Matt Joseph Diaz

Think of #MondaysWithMatt as the ultimate #MondayMotivation. Today's topic is how to handle mental health in a partner.

We met Matt a year ago when he showed us his post weight-loss body.

Success is an uphill climb, but it’s rarely a directly uphill climb. There are cliffsides and plateaus, there are points where you have to adapt and change in order to make things work. These are not steps backwards, nor are they indicative of your failure—they’re simply a byproduct of life. More often than not, this ability to work with the circumstances in order to get by will take you farther than certain “skills” ever could.

This week, Matt addresses everyone out there with a lady as their partner. Which is a lot of us, so listen up.

CN: suicide

After spending a long time in nature, it stopped being intimidating. It started being calm. The quiet wasn't something I feared anymore. It was something I wanted to cherish.

When we write articles about body image, we often speak in the abstract about big ideas and how we approach social interaction — but how exactly does one become body positive? What are the nuts and bolts that’ll lead you to a more positive sense of self, both physically and emotionally?

Once I became a body positive writer and speaker, I told the story of that night on podcasts and in interviews as an example of the sort of reaction I was afraid of prior to my video about my excess skin going viral. Every time, the interviewer made a comment about how Dana was “the ugly one,” not me. And every time, I told them I didn’t want her to be vilified or insulted.

This is literally the cutest, happiest thing you will see all day.

Whether it’s your ethnicity, your religion, your sexuality, you do not deserve to be loved in spite of who you are — you deserve to be loved for who you are. Those things are a part of you, and they shouldn’t be swept under the rug or pushed to the side so someone can pick and choose the things they like about you.