How I fought to find my inner athlete
“Fat” and “skinny” have been allowed to define us for too long. It’s time for strong.
“Let me tell you something about good-looking people: we’re not well liked.” So begins a famous routine by comedian Larry David — himself pretty far removed from conventional notions of physical attractiveness. Like any good joke, it’s built on a well-known truth: that we tend to regard other people’s athleticism or good looks as irritatingly, depressingly beyond our own reach.
I mention athleticism and good looks together because, in general, they’re pretty fundamentally related. Evolution and popular culture have conspired to make us both worship and resent strength, speed and low body fat. It’s why Olympians score major product endorsement deals. It’s also why millions of people delight in seeing candid photographs of celebrities without the usual makeup and airbrushing. And it’s why so many were so furious when Lululemon founder Chip Wilson argued that people of certain body types just shouldn’t wear yoga pants.
Stories like these illustrate our complicated love-hate relationship with beauty and fitness. And I have my own story about body image and athleticism — one that I’ve never told before, and have only lately begun to understand.
Growing up, my parents were as nurturing and supportive as any kid could ask for. We ate healthy food and spent plenty of active time in the great outdoors around my hometown — hiking, canoeing, cross-country skiing. They also made sure I learned (sort of) to swim and skate.
What they didn’t do is make me play team sports. I can’t blame them. I was a shy and fearful kid who liked nothing better than to stay inside and read a book. As much as I enjoyed a good camping trip, I would have been far from comfortable on a field or rink with a bunch of other kids.
And even if I’d wanted to play team sports, I wasn’t really cut out for them. I was gangly and uncoordinated, and I struggled to grasp the rules and dynamics of most games. Most kids saw Physical Education as a welcome break from classroom learning and an easy A for their report cards. For me, gym class was a repeated struggle defined by humiliation, frequent defeat and a creeping sensation of uselessness. From the middle of elementary school through the end of mandatory P.E. in tenth grade, it was a constant reminder that I was different and lesser than many of my peers.
“Skinny.” It’s probably my least favourite word. Next to racial, religious and sexual slurs, its power to divide and demean a broad swath of people is unrivaled. For those on the upper end of the body mass index spectrum, “skinny” is a reminder of the impossible standard to which non-skinny people are compared and found lacking. It’s an unhealthy and unrealistic ideal that serves mainly to make people feel bad or worse about their bodies.
As someone who was underweight for close to twenty years, I came to hate “skinny” for different reasons. I came to associate it with people laughingly remarking that I needed to eat more, joking that I might get blown away in the wind, and using it to explain away my lack of success at organized sports. Because of the fat-bad, thin-good dichotomy we’ve set up, “skinny” remains an acceptable word to call another person, with little recognition how hurtful it can be.
When referring to a woman — think of supermodels and actresses — “skinny” is often intended as a compliment, though often a grudging one. For a boy in gym class, it’s a shattering verdict of inadequacy. It means you’re awkward. It means you’re not solid and it means you’re not strong. It poisons how you see yourself in every aspect of your life, sapping your confidence, draining your sense of self-worth and your reserves of inner strength.
The seeds of renewed hope were sown in my early teens, when my mom gently but firmly talked me into karate classes. Martial arts didn’t greatly change the way I looked, but it inspired me with the outlines of a new realization: that through conscious and repeated effort, I could improve myself. Over half a decade, from white belt to black, better balance, improved coordination and a forever escalating number of push-ups and crunches drove a sense that I could decide for myself how I would look and feel.
Through eleventh grade and into college, I was blessed with a rapid improvement in my social skills and self-confidence as I took on student leadership positions and made more and better friends. These gains helped push me through a continued displeasure and insecurity with how I looked. When I saw myself, in a big mirror or the side of a reflective building, I would wonder anxiously — one habit I have yet to beat — whether the reflection was distorted, and whether for better or for worse.
My saving grace was running. I started jogging both alone and with friends along Ottawa’s Rideau Canal pathway, and discovered my long legs — an impediment in so many sports — were well suited for it.
I kept running when I moved to Vancouver and started law school, building up to a routine of running about five kilometres every morning. That fall, aged 22, I decided to run my first race — a modest eight kilometres on the University of British Columbia campus.
That race was a miserable experience. My sides cramped up less than halfway through, my legs started quivering far too early, and I repeatedly thought I wouldn’t be able to finish. When I finally crossed the finish line, both relieved and still terrified by my near-failure, I promised myself that experience would never be repeated.
So, at long last, I started going to the gym. That meant crossing a huge psychological hurdle — I hadn’t lifted weights since the mandatory gym classes I’d so gratefully left behind, and I had a steep learning curve ahead of me.
My first few months of gym workouts often felt futile. Any changes to my body seemed to be marginal at best. But I soldiered on, because the alternative was “skinny”, and that was unacceptable.
That spring I quit law school to go back to Ottawa for a master’s degree, with a four-month summer in Kamloops in between. That August, my hometown would hold the first Kamloops Marathon, along with shorter races. My good friend Jer and I decided to run the half-marathon — but first we would be well-trained.
Kamloops summers are tough and glorious. The heat can reach 40°C, the sun is bright and the three rivers are cool and inviting. Set in a mountain valley, Kamloops is also about as hilly as it gets.
We learned from early mistakes. Working on an incremental training program, we once found ourselves running a late-afternoon, fifteen-kilometer death run in 30-degree heat without any water from my vehicle to Jer’s. We got badly lost in ranching country east of town with no cell reception for navigation, making a planned eighteen-kilometre run considerably longer. Worst of all, we picked a seemingly reasonable 20k route on Google Maps — only to find ourselves running ten kilometres straight uphill without any shade, draining our Camelbaks of water, followed by ten excruciating kilometres back down.
Meanwhile, we successfully ran a series of ten-kilometre races in and around Kamloops. When the day of the half-marathon arrived, relentless training on steep and dusty hills in the blazing sun had over-qualified us for the early-morning urban race course. I finished well below my target time, and almost immediately registered for my next race.
Back in Ottawa that autumn for grad school, I turned in another solid half-marathon in the Canada Army Run. I worked out at the Carleton school gym at least four times a week, and kept running right through the harsh Ottawa winter. In rural Metcalfe, I also got serious about Western horseback riding, overcoming a childhood unease around the big animals and further reinforcing my confidence in my ability to use my body for a range of challenges.
By digging deep and refusing to slide backward, I gradually but profoundly reinvented myself. Today, I hit the gym at 5:00 AM every weekday — building muscle, burning fat, and driving up my brain function and energy level for the day ahead. Through research, observation, and trial and error, I’ve found techniques that work for me. Steadily and visibly, I keep getting closer to the body I want. Lifting a weight five pounds heavier than last week’s becomes its own reward — because it means I’m better than I used to be. Weighted step-ups, squats and leg curls improve my running performance by leaps and bounds. Seeing somebody bigger or stronger than myself was once a discouragement. Today, it’s a motivation to get stronger and faster tomorrow.
Where organized competition used to mean fear and shame, it now represents opportunity. To channel my hard work into tangible achievement. To test myself, not just against other competitors but against my former self. To prove that I’m better than I was yesterday.
I love country music, and especially the work of Chris Ledoux — a rodeo cowboy turned musician who managed to release two albums even as he fought terminal liver cancer. The song that inspires me most, especially late into a challenging run, is Cowboy Up:
You gotta cowboy up
When you get throwed down
Get right back in the saddle
As soon as you hit the ground
You heard that the tough get goin’
When the goin’ gets tough
Around here what we say is
Boy, you better cowboy up.
The point of my story is this: none of us are consigned to stay as we are. We each have limitations, often considerable ones, that can come to define us — but only if we let them. There’s plenty to respect about somebody who begins life with considerable advantages and determinedly uses them to get further ahead. But there’s much more to admire about those who rise above early setbacks — convincing themselves that something better is possible and can, through hard work and resilience, be achieved.
It takes a combination of hope and fear just to get up in the morning. Hope for the good things that lie ahead, fear of what will happen if we don’t get moving. My hope is that more of us will learn to turn those emotions into personal progress.
“Fat” and “skinny” have been allowed to define us for too long. It’s time for strong.
Emile Scheffel is a communicator, activist and all-purpose adventurer based in Vancouver. In the next few months he’ll run a 10k, a half-marathon, five mountain trail races and a Tough Mudder. Twitter: @Emile_BC
