The wonderful woman who illustrates this column, Isabelle Maroger, will have to redraw Harry. It’s not that he minds being turned into some kind of cartoon – he’s been with me for nearly a decade and is used to reading about himself as a cartoon. It is more that he no longer looks like the man in the drawings. Not even the man I met all those years ago.
Reader, Harry has changed. How really changed. In the past six months, he has undergone what is known as a “full body transformation” which is known in the fitness industry as a “full body transformation”.
Gone is the soft, laid-back man with a penchant for pizza on Saturday nights. In its place is a babbling hunk who lifts weights three times a week, measures his protein, and eschews all carbohydrates that are not complex. Our refrigerator consists of almost 50 percent egg and turkey breast. Sesame seeds, he tells me, are an important source of energy. He takes endless supplements – oils! Multivitamins! Probiotics! – and after training he eats protein shakes.
He bought a high-tech scale that claims to measure his body fat and fluid levels – basically a scale that can look into the depths of your soul. I walk around her on tiptoe in the bathroom. Harry’s willpower has highlighted my lack, but I’m not trying to make everything about myself (fnar, fnar).
It looks … well, torn, one would say. Everyone mentions this. “Gosh, Harry looks so good!” Coo my friends after you meet him on the street. I find this annoying because I’ve always thought my husband was handsome and objected to the fact that biceps and a chiseled jaw line somehow make him a better person. But we don’t seem to speak the same language either. He runs off and says things like, “I did hill sprints and knocked off my PB for a minute.” He sees me trying to lift grocery bags into the kitchen and suggests that I might want to try some squat thrusts. My eyes are shining because I think he’s coming to me. But no. It turns out that this is weight lifting.
He goes on and on about the benefits of weight training and how it will make me a stronger runner. He doesn’t seem to understand that I don’t have to be a stronger runner – I only need to be able to run for half an hour a day, preferably away from his bleak conversation about protein and kettlebells.
Still, I have to leave him to that. After being the focus of attention for years when I stopped drinking and running marathons, he has earned his own transformative obsession. I could even try some of these stocky thrusts. Who knows? It might even be fun …
Continue reading:
I can’t be the only one walking around the full moon in a bit of fun
I can’t be the only one who hasn’t learned to drive
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