...adonis is complex...
...gravity is overrated...
“Your weight has to be behind the punch to make it matter.”
-Kris Kristofferson-
I knew better. Two dudes walked into the beer bar I spin records at holding a rusted vintage 1930’s metal doctor’s scale. It works, they said. It’s accurate, they said. Step on it, they said.
I don’t like the idea that my health and self worth is tied to gravity. Once a year I go to the doctor’s office and wince while they record all my physical data. A 375 pound doctor told me I was technically obese.
I hike every day. I run every day. I eat a balanced diet high in veggies (maybe not enough vegamite). I feel good. People tell me I look good. But I stepped on the scale and some awful number came up. I’m not sharing it because the number was not nice. I suck. Endless days of exercise and I haven’t lost a pound. Instead I gained them.
For a man with no kids I sure have a dad bod. I am instinctually of good health, meaning that my instincts are to do healthy things. I eat carrots. I sweat. I read things. I agree, math. But standing on that old granddad scale I felt like a big fat fuck.
I’m not fat. I am overweight. I am technically obese. I feel healthy. People tell me I look ok. When I look in the mirror I shrug, sure. Then a world around me emerges. Man culture calls to me.
Dude. Bro. Brah. Get swole. Get shredded. Get ripped.
Maybe I should. Maybe I will.
Technically I have been obese since I was 18 years old. Moved out of the house with a sweet college buffet to buffet on, I opted for putting on a freshman 50 instead of the standard 15. I grew a third neck to hold up my second neck. And after a year of gluttonous abandon I spent a summer smoking instead of eating and dropped every piece of weight I put on. I looked nice naked. I drank 12-packs and had a 6-pack.
Time passed and my fat fluctuations continued. The jeanmakers started including stretch so that the more marshmallow I got, the pants would still fit. I went up. I went down. Then I did karaoke in a j-town bar and stared into the mirror and I couldn’t see myself anymore. I just saw s’more. Fluff. Smoosh. Fill. I saw the big fat fuck!
Time to starve again. Change habits, make habits, and say habit habitually. I hab-had about enough of it. The numbers are breaking my brain. I am sad because a dude got hit on the head by an apple? The gravity of the situation is *pun intended* heavy.
Just by stepping on a scale, or looking in a mirror, I can go from yay today to fuck forever. My brother instilled the idea that I should look good on me by beating me up unless I did sit-ups and push-ups for him. As a dork drawn more to drawing, it took a while for the beatings to make me smile.
I did 100 sit-ups today. I did 100 push ups. I’m not smiling.
One day I played basketball with a dude who had boobs and worried that might be me. I mean I love boobs. Maybe that is why I grow them. I’ve been a D-cup, a C-cup, and a buh-buh-buh B-cup. But I’m an A-cup now. You know, like Fonzie says. Ayyyyy (cup).
I uh, ah, eh, don’t know why this matters to me.
I don’t want gravity to weigh me down. I’m not a mirror man. The more I stare into mirrors the weirder I look. This is science. This is math. People look weird. Faces are weird. There is a direct correlation to the amount of plastic surgery one might seek out in relation to how often or how little they stare at themself in the mirror. Just one look at my ass and I am ready to saw it off and replace it with a lost kardashian.
When I live inside my gaze I lose sight of myself. I am not a purely physical object. I am not only bone, blood, sinew and falling apple. I am soul. I am spirit. I am typey-typed words trying to instill ideals and values from my brain-burp to your brain-burp.
I am enough.
But on that scale, I become too much again. I tell myself I need a new me. I need to look like the TV. To be hard-skinned and oily. Physical reality tells me I am wrong. There is a standard, an average, a mean that should bring me meaning. Good health is just a single color on the rainbow away from me.
The things I could do with a new face, a new body, a new mind. I could be entirely someone else. That is my happiness. My happiness is someone else. My big fat fuck is me. All because of that big fat fucking scale.
The chaff is that scale ignores my scale. I am not concrete and final. I am not simply mass. My whole is a whole lot more. I fluctuate. I change. My growth grows.
But the metal monster beneath my feet is not a beast. I am a beast. My judgements are my personal responsibility. And often they are filled with thoughts and ideas that aren’t my own. Standards I didn’t set. I’m an average of all the averages I have averaged.
How average I can be!
I want to be better and bigger than that. But even that thought is yet another needless this-isn’t-me moment. My bigger and better is just more mirror. It could be unlucky, but I want to break that habit. I want to break that mirror.
Deep breath. Burp.
When I said I wanted to write about weight to a friend she said good, you’re a woman now. Oh man I thought. Oh, human.
I can shed pounds. Shed my body and my worry. My shame, regret and judgment. Hazy memories, belief and purposes. Every day there is more of me to lose or to gain. And with that, I am under and overweight. I am too much of too little. I am human. Hear me *burp*.
“I defy gravity.”
-Marilyn Monroe-
…thanks to , Lee Smart, , and Lina Praškevičiūtė for your amazing feedback on this…i couldn’t be more or less without you…
either way, you’ll always be a heavyweight innovator
A wild ride of a reminder that health and fitness is incredibly complex at a deeply personal level. Lots of people (ahem) try to simplify it.
I am "in shape." People ask me how I do it, how I stay with it. I don't really know, and I don't really want to dig that deeply. It works, for some reason(s), so I leave it alone and keep going.