Is Your Body the Other Side of the Coin of the Mind?

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Is the body our essential self? Or is it just an outer shell? And if so, is it more like a clam shell or a hermit crab shell. What i know about my body for sure is its size. When it is bigger or smaller, squiter or firmer. I know this every first hand, from point blank range. In our number obsessed culture, people tend to use weight as diagnostic shorthand for the whole vexed mind body relationship. It serves as a kind of stock price, a number that indicates publicly the overall health of our private situations. For much of his childhood, i was the fat kid. Husky was a word i heard a lot as a ch

We cannot escape our bodies. So how do we reconcile them with who we really are?

Sam Anderson, a staff writer, considers this particular conundrum of the human condition by recounting his lifelong struggle to maintain a healthy weight: his teenage triumph over the “legendary snacker” he was in middle school, the slow creep of the pounds in early adulthood, and the pandemic’s expansive effect on his waistline.

Anderson also explores what it takes to monitor food consumption, the linguistic legacy of 1980s diet culture, the curse of intergenerational weight problems, the natural limitations of weight-loss efforts and the importance of self-acceptance.

This story was written and narrated by Sam Anderson. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.