FIT, FAT...AND NAKED

 So my weight keeps fluctuating, and the holiday season - starting with Halloween - is making it harder to maintain let alone lose weight. I'm up a few pounds against my lowest last June, and struggling to get back on program.

One of the positive factors is that I am exercising regularly, which ought to change the course of the weight I'm gaining. (This is purely a willpower thing, kids. I know that.) 

My morning workout routine is going quite well, and I'm up to a half hour of high activity most mornings. And I can readily feel the improvement in my musculature. My ass and abs in particular, though my abs are still embedded in a stubborn layer of fat and my ass - which itself is resuming its "bubble butt" appearance from my college days - rests below a similarly stubborn pocket of back fat clinging to my lower back and oblique muscles. 

Not me...yet

Much of all this, of course, is psychological. Mental. And I've noticed a shift lately in my self-perception that I think is an important one.

For years I have thought of myself as a fat man. Because I was. I was fat and unfit, suffering a number of medical issues as a result. As my regular readers know, my primary medical issues have been urological not fat-based. But the fat has contributed to high blood sugar, high blood pressure, and a general low energy.

But as I've dropped the weight - roughly 75 pounds from my all-time high - focussing in on a strong exercise routine of a half hour of energetic dance alternately emphasizing specific muscle groups (the thighs, ass, and core), I have noticed a shift in my self-perception. For months now I've talked about how I essentially inhabit two bodies at once: a fitter, more muscular one, under layers of fat.

Bubbling up (not me, yet)

It's an odd physiology, particularly when I'm in the pool as the fat tends to float. It's a genuinely weird sensation, and it clearly delineates the fat from the muscle.

So I thought of myself as a fat man with underlying musculature.

This has shifted. As I exercise each morning I can focus in on muscle groups that have long been dormant. My gluteal muscles have become quite strong, and, as I mentioned above, have resumed their younger toned look - with some fat still overlaying the muscles and the unwanted presence of a substantial fat pad on my lower back. But the muscle tone is evident both in appearance and texture.

My abs have changed as well. Despite their coverage by fat, I have a flatter set of stomach muscles. Yesterday at work I was feeling a little crampy from sitting all morning and pushed my chair back to do some leg lifts. It's nothing I do frequently, and leg lifts aren't a part of my normal workout, so figured I'd do just a few. Five sets of 15 later I was rather pleased with myself. My abdominal and leg muscles are developed to the point I could do these with surprising ease.

All of which comes down to a new perception of myself. I am not a fat man with underlying musculature. I have a lot of extra weight still packing me in, but I feel much more like a fit man with layers of fat overlying the muscles instead of a fat man with some decent muscle tone underneath.

My morning routine is a highlight of my day. I spend a half hour every day with both feet firmly planted as I move to the music. I'm a former dancer, so know what I'm doing, and can focus my attention on specific muscles such as my thighs, abs and buttocks. My arms get a good workout as well, though I'm planning on adding a separate weight regimen to enhance my biceps and shoulders. 

As muscles tone up I've rediscovered that their sensations are more easily detected than when they are flabby. You can feel them individually as you flex and exercise them. My lower abdomen, navel to public bone, has come alive enough I can focus effort in that area and feel the difference. I can flex one buttock, or both. I stretch my calves frequently, even if I'm not, at that moment, exercising.

I do my workout nude. It saves both in laundry and is a remarkably freeing thing psychologically. I've been doing it this way for years, but now that the muscles are developed it also enables me to feel good about myself. 

A song I frequently use is George Michael's "Freedom '90." It's got a good beat and you can dance to it. (Sorry, a joke only people my age and older will get.) 

The central theme of the song is around the need to be true to one's self. Not to be what others expect us to be. This can be debated, if course, because this sort of thing can be bad if the man isn't really a good person. (But I digress.)

I use the song for its positive overall message and the fact it's something that gives me a decent five minute segment of music to dance to. And since I'm naked, one of the lines in the song - "Sometimes the clothes do not make the man" - never fails to amuse me. 

And as I dance to that song I realize that what makes a man is not clothing. It is not possessions. It is not what other people say about him.

What makes a man - for better or for worse - is how we see ourselves. And whether we measure up to what we want to be in the world.

I'm a fit man, now. 

With stubborn fat.