Seattle Mariners catcher Mike Marjama may have just started a career in the MLB but that’s not stopping him from raising awareness for an important issue — male eating disorders.
Marjama was featured in an extensive segment on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Wednesday where he told his story.
“I don’t like to think of myself as a Major League Baseball player that had an eating disorder,” Marjama said. “I’m a dude just like everybody else, and I’ve suffered from some demons, and I have demons, and I was able to kind of overcome those.”
Marjama explains that he suffered from a combination of anorexia and bulimia all the way through high school.
“I kind of had baseball taken away from me my junior year of high school,” he said. “I wasn’t able to play, unfortunately, because of my eating disorder and hospitalization.”
It started when he first realized he was into girls.
“I was definitely getting into an attraction to girls,” he said of that time. “So my way was thinking about it was … if I’m going to get a girlfriend, I’ve got to get a six pack, and so I thought it I didn’t eat anything, well I wouldn’t get any fat, and then if I worked out a ton I would get big and muscular.”
But things got even darker from there.
“I put a stationary bike in the shower, and [would] ride until I would pass out,” he said.
Marjama explains that he eventually enrolled in a program to work through his issue but he still wants to raise awareness for the remaining 10 million men who apparently struggle with eating disorders.
Now listen. I don’t want to knock eating disorders. They’re serious and they definitely affect people in the world. But I have a hard time believing that a high school baseball phenom actually struggled to get women interested in him because he didn’t have a six-pack. I also have a hard time believing this guy didn’t have a six-pack.
But for all those men out there who are worried about their six-pack or lack thereof, let me break it down for you.
I’ve polled many women on this topic. And the fact of the matter is, most women do not care about six-packs. That’s not what we’re looking at. If you’re a reasonably athletic dude with a respectable face and you’re somewhat nice, congratulations. You’ve already exceeded 99 percent of women’s expectations. You don’t need to starve yourself to succeed with the ladies. It’s that simple.
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