I absolutely hate my body. Anyone else?

You can add some strength training without negatively impacting your running. Be happy that you're slender now, because it won't always be so easy to keep the weight down.

Start lifting steel. Get in the gym and get after it.

One benefit of being skinny is that your face normally looks much nicer than if you were 15 pounds heavier.

I don't think it's that big of a deal though. I think it is much more important to wear clothes that look good on you. If you wear clothes that are oversized and ugly people aren't going to respect you.

A skinny person who is well dressed is going to be seen as more acceptable than a buff guy that can't dress himself.

Relate to that feeling big time. Can only share what I know. First order of business that helped me: I had to work through why random people's judgments and opinions mattered so much to me. I was a skinny runner in high school, and for a variety of other reasons people often assumed I was gay. Rather than confront my emotions around that, I ran the other way. Gained weight in college and lifted weights purely to look more like a "typical" guy. Was satisfied because people started seeing me the way I wanted to be seen, but I felt hollow going to the gym purely because I was worried about people making the wrong conclusion about me.

Post-college: It all crumbled. Gave up on the aesthetic pursuits. Started focusing on what I WANTED out of life, rather than what I was hoping to avoid, or what was expected of me. Stopped doing strength training except as it relates to the sports I want to do - running and hiking. Embraced being skinny and looking like a runner. Definitely went through some weird body image shifts. Felt alien in my own skin for a while. Now I don't have any notion of being skinnier than average, because average is defined by desk jockeys who go to the gym 3-4 times a week to add a little definition beneath their flab, and are afraid of looking stylish for fear they will violate the norm. Striving to look like the societally-normal template for any demographic is generally a waste of time - if it benefits you, it's because you're fitting in for its own sake, and you'll only be validated by fellow status quo-followers. I realized I didn't want that in the long term, because I had it for a while and it felt so pointless.

Once I realized that I didn't want to spend time and energy to fit in most of the time, I figured it was more important to look and act t he way I really am. And there will always be some macho man available to insinuate that I'm gay. I laugh in their faces now. I don't accept their viewpoint as "right" anymore. I don't even worry about what it means if he concludes I am gay - oh no, a stranger mistook a piece of my identity! I just laugh in his (likely closeted) face. When you're a prisoner of society's expectations, it's infuriating to see people walking around doing whatever they want.

If body image is a product of how the opposite sex feels about you, I can tell you that I've had plenty of women who were into my lean body. In my experience, women like lean more than the buffed up weight lifting body. These are other image benefits too, especially as you get older.

Hope that help.

That was a really thoughtful response, thank you. I appreciate your example of changing mindset over changing body, because (to the “lift” people) I’ve tried lifting plenty of times for good periods of time, and my body just doesn’t respond to t when running 70-100+ miles each week.

It’s good to hear that some other people even feel this way. I’ve often been surprised by how little it’s bothered my teammates in the past, but I guess I am more insecure than them usually.

I used to be fat, i lost a lot of weight over the years and now my friends and family see me as anorexic. Body image wasn't an issue then and it's not an issue now even with the extra skin i have. I lost weight for health reasons and kept it off for the love of running.

Being more muscular or toned isn't what it's cut out to be, because the buff guys are scared to death of losing their muscle.

On a side note for the guy that was worried that people labeled him as gay, its more likely than not, that the buff guys are gay and they were intimidated by your looks. Skinny gay guys tend to be the flamboyant ish type or the type you can tell.

Anyway back to the OP, i way more prefer skinny guys over muscular guys and this is coming from a bisexual. Confidence is sexy too, so build it!!

screen name checks out

This must be a thing. I constantly got accused of being anorexic growing up. You're skinny - anorexic. Want to eat healthy - anorexic Went for a run of more than a few miles - anorexic or sometimes bullimic

Now all those people are scared to death of coronavirus whereas I've maintained my lifestyle as best I can with all the closures and what not, while following social distancing protocol, because I know the virus will likely only be a 2 week inconvenience for me. It must suck to live in fear of going to the grocery store or start worrying when the beach is crowded. I worry for others though, not myself.

hateitbutloveit wrote:

I love running, and being fast and feeling good throwing down high mileage weeks. I’m a natural slow-twitcher and benefit from long miles and tempos.

Despite my intense love for running, I absolutely hate what it does to my body. As a male, I hate feeling so thin, so not masculine, everything about it, and I’m not even that skinny. I don’t think I have a horrible body image or anything, I think I’m pretty good looking. But at the same time I hate being skinny in a culture that hates skinny men.

Most male runners I know are so fine with being skinny in favor of speed. Can anyone share with me your mindset? I feel like I need to just accept and like my skinny body how it is.

I don't hate your body. You are perfect the way you are

Form follows function.

If your body has naturally developed with running, activity that our species have evolved to do best of all animals on this planet, isn't it beautiful to have such a highly specialized body? It's also beautiful to have a highly specialized strength athlete's body. Having a body that is highly trained to perform some (athletic) function is beautiful, even if you think it's useless (it's not!)

Yes, for the society of obese couch potatoes, you are a freak. Deal with it, for this purpose you have a beautiful highly developed brain. Or don't you?

Ryan Hall hit the weights and he is pretty buff now.

Lots of good advice here. To help wrap your head around body image, remember that the societal ideal is a supermodel. Girls want to look like female supermodels. You should want to look like a male supermodel. I suggest wearing your hair in interesting ways and giving people Blue Steel.

WFH mileage 2 wrote:

Lots of good advice here. To help wrap your head around body image, remember that the societal ideal is a supermodel. Girls want to look like female supermodels. You should want to look like a male supermodel. I suggest wearing your hair in interesting ways and giving people Blue Steel.

Does a Zoolander reference make me old?

Felt the same way but different scenario

I was always built slightly bigger than the other distance guys think Chris solinsky

Compared to my competitors on the start line I looked a bit bigger but against anyone normal I looked skinny

I had a high school sprint coach tell me I would never run a good mile and be a distance runner

It took me a while but eventually I saw myself as the best version of me I could be, but always improving too. I think some of the issues probably stem from me being a little fat kid when I was younger but I’m happy the way I am, you just gotta learn what makes you happy to be yourself. I’m not being very helpful because I didn’t do much other than accept it, but I hope you can too

just date girls that like skinny guys. lean into the aesthetic, learn to skateboard and smoke weed. you'll have girls all over your d1ck before you even realize it

easy solution wrote:

just date girls that like skinny guys. lean into the aesthetic, learn to skateboard and smoke weed. you'll have girls all over your d1ck before you even realize it

Yes!

This may very well be the most convincing troll post I have seen on this site in a while, or OP is an idiot. Only slow people have time to worry about how their body looks. It’s also not mutually exclusive to run and look good/feel masculine. Just shows you are extremely beta and/or slow. Sad.

I went through a "i hate feeling skinny phase" at the end of my early 20's injury-laden running career. I started powerlifting at 24, and gained 90 lbs in about 18 months. I'm 6'3", and was around 150 when I was running. So, I got up to ~240 at my heaviest, and I hated it. I stopped doing any extracurricular exercise when I had a physical job, and the weight fell off of me. I did BJJ for a few years, the lifted recreationally for another 18 months before I started running again early last year.

Now I'm almost 33 and about 160 again, and trying to get leaner. As I get older the less I care about having big muscles, but I prefer the lean, tan, grizzled-old-man look.

I'm not entirely sure what my point is, but you may find that you care less about a larger frame as you get older.