Personal Account of Body Dysmorphia and Fitness Obsession

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It was when sipping some grim, flavourless soup with the fervour and grace of a dog lapping spilt gravy – my only main meal that day – that I realised I was becoming a joke.

Slurping the final mouthful, I saw my mum and sister exchange a wry look. I knew what it meant. I’d become a nightmare.

It was month three of my 5:2 intermittent fasting diet. Five days a week of eating up to your usual calorie limit (around 2500 calories for men), two days of eating just 500 calories. Brutal.

We were holidaying in Turkey at the time. When I could have been eating kofte with my family, I was fasting and had become a giant bore about calorie counting.

Their gentle exasperation didn’t deter me from my almost impossible goal: muscular upper body; tiny waist. I was still working out on fasting days. It was the only way I’d find my body acceptable.

Sylvester Stallone this week opened up about developing an eating disorder and taking steroids when younger. His appearance “became an obsession, really bad”, he said, and it took a terrible toll. He regrets it.

Stallone was the original “looksmaxxer”. Today’s versions include an Australian man known online as Androgenic, who’s been, understandably, roundly mocked.

It’s easy to laugh at male body obsession. From Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sly Stallone’s extremely muscled, weirdly unsexy ’80s bodies, to today’s manfluencers who smoke meth and work out, it encompasses the most satire-worthy traits of toxic masculinity: narcissism, ego, superficiality, competitiveness, brute strength fixation.

In my 5:2 days, the joke was on me. My family nicknamed it my 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 diet. Apt – like the backwards countdown of a humourless drill sergeant. That is what I was becoming.

Buoyed by the hint of abs – I’d been a tubby 20-something – I wasn’t going back.

I’d tried shortcuts to shred before, from diet pills to the grapefruit diet (half a grapefruit before every meal for its “fat burning enzymes”). It was an obsession built from insecurity given that classically handsome men were tall, dark and handsome; I was short, ginger and plain. I believed I needed pectorals to be considered even vaguely attractive.

I joined a gym but diet alterations saw the most noticeable results, so my fasting continued.

Then I learnt about “body dysmorphia” – a skewed perception of what my body actually looks like. I saw photos of myself and thought they showed a potbelly and ill-defined abs, despite practically starving myself. The Butterfly Foundation says one-third of Australians with an eating disorder are male – some 365,000 men and boys, part of an overall increase of 21 per cent over a decade. Experts note that intensifying social media messages aimed at men and boys pose significant risks by equating success and self-worth with appearance.

Eventually, after being told by loved ones I “look better when I eat”, I quit the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 diet forever. My body changed again, as bodies do. I’d love to say I accept it more today. I probably do slightly more than I did.

I didn’t think I had an eating disorder. Like many men I know, I was eager to look muscled, manly, vaguely attractive and less bothered about being laughed at for striving towards it.

In the gay scene I inhabit, body fascism is rife. It can lead to elitism, disillusionment, substance abuse and orthorexia – an intense adherence to clean eating or self-imposed food rules. I abhor it all, yet participate in it. I objectify men to those same largely unattainable standards – I can do better here, too.

Sly Stallone says steroids are rife in the gym bro scene. They’re rife on the gay scene, too, but the taboo means the true extent is unknown.

In the Ozempic age, the risk of boys becoming body obsessed is even greater, but we’re too busy mocking them to spot signs of struggle, shame and stigma.

My body remains steroid and ab free. I’m still the only person mum knows who hits the gym on holiday. I’m still finding my line.

Gary Nunn is a regular contributor.

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