My Changing Body and Me
My Three Bodies: Skinny, Muscular and Skinny Fat
The struggle of living in my own skin
Introduction and background
My body type changed from very thin, my natural default, to muscular, in my thirties, and now, to “skinny fat” in my fifties. I’m not happy about it, although apparently not enough to actually do anything about it.
I have never been comfortable in my own skin. I hated my body when I was very thin, or “skinny,” a term that made me feel defective. I was very thin in the first part of my life, until my 30s.
I would go to great lengths to avoid taking my shirt off. I wore t-shirts at the beach, including when I went into the water, choosing to deal with the wet and uncomfortable post-swim cling, rather than exposing my ugliness.
There is a Paul McCartney song “Mamunia” that I always loved (OK, “Paul McCartney and Wings” if you wish to be a stickler). As a tween I made the mistake of singing its lines “You’ve never felt the rain, my friend/till you’ve felt it running down your back” within earshot of my mother. She responded, “You’ll have to take your shirt off first.”
This isn’t in itself a particularly awful thing to say, but she knew how self-conscious I was about my body, and, intended or not, I experienced this as a put-down, making me feel even worse about myself. In the bigger context of the less-than-ideal way she treated me, this just felt like another pile-on.
My body starts to change
Fast forward thirty years. I went to the gym on a regular basis, sometimes as frequently as four times a week, determined to feel better about myself. Slowly but surely, I saw my body start to change. I developed muscles I had never seen before. It was never enough. This body didn’t feel like it was mine. It was a body that belonged to other people.
Those good feelings that I had hoped would come flooding in once I started reaching my workout goals barely registered as a trickle. My body, from which I had always felt disconnected, became an even greater source of dissonance. Although it was slowly becoming my goal body, what it represented wasn’t congruent with how I felt about myself. I had the nagging feeling that I was a fraud who didn’t deserve love.
Still, I kept up with the protein shakes and strength training and I became even more muscular. This, I hoped, would help ease me into the dreaded and long delayed coming out process. Lurking on Grindr taught me I wouldn’t be “marketable” unless I looked great with my shirt off.
I wore the unfortunately-named-but-obligatory, “wife-beaters,” those t-shirts that expose the arms and upper shoulders and hug the torso, emphasizing the flat stomach and pronounced pectoral muscles. I dared to take selfies while flexing and posted them on my dating profile. I suddenly was popular.
Sex, depression and skinny fat
I finally lost my virginity, which I attributed to my changed body, although my first sexual experience was kind of awful. I developed a friendship with one of the guys from Grindr and soon we became a couple, off and on, for about ten years. Unfortunately, he was emotionally and verbally abusive. He would put me down, manipulate me and weaponize sex, which was exactly what I believed I deserved.
Then I suddenly developed a chronic medical condition (eye pain and visual impairment). I couldn’t keep going to the gym because I was in acute pain. I became unable to work. My depression, which had always been present, worsened. I couldn’t drive anymore.
I had to see the ophthalmologist two and sometimes three times a week. I was taking taxis, not due to my longtime fear of driving, but because I didn’t know anyone who was willing to take me to my appointments (Uber was in its infancy at that time and wasn’t yet available in my area).
I started eating a lot of prepared foods, junk food and anything that would motivate me to eat. When I was at the height of my gym addiction, I watched my diet carefully and ate almost exclusively steel-cut oatmeal, chicken breasts, albacore tuna and brown rice. Soon I stopped approaching eating with awareness. I became an emotional eater, stuffing my feelings with food and needing the comfort of a full stomach, especially before going to bed.
I became skinny fat, with accompanying loss of muscle tone, skin/fat hanging off my belt around my waist and a noticeably rounder face. I developed a prominent double chin. I grew a beard to create the illusion of a strong jawline. I couldn’t fit into my clothes. I stopped tucking in my shirt. I avoided mirrors. I avoided getting my picture taken.
An ever-changing body
I wish I could wrap this story up in a bow and truthfully say “that was then, this is now. I don’t relate to my body as a thing separate from myself. I don’t hate myself (most of the time), which is progress, but it’s not the same thing as accepting or loving myself, or in turn, accepting my new, changing body.
The media has been a harmful influence on the way I perceive my body. “Skinny” is an accusation, “muscular” is praise and “skinny fat” or any form of “fat” is a wholesale dismissal, giving license for stand-up comedians and anyone else to make me/us the butt of hurtful jokes.
I look back on when I had a body more in alignment with what the media dictates and wonder why I didn’t appreciate it and myself more. But to do that is to buy into the rules that someone else set up for me/us.
It remains damaging and difficult to identify and challenge because it’s so deeply ingrained. I am accepting of other people’s wonderfully varied bodies, but I can’t see my own as part of that group. There is a part of me that believes I have a standalone body that isn’t part of a context at all.
Therapy and conclusion
My therapist tells me I have two options. First, to change whatever it is about myself that I don’t like. Second, accept what I can’t change. The easy conclusion from this would be that I should alter my body; that I should start working out again and depriving myself of all but the most nutritious of foods. But I know she means something else. I need to get to a place of self-acceptance for who I am, in the body that I have. Only then will I see any real progress.
