weight gain. I started to look at my fat anthropologically. I had extra pounds, it was a fact. So now what? Might as well accept it, since nothing I did was working. Hell, I could even have fun with it. I decided to use the extra weight as a social experiment.

There was that book in the 60s called Black Like Me, where a white guy had pigmented his skin enough to pass for black. He wrote about traveling alone through the white Southern states, and of the prejudice he encountered. I decided to use the same principle by wearing an authentic 23-pound fat suit, though obviously my situation wouldn't involve risking my life or coming close to anything a black man traveling alone through the South would have gone through 30 years ago.

Before, I'd tried to hide my body by wearing loose shirts left untucked. Now, on a weekday, I put on a t-shirt that was just a little too small, and pants that were size 30. This dramatically accentuated my waist, making my stomach do the proverbial overhang, and highlighted my bulging love handles. I looked at myself in the mirror and was shocked. I also got a perverse kick at my own image, as though I really was wearing a prosthetic stomach. I took a walk through a busy section of Bay Ridge; granted, a section of Brooklyn where no one knows me. I was an undercover fattie. I let it all hang out, sucking in nothing.

At Dunkin' Donuts, no one really batted an eye; there were lots of guys with guts way bigger than mine. I walked into a couple of weight-loss centers, and got a kick out of the way the salesladies rushed me, saying, "You can lose five pounds by Monday!" and "My chart says you're obese!" as though it wasn't completely obvious they were selling weight loss like vacuum cleaners.

I walked into clothes stores and felt the judgments of the sales people as they checked me out. In one cheap Korean apparel store, the two counterladies looked me up and down, giggled and conversed in their native language while glancing at me. Others viewed me with pity, as though my extra pounds made me handicapped. Still others?curiously, mostly Hispanic women?checked me out and gave me approval with their eyes. They didn't mind my mini-Buddha belly one bit.

I walked into an expensive gym full of thin people and had a consultation with a young lady who was obviously fascinated and horrified by my belly. I could tell she wanted to look directly at my stomach but was too polite. I deliberately averted my glance, and saw her eyes travel across my body from my peripheral vision.

The amazing thing about the whole experiment was that I had gained just 23 pounds, which, to American society's standards, is allowable for a man, though it still freaks people out. On a formerly thin woman, 23 extra pounds would immediately lump her into the fat-girl realm, or close to it. I can only imagine what it's like to walk around in society wearing 50, 100 or 200 extra pounds.

It wasn't a long experiment, but it changed my entire attitude about the gain. By exposing my fat to the world, I had lessened its power. Soon after my day of letting it all hang out, a profound shift happened in my consciousness.

Without reading any books or following any particular diet, one day I simply began eating differently. I cut my food by about a third, eliminated white flour and sugar from my diet, ate three times a day with two snacks (and nothing after 6 p.m.), drank at least a gallon of ice-cold water each day. At no point was it work.

I also looked up Gleason's Gym, and biked down to their Brooklyn waterfront address. I spied no Evian water bottles, no aloof gym bunnies with lipstick and gum or guys having 20-minute conversations with their friends while seated on a lat-pull machine as other patrons fumed. This was a hardcore place for people who wanted to get in shape and fight, not socialize. More than 200 pro fighters train there; more than 100 champs have trained in the place since its inception in the South Bronx in the 1930s.

I had no interest in hitting or being hit, but the owner directed me to Vanessa, a 26-year-old up-and-coming boxer. Far from being a stereotypical tough chick trying to prove she could excel in the mostly man's world of boxing, Vanessa was intelligent, compassionate and nothing like the drill sergeant I expected. I placed myself in her capable hands, and we met in Prospect Park. Over the next six weeks, Vanessa put me through the most excruciatingly difficult physical work I've ever done in my life, and all of it happened while standing in one spot. Squats, jumping jacks, crunches, pushups, the works. As time went on, though, I couldn't afford to keep her and we parted ways. But Vanessa and the raw intensity of a few workouts at Gleason's inspired me to do what it took to get and stay in shape, after two years of feeling crappy about how my body was doing things I didn't want it to do.

Five months later, I'm maintaining a 17-pound weight loss. After life as a "fat" person, I know it's not a death sentence. And I have a little more compassion for those carrying extra pounds.

Gleason's Gym Inc., 83 Front St. (betw. Washington & Main Sts.), Brooklyn, 718-797-2872.