For years, I treated the absence of visible abs as a personal failure. A shirt came off at the beach, someone mentioned “getting lean,” or an algorithm served up another shirtless transformation, and I felt obliged to explain myself. I had to be busy, injured, stressed, travelling, or “getting back into it.” Apparently, simply having a normal body was not considered a complete explanation.
I am finished with that performance. I still care about fitness, strength, energy, and looking good in clothes. I enjoy training and I understand why people chase a lower body-fat percentage. What I reject is the idea that a six-pack is the entry fee for self-respect, good health, masculinity, or a summer at Bondi.
Visible abdominal muscles are largely a matter of body-fat levels, genetics, muscle development, lighting, posture, and how recently someone ate. They are not a reliable certificate of discipline. A person can have a defined midsection and still sleep badly, eat recklessly, behave terribly, or build their entire identity around being admired by strangers.
The fitness industry has become very skilled at turning an appearance into a character judgment. “Lean” gets translated into focused, while softness gets labelled lazy. That is a convenient story for selling meal plans, supplements, coaching packages, expensive gym memberships, and endless content about “shredding.” The body becomes a public project that is never allowed to be finished.
In Australia, the pressure can feel especially loud during warmer months. Beach culture, footy culture, outdoor drinking, and the annual rush to look good before summer all feed the same message. A trip to the Gold Coast or a Saturday around Sydney’s eastern beaches can make it seem as if every man is meant to have a defined torso and a relaxed attitude about displaying it. Most people are simply better at hiding their insecurities.
My current fitness goals are far less glamorous than a transformation photograph. I want to walk up a steep street without feeling wrecked, carry groceries without straining, maintain decent mobility, and have enough energy left at the end of a workday to cook dinner. I want a body that supports my life rather than a lifestyle organised around protecting a particular visual result.
That can mean lifting weights, running, stretching, swimming, or taking a long walk without treating every session as punishment for eating. I spent years assuming I hated running because I was bad at it and because every attempt felt like a test. Eventually, I found a more useful relationship with it, which I wrote about in my running story. The improvement came from patience and consistency, not from abusing myself into motivation.
There is also a practical cost to relentless leanness. Maintaining a very low body-fat percentage may require rigid meal timing, constant weighing, reduced spontaneity, and an unhealthy level of attention to minor changes in appearance. For a professional athlete or bodybuilder, that trade-off may make sense within a particular season. For someone managing work, family, rent, commuting, and ordinary life in Melbourne or Brisbane, it may be a poor bargain.
I refuse to describe every enjoyable meal as a “cheat.” That language turns food into a moral battlefield and makes a person feel guilty for eating something that was never meant to be a performance supplement. A meat pie after a cold game, hot chips by the coast, a proper pub meal, or a late-night kebab does not erase a week of sensible choices.
Australia has plenty of excellent food, and our culinary culture is not built around bland efficiency. We have Vietnamese bakeries, Greek cafés, Lebanese grocers, Italian restaurants, weekend farmers’ markets, and brilliant seafood. Melbourne’s restaurant scene, Adelaide’s wine culture, and the produce available in local markets all make eating well much more interesting than assembling the same chicken-and-rice container every day.
This does not mean nutrition is irrelevant. Protein, fibre, vegetables, hydration, and regular meals matter. So does understanding the Australian supermarket landscape, where “high protein” branding can turn a basic yoghurt or snack bar into a premium purchase. I would rather spend money on food I genuinely enjoy and can sustain than buy a cupboard full of powders because an influencer promised a sharper jawline.
A good diet should make life more capable and enjoyable. It should support training, concentration, recovery, and social connection. If the plan makes every birthday dinner feel like a negotiation with yourself, it is probably serving the mirror more than your health.
A six-pack is not the only way to look put together. Fit, fabric, grooming, posture, and proportion have a much bigger effect on personal style than people admit. A well-cut shirt over an ordinary stomach will usually look better than an expensive shirt stretched over a body that has been pushed into exhaustion.
Australian weather makes this especially useful. Linen, relaxed cotton, unstructured overshirts, camp-collar shirts, and properly fitted shorts can handle a hot Sydney afternoon or a humid Queensland day without forcing anyone into a compression top. In winter, layering offers even more options. A good jacket, clean shoes, and trousers that sit properly create presence without requiring a dramatic physical transformation.
There is a strange contradiction in men’s style media: it tells men to develop a personal brand, then sends everyone towards the same narrow body ideal. Personal presentation should communicate taste and confidence, not surrender to a template. If you are building an online presence, thoughtful social media strategy can help you communicate your interests and personality more effectively than posting increasingly similar gym mirror photographs.
That matters because confidence is often built through evidence. You keep promises to yourself, learn what suits you, become comfortable in your clothes, and stop waiting for a future body before participating in your own life. The goal is not to pretend appearance never matters. It is to stop allowing one feature to dominate the entire conversation.
Being done apologising does not mean I have abandoned movement or stopped caring about how I look. I still notice when my clothes fit better. I still enjoy the satisfaction of getting stronger and the mood lift after a run. I can pursue those things without making a six-pack the final judge of whether the effort counts.
The difference is that I am setting goals I can live with. I want training to fit around life, rather than life being squeezed around training. I want to eat with friends without mentally calculating the damage. I want to visit a beach, pool, or public change room without assuming everyone is conducting a forensic assessment of my stomach.
There is also a social responsibility in saying this out loud. Young men absorb the same images and assumptions that adults do, often without the perspective to challenge them. If every older man presents his body as a failed project, the next generation learns that normal ageing is embarrassing and that pleasure must be earned through restriction.
My body has carried me through illness, long commutes, bad decisions, good meals, stressful jobs, and periods when I was not especially kind to myself. It deserves care, training, decent food, and rest. It does not owe me an abdominal display in return.
The fitness industry can keep selling the fantasy that happiness begins after losing the last few kilos. I am choosing a broader definition of being fit: strong enough for daily life, mobile enough to stay curious, healthy enough to keep showing up, and comfortable enough to stop hiding until some imaginary deadline.
If you are tired of apologising for a body that does its job, start with one practical change this week. Wear the shirt you keep saving, take the walk without turning it into punishment, cook a meal you actually want to eat, or train for energy rather than approval. Share your own perspective with NexxtLevelUp, and make room for a healthier conversation about bodies, style, food, and the lives they are meant to support.