Why understanding the answer to this question will set you free from immense pain and suffering, and put you on a pathway to joy.
Many people find this surprising, but I’ve always struggled with body image. I say surprising because when people look at me, they don’t see someone with the typical body image problem of being overweight. In fact, most everyone I’ve discussed this with is shocked to hear me reveal this struggle.
You see, I’ve always been tall and thin. I graduated high school at 6 feet tall weighing 117 pounds, built like many of the men on my mom’s side of the family. Some people, especially those with the opposite body image problem, might scoff at this even being an issue because I seemingly have what they want. But I don’t. I don’t have the body that society has told me my whole life an attractive, sexy American male should have. I’m not muscular and definitely not over the top manly. I’ve been fed images in media including print, TV, and movies of what a sexy male is, and they’re very macho, muscular, and manly.
I struggled with this mentally my whole life. Beginning in college, when I finally had a chance to reinvent myself, I began doing something about it and started lifting weights. I even succeeded to varying degrees for relatively long stretches. At one point in medical school, I was up to 194 pounds, almost entirely from lifting weights obsessively and eating like crazy. I was happier and had more success with the opposite sex, but this didn’t last forever. Now I realize it was a fool’s goal.
As an adult, as I’ve aged, I’ve developed muscle and skeletal issues from a combination of being obsessed with lifting weights to feel better about myself, plus working way too long at desks and computers which encourage poor posture that’s terrible for shoulders. This body pain has caused me to lift weights way less than I used to, forcing me back into struggling with body image and confronting my beliefs around it.
This turned out to be a wonderful gift.
As I’ve become more obsessed with personal growth and reducing my own suffering, I can’t help but run this body image issue I’ve had most of my life through my personal growth filter.
What I’ve Realized
First: My increased success with the opposite sex in undergrad and medical school was probably largely due to the massive increase in confidence I had in myself because of being more muscular. It wasn’t the muscles that made me attractive, at least not entirely, but rather my confidence and belief in myself as capable of being attractive.
I bet you’ve witnessed people who don’t fit the traditional mold of physical attractiveness, too overweight, too underweight, too tall, too short, or lacking conventionally attractive facial features, but who nonetheless have incredible confidence and self-belief, making them very attractive despite their physical appearance. They’re charismatic and we’re drawn to them. This shows me the fallacy of thinking the only way I can be happy and attractive is by having the exact type of body society tells me I should have.
Second: What society agrees is the current “sexy body” is a moving target. It has changed over time, between cultures, and even within subcultures. Professional cyclists have different bodies than NFL defensive ends, but their fans find them equally physically attractive. If there was one ultimate truth, how could this be possible? In other cultures, Japan and Korea for instance, tall and thin is the aspired to sexy and attractive aesthetic. How could this be if there was only one definition of attractive?
The biggest realization: Why in the world would I care what anybody else thinks about how I look anyway? I’m no longer looking for a mate, I am very happily married. Why should I care what the opposite sex thinks about me? I live in an age where I no longer have to physically fight people to get ahead in this world, so why should I care what other males think about my body? It all seems absurd when you point it out, yet most of us are stuck in this trap every day, and it causes us immense pain and suffering.
There’s a Different Way
You can choose to realize which body image problems you have and where they come from. You can choose to love yourself for who you are. You can choose not to care what the same or opposite sex thinks about how you look physically. You can realize that any friends or romantic partners who would choose you based largely on how your body looks are not people you should desire to be with anyway. Those are superficial relationships. Those people may leave you if you lose your looks, but real friends and real romantic interests want you for much more than just your body.
This isn’t to say you can’t strive to have better health and lose weight because excess weight causes disease and illness. I’m a physician, after all, and I want people to have better lives and be healthier and I preach this all day every day to my patients. But I want them to do it for health reasons such as a longer healthy life and to be able to do the things they love with the people they care about, and not to impress others or win fake friends.
In fact, I’m often amazed how frequently my conversations with patients about their weight and health shift almost immediately to attractiveness rather than health. I should have understood years ago how much confusion exists between the two, and I think I could have helped a lot more people, including myself.
Are you stuck in the trap of standards set by society and others as to what you should look like to feel worthy about yourself? Are you ready to move beyond this to something more meaningful and compatible with what will actually give you joy and meaning in life?
The first step is realizing the trap you have been caught in, and the second is realizing whether you chose to stay in it or not going forward is entirely your choice.
The question remains: Who are you trying to be sexy for? When you can honestly answer that question, and more importantly, question whether you need to be trying at all, you’ll find a freedom that no amount of muscle ever provided me.
