Growing up with the interesting combination of a great metabolism and a physical disability, I had never truly worked out (and certainly not lifted weights) before I moved to LA in 2012, at 26 years old.
Until late in college, I could eat whatever the hell I wanted, every single meal and at all times between, and not gain weight.
During sophomore year, I’d drink 2-3 (maybe more??) sodas per day. I cut back on that I believe for health-conscious reasons, but during my fourth year, my roommates pointed out to me that I was an absolute sugar whore. Cookies, candy, cake, pie, you name it. I’d routinely destroy an entire box of cookies in an evening or two.
And I’d eat fast food almost daily.
I stayed skinny as hell.
And with my disability, I just never even considered trying to build muscles. Even though the right side of my body has almost always had normal strength and functionality, I think the idea of having control over how strong I was or how my body looked was so out of my reality, it never even crossed my mind. That was only for the pro wrestlers and athletes I idolized. And some frat guys I knew. But I couldn’t build muscles.
I walked into the University of Oregon’s student rec center maybe twice in my 5 years going to school there, but it wasn’t for a workout. And those were my first times even setting foot in a gym.
But when I started taking my personal development really seriously and took my first intensive bootcamp in 2011, my beliefs about myself and what was possible for me started to change a lot. At some point I realized there was absolutely no reason I couldn’t build some muscle.
So I decided that the following year when I was going to move to LA, that’d be the perfect motivator to get a personal trainer and see what I could do with my body.
Yes, absolutely the whole LA image thing was the biggest “Yes, I do in fact want to do this,” motivator. It is what it is.
Even then, it took me two years of living in LA and having a chiseled, model-dating roommate who was a part-time trainer to actually get started.
From the personal development coaching I’d had, all the reading/listening/watching I’d done, and a fair number of very in-shape or totally buff peers in the various programs I’d been through, I knew that getting fit wouldn’t be the total answer to having the dating life and relationships I wanted.
But all that fitness marketing and Hollywood imagery – of women fawning over buff guys – compounded over a young lifetime is a powerful force. Besides, it’s only logical that looking better and stronger will make you more attractive to women, right? And my confidence, which is the most important thing, would surely be aided in a big way by working out hard and putting on muscle.
Let’s look at what happened over the last four years, and going really hard (4-6, sometimes even 7 days per week) over the last 18-24 months.
This was me at 27 in 2013
(The photo bomb was a nice touch!)
…And here’s a terrible theme-party picture from 2014, not long after I started working out so you can at least see my right (stronger) arm.
And these are within the last month, June/July, 2018
Stupidly, I haven’t really taken progress pics, and none of these angles, body positions, or lighting are ideal or match (and yes, the recent ones probably have been lightly edited), but you can see the changes happening, as long as they’ve taken. …Unfortunately, my abs do not look as good as the photo on the left all the time (at least yet), because I still love my sugar and carbs!
So that’s what’s happened on the outside. But what about how women have responded to me?
We used this in a post about one of our alumni who’d been obsessed with the gym, and it’s both hilarious…and painfully fucking true:
Meme: “Gym, expectations vs reality” by johnny123bravo on reddit.
I get compliments from other dudes pretty frequently. The number of compliments on my physique I’ve gotten from women is less than 10. In FOUR YEARS.
Most of the ones from women have been friends. Just friends.
There’s only one woman I can think of who I’m at all flirtatious with who has noticed the changes and let me know, and she’s a total gym rat.
Well…there is one woman I slept with who commented on my upper body.
I met her with my shirt off and I’d been feeling good about my gains, so as we were getting close, I figured maybe, just maybe the body I’d built was some small piece of her initial attraction.
Then, as we’re getting dressed, she says “Damn. You’re actually pretty ripped!”
She hadn’t even noticed until after we’d had sex.
And she was in very good shape herself.
If that doesn’t tell you how little having a body matters to most women, I don’t know what will.
So what about the confidence from working out and bodybuilding?
Well, it hasn’t magically given me a huge boost of swagger and confidence with women or generally in social situations I’m intimidated by.
If I’m being completely honest, there have been a couple times very recently at Hollywood pool parties where I pulled my shirt off excited to show off all my hard work, and realized “Fuck. I still have a bunch of fear and anxiety,” around all these show-stopping LA model-types.
I still have to face my insecurities emotionally.
The body really isn’t the answer there. Hell, I’m not even sure how big a difference it’d make if I was given a new left arm and leg. The left side really only fucks with my confidence now in moments where I’m in a lot of physical pain, or an awkward situation now and then where a fully functioning left hand would help. Other than that, it’s not about my physique or my left side.
It’s about how I feel about my self – my deep down confidence. And bodybuilding hasn’t made a huge difference there…at least not on its own.
What’s made a huge difference there (I’ve come a LONG way, and I also have incredibly high aspirations of being able to be confident and free, aka truly being myself, with anyone in even the highest pressure situations) is getting confidence coaching, doing internal work on myself, practicing socializing, practicing dating, and being outside my comfort zone with people.
Don’t get me wrong. I feel great after a good, hard workout.
I feel great challenging my body, mind, and emotions in the gym.
I feel great seeing my body change and grow. That’s empowering for anyone, and especially for me. Every time I look in the mirror with my shirt off now, I feel great.
I’m working pretty hard on my left side now too, which I didn’t have the motivation to even really think about before. Skydiving solo is the big goal there.
But that just doesn’t translate that much after the post-workout high subsides or after I leave the mirror to a huge confidence-boost with women or socially.
Where it does start to make more of an impact, though, is when I focus on combining working out and how I feel about my physique with my internal confidence.
Sometimes I’ll do a couple of sets of bicep curls or shoulder presses right before I leave my place to go socialize or go on dates. But I’ll focus on the feelings of masculinity, power…you know, that testosterone! – it creates in my body, and expanding those feelings of being masculine…and just feeling good, vs focusing on it as a physical workout. It’s a meditative lifting session.
In between sets – and I try to do this at the gym, too – I focus further on those good, hard-working feelings to expand how powerful, masculine, sexy, and most importantly how self-loving I feel. (January 2019 update – I wrote a post all about this: My Mental and Emotional “Pregame” Warm-up: Meditative Weightlifting)
What I’m specifically doing is using the “Allowing” portion of the meditative work Brian, our founder, teaches, and I’ll link to that at the bottom of this post.
Even then, it’s still a matter of catching myself losing those good-feeling states throughout the day, interactions, dates, etc and getting back to them through (often very quick, instantaneous even, sometimes) meditative emotional and feeling/body awareness work. I’ll write more about that in another post.
Bodybuilding is a lot of fun, it’s empowering, it’s made me more health-conscious than ever, it’s good for your physical and emotional health and longevity, and it can impact your confidence when combined with internal work on yourself.
And some do claim huge confidence boosts from bodybuilding alone. But based on my experience, the experience of my peers in the past, and the experience of multiple clients of ours, I wouldn’t count on it.
Count on working on how you feel about yourself deep down and working directly on your social skills and stepping into tension – being outside your comfort zone – for that.
Like many celebrities and wealthy people talk about discovering when they achieve great career or financial success, changing the outside – even your body – doesn’t necessarily change the inside.
You’ve got to work directly on the inside (along with putting yourself in situations that challenge the inside) to reliably change that.
Follow-up posts:
An Update: What Bodybuilding with A Disability Has – And Hasn’t – Done For Me
My Mental and Emotional “Pregame” Warm-up: Meditative Weightlifting
Questions, comments, or stalking? Here’s where you can find me:
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Related:
Start Believing in Yourself with These Powerful but Simple Steps (The meditative work mentioned in the post.)
Does Bodybuilding Make You Confident & Attractive? (alumni interview)
How To Be More Attractive to Women by Developing Your Indifference to Outcome
How to Give Women Compliments
