I have carried weight my whole life. Not just the kind you measure on a scale, but the kind you feel in your chest when the laughter of friends shifts into laughter at you. From an early age, I knew what it felt like to stand out in all the wrong ways. On the basketball court, while everyone else’s jerseys hung loose, mine stretched tight across my stomach, clinging like a spotlight I didn’t want. At the pool, when kids dove in shirtless, I clung to my swim shirt like it was armor. It wasn’t just fabric—it was a fragile barrier between me and the judgment I expected the moment I let it go. Even before I had the language for shame, I was fluent in it.
I loved sports. I played football when I was younger, swam in the summers, golfed with my dad, and spent countless afternoons shooting hoops with my friends. On the surface, I looked like any other kid who loved being active. But deep down, I always knew I was “the chubby one.” I could feel it in the way I avoided mirrors, in the way I secretly envied my friends’ flat stomachs and skinny arms. It was like walking through life with a neon sign hanging around my neck: Ugly. Fat. Not enough. Nobody else could see it, but I felt it pressing into me every single day.
Colin was one of my closest friends growing up. He was quick with jokes, always finding a way to make people laugh. But his humor often came at someone else’s expense, usually mine. He wasn’t cruel in the way random classmates were cruel to me; his teasing carried a sting sharper than anyone else’s, because he was supposed to be my friend. Colin was also a bigger guy, but because he was smaller than me, everyone seemed to forget that he wasn’t in perfect shape either.
One summer night in Georgia, we were packed into my parents’ 2016 white Buick Enclave on the way to a Braves game. The leather seats stuck to our legs, and the humid air pressed heavy through the windows. I was wedged in the back, trying to disappear, when Colin began pointing at strangers outside the car. If it was a heavy man, he’d grin and say, “Look, JJ, that’s you.” If it was a large woman, he’d laugh louder, “Hey, I found your future wife, fat on fat.” He joked that I couldn’t see my toes, that I weighed the car down. At first my friends laughed nervously, then louder. I forced myself to laugh too, because that’s what you do when you’ve been the punchline your whole life. Better to look like you’re in on the joke than to let them see how much it hurts. My parents tried to intervene, telling him to knock it off, but he wouldn’t stop. The car became a cage. My chest burned, my eyes stung, but I swallowed the tears. Crying would only make me weaker, would only give them more ammunition. I stared out the window, my reflection ghosted in the glass, and something inside me whispered: Never again.
That night lit a fire in me. I didn’t just want to lose weight—I wanted to shed the shame, the labels, the endless humiliation. I wanted to walk into a room without feeling like I had to apologize for existing. So I changed. The weight began to come off. Five pounds. Ten. Forty. Eighty. Each drop on the scale felt like a chain breaking, but every time I looked in the mirror, I still saw the boy in the Buick.
My body shrank, but the shame clung tighter. The journey itself was brutal. I remember tying my worn-down running shoes in the dark of early mornings, the pavement still slick with dew. I’d slip my headphones in, blast music, and push my legs to the point of pain. Every stride felt like running from that car ride, from the laughter, from the shame. In the gym, sweat would pool on the floor as I gasped for breath, leaning against the wall when the dizziness set in. My stomach cramped from hunger, but I convinced myself it was discipline. I told myself that skipping meals was proof of my willpower, that ignoring my body’s needs was the price of becoming someone new.
There were moments of triumph. The first time I saw the scale dip under 200 pounds, I cried. My clothes hung differently. My face looked sharper. People started to notice me. Compliments rolled in from teachers, friends, even those random classmates. For the first time, I wasn’t invisible. Or worse, the punchline.
But the victories were fragile. I couldn’t enjoy them because I was always chasing the next milestone. If I lost ten pounds, I needed twenty. If I dropped a pant size, I wanted another. I thought freedom would come with progress, but progress only deepened the obsession. I punished myself harder, starved longer, and worked out until my body begged me to stop. What I called “discipline” was really self-hatred in disguise.
The illusion shattered one afternoon in my bathroom, with my friend David. I took my shirt off and put it on my bed, lathered my face with white shaving cream, and picked up my blue razor to start shaving. David, half-jokingly, asked, “So… when are you getting a six-pack?” His words cut deeper than Colin’s ever did, than a razor ever could. I had lost eighty pounds. I had given everything. And still, it wasn’t enough. Loose skin clung to me like a scarlet letter, proof that no matter how hard I worked, I could never fully erase the past. His comment wasn’t meant to destroy me, but it did, because it revealed the truth: if I lived for other people’s approval, I would never arrive.
I spiraled. I dropped the razor in the warm bowl of water gathered in the sink. Did people only like me now because I was thinner? Were the girls who smiled at me interested in me, or only in the body I had created? Was I anything more than a before-and-after picture? I stared into the mirror, searching for the boy I thought I’d become, and saw only a stranger. The backpack of stones I thought I had dropped was still there, just heavier in a new way.
And yet, in that storm, I felt another voice. Not Colin’s. Not David’s. Not even my own. It was quieter, steadier. The whisper I had known as a child but forgotten. The whisper that reminded me of prayer, of scripture, of a Savior who never measured me by a scale. A Savior who never mocked me, never asked me to be perfect before offering love. I learned that self-love and peace must come from within. I learned that a diet of external validation of compliments mixed with self-hatred could feed my ego, but never my soul. I learned that praise and applause can fill a room, but they empty a heart.
Healing has been slow, uneven, ongoing. Self-love did not arrive in one instance; it has come in fragments, tiny choices to believe a kinder truth, even when the old shame screamed louder. A day when I didn’t flinch at a compliment. A night when I slept without replaying insults. A conversation that didn’t leave me hollow.
None of these erased the weight I carried, but together they began to shift it. If I could sit across from my younger self, the boy in the swim shirt, the boy in the Buick, I would tell him: “You’re going to lose the weight. But that won’t heal you. You’ll think it’s the answer, but it isn’t. What will heal you is knowing you were loved all along. Loved by your family. Loved by God. Loved by the Savior who sat with the outcasts and walked with the broken. You won’t always believe it, but it’s true.” I can imagine him staring back at me, skeptical, doubting. Maybe even laughing bitterly.
But I’d tell him anyway, because it’s the truth I wish I had known sooner. The weight that stayed—the scars, the shame, the questions—doesn’t define me anymore. It reminds me. It reminds me where I’ve been. It reminds me of the lies I once believed. And most of all, it reminds me that grace is real. My reflection isn’t my worth. My scars aren’t failure; they’re proof of survival. And when the voices return, I remember: I am seen. I am known. I am loved. Not because I became perfect, but because I was His all along.
