My Body Dysmorphia Ruined Walking for Me, Here’s How I Fixed It.
4 min readApr 6, 2021
When you’re in the throws of an unhealthy relationship with food, your body & exercise, all movement is just about calorie burn.
And all food is just about calories.
And all bodies are just about size.
Anything that does not (in your mind) directly contribute to your goal of getting smaller, leaner, thinner — is hardly useful.
For years, I missed out on morning walks, evening walks, walks with friends, walks with myself, because I feared they did not burn enough calories to move the needle forward on my mission to become smaller.
(I suppose, if we take the “needle” metaphor literally, what I really wanted was for it to move backward, but, you get my point.)
Instead of allowing myself to take a stroll by the water and call my Dad or take a walking lunch break, I spent morning after morning and lunch break after lunch break forcing myself to run. to sprint. to sweat.
