GIVE YOUR MIND AND BODY FOOD FOR THOUGHT
The more perceptive among you may have noticed that this month’s cover model represents a slight departure from the norm. Certainly, as specimens go, the subject is well built, of handsome proportions and easy on the eye – though this is where the similarities to, say, Jason Momoa or Marcus Rashford end. Look closely enough and you will realise that September’s pin-up is, in fact, a sandwich. “What on earth were you thinking?” I hear you ask. (Actually, that might be my boss.) The answer is, well, many things. But let’s take them one at a time. First, why not? Men’s Health has been published in the UK for some 26 years. Over that time, we have always featured male figures on our cover: sometimes T-shirted, though mainly topless; more recently in colour, previously in black and white; occasionally alongside a woman, often with a beachside backdrop. The point is that it’s all been pretty formulaic. When the first issue came out in 1995, it was pre-Google, presmartphones, pre-Instagram, pre-Fight Club, pre-CrossFit, pre-Soul Cycle, pre-influencers, pre-avocadoes-with-everything. The world of health and fitness has since evolved beyond measure. Meanwhile, magazine covers have arguably become more creatively conservative and demonstrably less lucrative. And yet we somehow expect them to resonate the same as they used to? Second, why not give the reader’s imagination some credit? This is a magazine for and about men – the clue is in the title. In fact, the clue has always been front and centre for all the reasons cited above. Is it conceivable that someone passing by a newsstand might feel duped or bamboozled by the contents of this month’s Men’s Health on account of the unprecedented absence of some chiselled abs and warm skin tones? That’s a genuine question, by the way, though I really hope the answer is no. But my third reason is perhaps more considered, not to mention one that I feel touches on a crucial aspect of men’s relationships with their health, and yet is too rarely discussed. For all we glory at feats of strength, impressive displays of speed, mobility and dexterity, and the undeniable swank of a well-sculpted physique, the physical application that goes into all of this is the easier bit. Much more challenging is managing the swing of the fridge door. It’s an irritating truism that abs are made in the kitchen, but one worth heeding nonetheless. Nutrition is more instrumental than exercise when it comes to body composition; after all, you can’t out-train a bad diet, to cite another truism. But fuelling one’s body is an intricate and occasionally perplexing science, complicated by the way it changes depending on, among other things, your desired goal, how much time you have, your age, the quality of your ingredients, the quality of calories and your basal metabolism. It gets even more confusing when you have two goals – strength and weight loss, say – that may require two different approaches. To add insult to injury, the kind of food that fuels hard work is invariably not the kind with which we like to reward it. As relationships go, it can be fairly toxic. One of my oldest friends has lost almost 20kg in weight over the past year. For a decade or so, he has been passionate about exercising daily and strenuously – mainly running, then cycling, with some resistance work thrown in. Yet still he hovered between 105kg and 108kg. Men’s Health, with its cover promising hard abs and a winning smile, ostensibly offered him little. Then, at the beginning of the first lockdown, he started adopting the keto diet – a diet about which, it is true, we have sometimes been ambivalent. Nevertheless, it worked emphatically, and he has become a new man. With social restrictions now lifting, we keep promising each other that we’ll meet up and blow off some steam. But many of the activities that bond us – football and beers, drinks at a gig, the late-night curry – are, at the time of writing, off-limits. Anxiety about food and how to establish balance is often spoken about as a women’s problem, but it affects men, too. Unlike most traditional cover models, men are wont to try to adopt a “debit and credit” approach to their weight in general, yet invariably get their sums wrong. This Men’s Health cover, then, is a broad attempt to broach these issues. It’s about learning to be healthyish, first and foremost, because who wants to live like a (well-toned) monk the whole time? It’s about dispelling nutritional myths, rejecting dogma and getting to the crux of our relationship with food – because there’s no such thing as good and bad, right and wrong. And it’s about empowerment: learning how to eat what you want, to get what you want, and be happy in the process. So, be my guest – tuck in.