Ed Sheeran Reveals How Fat-Shaming Trolls Affected His Life
No matter how we promote self-love, there will always come a time that you will feel insecure about yourself, particularly your physical appearance, and compare it with other people your age. These insecurities get worst when people start pointing out your flaws and make it big of a deal every now and then.
Getting insecure about our looks is a common thing, and Grammy-winning musician Ed Sheeran revealed that he is not an exemption of having this insecurity stage. During the Behind The Medal podcast on Monday, the "Shape of You" singer shared how he overcome the stage when he is not really proud of his own shape.
According to Ed, he started to be aware of his insecurities during his X Tour in mid-2014 to 2015. It is also the time when people started pointing out his flaws and realizing he feels the same way about himself.
"I never had insecurities, and people pointed them out - your brain starts thinking about them," Sheeran said.
The 28-year-old singer-songwriter said that he had come to his senses when cruel internet trolls started pointing out that he was fat and chunky.
"I was the same sort of age as the One Direction boys and Justin Bieber and all these people that were really in shape and had six-packs and I was kind of like, 'Oh should I be looking like this?'" Ed said, adding that the negative comments also led him to take down his Twitter account in 2017.
Sheeran also revealed that he hated the way he looks so much that it was his choice not to appear on his first three music videos, except for the Thinking Out Loud music video where people saw him dance for the first time. The said music video had more than 2.8 million views on the same day it was released.
Despite Sheeran's confession that the trolling affected his self-esteem, he never let it bring him down. He believes that people are pointing out about his flaws to feel better about their insecurities.
"It all stems from other people's insecurities. So many people have so many things they're insecure about, so it makes them feel better to point out someone else's. Half the people that would say I was fat would be fat themselves," he added.
The hitmaker proudly shared that through the help of his wife, Cherry Seaborn, he was able to get over the chunky stage, started living a healthy lifestyle and eventually shed over 56 pounds.
Sheeran said that Cherry helped him to have a healthy regimen, which consists of running about 45-minutes in the morning followed by sit-ups and having a balanced and moderate diet.
The singer revealed that he had to motivate himself to quit on bad habits like topping chips on pizza and eat it like a sandwich, partying all night, sleeping until late afternoon, drinking bottles of wine, and not getting enough exercise. He also said that he had to stop smoking to clear his lungs.
