When I learned that the first issue of Watermark this year would focus on fitness, I could already feel my fingers banging on the keyboard. I have A LOT to say about fitness, especially as a gay man. Where do I begin?
Fitness for me equals journey. I’m still walking down this long, fun, frustrating road that I call my fitness journey. I can’t remember when I started calling myself fat. Maybe it was late in high school, maybe it was college, but at some point while growing up I started this vicious cycle of going to food for comfort.
Once I would shove the double cheeseburger down my throat with a large fry and some diet coke, I would immediately feel regret. In those four to five minutes (I can throw down on some food real fast) it would take me to devour everything, I felt like I could literally feel the endorphins releasing into my blood stream.
The burger never rejected me. The fries never made me feel less than. The diet coke would laugh at my jokes. Food was everything I ever wanted out of a guy. That burger and fries never stood me up on a date. I turned to food to celebrate good times and to make myself feel better after anything negative hit my life.
Then college ended. In that spring semester of my senior year I went from weighing around 180 pounds to pushing 300. After I turned 21 I found booze, buffalo wings and ranch. I couldn’t get enough. By the time I went to my first gay club in Savannah, Georgia, I was pretty good with the negative self-talk.
“Miguel, this shirt is too tight for you. Gosh, you fatty, put the damn french fry down so someone will learn to love you.” Those are the type of thoughts that would run through my head at any given point after eating a meal. After experiencing different tribes of people staying in their tribes and ignoring anyone that looked differently than they did, my negative self-talk went through the roof. At 21, just graduated and only a few dating situations under my belt, I felt like I needed to lose weight in order to get a man. That began my next decade of trying every diet under the sun.
Weight Watchers, starving myself, avoiding carbs, utilizing meal prep services, hiring personal trainers, undergoing liquid diets and taking special pills – I have tried it all. Every time I would go through a cycle of losing weight I would work my ass off for a few months, lose weight for about a month or so and then go back to slowly putting it back on. It was not a fun experience. In that time, even when I lost weight guys would still not talk to me.
I thought being skinny equaled getting a man. What was I missing? I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong – and then I walked into my first CrossFit class.
I know what you are thinking. Did Miguel write all of this to now try and sell me on CrossFit? No. I’m not trying to do that; I’m just telling you what worked for me. From the moment I started the journey with CrossFit, my self-talk started to change. I’ve gone up and down with weight since I’ve been attending classes, but the biggest change I’ve seen is how I view myself.
I used to attack each workout because I felt like it would get me closer to my goal weight, which would make me dateable. I’m so mad at myself for thinking that way. This is why it’s called a journey.
After going through my first CrossFit competition a few years ago, my energy in the gym turned to correcting my form, gaining strength and developing mental toughness to work through difficult workouts. About two years ago, after working on my mind and self-talk, I was getting ready for work. I noticed that for the first time since high school, I liked the way I looked.
No, I loved the way I looked. Not because I had a six pack – I didn’t – but the person looking back in the mirror was a man who had finally found confidence in himself. I had learned to love my curves and embrace the power in my thick thighs. I didn’t need to look a certain way to be loved. Those thoughts set off an explosion in my head.
Since then, I’ve regularly had to make sure that I wasn’t doing the negative self-talk. I spend so much time with myself, why would I want to expose myself to so much negativity? You don’t need a personal trainer to learn to love yourself – you just need to look at what’s on the inside.
So as you go into 2020 and work on those fitness goals, focus on how it’s going to make you feel, not how you are going to look. It’s great losing that weight, but when does it stop? Will you ever like the way you look? Not until you also work on what’s happening on the inside. That process can be just as tough as the workout you do in the gym. Happy New Year!
Miguel Fuller is the host of Miguel and Holly on HOT 101.5 in Tampa Bay and hosts daily segments on the nationally syndicated Dish Nation. See his life in pictures and videos on Instagram @MiguelFuller.
