New Body. Old Skin.

Losing weight is great. Losing A LOT of weight feels amazing. Your doctor is happy with you. You feel incredible. You get tons of compliments about how you look (which can be new and exhilarating). You might be getting a ton of new attention from other humans that you'd like to "know intimately". You feel this sense of accomplishment with each digit that melts off of the scale. You have a 'New Body'.

All of these 'good feelings' typically only last a little while. If you're like me and you've lost a considerable amount of weight, we're often left with some less than desirable markers of your 'old body'.

I've got stretch marks. They're on my stomach. They're in my armpits. On my hips. They're even in my fucking groin (this is not some lame big dick joke, they're legit there). Now I have loose skin that sits over my abdomen. I've pushed my weight loss to the point of feeling uncomfortable all in the pursuit of trying to get abs you can see.

The biggest body hang-ups I've encountered have happened after I lost weight. I had so many expectations of how I would look, how I would feel and how I would live after I got to my goal weight. What I wasn't expecting was the body I have. Maybe that was naïve? Maybe I should've seen this all coming?

Once I realized that my skin is more than likely never going to shrink back, I was so fucking mad. Legitimately furious. I was pissed off at old Tim for putting the current Tim in this position. I've been caught saying out loud, to my wife (Borat voice* MY WIFE, sorry), "What was the point!?". As if all the other benefits didn't even matter.

It's so incredibly difficult to break this connection we have between looks and fitness. I still feel like I'm 'unfit' sometimes because my abdomen doesn't look a certain way. I'll look in the mirror and only stare at my lower stomach because that's where my skin sags the most. I don't even care about the rest of my body, let alone all the health benefits I've experienced.

You can't Instagram a massive reduction in blood pressure. It's tough to get a pic of taking yourself from a pre-diabetic blood sugar range to a healthy number. There's no way to thirst trap with a shot of your low AF resting heart rate. Those are the things that make you feel physically great. But…that's not where we put our value.

Since I've lost the weight, I've gotten stronger, I can run faster and further, I've learned how to eat right, and I am even skilled enough to teach boxing fitness classes…But I'll still make sure I pull my shorts up over my lower stomach. Because I feel like that one part will all of a sudden turn me into a fraud. As if someone will see it and be like "Oh wait, you used to be heavy? How about we get an actual skinny person in here to teach this class."

I imagine that I'm not the only one experiencing this. I know there are other people out there who want to talk about fitness, and exercise and meal prep, but they think that until they 'look' a certain way they have to delay this passion. Delay this excitement. Delay their happiness. Which. Is. Royally. Fucked.

Maybe we all need to go to therapy together, because I don't really have any answers. I'm here with you trying to work on all the same stuff. I wish that when you first go to the doctor (one who understands weight loss and doesn't just tell you to lose weight), that they'd link you up with a support group or a therapist. Losing weight is hard, but not near as hard as reconciling with the body you have once that weight is gone. Because once it's gone…it's still just you.

Most of this was just for me. I take a lot of pics of myself like everyone in the fitness industry and I do my best to make sure I hit the right angles. This is me being real. Trying to accept the body I've got.

As psychologist Carl Jung said, "What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size." If we continue to push back against these ideas of ourselves, they only get stronger. Let's all take, even if it's just 5 seconds, time to accept where we're at. Because I'm tired of wasting minutes each day wishing for something that's beyond my control. Wishing for something that may not even be possible for me. I'd rather spend time enjoying what I have, where I am and who I'm with.

We'll get there. Someday.

Alright, enough whining, let's go lift heavy shit.

Peace.