Over the years people have said it to me "Of course you're in shape, you played professional rugby and you're a physio. This is your job. You don't know what it's like to be overweight."
That’s when I take out my phone.
Because I have this photo on there of me at my heaviest. Not just carrying a bit of extra timber, it was more than that. I was miserable in a way I could not have explained to you at the time.
It was taken after I'd finished up in the fitness industry. I'd left the gym floor, which was the only place I'd ever felt properly useful. I was still coaching a handful of people but the thing I'd built was behind me. I took a corporate job because it seemed like the sensible move, and in that job I felt like I was cheating myself every single day. I felt like I was losing myself.
At the same time I was single, and nearly every friend I had was getting married and having children. I wasn't. I was watching it happen from the sideline.
I was lost at sea.
There was no single moment where I decided to let myself go, to lose myself. I just found myself that bit further from the shore each week, and one day I looked back and I could not see the sand.
But this wasn’t the first time I drifted out to sea.
The same thing happened when I finished rugby, and I can still see the room it happened in.
Michael Cheika the Leinster coach asked me to come to his office. I walked in the way I walked in anywhere back then, smiling, ‘Howaya’.
He got straight to it. There's no contract for you next year.
I genuinely cannot tell you what he said in the next couple of minutes. I know he kept talking. But somewhere in that first sentence I had already decided. Rugby is over. It’s finished. Twenty-eight years of age and nobody was going to talk me out of it.
I left his office, got in the car, drove home and texted a few teammates, my sister, my closest friends. Finishing up. It's done. Yep, happy with my decision.
‘Happy with my decision’.
I took the rejection and used it as the excuse to finish, because being the one who walked away hurt less than being the one who wasn't wanted. That took me about ninety seconds to do and about fifteen years to see.
What I understand now is, I was already good at that. From very early in my life I was well used to being hurt, ignoring it, and carrying on with the hurt still in me. I have fond memories growing up as a kid, but the early years were chaotic. Not knowing when I would have a fatherly figure around left me uncertain, always ready to run. I didn’t learn how to stop and feel. Instead I built internal furniture to pack the feelings away and carry on.
I spent a lot of my early life not stopping to feel things within my body, so I never noticed what was happening to my body either.
So it happened then, and it happened again when I took the corporate job, and I didn't see the second one coming because I thought the first one had been about rugby.
It was never about rugby, it was about a pattern, and it was about transition.
Both times, my body went through a lot of stress. My sleep became completely unpredictable. I tried to cling on to some sort of routine, but the thing that used to structure my week had disappeared and nothing replaced it. I would binge drink at the weekend to feel some sort of buzz and fun to break up the feelings of discontentment. Food became something I did to pass time rather than something I needed to fuel me. I spent hours sitting or lying down overthinking, and the thought of doing some form of exercise made me feel allergic. Have you ever felt so repelled by the idea of breaking a sweat that you just couldn’t start?
I believe it doesn't matter which transition it is either.
Finishing your sport. Selling the business you spent years building. Moving country. Getting married. Getting divorced. The death of someone you adored. The kids leaving the house. Being made redundant.
For me each transition felt like an earthquake, and my body was trying to balance on the ground when it happened.
It’s mental, it’s emotional, but it’s physical first, and my body is where the record got kept.
There's another photo on my phone.
It was taken a few weeks ago. I'm carrying my son.
What actually sits between this photo and the one I was miserable in is many years, two countries, a lot of quiet work and a fair amount of getting it wrong.
The reason it matters to me is becoming a father is a transition too. Broken sleep, limited time, your life rearranged around a little human. It could have gone the same way as the other two transitions.
But it didn't, because this time I knew what was happening.
And because now I have someone who fully depends on me. I want to be there, I want him to know I am there. And I want to be physically capable of it, for all the moments that matter.
The weight loss isn't the achievement. I'd lost weight plenty of times before and nothing changed inside me. What actually changed this time was quieter than that. Looking after my body stopped being something I did to fix how I looked, and became the way I showed myself I was moving forward. My body became the proof that I was on a journey, not static and stuck.
And if I could go back and tell myself a few things it would be these.
Gary, no one is coming to save you. You will have people who want to, but only you can actually do it. There's no lightning bolt. It drags on for weeks, months, years, until staying where you are finally hurts more than the thought of changing.
Gary, take out a piece of paper and a pen, not your phone or keyboard. Write it out, where you are and everything you’re feeling and doing. Then write what it could look like if you started treating yourself differently, how would you feel, what would you do with your body to prepare it for the moments that are coming, because it is what carries you forward. Write it like you were writing to a friend who’s asking for your help.
Gary, slowly start to pick up the receipts, the evidence that you give a fuck about yourself.
Gary, don't ignore your body, lean into it. Use it to restore your confidence, your belief, it is the doorway to everything good that will happen for you. Just start with walking.
I’ve noticed when my head is full of noise, my body is a great way to turn down the volume. Not because training fixes my problems, but the body is where I feel the steadiness comes from. I spent years trying to think my way through things while ignoring the one thing that could have steadied me. I wish I'd known to go to the body first. To let it lead, and let the head follow.
Your body has taken you everywhere.
It carried you through every single moment that has ever happened to you, and it will carry you through whatever is coming next.
Every memory you own arrived through your body. The sound of the final whistle. Holding your child for the first time. The room you walked into the day you met her. The knee you got down on in front of her. The weight of your friend’s hug. None of that came through your mind. It came through your body and your mind filed it afterwards.
Transitions will keep coming. They always do, that’s life. Try to lean into your body when they arrive, because that's exactly when you’ll need it most.
Gary
If any of this sounded familiar
I send out regular emails, with similar themes to this piece - what actually happens to your body in your forties, and what to do about it. If you want to receive them, just pop your email in below.
If you'd rather just talk, email me at gary@garybrownhere.com.
And if you've already decided you want to do something about it, that's what The Challenge is for. It runs for 4 weeks, and the next dates are on the page.
