For at least the last five years there have been very public and heated conversations about body image. The majority of the coverage has been related to physical traits, from skinny, through skinny-fat, to dad bod, and up to obese, but almost all focused on outward appearance. I'm sure you remember all of the blogs lighting up with posts about positive self-image and how people overcame their fears of judgment. Unfortunately, a lot of the conversations left out a group of people with demons caused by delusional self-image, and we're not talking about the positive kind of delusion.
I am talking about people with Body Dysmorphic Disorder. For those that don't know what BDD is, it is a mental disorder in which you can't stop thinking about one or more perceived defects or flaws in your appearance — a flaw that, to others, is either minor or not observable. The key is that the flaw exists in your mind and isn't a flaw that everybody will see. For some, it may be their nose or their ears. For lifters, it's typically a certain muscle group or the body in general. It is a driving force in how they train and eat and an endless source of frustration. For some, it could be a precursor to an eating disorder.
I want you to think of how many people you know that can't see their body the same way you see it; the ones that find flaws that nobody else sees. I'm not talking about the ones that fish for compliments or the ones that just look for attention. I'm talking about the ones that silently eat at themselves, never really letting anybody know what the voices say and the eyes see. Now take that feeling and have it happen every day, replaying it over and over where you find yourself drawn back to it so frequently that it may as well just be on repeat. Your hands are drawn to it, your eyes can't see passed it, and as soon as you see or feel it, you think about it all over again. I didn't always have this demon causing problems and it wasn't the result of other people pushing their views on me. For me, it came when I entered college and was no longer one of the best at anything.
As a child, I didn't know any better because I was a good athlete and nobody really cared how skinny or muscular you were. When I got to high school, I was a good athlete, but it was obvious that at 5'11" and 125 lbs, I was not the same size as other athletes that could now out muscle and outperform me even though I was competitive. Still, I didn't put that on being small or weak, but just not having the genetic luck. When I entered my freshman year of college, it hit me dead in the face. I was tiny for my height, unable to be competitive anymore and clearly overshadowed by the larger, more muscular students. I started lifting and trying to get bigger. I ate non-stop and trained 5-6 days a week. After a year of training and not stepping on the scale, I couldn't tell that anything changed other than my strength. When I did step on the scale it was a 60 lb gain, yet my eyes couldn't tell the difference between what I was and what I became. I began to notice lagging body parts even more and stuffed more food and more training hours. At 205 lbs, I knew I wasn't tiny, but I just saw more problems; small arms, skinny legs, no calves, bird chest. The list would go on and on. God forbid I stood next to somebody with any appreciable muscle mass or clothes that made them look stronger, even if they're 40 lbs lighter than me.
My battle is with eyes that show me I am small and weak, that I have no muscle, and a mind that tells me I will always be too small. Like many people that battle their own thoughts, some days are better than others, but a week doesn't go by where I don't sit and analyze my body, my arms, my legs, my chest, my abs, etc. These last few weeks have been especially tough on me. Because I am struggling in the gym, the voice has been getting increasingly louder. No matter how much I know it's just in my head, every training day makes me notice something. It hits me hard; it breaks me down just as much as training.
Every day I get to train is a great day and a terrible battle at the same time.
There are a lot of others out there that struggle the same way. Some will try to compensate by taking and posting pictures for approval, some will wear tight outfits designed to accentuate muscle, others will wear the baggiest clothes to hide what shames them, and some will grind away unable to beat the demon inside...and then there are the "outsiders" that take every supplement known to man hoping it will fix the problem.
I wish I had a solution, even a temporary cure to help others like me, but the mind can be harder to train than any muscle group. Some can work through it with enough positivity from their friends, some through self-affirmation, and some will just have to keep battling.
And before some asshole tries to tell anybody that suffers from BDD it's just in our head, no shit. Do you think we don't already know this? Don't you think this is part of what makes it so destructive? Don't trivialize somebody's body issues just because you can't see them! Don't trivialize anybody's issues by saying "it isn't that bad" or "it's in your head." All that does is make it worse. Before you go thinking that just because someone isn't super skinny or fat that they don't have body image issues, step back and consider the people that don't see the mirror the same way the world sees them. We all have our own battles.
