As Type 2 diabetics, we're often told that the best thing we can do for ourselves is lose weight. And that's undeniably true. But no one tells you ahead of time how weird that process can be.

Now, I write about my own weight struggle a lot, so perhaps it's time for me to own up to some actual numbers. I'm not an "alert the media" level fat guy. When I was diagnosed with diabetes almost two years ago, I went on a panic-and-phentermine-fuled weight loss frenzy, and I lost about thirty pounds. At 6'2", I got down to about 205 pounds. So not Jude Law, but not Jabba the Hutt, either.

This was quite a difference from the worst of my college days, when I weighed (and I can't believe this, even as I type it) about 280 pounds. I was a mess, a big sloppy boozy lummox. I'd managed to lose about thirty of those pounds before I was even diagnosed, because let's face it, Dean Wormer in Animal House was right. "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son."

When I got down near the 200 mark shortly after my diagnosis, I was thrilled. It only took me about four months to get there, and I wondered why I'd never bothered to do it before. All I had to do was start exercising a little, stop drinking and, well, give up food that I liked. But as I started to adjust to my new body, a few things bothered me.

First of all, my clothes looked ridiculous. I felt like Mister Noodle from Sesame Street, with giant floppy shirts and baggy pants. That was easily fixed, and when I went to buy new stuff, I was amazed to see that I had gone down TWO SIZES. I skipped a whole size, that coveted XL, and went straight from the mildly humiliating old friend XXL to the new, sassy, sexy L. It was like becoming popular in high school and dumping all my old loyal nerdy friends so I could hang out with the cheerleaders. It felt so so wrong, but so so right at the same time.

One morning, I found myself standing in front of the mirror before taking a shower, and I started to see things I hadn't noticed, things that a simple trip to Old Navy wasn't going to fix. Because there's an ugly secret to weight loss. Ready for it? Here it is:

When you lose a bunch of weight, no one bothers to tell your skin.

"Oh wow," I thought as I pondered my strange, saggy belly-that-wasn't-so-much-a-belly-anymore. "That's not right. Oh god, and what is THAT?" I poked the little turkey gobbler thing on my neck, the thing that once housed a fine array of extra chins (in case of a blowout, no doubt) but now hung like a sad little flag.

I was a freak. A skinny freak, but a freak.

I'd like to say that I addressed those issues with some body-toning exercises, a session of miraculous cosmetic surgery, or perhaps a dose of Acceptance. ("This is my gobbler, and I love and accept it.") But it might be more accurate to say that I solved the problem by gaining most of the weight back and filling those sad sagging body bits with more me.

Okay, so after a year of career-related stress and career-related celebration, and also the heartbreak of my body adjusting to the effects of phentermine, I ballooned back up to almost 240 pounds. All my fancy new shirts started to migrate to the back of the closet, and since I didn't actually have an XL phase of my life, I found myself buying a few new shirts and pants. Those were some sad shopping days.

Still, I don't think I was really aware of the extent of the problem until my college newspaper did a story about my upcoming book, and I was happy about the whole thing until I saw the photo of the Michelin Man wearing my clothes that accompanied the photo.

Well. There you go. No hiding that.

I've written about this previously, but I'm happy to say that I've started back down the road to the Old new Me. I'm back down to 230 pounds, and my XL shirts, while not flapping in the breeze just yet, are feeling ever so slightly roomy. My book comes out in exactly two months, and while this may not be a realistic goal, I'd like to get within spitting distance of 200 by then.

My sassy shirts are waiting, patiently, for their return from exile. I'll just have to find a way to make peace with the gobbler.