Monday, October 30, 2017

I have a large posterior and I am incapable of telling a falsehood

My butt is getting bigger.  This is not exactly a new complaint for a 39 year old but what is slightly new is that I don't mind at all because it seems to be growing because of my workout routine.

This fall I decided to add on a bunch of leg exercises to my routine:  Leg curls, leg extensions, leg raises, and squats.  Mostly this was just because it seemed like the right thing to do - the upper body workout definitely was motivated in large part by vanity but I am perfectly happy with my butt and leg aesthetics.  However, it seemed like it would be better for my health and fitness if I diversified a bit, so I added in 2 leg days a week.

Initially I tried doing 20 squat sets and I ended up the way a lot of overzealous beginners do.  I spent a few days limping around, barely able to walk because I overdid it.  I found that I could do 10 squat sets consistently and I have been ramping it up from there so that now I am using the same weight but doing 3 sets of 20 comfortably.  The improvement is real and I can feel it both in my exercises and in my daily routine.  My legs are a *lot* stronger.

But when I looked at my butt one day recently it was a bit of a surprise.  I was expecting my arms to get bigger from working out and so when that happened it was a not a surprise and in fact my reaction was "Good, good, now I need MORE."  My butt getting bigger was just weird though.  Rationally I knew this was an expected consequence, but emotionally it was bizarre.

This illustrated the huge difference between my perception of upper body and lower body strength.  No matter how big my arms and chest get I still see myself as a skinny teenager and it isn't enough.  I doubt that any achievable amount of size will change this feeling.  It intrigues me to look at myself because I can simultaneously note the changes in size in my arms and still react to myself as if I am as thin as I ever was.  Somehow I can perceive myself as both big and tiny at the same time.  Brains are so cool!

For some people, mostly men, this sense of being too small is a serious problem and is called muscle dysmorphia.  It leads to people throwing their lives away to spend more time in the gym to fend off guilt and feelings of inadequacy.  They also often abuse all kinds of muscle building drugs in pursuit of the unattainable goal of being the absolute biggest.  There are enough parallels between muscle dysmorphia and eating disorders such as anorexia that many people call it bigorexia instead.  Even the way society reacts to it can be an issue because many people with either a problem trying to get small or trying to get big will get compliments on their bodies and feel guilty as though they have to do even more to earn that praise.  In watching a bunch of fitness and weightlifting videos over the past while I have seen far too many enormous men with astounding bodies who feel despair over not being big enough; it is clear that this desire is completely uncoupled from reality.

I am not facing real problems in this regard though because even though I have that basic perception of myself of not being big enough my response to it has been to be in the gym for 40 minutes a day and eat a lot of protein and other food in general.  I am stronger and healthier than ever before and it hasn't been hurting the rest of my life in any appreciable way so it isn't a mental health problem, just a thing I do.

Getting bigger legs and a bigger butt have actually been an annoyance in one way.  It is hurting my numbers on exercises that use my body weight.  My overall weight is going up faster than my arm strength so I am stagnating or even regressing on exercises like pushups, dips, and pullups.  Hauling all that extra ass up into the air is tough work!

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