Matt Joseph Diaz

This week on #MondayMotivation With Matt Joseph Diaz, mental health. Matt talks about binge eating disorder.

Impostor syndrome is a disconnect in your mind between how everyone sees you and how you see yourself. It can be more dangerous than it seems.

I'm 23 years old, I don’t want children, and every elder who discovers this feels compelled to tell me how wrong I am about my own feelings.

Welcome to Monday Motivation with Matt Joseph Diaz! Every Monday (obviously), I'll be serving up some motivation to get you through the week.

How embarrassing is this story, and is the value in it (be it entertainment, educational, or both) enough that the benefit in sharing it outweighs how mortifying it is?

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.

I feel equipped to talk about the intricacies of the body positivity movement; for with all its beauty and empowerment, there are aspects of body positivity that try to control how others view and treat their bodies. Though I understand the intention, behavior like this flies in the face of the ideals the movement is trying to create. Put simply: it's time we stop trying to police body positivity.

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

I am so very afraid.

The “you” who opens their eyes in the morning isn’t the same “you” lays down their head in that bed that night. In those few hours of consciousness you have more exposure to life, you experience a world of compassion and cruelty that has the potential to change the trajectory of your entire life.