Built this way

Alongside all the other ways in which I have evolved and improved during my adult life, there has been a steady upward trend in how I feel about my body. This hasn’t happened by accident – it’s something I’ve put a huge amount of work into over the years. And, much as I resent the effort this has taken (imagine what else I could have used that energy for!), I am sometimes quietly proud of the results.

It was definitely pride that I felt a few weeks ago, when I saw the photos from the Peak Divide, which five of us completed on Bromptons, alongside the 300 runners who unquestionably had the harder job.

My first thought when I saw this picture, by Luke Broster, was: wow!

I almost never see a picture of myself and think I look great.

Sometimes, very occasionally, I see one someone took ten or twenty years ago, and think “oh my goodness, I look amazing, I wish I’d known at the time.”

At the time of course, I was probably obsessed with some sort of minor flaw that I can’t even remember now, and certainly isn’t evident in the pictures.

Actually, I know exactly what sort of flaw it will have been, because it’s almost always my stomach. It has always felt to me like one of life’s great injustices that I don’t have a flat midriff, even when I’m at my very lightest. To my mind (in its darker, less rational moments) I drew the shortest possible straw when it comes to body type. I could cope with a lot more body fat, I tell myself, if it was arranged attractively around my hips and chest, like some of the cute plus-size women I have started to see getting dressed on Instagram (thanks for that, algorithm). I wouldn’t mind so much if I had plumper arms and legs – if only my silhouette went in and out in a bit more, and I could achieve that classic flat-stomach-when-in-cycling-position look.

In recent years, I have begun to accept that my body’s flaws (but let’s call them features) will always be with me, because they’re an innate part of how it works. We’re told that having fat around your middle is a sign of ill health, poor discipline and increased susceptibility to diabetes and heart disease – and sometimes it is, but not in all cases. Some people’s bodies are just built this way. I had a visible tummy when I worked full-time as a bike messenger, and when I won a 4,000km race across Europe. Recent tests have shown my heart and lungs and all the rest of it are in tip-top condition, and when I cast my mind back to the rare moments when I didn’t stick out around the middle, it was only ever because I was ill, depressed, or exhausted and depleted after a long season of cycling. For my body, a flat stomach is not a sign of health. Quite the opposite.

It’s taken me a very long time to get here. I’ve had my adult body for almost thirty years now, and for all of that time (sadly, some of the time before that too), it’s been the site of an emotional wrestling match, in which I try to defend myself from the evolving cacophony of diet culture. Back in the 90s it was SlimFast and the Special K diet. Today it’s Mounjaro and protein-maxxing. All the way through it has been countless voices – people I know, and people in the media – describing themselves as fat, describing each other as fat, dropping hints to me that I am also fat, and making sure all of us know that being fat is the worst possible thing that could happen to you, and also all your fault.

That whole time, I have cycled through phases of loving and hating my body. In my twenties, and especially before I got into cycling, the phases of hatred were much longer. And is it any wonder, when almost everything I’d ever heard or read about women’s bodies at that stage told me that mine was wrong?

But gradually, during my thirties, I began to gain the upper hand in the wrestling match. I still, even now, sometimes feel sad about my body and wish it was different, or catch sight of myself in the mirror and instinctively decide start thinking about diets (even though I will never go on one – I wrote a few months ago about how alarming I found the experience when I did).

But more and more of the time I think my body’s great. And when I look at photos like the one below, I’m viewing myself through the lens of what I can do. I feel happy when I see my legs and shoulders and stomach and all the rest of it, not because of how they look, but because looking at them reminds me of how well they perform, and how good that makes me feel.

Seeing this image for the first time, when Brompton posted it on Instagram, felt like a watershed moment.

My first reaction was “wow!”

My second reaction was to feel grateful that I have such a striking souvenir of a weekend we all enjoyed so much.

My third reaction was to hope that Brompton – and photographer Luke – were as happy with the image as I was.

It was really only as an afterthought that I did the customary sweep for bodily flaws, and noticed that, yeah my stomach is really sticking out in that photo. What was curious was that, for once in my life, it didn’t seem to matter. I still think it’s a wonderful photo and, unlike many other wonderful photos people have taken of me over the years, I’m not going to hold back on sharing it.

And this, I think, is what they call progress.

A big thank you to Luke Broster, for the image that inspired this essay, and for many other wonderful pictures he has taken. If you’d like to see more (or book him for a job), his website is here.