Without Your Physique, Who Are You?

Recently my partner asked me a question that I didn't really know how to answer.

"Without your physique, what are you?"

At first I thought it was just another comment about my body. I've trained for years, I'm muscular, I spend a lot of time in the gym, so obviously my physique is a big part of how people see me.

But the question stayed in my head.

Because it reminded me of something somebody else had said to me years before, when I was a completely different person physically.

And the strange thing is, the two comments couldn't have been more different.

Before I Became the Muscular Guy

I wasn't always muscular. I was fat.

That's not me being unnecessarily harsh on myself. I was massively overweight at one point and I hated how I looked.

Eventually I started doing something about it. I lost weight, started training properly and slowly began building muscle. The changes didn't happen overnight, but eventually I looked completely different.

And when your body changes that much, the way people react to you changes as well.

People notice you. You get compliments. Clothes fit differently. You start looking at yourself differently.

For someone who had spent years being uncomfortable with his body, that felt good.

Probably too good.

During a relationship at that point in my life, my partner said something to me that I've never really forgotten.

"You'll always be the fat little boy I met."

She may not even have realised how much that sentence would stick with me.

But it did.

I'd put all this work into changing myself physically and suddenly it felt like none of it mattered. I could lose the weight, build the muscle and completely change what I saw in the mirror, but maybe underneath all of that I was still exactly the same person.

So I carried on changing.

The Physique Became More Than a Physique

Training became a massive part of my life.

I got stronger. I got bigger. I became more confident.

Eventually I wasn't the overweight guy trying to get into shape anymore. I was the muscular guy.

And I liked being that person.

There's nothing wrong with admitting that.

I liked looking strong. I liked people noticing. I liked being able to walk into a gym and know that I'd spent years earning the body I had.

The gym also gave me something incredibly simple when other parts of life weren't simple.

If I wanted to get stronger, I trained.

If I wanted to change my body, I changed my diet.

If I wanted to improve something, I could work at it and eventually see the result.

Life doesn't always work like that.

You can put everything you've got into a relationship and still lose it. You can make plans that don't happen. You can do what you think is right and still end up with an outcome you didn't want.

The gym is different.

The weight doesn't care what's happening in your life.

You pick it up or you don't.

I think that's one of the reasons training became so important to me.

But somewhere along the way there was probably a line that I crossed without noticing.

My physique stopped just being something I'd built.

It started becoming part of the evidence I used to tell myself that I was worth something.

Then Years Later I Heard the Complete Opposite

Years passed. That previous relationship ended and my life changed considerably.

By this point nobody looking at me would describe me as the fat kid anymore.

Being muscular was just part of who I was.

Then recently, in a completely different relationship and at a completely different point in my life, my partner asked me:

"Without your physique, what are you?"

And that's where this gets strange.

Years earlier I'd effectively been told that no matter how much I changed my body, I'd always be the fat kid underneath it.

Now I was being asked what was left if you took the muscular body away.

Two different people.

Two completely different points in my life.

Almost completely opposite comments.

Yet both of them managed to hit exactly the same place.

The first made me feel like I could never escape the person I used to be.

The second made me wonder whether I'd spent so long trying to escape him that I'd built too much of my identity around becoming his opposite.

When Your Physique Becomes Your Identity

That's the part I've had to think about.

Because if somebody asked me who I was, I could obviously give them answers.

But if I'm being serious about the question, I have to acknowledge how much confidence I've attached to my appearance.

For years progression was incredibly easy to measure.

More weight on the bar. More muscle. Less body fat. A better picture. Somebody noticing the difference.

There was always something telling me I was moving forward.

And there's nothing inherently wrong with any of that.

The problem comes when those measurements stop being about your body and start becoming measurements of you.

Because eventually your body will change.

I'm not always going to look exactly how I do now.

I'm not always going to be as strong as I am now.

I could get injured. I could get older. My priorities could change.

And if losing muscle means losing my confidence, then I have to question what that confidence was actually built on.

Maybe I've Been Chasing the Wrong Transformation

This is probably the part that's harder for me to admit.

Changing my body was difficult, but it was also straightforward.

You train.

You eat properly.

You repeat it for long enough.

Changing yourself as a person isn't anything like that.

There's no programme telling you exactly what to do.

There's no mirror showing you whether you've improved.

Nobody gives you a personal best for admitting you were wrong.

There's no trophy for handling a difficult situation better than you would have five years ago.

But maybe that's where progression needs to go next.

Becoming someone who keeps his word.

Being able to admit when he's wrong.

Taking responsibility for his decisions.

Learning that rejection doesn't make him worthless and attention doesn't make him valuable.

Knowing when something deserves fighting for and when something needs accepting.

Building friendships, interests, skills and ambitions that don't depend on what I look like.

Being able to lose something important without losing myself with it.

Those things require a completely different kind of work.

And in some ways I think they're harder.

I'm Still Going to Train

I'm not writing this because I've suddenly decided the gym is bad or that caring about your appearance makes you shallow.

I'm still going to train.

I still want to be muscular.

I still want to be strong.

And I'm proud of what I've built.

The gym has given me discipline, structure and somewhere to put my energy when I've needed it.

I don't want to lose any of that.

What I probably need to lose is the idea that my physique has to prove something about me.

Because it can't answer the bigger questions.

It can't tell me whether I'm a good man.

It can't tell me whether I'm a good father, partner or friend.

It can't tell me whether I've treated somebody properly.

And it definitely can't tell me what I'm worth.

Those things have to come from somewhere else.

So Without My Physique, What Am I?

At the moment, maybe I don't completely know.

And strangely, I think that's a better answer than desperately listing things to prove that I do.

Maybe figuring it out is the next bit of progression.

For a long time I thought transformation meant changing what I saw when I looked in the mirror.

I spent years building a body because I didn't want to be the fat kid anymore.

And physically, I succeeded.

But perhaps the biggest transformation is going to be learning that neither version of my body gets to decide who I am.

The fat kid wasn't worthless because he was fat.

The muscular man isn't valuable because he's muscular.

They're just two versions of the same person at different points in his life.

I've spent enough years building the outside.

Now I need to make sure I'm building the man underneath it as well.