L ooking back, it was probably when I started checking how many grams of carbohydrates were in red onions and broccoli that my eating disorder began. I say “eating disorder” now, but, of course, as a man, I didn’t think of it as that at the time. It was just “cutting weight”.
I was 22 and had signed up for my first white-collar boxing match. Even though the weight classes were loose and barely enforced, I was determined to get into the best shape of my life – which I believed meant getting down from my natural weight of 90kg to 80kg. That’s like going from 36in to 32in jeans in the space of a month.
My mum – a woman who, when I was a child, used to butter my bread like a mafia boss burying a body in concrete – was aghast. But her protestations over my unnaturally low weight only strengthened my resolve to be as shredded as humanly possible for three two-minute rounds of novice boxing, held in a Holiday Inn off a ring road outside Norwich. Which I lost.
She was, of course, entirely right, as mums invariably end up being. A man brow-furrowing over the nutritional value of a bag of onions under the unholy hum of Tesco Express fluorescent lighting might, to some, hint at a sense of control. He is only concerned about what exactly he is putting into his body, after all.
But, speaking as someone who used to be that furrow-browed man in the Tesco Express, there is a dangerous obstinacy and pride in men. When mixed with the feeling that they lack command in other ar.
