My navel never used to interest me much, but lately I’ve been paying it more attention. That’s what weight-loss does, at least in my case. I keep inspecting bits of me, because over the past two and a half years I’ve lost nearly 61kg, or 9st 8lb, which is 44% of my old body weight.
Today I weigh 75kg, or 11st 11lb – smack in the middle of a healthy BMI. I have a new body.
Not brand new though. On Vinted or eBay I’d consider passing myself off as “very good” – gently used, in excellent condition, with minor imperfections – then reluctantly admit that “good” is more accurate: regularly used, signs of wear, still works well enough. I am, after all, in my 50s, battling not to slip to “satisfactory”.
This weight loss has been pretty controlled, I should add, not the result of any serious disease or mental illness. It started with diet and exercise – lots of apples and yoghurt and couch-to-5K runs – until April last year, when I supercharged the process by getting a Mounjaro prescription and cycling to work. The graph showing my daily weigh-ins dropped like a cheese rolling down a Gloucestershire hill. Now the line is a ski jump slope: it’s flattened out, and since March I’ve hovered between 73kg and 77kg as I’ve reduced the Mounjaro dose.
On face value, this new body is amazing. Under the surface it’s pretty great too. The exercise means I’m fitter than I was even as a (mildly active) teenager. At home I don’t collapse on to the sofa or need to push myself up. On the Tube, I walk up the emergency staircases for fun. On Vinted I’m buying clothes that I like the look of, rather than what might fit me.
So why just “good” and not “very good” or “new without tags”? Because although my insides have shrunk, my skin has not. The bellybutton, something I once needed a mirror to see, is easier to inspect now that the rest of my tummy is gone. But it’s not flat. There are sags.
On a plane to South Korea I found another upside to downsizing: my hips don’t get bruised from being squashed against the armrests any more. Seoul is the spiritual capital of weight-loss drugs and cosmetic surgery. The country regularly tops international lists for the proportion of people getting nose jobs, eyelid lifts and liposuction. Oemo jisang juui – “looks are supreme” – is one of those social mores that is widely acknowledged as a problem by Koreans yet stubbornly resistant to change. Fitting in is crucial – you can’t walk far without encountering a photobooth shop to get an Insta-ready V-sign selfie in a mocked-up New York subway station. I was in the city on holiday. I could probably have signed up for some sort of skin-tightening procedure with one of Gangnam’s 500 plastic surgeons, but being a little bit flappy doesn’t bother me. I haven’t lost that frisson of slight surprise every time I see myself in a mirror.
James as he was before he lost more than 60kg
In fact, the most interesting part of my trip came during the lotus lantern festival, when monks lead a parade to celebrate Buddha’s birthday. The number of Buddhists is dwindling, and this year there were some replacements: Seokja, Mohui, Gabi and Nisa, four adolescent-sized robots dressed in monk robes, who don’t carry lanterns; instead their heads glow blue. As a stunt, it was slightly less impressive than the backflipping, kung fu-kicking, marathon-running robots that Chinese companies unveiled earlier this year. The robot monks plodded and shuffled along the road past us, then some disturbance in the chi provoked one into a bout of tottering. Everyone held their breath to see if it would tumble. It stopped in an exaggerated way, like someone doing a driving test, then started shuffling again.
People ask if I miss the old me, if my personality has changed or if people treat me like a different personPeople ask if I miss the old me, if my personality has changed or if people treat me like a different person
Back in the UK, at the Royal Society’s summer exhibition a few weeks later, I encountered the other cutting edge of robotics: fine motor skills. Ingmar Posner and his team at the Oxford Robotics Institute are trying to make robots that are useful as well as memeable. The professor of applied AI showed off “Frank”, whose two octopus arms have pincer claws that can grip blocks and stack them. Next to Frank was a disembodied robot hand, a kind of Lego glove with hydraulic tendrils coming out of each joint. It can grip a ball or a banana with human-like dexterity, because it has squishy, touch-sensitive pads that mimic the pads on our fingers and palms. It can touch and feel things.
The hand is part of a race between Posner’s team and the Chinese – if not the Korean robot monks – because the big technical challenge is to make a thing whose pads are robust. Future hands will not be disembodied, like Thing from the Addams Family, but attached to arms like Frank’s and on bodies that don’t totter. The point is to build a robot that can do what a human does – maybe put up some shelves, clear up the debris, then make a cup of tea and wash up afterwards. Since we live in a human-shaped world, the best design for these generalist robots would be humanoid.
As robots become more human-like, I am becoming more robotic. Running and cycling involve the kind of repetitive movements that a factory robot is built for but put unnatural strains on my body. If one of Frank’s octopus arms develops a fault, the Oxford team can replace it. But I can’t swap out a tendon for a shiny “brand new with tags” version if things go wrong.
And things have gone wrong: a knee aches; the buttocks twinge; there are strains from months of pedalling and running (great for toning some muscles while leaving others to atrophy). My calves are massive, from years of carrying 140kg, but my hamstrings are weak. My knee hurts because one of my thigh muscles is weedy. Fixing the aches involves a whole load of exotic new exercises, such as Nordic curls and Bulgarian split-squats, and even then there’s no guarantee I will be free of pain.
Repetitive exercise is not the only way human bodies are converging with robots. The weekly injections of Mounjaro and Wegovy (and its new tablet equivalent) are, like anti-ageing creams or hair dye or the weird K-beauty serums in Seoul, attempts at biological engineering.
But if I could just swap out a tendon or get a new skin suit, would I still be the same person? It’s Plutarch’s Ship of Theseus conundrum made flesh: if you replace every plank on a ship, is it still the same ship? What if you made a new ship out of the old planks? Since my body’s cells die and replace themselves all the time, I’m comfortable I would still be the same person. Having a pacemaker or a prosthetic limb doesn’t make us less ourselves.
But not all of my friends agree. People who’ve known me longer than two years sometimes ask if I miss the old me, if my personality has changed or if people treat me like a different person. To which the answers are 1) no (I’m still me), 2) no (I’m just as annoying) and 3) no (and it’s slightly disappointing).
Why disappointing? Because weight-loss was a pathway I imagined would lead to greater confidence, more career success and a better social life, and the dials on those have not shifted. My previous instincts to try to shrink my bulk and sidle out of the way have not changed much. Whereas once I would glance around to see if anyone was looking at me and mentally exhale in relief that they weren’t, I still glance around now and discover the same lack of interest. Simone de Beauvoir described men as the default human being, but 77 years after The Second Sex, in our new attention economy, it feels more accurate to call us a blank canvas. Men look quite boring, particularly middle-aged men. We are nearly as invisible as middle-aged women.
I fear that if I don’t wear tight clothes now, I won’t be able to when I come off the GLP-1s and put all the weight back onI fear that if I don’t wear tight clothes now, I won’t be able to when I come off the GLP-1s and put all the weight back on
My response has been to scour the secondhand clothes apps for overly tight tops and to foster a several-months-long delusion that I can pull off bootcut jeans in the era of barrel-legged bagginess without looking like I’m going to a 70s disco. Leather jackets. Colourful belts. Yohji Yamamoto T-shirts. Bright, stripy Paul Smith shirts for a tenner. It’s partly down to fear – if I don’t wear tight clothes now, I won’t be able to when I come off the GLP-1s and put all the weight back on.
At the heart of all this is a more honest response to question one: do I miss the old me? No, I’m still here – and I’m still the same person who ate and drank my way to 140kg. Have I found a way back to my mildly athletic younger self? Or am I a fat man chained up inside a secondhand Helmut Lang shirt?
The second part of the robotics race, Ingmar Posner explained to me at the Royal Society, is psychological. A generalist robot doesn’t just need a working body that can move around and manipulate things. It also needs to decipher the world and understand its place in it. Posner uses the term “embodied intelligence”, which means that a robot’s shape is part of its AI. A Slinky walks down stairs; people have designed legs that walk down slopes without needing to be controlled. It means the AI doesn’t need to compute every tiny adjustment.
Last year I visited Switzerland to see a paralysed man walk again. Markus Klementz’s spine had broken in a skiing accident; seven years later, thanks to implants in his spine and brain, he managed to take his first, faltering steps at Professor Grégoire Courtine’s clinic in Lausanne. Key to this extraordinary breakthrough were the neurones in Klementz’s spine. These are like rudimentary brain cells, able to tell his legs how to move. The right electrical impulse to the right spinal neurones will make them move in a walking motion. The spinal implant gives the impulse; the brain implant communicates with the spinal implant so that Klementz can control his legs again.
The spinal neurones are a kind of embodied intelligence. So the deeper answer to the question my friends ask – has my new body changed my personality? – is more subtle. By not squeezing into airline seats, my personality has changed because my place in the world is different. I bump into things less and have fewer mysterious bruises. I do things differently, walk differently, have different preoccupations. I carry extra clothes to fend off aggressive air conditioning.
This is where my AI robot comparison totters and face-plants. I’m self-aware; AIs aren’t. But if my new body makes me think differently, which means it’s changed my brain in some way, what does that mean for Frank and the other robots? Perhaps people trying to make a self-aware AI are doomed to fail if they don’t start with a robot that can see, hear and feel.
Fat or thin, my body defines me in ways I can’t escape. It’s my only way to understand the world, to interact with it. It’s been that way ever since someone cut my umbilical cord.
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