During lockdown I realised I wasn’t dealing with my body dysmorphia well – so I have made a change that helped

I am using this opportunity indoors to relearn what feels good about exercise so that I can be kinder to myself, inside and out

Prior to the coronavirus, I was at the peak of my newly adopted fitness journey. I was attending the gym regularly alongside a 9-to-5 unpaid work placement, and I felt good for it.

Taking progress pictures, tracking my macros and treating myself on weekends had formed the basis of my new routine.

But as someone who has struggled with body dysmorphia for almost eight years, lockdown has revealed to me that beneath the joy working out would give me, the deep-seated insecurities that have dominated a large part of my daily inner monologue had remained strong.

As a teenager, my body was always something I was conscious of. I had always been physically active, as a member of a local rowing club from the age of 11 – training four days a week – and a swimmer before that. But it wasn’t until one of my best friends started to diet and skip meals, at 13 years of age, that I started to think deeper about the link between my physical appearance and my worth as a person, and with those thoughts came a lot of self-doubt.

Foods I had never associated with any particular outcome, were seen as “good” or “bad” – and the choices you made when eating reflected your self-control. Carbs – the most infamous “bad”; sugar – bad but easier to moderate; fruit – good, and something you should snack on if you dare feel hungry between meals.

Alongside my new secret obsession with what I was eating, I started to hoard images of girls that fitted my “body goals” criteria – a thigh gap, the flattest of stomachs and prominent bones. “Pro ana” (short for anorexia) content was making up a large part of what I consumed digitally, reminding me that even if I was slim, it was never enough. This was not healthy and was getting worse.

The realisation that I was experiencing a case of body dysmorphia came after I went on a “no-carb diet” for six months at the age of 17. There was a night I went for a meal out with colleagues, wearing high-waisted jeans and a crop top, despite my self-consciousness towards my stomach. Nevertheless, I took a selfie, but looking back at this photo after the diet brought an immense sadness.

The overweight girl I had seen in the mirror when taking the photo was nothing like the photo on the screen. I saw a girl with a tiny waist, shrunken features compared to her full head of long hair, who looked like she was genetically predisposed to being petite, like that of a pocket-sized Barbie doll.

This new year I was one of many hoping to kick-start 2020 with a new fitness regime. Unfortunately, I now realise I was using the gym as a new comfort blanket for suppressing my obsessive thoughts. If I had gone to the gym that day, I could assure myself that I had done my bit to keep in shape and was a step closer to securing my dream body. While I had convinced myself that this was due to a genuine love for weightlifting, I didn’t want to acknowledge that there were deeper and more insidious reasons for my inability, fear even, to take a few days off.

What is most frustrating about body dysmorphia is that the goal posts are always moving – in an unhealthy way. This makes for an incredibly strenuous and never-ending process of monitoring “progress” and analysing your physical state – all the while you never really know whether your reflection is real, or is in fact your misinterpreted and hyper-deprecative perception of self.

Being in lockdown and not being able to go to the gym meant being torn away from the coping mechanism I have depended on for years to keep my body dysmorphia in check. I have had to face the uncomfortable fact that my obsession with “maintaining” was wrong – bodies are fluid and that is OK.

Such a huge part of living with body dysmorphia comes with extreme feelings of guilt, due to the internal pressure that we put on ourselves to look a certain way and the refusal to ever accept our current state. It is easy in the fast-paced modern world we live in to distract ourselves with the mundane routines of normal life, as a way of ignoring that our mental health is struggling.

Lockdown is teaching me that what I had considered a healthy lifestyle was just my obsessive thoughts finding a socially acceptable way to materialise.

I struggled with feelings of guilt and despair in the initial weeks, but I have now started to pursue yoga, cycling and belly dance – moving my body in ways that feel good and are not so heavily motivated by aspirations to change my appearance.

Being stuck indoors all day inevitably means being stuck with your thoughts, but for those of us with body dysmorphia it can also be an opportunity to focus on exploring new methods of self-care as the first step to loving ourselves. Lockdown can also give us the time to seek support from peers or professional help.

When you focus so heavily on reaching the outcome of a journey, it makes it so much harder for the process to be one that is enjoyable and healthy. Associating exercise with anything other than changing my appearance is new for me, and I am using this opportunity indoors to relearn what feels good so that I can be kinder to myself, inside and out.

For more information on body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) see the NHS or the BDD Foundation