Feeling pretty good for a guy turning 50 this week.
If any Patriots, Brothers, Followers, or Lurkers want to help make this one special check out the link below.
I stood in front of the mirror today and my brain did what it always does.
The version of me looking back wasn’t the one everyone else sees. It was heavier. Softer. A stomach that pushed the tank top up, arms that looked smaller, a face that felt wrong under the brim of the hat. I turned and caught my actual reflection in the other glass—shoulders that have been built over years, a back that actually shows the work, legs that carry me through sessions—and for a second the two images didn’t match. Then the louder one won again.
That’s the part people don’t get about body dysmorphia. It isn’t vanity. It isn’t fishing for compliments. It’s a filter that rewrites the evidence in real time. You can lose the weight, add the muscle, take the progress photos, hear the comments, and still walk into a gym and feel like the person who never started. The numbers on the scale move. The clothes fit differently. The mirror does not always agree.
Some days the distortion is quiet. Other days it narrates the whole session. Every set becomes proof you’re still behind. Every angle in the phone camera becomes a reason to delete the photo. You train anyway, because the alternative is worse, but you leave carrying both bodies: the one you built and the one your brain insists is still there.
If you live with this, you’re not broken for not “just seeing yourself clearly.” The gap between the body and the perception is the disorder, not a character flaw. Progress can be real even when it doesn’t feel real. And the people who only ever meet the version of you that exists outside your head are not lying when they describe someone different from the one you argue with in the mirror.
I’m still learning how to trust the work more than the distortion. Some days I manage it. Some days I don’t. Both count.
#BodyDysmorphia #BodyDysmorphicDisorder #BDD #MentalHealth #GymLife #ProgressNotPerfection #BodyImage #YouAreNotYourThoughts #Recovery #SelfCompassion #FitnessJourney #ItsOkayToNotBeOkay #MentalHealthAwareness #TrainAnyway #MirrorLies #RealTalk #Healing #OneDayAtATime
Feeling pretty good for a guy turning 50 this week.
If any Patriots, Brothers, Followers, or Lurkers want to help make this one special check out the link below.