Gay – My body issues have pretty much disappeared

My situation may be a bit different from most people on here, in that I was never addicted to porn, and I’m gay – so YMMV. But I figured I’d share anyway.

I’ve always had issues with body image, particularly when it comes to gaining weight or being fat. I’ve been a distance runner for over a decade, so from an objective standpoint, I’ve always been really lean, but I pretty much always felt like I was a skinnyfat, ungainly blob.

A few months ago I decided that I needed to cut porn entirely out of my life, after reading the book Your Brain on Porn. It was pretty easy for me, to be honest – I just decided that I wasn’t going to ever look at it again, and so far I haven’t had any real problems with that. Over time I’ve been consciously and unconsciously cutting similar content out, such as Instagram.

But one thing I noticed recently is that the body issues I’ve always had have pretty much disappeared. I’m no longer spending time looking at, and comparing myself to, images of men with idealized bodies, and as a result, I’m not constantly coming up short. It’s not that I don’t care what I look like anymore, it’s more that the impossible standard I’d always subconsciously been holding myself to is no longer there, and my perspective has shifted.