I can hate my body if I want to
I’ve been skinny my entire life. Have never struggled with weight gain. At every milestone where people get fatter, e.g., the “freshman 15” of college or the potbelly one is supposed to derive merely due to the fact that nuptials have taken place, has not only missed me, but seems to have gone out of its way to avoid me. Being skinny is so natural to me that if I were to write a book on weight-loss, it would be titled “Eat whatever you want and tap your feet a lot,” which expresses the length of depth and effort that goes into me maintaining my weight. Before you start rolling your eyes and mutter “what a fucking problem to have Dan, life is so hard,” hear me out–
I don’t like my body.
I’m unsure of when exactly I came to the profound realization that I was extremely skinny. Sometime towards the end of high school. Up until then, there weren’t very many pictures of me floating around. I lived outside the U.S., had not been connected to myspace or facebook, and had just discovered the iPod. Sure there were some mirrors around, but not full length, just the medicine cabinet-sized ones. So I only had a roughly 12 by 15-inch view of myself, which given my neck and head size was mostly consumed by images of those respective body parts. At some point though, some hard-copies of pictures made their way to me, standing in group shots of other teenagers or shoveling dirt somewhere and it dawned on me that I was curtain rod skinny. There was only enough tissue surrounding most of my bones to be able to move my appendages and keep my head upright, though some days that seemed to be a chore.
At that point though, I shrugged it off as just having a lightning-fast metabolism, and a penchant for walking, running, or biking everywhere. And that it was only about three degrees cooler than the surface of the sun for three-fourths of the year in the Caribbean. It takes work (read: lots of dominoes and beer) to get heavy down there. But even after we moved back stateside, during my last year of high school, I remained as thin as ever, having to cinch belts tightly to hold up pants and disappearing inside hoodies (an entirely new and fascinating clothing choice). One particular incident stands out–A group of us youngins had gathered at a farm to play paintball. Our host’s brother, we’ll call him Bill (I have no idea what the man’s actual name is), a large balding man in his 40s, had decided to join in the fun. I was wearing a cutoff t-shirt that day, because what the hell, I wasn’t scared of a few paintballs on bare skin.
Right before we went into the woods, Bill meandered over to me and said: “Dan, what are these strings doing hanging from your shirt?” I looked down wondering if I had done a poor job of cutting off the sleeves and looked back at him with my brow furrowed. He then reached out and pinched my arms and said: “See these strings?” Ouch. I quickly retorted with something to the effect that “at least I still had my hair” and that “I’d rather be skinny than on my way to heart failure.” Bill just chuckled and sauntered off into the woods. We destroyed his team that day. Twice. Turns out it’s really hard to hit a curtain rod with a paintball at 50 feet. This adds nothing to the larger story, but I thought you should know. My tininess continued into my freshman year of college before I finally decided I was done with being skinny and wanted to bulk up, you know, look less like a middle schooler (some of whom still look older than me).
I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent in a gym, but it is probably more or less directly proportional to the amount of money I’ve spent on protein powder, fitness equipment, and hours reading about exercise, which is to say, enough to start a viable foundation in my name. I’m basically two courses shy of a Ph.D. between all the studying I’ve done and active experimentation on myself. We’re talking years here. It has waxed and waned, but a conservative estimate would be about 7 years of working at it. Here’s the shitty part–I have next to nothing to show for it. I’m just as skinny as I always was, plus or minus about ten pounds (which was never 10 of lean mass). I’ve been at this for years. I’ve bought a bench and weight set that is in my garage to lessen the activation energy to go to the gym. I’ve paid high fees (up to $400) for programs that promise lean gains for skinny guys. If you struggle with weight gain and have worked hard and failed to consistently improve, you know the exact feeling I’m talking about. The step onto the scale in the morning and seeing no change, or worse a change in the wrong direction. The glance at yourself in a mirror as you walk by as your eyes dart to your best feature in an effort to avoid the parts you don’t like. The jealous glare you give to the fitter people in the gym. I’ve experienced all of it too, just for a completely different reason.
It wasn’t until very recently that I finally and firmly came to grips with the simple reality that I wasn’t happy with my body. I didn’t like the way I looked or how I felt about the way I looked. Because I was skinny, I thought I was being a super-diva about trying to put on weight, when many people would kill to have my problem. So the guilt about feeling bad about my arms just kept the cycle rolling. I ran from it for awhile, quite literally, by embracing one of my favorite things–racing. I would run trail races all over the place, telling myself all the while that this was what my body was built for and I should be grateful for it. And to a degree, I really was. I got good at racing because of my thin frame. Metaphorically and literally though, I could only run from the image of myself as a curtain rod for so long. I eventually came back to wanting to build bulk, lift weights, get big, and before long was throwing hours and dollars at it like there was no tomorrow (so much so, I threw my back out doing deadlifts the day before I was supposed to take the bar exam. Let me tell you, that was really, really, dumb).
So here we are, stuck under the weight (last bodybuilding pun, I swear) of wanting change, but feeling guilty about changing something that is largely “cosmetic.” With this most recent program iteration, I’ve been making small and steady progress. In the process of strict adherence to it, I’ve come to realize that some of this whole “positive body image” mantra is doing all of us a disservice. But maintaining that we have to love ourselves just the way we are, regardless of form, creates yet another pitfall for feeling like shit when we don’t succeed. In other words, every time that I look at myself in the mirror and can’t convincingly say that “I’m fine the way I am,” I have an additional reason for disliking myself–that I’m a failure.
Discomfort or even disgust are powerful motivators for change. And while they shouldn’t rule anyone’s life, they shouldn’t necessarily be ignored either. The positive body image movement’s gut reaction to all of the skinny sex that’s been thrown in our faces is understandably far afield. The pendulum always swings (almost) all the way in the other direction before coming closer to the middle. But what I want to advocate for here is the idea of not being “fine” with how you look and that being ok. That’s a feeling, and most feelings are things we have no control over. They arise in consciousness uninvited and often stay long past their welcome. My insecurities about my physical self have lingered for years. There is often very little you can do about how you feel. You can, however, decide how you act in regard to that feeling, in this case, whether you start working out, stop eating as much, or in my case, start eating more. Hidden within the body image movement is a gem–the idea that we, and we alone, decide how to shape our physical form, and we alone get to say if it’s ok or not.
Of course, there are extremes, like eating disorders and morbid obesity that are physically unsafe and need medical treatment. But for the rest of us in the middle, our shape is as much a part of our identity as who our parents are or whether we watch Game of Thrones every week (I do not, waaaaay too much death). Because it is so integral to our sense of self, it should never be considered a moral failing to decide what changes should or should not take place within it. I find my curtain-rod nature troubling, and despite the hundreds or thousands of people that would switch places with me, I want to alter part of who I am. The fact that I am privileged to eat whatever, whenever (or rather used to, the current diet regime is rather strict), does not mean I have to indulge in the requisite amount of guilt before lifting weights for an hour every day or choosing to restrict my calories. And the same is true for someone looking to remove the extra from their midsection. So the question becomes–how are we supposed to feel about our bodies?
The answer: however you want. If guilt is pushing you to change, embrace it. Or reject it and eat another oreo, and enjoy the hell out of that fucking oreo. The body-shamers and body-boosters alike share a common problem–they tell you are supposed to view your body. Fuck that. You have zero control over how you feel about your body. You can only choose how you act in response to those feelings. A bunch of hard work and a slimmer (or bigger) arm size may capitulate you towards feeling better about yourself, but that feeling arose out of the same nothingness that the prior feelings of guilt or shame did. The beauty of this interpretation is that it is subject to change, by you, at any time. I can decide tomorrow that buffness be damned, I’m going back to running and can celebrate that choice without any real regard to what my body looks like now or what it will look like in a year. So don’t beat yourself up, or do, but realize that the only thing you control is your response to the emotions that well up when you see yourself in the mirror. You don’t have to love your body, just the choices you make about it.
Is it lunch time yet?
Originally published at millren.wordpress.com on July 18, 2017.
