![]() Some depict programmes spanning half a year. “These are 12 weeks, 16 weeks,” she says, pointing at the grid of achievements. The walls of their site near Moorgate are decked with Before and After shots that show dramatic – sometimes scarcely believable – changes in short spaces of time. Sarah is a three-time Olympian and nine-time British speed-skating champion, who runs Roar Fitness with her partner, Rich Phillipps. I’m fairly sure that what she terms “pushing” I am likely to consider borderline inhuman. “No one does this in seven weeks,” she says, “so we’re really going to have to push you.” I feel a pit somewhere in my stomach open. (They would have had me do it longer, but since we were starting at Halloween, a suitably festive Halloween-to-Christmas arc was agreed, in the hopes that my reaction to my workouts would likewise turn from horror and darkness to joy and good tidings.) Now, finished with my folds, Sarah is quick to point out the difficulty of my task. But, if I’m honest, some of that curiosity was borne of having passed those images a thousand times, patting my belly, and wondering if I could achieve similar results.Īt R oar, I embarked on a fitness and diet plan aimed at getting me from dad bod to rad bod in just seven weeks. As a congenitally cynical person, I was incredulous as to how real or positive those images were. In agreeing to write this article, I kept telling people I was looking forward to doing the mildly silly Before and After shots, precisely because I find the “black-and-white-sad-man versus full-colour-beefcake” contrast so ridiculous. It is a taunt, unattainable and unsustainable – a 12-week course at Roar costs more than £3,000. The ideal male physique is now everywhere around us, from the pneumatic tightness of Love Island contestants, to the preened and perfect bods of Instagram fitness gurus selling us diet teas, gamified fitness trackers and wellness apps. Doctors don’t tend to recommend them, for fear of the mental and physical damage sparked when a desired physical form is unrealised. Short-term body projects are complicated, controversial things. It should be said that some of this focus on health doesn’t seem particularly healthy. Physical transformation has, in theory, never been more accessible to those of us who find themselves the unexpected proprietor of a nascent dad bod, and theres’s no shortage of social pressures for us to avail of them. It’s a curious quirk of our current age that, as we grow ever more lightbulb-shaped, a head-spinning profusion of diets, fitness regimens, self-health books and body-shaping plans has exploded. Photograph: Pål Hansen/The ObserverĪnd, I’d noticed, the tools to offset those risks seemed to be everywhere. Pinch an inch (or more): Sarah Lindsay gives Seamas a skin fold test at the start of his session. But with advancing age came lower metabolism, and a move away from retail and minimum wage jobs that kept me on my feet all day, to more settled and sedentary creative pursuits that see me now, aged 34, heartier than I once was. I spent my youth as that skinny, lanky child who never put on any weight. If I’m being honest, my body’s journey from lad bod to dad bod preceded fatherhood. That and realising, around the time my son was six months old, that his adorable little pot belly and my own seemed to bear a family resemblance. I first noticed I was gaining weight when I started having to reach a little further to wash my sides in the shower. Harry Hill says he knew he was going bald when it started taking longer and longer to wash his face. I am, of course, making these connections because I am staring in the mirror as all this is being done and noticing, perhaps for the first time, how much my body has changed in the past couple of years. It’s standard anatomical parlance, but it conjures images of oversized wildlife – hippos hoist into the air so the zoo can wash their meaty shanks. It is Day 0 of my physical transformation plan and, following a brief chat, my top is off and it’s straight to the skin folds. I am standing in her office at Roar Fitness, and my initial consultation is under way. Closer acquaintances would, I suppose, call them my love handles, but Sarah is good enough to keep things mildly formal, perhaps to offset the fact that she is measuring the fat on my body just a few minutes into our first meeting. “Chin 11.8, Mid aux 22, Supra 45.” I shudder from the touch of cold callipers on my skin as this last measurement is taken from my suprailiac area. She does this under her breath, the way a dentist uses that odd numerical language to gossip about your molars right in front of you. Sarah Lindsay recites numbers as she pinches my folds.
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