I set out to get ripped – but my fitness journey led to an eating disorder

“How did it get to this?” I was sitting on a rooftop restaurant on the Amalfi coast — surrounded by friends, my ambitions of having a career in journalism achieved, my physique goals largely reached — looking at a giant pizza as if it were some behemoth I had to fend off. How many hours of incline walking would I need to burn it off? Would it derail the years I’d spent toiling to reach my current leanness? Would I lose control again, slide down a slippery slope back to my formerly “skinnyfat” existence? It’s absurd, tragic almost, that an idyllic scene — in the birthplace of pizza, no less — would be the source of tortuous mental arithmetic. It finally dawned on me that my fitness journey had imprisoned me into a state of body dysmorphia. I needed an escape. A few years earlier, things looked starkly different. I had moved from finishing my Master’s at Cambridge to Italy to be a freelance writer, found an apartment in central Rome, and finally embraced my life as a gay man. My dating experiences before were less Call Me By Your Name than they were He’s Just Not That Into You; a string of romantic failures and lacklustre “situationships”. I felt like the guys wanted someone who fit their bodily ideal more closely, which they either expressed directly, or was clear from their dating profiles. I turned to fitness culture to turn a ripped heart into ripped abs. Shorts Of course, my self-esteem issues ran deeper and I should have known the risks – I had a diagnosed history of OCD, body dysmorphia, and binge-restrict eating in my teenage boarding school days. But the things that made me insecure in my English boarding school environment – my stronger Italian facial features, for instance — had resolved by my early twenties. So I committed to a seemingly positive life course-correction, without realising that months of adrenaline, gym pumps, and physique changes would degenerate into an all-consuming spiral of obsession and misery. Conversations about body image and eating disorders are back in the limelight. “SkinnyTok” content, weight-loss GLP-1 drugs, and Hollywood celebrities visibly wasting away before our very eyes has forced us to reckon with the fact the mid-2010s “body positivity” explosion has floundered. The girls are shrinking — but what is happening to the boys? Estimates from Beat suggest one in four of those battling an eating disorder are men, while clinical research shows men face body dysmorphia at almost the same rate as women. For gay and queer boys, it’s often worse. One of the prevailing issues is muscle dysmorphia and muscle-oriented eating disorders, also known as “bigorexia”. The dangerous new aesthetic being sold to men is associated with lean muscularity: visible abs, low body fat, the Michelangelo’s David-to-Instagram “fitness model” pipeline. You’ve got to be bigger, but also leaner – not the simplest of ideals to achieve. The role of social media and especially “looksmaxxing” – the manosphere-adjacent culture of optimising appearance that has seeped into the mainstream – has further exacerbated the problem. Muscle dysmorphia can take the forms of restrictive eating, obsessive training, or exaggerated macro goals, like overdoing protein intake. In a significant minority, it might even mean resorting to potentially dangerous, poorly tested substances like injecting peptides, or the outright illegal, such as steroids. What was once largely the realm of strictly competitive bodybuilding — concepts like “bulking” and “cutting”, above all — have become so entrenched in current fitness culture that one Canadian study from 2022 reported 48.9 per cent of 16- to 30-year-olds engage in these practices. Changing my narrow-framed, soft-edged 5ft 6” body was a year-long recomposition effort. I lost around 6kg of body fat and gained a similar amount of muscle, trained six hours a week, and worked with a professional sports nutritionist who took monthly measurements. Hundreds of pounds were cashed out on visits, supplements, and protein powders. Love handles were replaced with defined obliques and my abs were now visible in photos. It changed the way men approached me both on and offline. Fitness was no longer a hobby: it was a new identity I had to keep building – and preserve at all costs. Every time I didn’t commit to my workouts as planned, deviated from my diet, didn’t hit a macro goal, the nagging worry of “losing control” crept in. The response? Clamp down harder. Work out more. Eat “cleaner”. The closer I got to my physique goals, ironically, the more flaws I noticed. I scanned for physique changes relentlessly, I counted calories; social meals became a source of stress rather than relaxation. Eventually, my nervous system was dysregulated, libido MIA, hunger cravings through the roof, and sleep and digestion trashed from the excessive caffeine I took to suppress my appetite and fuel my workouts. I spent months self-medicating unprescribed benzos to fix my insomnia. And by the time some of my former flings slid back into my DMs, I was too burnt out to even care. I’m not alone in this experience. George Mycock, a PhD researcher in this field at Worcester University, went to extreme lengths to try to optimise the perfect appearance. “I used to check myself in the mirror for hours a day,” he told me. “I would exercise multiple times a day, often to the point of throwing up or passing out. I’d binge eat to try and build muscle, and severely restrict myself to try and remove body fat.” ‘This summer, my anxiety around eating relapsed abruptly, exacerbated by seeing half-naked bodies on the beach’ Mycock recovered, and decided to channel the pain he’d experienced to research the topic of muscle dysmorphia and eating issues in men. He notes that one of the prevailing feelings experienced by boys dealing with body image and eating disorder is when it all suddenly “flips from something you want into something you feel you need to do”. The most challenging part of recognising it is the fact that many such behaviours can be masked behind “discipline” and “health”, even praised by others. Clinically, the turning point is even harder to establish. “We don’t know the line of when [it] turns into muscle dysmorphia,” says Kyle T. Ganson, an associate professor in social work at the University of Toronto. “To make things worse, many men facing it are not seeking treatment, and clinicians don’t often have the language to address it.” Research reveals a glaring lacuna. Ganson published a US and Canada-based study this year that found 44.4 per cent of licensed therapists had no knowledge of muscle dysmorphia. Only 14 per cent had received formal training on eating disorders in men. As social and even mainstream media broadcasts an ever-more perfect picture of the male physique — think of Marvel Superhero physiques today versus the less polished ones of a few decades ago — more and more boys feel dissatisfied with their bodies. But help is possible. “Through therapy, I started to work on recognising things about myself that I could like, respect, and love, that were separate from my body,” Mycock continues. “Over time, this helped unravel my dependency on ‘needing’ to look a certain way for self worth, as I had other parts of me.” Things, however, aren’t always neatly resolved. My story, alas, does not yet have a happy ending. This summer, my anxiety around eating relapsed abruptly, exacerbated by bereavement and the beach season of parading half-naked bodies. It’s rather ironic that I’d land a plushy job as a food writer in the food capital of the world, Rome, only to develop a cripplingly inflexible relationship with eating. A food writer afraid of food. At times, I worry I might never be able to enjoy a meal in peace. Writing about this is part of an attempt to kickstart some positive change. My advice to parents echoes what Ganson recommends: “practicing respectful curiosity”. Don’t panic if you see your boys get into the gym, but don’t ignore it either. Watch their relationship with food and their appearance, ask questions, but don’t invalidate their aspirations or respond with judgement — that will just push them further. Kerri Fleming, Beat’s head of services, says: “Muscle dysmorphia can be particularly difficult to recognise in boys and young men. This is because excessive exercise, restrictive eating and a preoccupation with building muscle can be mistaken for a every day fitness habits. Parents should approach conversations with compassion, focusing on how their child is feeling rather than their appearance. We suggest listening without judgement and trying to avoid comments about weight, shape or muscle size. Reassuring them that they’re not alone can help create a supportive environment. “Parents shouldn’t wait until their child is visibly unwell before seeking support. A GP is a good first point of contact for assessment and appropriate referrals. Beat’s Helpline can also provide support and guidance.” For men teetering on the edge of fitness obsession, ask yourself this: is this a defence mechanism, a form of self-medication? It may soothe things for a short while, but you can never lift your way out of your insecurities. Your dream body will never be your dream body if it becomes a living nightmare to maintain. If you are struggling with an eating disorder, please contact Beat’s helpline on 0808 801 0677, on webchat, via social media or through email. Helplines are open from 3pm– 8pm, Monday to Friday