Over the years I’ve written just a little bit about fitness, my weight, and my relationship to my body. But this morning I find myself contemplating it in a slightly unfamiliar way that I thought it might be interesting to work through in writing.
Body Neglect and Early Weight Gain
So, when I was young, by which I mean before college, I was rail thin. When I arrived at college my first year, I was 5’8″ and 110 pounds. By the time I finished college, I remained 5’8″, but I was 190 pounds. And my weight peaked just a few years later at around 220.
I barely knew I had a body, except as a source of discomfort when it was required to do anything, or momentary pleasure when engaged in sex or sexual activity. That was it. I didn’t take care of myself, didn’t exercise, looked down my nose at the very idea of healthy eating. ‘No thanks, I’m trying to quit,’ I would say when someone offered me salad. Or, ‘That shit’ll kill you.’
I don’t think I believed those things; I think they were defenses against anxiety I felt about what I knew was my obesity and my ultimately self-destructive and negligent relationship to self-care.
Midlife Shift and Initial Triumph
When I turned forty, around when I started this blog, and around when I came to terms with my compulsive and addictive relationship to sex, and around when my wife and I began to explore sexual relationships with others in an open and more consensual and non-commercial way, I began to attend to my body a little… differently.
I hired myself some hot trainers, I started a fitness regime, I modified my diet, and I lost about forty pounds, going from 220 to 180 or so. I felt triumphant and at ease in my body back then. That all felt pretty straightforward. I don’t remember feeling deprived, I don’t remember feeling resentful, I just remember feeling accomplished, like I had done something. And like I had done something permanent, changed my relationship to food and to exercise for the better. Not to mention my relationship to my body.
Pain, Decline, and Another Recovery
That lasted for a few years, but in my mid-40s I developed some pretty severe back problems. My pain mounted, I couldn’t maintain my workout regime, and my diet faltered. My weight started ticking up again, peaking, this go-round, at about 210 pounds. In the wake of a pretty monumental surgery, and a lengthy rehab project, I reached 220. The pandemic exacerbated things, of course. I was drinking more, eating more, the gym wasn’t even open.
It wasn’t until June of 2021 that I once again turned my attention to maintaining my body. With a view towards living in it for the long run. Over the 12 months beginning in June 2021, I got fit. I started a 7 day a week fitness routine. I lost a pound a week, bottoming out at about 156. A remarkable achievement. And I set myself the goal of living thereafter at 160 or below. That was in June of 2022.
Obsession and Exhaustion
Today, a little more than three years later, I weigh 165, about five pounds over my then established target. I haven’t been below 160 for more than a couple of days in a couple of years. Try though I might, it seems like 160 to 170 is the range in which my body most wants to live. This in spite of a continued, somewhat fanatical and obsessional relationship to working out and eating.
I count my calories every day. I feel hungry almost all the time. I work out at the gym six or seven days a week – every day, unless I’m somewhere no gym is accessible. I’m thinking constantly about my fitness and my weight.
And I hate it.
I resent the energy it consumes.
I resent the rigidity with which I have to insist on exercise in my life.
I resent the meals I miss, the food I say no to.
I’m not an ascetic. I love my scotch. I love chocolate. I love ice cream. I love good food generally.
But I’ve come to know about myself that if I eat more than 1,700 calories in a day, I will gain weight. And I will gain it fast. It’s not hard for me to put on five or seven pounds in a family weekend at the beach. And it takes me months to work off those pounds. When I got back from a six-day extended family vacation this summer, I weighed 172. And only just now have I gotten as low as 165 – several months later.
All of this makes me a little crazy. It attacks my relationships, my work, my sanity. And at the same time, it feels absolutely essential. I don’t have an eating disorder. I think at the end of the day, my relationship to food and my body is mostly healthy. It just requires an enormous amount of care. Constant effort and attention.
And I hate it.
