The Body Keeps Score, Part 2: The Weight Question

I am going to write about weight, and I am going to try to do it without the usual framing — neither the punishing self-improvement version nor the reflexive body-positivity reassurance — because both of those framings miss what I actually want to say.

The number on the scale is not what this is about. The number on the scale is a proxy for something else, and the something else is the thing worth talking about.

The eight kilograms

I am not overweight by any clinical measure. My BMI is in the normal range. My GP, who is a sensible and unvarnished person, has not raised the subject.

I am, however, carrying approximately eight kilograms that were not there at 36. They arrived gradually, during the period between our fertility treatment and Ellie's first birthday. The period that contained, in no particular order: the cessation of the running that had previously been my main calorie expenditure, the arrival of a level of stress and sleep disruption that is not conducive to careful eating, the discovery that toast at 11pm is one of the few reliable pleasures available in a household with a newborn, and the natural metabolic deceleration of the early forties.

None of these are dramatic causes. The weight did not arrive overnight. It accumulated in small increments, each individually unremarkable, until I looked at a photograph from a work event and thought: ah. There we are.

What the research says about weight and men in their forties

I spent some time reading the actual evidence, because I am constitutionally unable to approach a problem without first understanding the mechanism.

Several things happen to body composition in the early-to-mid forties that are not simply about eating more. Testosterone decline — which I am going to cover in the next piece in this series — affects the ratio of muscle to fat that the body defaults to maintaining. Lower muscle mass means a lower resting metabolic rate, which means the same caloric intake produces a different result than it did at 36. Cortisol elevation, which is the gift that sustained sleep deprivation gives you, specifically promotes fat storage around the abdomen.

What this means is that the conditions of early parenthood in your forties — poor sleep, elevated stress, reduced exercise, irregular eating — are almost perfectly calibrated to produce exactly the outcome I was experiencing. It is not a failure of willpower. It is a biological system responding predictably to its inputs.

This was both reassuring and frustrating. Reassuring because it was not mysterious. Frustrating because the inputs are largely not optional when you have two small children.

What I decided to do about it

I want to be clear that I did not decide to lose weight. I decided to change some inputs that had measurable effects on my energy levels and general functioning, and losing some weight was a secondary outcome.

This distinction matters to me because the weight-loss framing produces a goal with a finish line, and the finish line is not the point. The point is the daily operating state of the body that needs to carry two children up the stairs and maintain a freelance career and still be present at 7pm for the bedtime routine.

The changes, specifically:

Protein prioritisation. Not a diet — just making sure that the first thing I eat has meaningful protein in it. The toast-at-11pm habit was easy to sustain because the rest of the day's eating was carbohydrate-heavy and produced the blood sugar cycling that creates the desire for toast at 11pm. Eggs or Greek yoghurt in the morning, protein at lunch, the toast at 11pm mostly disappeared without being banned.

The 10pm kitchen close. I made a rule that after 10pm the kitchen is closed. Not for moral reasons — I genuinely do not care about eating after 10pm as an ethical matter — but because the eating that happened after 10pm was universally in response to tiredness rather than hunger, and tiredness is not a problem that toast resolves.

The walking, which I have now mentioned in approximately every piece on this blog because it remains the most consistent thing I have done for my physical condition. Walking after lunch when I can. The compounding effect on both weight and energy is real.

What I have not done

I have not counted calories. I have not tracked macros. I have not read any book with a number in the title describing the number of weeks it will take to transform my body. I am 44 with two children and a business and I have made a deliberate decision about where my cognitive load goes.

I have also not lost all eight kilograms. I have lost about four. The other four are, at this point, approximately stable, and I have made a kind of peace with them that is not resignation but is also not ongoing war.

The thing I actually want to say

The body you have at 44 with two small children is not the body you had at 36. This is not a problem to be solved. It is a condition to be managed with some intelligence and some proportion, and the intelligence and proportion part means not spending the limited energy and attention of a depleted parent on a battle with a scale.

Four kilograms down. Four more at a stable truce. The back is better. The energy is better. The toast at 11pm is an occasional choice rather than a nightly compulsion.

That is a reasonable result. I am accepting it as one.