The best shape of my life

Speaking of body builders, I've caught myself flexing in the mirror a few times lately.

 I have muscles now. It's very strange.

Over the past four years I've overhauled my lifestyle and now I do things like exercise and eat vegetables (actually, I always ate vegetables, but my vegetable-to-nonvegetable ratio has shifted in favour of vegetables).  This proved to be quite a useful thing to do, as I was around 98kg at the time of my cousin's wedding, but last year I got down to 75kg.  It took me over four years to do it, but I think I'm less likely to suddenly put it all back on again.

Since taking up fencing, I've decided I may as well throw my hat into the "sporty" ring at take a stab at being athletic.

As a result, I've developed a bit of muscle definition.  It's quite pleasing, I must say.  It's a lovely little buzz to be able to look in the mirror and see improvements (much better than always seeing something that needs improving).  I'm now 73kg and a respectable amount of that is muscle mass.  My "goal" is 70kg, and I suspect I might make it.

I had a weird thought the other day - I look more like myself now than I have for decades.

I've always hated photos of myself, because they never looked like me.  The version of me that I had in my head did not match the version of me I saw in the photo.

It seems like a strange thing to say, but I feel like I stopped looking like myself after the age of 9 or 10.  If you compared a photo of me at the age of six to a photo at the age of 10, you would be forgiven for thinking the older kid was the uglier, fatter, kind-of-stupid-looking cousin of the younger one.

I can see pictures of myself from when I was a little kid and think "that was me", but for the past twenty years I've looked at pictures of myself and thought "No, that can't be right - I don't feel anywhere near as stupid as that person looks..."

But for the past year or so I've actually seen myself in photos.  I've looked at recent photos and seen the grown up version of the younger kid - the one that looked like me.

And, strangely, I actually feel a bit sharper, too.  A bit more clear-headed and capable of noticing things than I have been for years.  It's like I walked into a fog when I was ten, and I've only recently walked out the other side of it.

I went for a walk on my 33rd birthday and realised that a) I'm in the best shape of my life, and b) I'm probably going to get better before I get worse.

That's a pretty good place to be.