Men and Body Dissatisfaction

I feel fat. 

I’ve always struggled with my weight but recently, because of the lockdowns and working from home, I’ve put on another stone, I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been. 

I know if I don’t sort this now, I never will.

I want to have more energy, I want to feel fit, again, I want to actually be able to kick a ball around with my son and not feel f**ked after 5 minutes.

These are the words of a client recently.

I asked him, ‘why are you telling me this’?

He said he didn’t know, I suggested he did…

He said, because deep down, not feeling good about himself affects his confidence, both in himself and his abilities. He went on to say that he’s constantly comparing himself to other, fitter, younger, better looking men and that even though he knows he’s doing it, he can’t seem to stop it.

My client is a 40 something high achieve. He’s financially secure, but not free, he has all the trappings you’d expect of someone with a successful career but because he’s too busy earning a living and not actually living, his health has deteriorated and it’s impacting his mindset and mood.

By his own admission, he’s time poor, he doesn’t have an exercise routine and because in work, he firefights his way through his days and weeks he’s either missing meals or grabbing unhealthy ‘convenience food’ on the go.

Body image concerns in men are far more prevalent that you might imagine.

When I suggested to my client that he isn’t alone in how he’s feeling about his body, he agreed and went on to say, ‘there’s lots of other men out there feeling the same body shame but are either too embarrassed to speak about it or feel like they have too little time to do anything about it’.

Paraphrasing the end of what was a huge admission and ultimately a liberating experience for my client, he said, ‘works going to put me in an early grave if I don’t own this’.

According to recent research conducted by the University of the West of England and in conjunction with the YMCA, many men look in the mirror or at an old photo and immediately chastise themselves for their beer bellies, man boobs and receding hair lines.

For men that that struggle with their body image, getting dressed for work, meeting new people, attending events and even choosing food in front of others are all real everyday life challenges.

I often say that being a man is hard, and I mean it. 

Many modern men can feel as though they’re not only having to live up to the traditionally masculine characteristics such as being strong, stoic, emotion-less and independent but that also, they have to look a certain way to be a masculine man, a successful man.

And all this subjective thinking stems from the societal conditioning men experience in childhood; be it from the peer pressure at school to be ‘tough’, our collective emphasis on championing sportsmen as successful male role models, or from our exposure to movies featuring action heroes and superheroes as these narrow waisted, broad shoulder, alpha males… 

This sh*t is still happening, and it’s creating an equal weight of expectation on both young boys of today and grown men of today.

Boys and men feel they have to look a certain way to be a ‘man’ and when they don’t, they either have do something about it or instead live with feel some embarrassment or shame around their physical appearance.

As a gender, men would do well to stop thinking that body dissatisfaction is a ‘women’s’ problem because this modern day affliction doesn’t discriminate its impact on gender. 

To illustrate this, I’ll turn to the same study I referenced earlier. It found more than four in five men, 80.7% actually, talk in ways that promote anxiety compared to only 75% of women.

And alarmingly the same study reported that 38% of men would sacrifice at least a year of their life in exchange for a perfect body, again this is a higher percentage than the women survey.

Would you sacrifice a year of your life in exchange for the perfect body?

So, how do you know when body image, particularly body dissatisfaction is a problem for you? Here are some clues that might mean you have conscious or subconscious concerns:

1. You regular experience negative self-talk about your body image or a part of your body you don’t like.
2. You have a fixation on either your own muscle size and shape or are drawn to others that are athletically aesthetic.
3. You experience a constant concern about your body shape or weight regardless of how well you develop your body or how much weight you lose.
4. You recognise within yourself a subtle sense of avoidance or anxiety around daily life experiences and/or special events due to your body shame or dissatisfaction.

Historically, discussing body concerns has been a topic of conversation many men would avoid at all costs, but this shame fuelled avoidance is compounding the problems that many men are secretly  experiencing; this is especially concerning when you consider:

• 25 - 40% of individuals who have an eating disorder are men. The National Association for Males with Eating.
• 33% of UK adults feel that your value as a person depends on how you look. The Mental Health Foundation.
• 48% of men struggle because of how they feel about their body. Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM).

So what can be done to normalise the conversation around body image and its impact… 

Well, just like we are doing with mental health, we need to encourage a collective openness and willingness to talk about body image as an issue, because when we do, we reduce the stigma and empower men to take action of how they think and feel about themselves.

Let’s go back to the start…

Once my client opened up about how he felt, his self-created internal stress lessened and he proactively and assertively took responsibility for how he felt. 

He set himself the goal of losing two stones across the course of our 6 month coaching engagement; just over a pound a week. Not only did he achieve his target, but he also found that as his weight dropped his aches and pains declined and his confidence and energy increased. 

He went from the ‘Couch to 5K’, to Park Runs and recently, he’s bagged himself a half marathon and he’s no longer f**ked kicking a ball around with his son. 

He feels less day to day tiredness in his life and he has commented on how he feels more engaged in his marriage and his career and recently, he sent me a WhatsApp picture message that’s seemingly sage advice for us all, it read:

Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live in.