My body issues Anonymous

Why aren’t there campaigns for male plus sized models? I had no one to tell me I’m beautiful when I weighed 185 pounds in eleventh grade; all I got were offensive slurs and derogatory nicknames. I had shielded out the remarks, without retorting, until they started coming from people that were close to me. Then, I cracked. I convinced myself that my body shape was my fault and started a journey to “fix it.”

Whenever I was faced with an emotional burden, I found solace in food – especially sugary condiments. The sweet rush through my views seemed to elate the stress inside me. I made a promise to myself to change my eating habits drastically, coming up with a simple and creative fix: toothpaste. Whenever I was hungry during the odd times of the day, I brushed my teeth. Surprisingly, this helped a lot in allowing me to reduce my sugar intake. The hard part to this drastic lifestyle change was to not let it impact my personality, as the scientist in me established that sugar intake was inversely proportional to irritability. I found that music helped, with the soothing sounds encompassing me inside a healing aura. The rhythmic patterns made me forget about the existence of time, blissfully wiggling my body to the appeasing beats.

I...