As a teenager, I learned that the ideal man is strong, muscular, handsome and essentially perfect without even having to work for it. These images were constantly shown to me as the golden standard that I should work to achieve.
My dad was a bodybuilder when he was younger, and he had high hopes that I would follow in his footsteps and obtain the physique he sported in the 80s. He would always talk about it with me, never explicitly saying anything, but heavily alluding to his hopes for me. I was never an overly-active kid, but a skateboarding accident left me with a broken leg and two months of sitting around in a cast.
That summer, I overate and wasn’t able to be physically active. Several weeks of sitting around caused a shift in my body weight and a dramatic change in the way I looked.
Going into my teenage years being overweight was unforgiving, and I would constantly feel uncomfortable or out of place. I specifically remember dreading the start of seventh grade, as that was when I would be required to change into gym clothes around other boys. My self-confidence was low, and I had difficulty thinking of anything other than my weight and my appearance. I tried to wear clothes that would cover up the parts of my body that I didn’t like, but no matter what I did, it never seemed to work.
Other boys would make fun of me for my weight and I was often called names like “fat.” I was always self-conscious about my weight, but I never really shared this with anyone else, not even my own parents. It was a personal issue I dealt with for years and years.
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