One Year After Going Viral: How Stripping Down And Opening Up Changed My Life

I started to understand this truth simple truth: Regardless of your shape or size, everyone has felt self-conscious. We just haven’t been talking about it.

Thought Experiment: How do you think you from one year ago would feel about you today?

Often, the biggest developments in our life can feel like a slow burn. The routine we fall into, especially in adulthood, can leave us glancing over at the calendar and asking ourselves where the months have gone.

Changes take time, investment and planning before we can safely move forward. But occasionally, our lives are irrevocably changed in an instant; a wrench gets enthusiastically thrown into any plans you may have laid into place, sending you radically off-course.

For some, it happens with the loss of a loved one or acquiring a new job. For me, it was the exposure of my deepest secret to millions of people.

For me, it happened a year ago today.

♦♦♦

At age 16 and nearly 497 pounds, I was convinced that losing weight was going to fix all of my problems — Girls would like me, bullies would become my friends, my social anxiety would melt away to show the transcendent social butterfly that always lay beneath.

Things didn’t work out that way, at least not immediately. No matter how hard I worked, my self-esteem felt hindered by a side effect of the weight loss I believed made me hideous. A side effect I hid from the world for years and, well, I’ll let me from a year ago explain it.

This video was part of an Upworthy article on March 18th, 2015.  It would ultimately be shared by over 120 million people. I was the subject of interviews and podcasts and was stopped on the street regularly for weeks.

My follower count shot up on every social media outlet where people could search my name. I went viral, and the world was a very loud place for a while.

What was strange, though, was what happened when the dust settled, when the Facebook shares slowed down, and strangers in bars weren’t drunkenly asking how they knew my face.

I found myself getting a hundred messages a day from people who had questions about body positivity. Dozens of people regularly asked for advice on how they could learn to love themselves, and thousands told me that I made them feel like they weren’t alone anymore.

I found myself looking at these people with diverse body types, from different walks of life, and I started to understand this simple truth: Regardless of your shape or size, everyone has felt self-conscious. We just haven’t been talking about it.

After the video went viral, I went to a high school where a friend of mine teaches 9th grade English. I nervously and excitedly spoke to students from several of his classes about the importance of positive self image, especially at a young age.

At the end of the day, a girl from the first class of the day walked up to me and said, “I just want you to know, you really spoke to me, and I’ll remember that.”

I knew then what my purpose was: to teach people the importance of being kind to themselves and each other.

Vulnerability is not a sign of weakness; there is true courage strength in opening yourself up to the world around you and trusting that it won’t take strike you down.

One year later, I’ve dedicated my life to showing every human being that they have value, both in their current form and in the potential they have to be more. I quit my office job to pursue writing and speaking on the topic of self love full-time.

I’ve spoken to hundreds of students at colleges and events, traveled to towns I’d never imagined myself visiting, and met some of the most incredible people I would’ve never encountered otherwise. I was included on People Magazine’s “Biggest Body Positive Moves Of 2015” list as well as Jes Baker’s article “7 Men To Follow In The Body Positive Movement.”

And yes, I underwent the first of several procedures to remove the excess skin. Not because of the shame and ugliness I felt before I shared my story, but because I grew to love my body and wanted to be the strongest, healthiest, best version of “me” that I could be.

This is the way life sneaks up on us, I suppose. Many of the changes we experience come so gradually that we don’t even see them until we look back — the way we don’t realize an album has become our favorite until we notice we’ve listened to it a hundred times. But there are some changes that hit like a freight train, that demand your attention and try to reshape the path you’ve laid out for yourself.

In these moments you have two options: Resist the chaotic nature of the human experience, or lean into the emotional ride you’re about to take. Either way, your life will be irreversibly changed.

So, to Matt Joseph Diaz from one year ago, I’d like to say this:

I know that the world can seem like a scary and terrible place, where the threat of judgment and exclusion feels like it's constantly looming over you. That’s because it is — but there’s so much more love and kindness on this planet than evil and suffering. There is generosity and spirit that runs so deep in every human being, you’ll find it hard not to fall a little bit in love with each and every one of them.

Even your enemies, those who would see you fail, have their value as learning experiences and tests of emotional fortitude. Vulnerability is not a sign of weakness.

There is true courage and strength in opening yourself up to the world around you and trusting that it won’t take strike you down. Even when the world hurts you, you will find within yourself a resilience that will continue to help you grow stronger as you pick yourself back up.

Begin to tell yourself:

Adore who you are, regardless of size;

And fuck anybody who says otherwise.

Tall or short, light or dark,

Cis or trans, fat or thin:

You deserve to love the body you’re in.

Thank you for this incredible year.