I have the habit of stepping onto the bathroom scale every day. The scale is pretty: an Ikea white plastic and glass design.
Last night, 136.5; Monday, 136.0. This weekend at the gym, I caught a glimpse of my stomach in a mirror during a set of chin-ups. A voice -- my own -- clearly and calmly claimed that, ‘you can’t go to the beach like this.’ Landed on my feet, I felt dizzy. What the fuck was that?
A small bulge at the navel drives me to distraction. It resists eradication in spite of a healthy diet and general exercise (plus targeted routines including crunches, leg lifts, and knee-ups). My present waist in size in the ready-made pants analogy is 30. I look into the mirror to grimace while pivoting left and right. Why will it not go away? Every day I cover up in a small t-shirt, aggravated. When engaged in conversations of diet/fitness, the intransigent bulge invariably arises and the other person invariably says some version of “you’re not fat.” Which isn’t the point.
The “once a fatty, always a fatty” paradigm exists. This nasty truth is, well, nasty. I didn’t expect it. It seems like a post-modern version of the ‘you can take a boy out of the jungle...’ cliche. I’m neither dumb nor anorexic (can a double negative fly here?). For a man my age and height, the quantitative stuff reads well. I know this. My doctor told me this. What in hell keeps the body consciousness around after losing fifty pounds? Why the use of italics? Anyway, knowing that my perception is warped by a cognitive dissonance sucks. I feel confident in handling the quantitative. Numbers represents goals that I can reach through effort and work. The problem doesn’t lie in the quantitative but qualitative; that’s a fight I’m less confident to engage. Subjectivity is a vehicle used to my detriment. Qualitatively speaking, no reason exists to feel ashamed/embarrassed about my body (aside from a bit of paleness).
My fear is that, after months of working on this little bit of body, the exertion comes to a lot of shadow-boxing. In other words, that I’m battling the missing fifth and sixth pieces of the ‘six pack’ instead of something more important. Perhaps I’m fighting a skewed perception.
