We Are the Sausage

Self-love, when the Self is a Tubular Meat or Meat Substitute Product.

As a new trainer and nutrition coach, I am discovering a beautiful thing:

There is a metaphor for everyone and a way of communicating the same deep message, in a bunch of different languages.

I’m willing to bet that there are as many ways to reach the heart of someone’s fitness goals as there are people in the world. And the art is in finding it.

Case in point (retold with permission)

I posted this gif to my instagram story:

And a friend wrote to me and he said: “Me”

This is so endearing. I love this friend.

I said “The sausage is all of us.”

He said “You are in shape. I am a sausage-shaped person”

Now let’s get one thing straight like a hotdog, he’s not a sausage-shaped person and I wasn’t always in this good of shape and I am gonna be in better shape in the future.

And I have my sausage days.

We all have our sausage days. And the more I learn about fitness and being “fit,” and the more heavier I can lift, and the faster I can run, and the more I like my physicality, the more I see that even though somebody can be in really “good shape” we still have the sausage.

AKA the body dysmorphia.

And as far as I can tell, it seems to affect men more than women.

I feel like succumbing to the sausage is beaten out of us women as we are inundated with the fear of diet culture.

Men seem to talk about their body dysmorphia more than women do, or I’m exposed to more men talking about it, but either way:

It’s massively out of fashion for women to talk about parts of their bodies they want to improve. It seems more acceptable when men talk about their desires for improvement.

I do not however, think that prevents women from wanting to improve our bodies. That’s obvious from the millions of hormone replacement therapy and weight loss drugs you can buy online now, targeted to my age group and meant to finally do away with “that stubborn menopausal belly fat”

Anyway, my point is not about gender differences and body dysmorphia, my point is that we can really only compare ourselves to ourselves. I believe we have the right, and maybe even the duty, to find the upper limits of our ability.

Our desire to change ourselves for the better (as we see it) is ours alone.

So I told my friend “We must only compare ourselves to the sausage.”

And he wisely stated that “We are all different sausages.”

Which led me to the question of goal setting: “What kind of sausage do you want to be?”

He tells me he is currently one of those canned Vienna sausages. “Small, not very impressive,” he says. “Does the job, but no one goes after it. It’s just there in your international hotel mini fridge in case you’re so hungry you need one.”

“I call those ‘Forbidden sausage.” I say. “You know what’s in those things?”

I ask: “That’s the sausage you think you are now. What kind of sausage do you want to be?”

He wants to be a nicer version of that sausage. “I want to accept and love my condition of canned sausage.”

So I say:

“Those sausages would be pretty good if they didn’t have some objectively unhealthy stuff in them, like sodium nitrate”

I go on:

“If I felt like I was one of those sausages, I would inspect my own ingredients and see what’s going into me. Then I could make myself a nicer version of one of those sausages.”

My coaching tip for him:

Watch what goes into your sausage.

That means reading all the labels of everything that you put in you.

And an advanced maneuver, since I know my friend likes to eat at festivals:

“If you’re getting some yummy bread wraps off the food truck, see if you can spy the bag labels through the window and see what brand it is and do a google on your phone and see what’s in there.”

He says it’s great advice and I’m happy. I suggest he does it for a week and see what the awareness brings.

I’m so glad he’s let me share this story, and that he trusts me to understand what he wants and how to get there. He’s getting himself into the gym and he’s becoming aware of why he feels like the sausage he feels like. I can’t wait to see the sausage he can be! Meanwhile I love him as the sausage he is.

This is getting weird. Let’s all be healthy sausages.

I’m inspired to look more closely at the sausage I am as well. I’m so grateful to this new job, and for this sausage.

The takeaway, in sausage-free language:

Read the ingredients labels. Read the nutrition facts. Don’t worry about changing anything, just practice the awareness. Know what it is you are eating. If it’s new to you, you are not alone! It’s extremely common that people don’t read them.

Obesity and sadness is also extremely common.

I see a correlation.

Once you do it, you will see this simple act of awareness will bring you closer to the change you want to see in your fitness and your life.