This British man has embraced his body rolls and man boobs, and is showing them off.
For years, Stevie Grice-Hart struggled with his weight and fluctuated between 252 pounds and 140 pounds.
“I grew up as a bigger kid,” Grice-Hart, a 26-year-old financial advisor in Southampton, told The Post. “I looked to the media for role models, but all I saw were ripped, chiseled guys with jawlines longer than my life expectancy. That just makes me feel worse about myself.”
So he turned to crash dieting, calorie counting and working out seven days a week. Though he dropped about half of his body weight, which he described as “dangerously skinny,” Grice-Hart said he still felt unhappy.
“I lost not just the weight, but I lost a part of who I am,” Grice-Hart, who stands at 5-foot-10, said. “I thought if I lost the weight, I’d suddenly be popular and wouldn’t have to worry about money … but that wasn’t true.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BoxBtjTAuTf/He signed up for Instagram in 2016 hoping he could find fitness influencers to get more tips to keep himself slim. Instead, he came across plus-size female models who were posting untouched photos of themselves online, something that changed his perspective on body image.
“I needed to start living my 20s,” he said. “I was missing out on my life just trying to be skinny.”
That’s when he started his journey for body positivity, posting photos of himself in his underwear on Instagram. Now he weighs about 170 pounds, follows a healthy vegan diet and says he’s never felt better.
“I get so many lovely messages from [men] as young as 11 to guys as old as 60,” Grice-Hart said. “They say that they’ve never had a space to talk about [body issues].”
But still, Grice-Hart said people don’t talk enough about men and their self-esteem issues openly and honestly.
“Whereas women … have a community to nourish each other and talk about their issues, men don’t have that,” he said.
Grice-Hart, who is planning to adopt a baby with his 29-year-old husband, said he hopes he can be a body-positive role model for his future child.
“I wish there was somebody around telling me it’s OK to look exactly how you look,” he said. “You don’t have to fit in a box. Not everyone has to look like the cover of Men’s Health and that’s OK. These people are still worthy of respect and love.”
While Grice-Hart has learned to embrace his body, other guys are going under the knife. In July 2017, The Post talked to other men who have undergone surgery to remove their man boobs, which cost anywhere between $3,500 to $10,000.
“I couldn’t wear certain T-shirts,” said Joe Marciano, who got a breast reduction in May 2017. “You could see [my breasts] with everything.”