She got dressed for a night out with her girl friends and was feeling like she looked pretty good in her outfit (which isn’t always the case, so it was nice to feel good in her clothes for a change). 

They went out for dinner and to a concert, and she ordered what she wanted off the menu, and let herself have a few drinks while belting out the band’s greatest hits.

Then the next morning she saw the photos she was tagged in on social media and gasped in horror. “THAT’S what I looked like? I look huge! I can’t believe that I felt like I looked good!”

Has this ever happened to you? Where you felt one way about your body, but then all of a sudden in an instant it flips and you feel totally differently? Or have you ever been told that you are picking yourself apart and obsessing over things that you think are flaws that are wrong with your body, and other people have told you that you’re being overly critical of yourself or you’re obsessing about nothing? Is there a distortion between how you visualize your body in your mind, or what you see in the mirror, and what your body actually looks like? 

You’re not alone. This happens to a lot of people and it’s where if you’re dealing with body dysmorphia or body image distortion, your brain is literally misreporting the evidence about your body. And when the data is wrong…every decision you make that’s built on those assumptions will also be wrong – and this keeps you stuck in that cycle where you don’t trust yourself or your body because your brain is lying to you and distorting things. 

That’s what we’re going to talk about today on the Rebuilding Trust With Your Body Podcast. 

Before we dive into our main topic for today, you know what time it is…We’ve got some Wellness Woo to talk about. 

Wellness Woo is the stuff that diet and wellness culture tells us we should do in the name of health, but it’s really based on pseudoscience, exaggerated claims, or just nonsense. 

Today’s Wellness Woo is: Prolon – s/o to Carol from the IEME community.

https://prolonlife.com

Their headline on their website is that they sell 

Longevity nutrition for every day—and every goal

From deep cellular renewal and daily longevity nutrition to guided nutrition therapy,

our products and programs are designed to help you feel your best today and thrive tomorrow.

In case you missed it, I just covered the topic of longevity medicine in the wellness woo segment in episode 226, so go back and listen to that when we are done here if you’re interested. For the purposes of this discussion what I’ll say is that our culture’s current obsession with “longevity” is just a new way of selling you on crap you don’t need. And spoiler alert: none of us is immortal. We can obsess about longevity all we want, but we all will one day die. This whole longevity and anti-aging branch of diet and wellness culture acts like we can play God, and you have to remember that no matter how much money you spend on blood tests or supplements, your body is still getting older each day, and you will someday die, and that’s ok.

Now is it helpful to take care of our bodies and our health so we can live the longest healthiest lives possible for us? Sure. But when it crosses the line into wasting your money and energy on woo and nonsense, that’s where I draw the line. (I also draw the line at obsessing over longevity and doing extreme and unsustainable behaviors for it)

So Prolon’s “about” section says Prolon is the flagship brand of L-Nutra, offering a holistic platform of products focused on reversing aging and unlocking better health. L-Nutra was born in 2009 with a vision rooted in decades of scientific inquiry.

The company was founded by Dr. Valter Longo, Director of the Longevity Institute at USC and the Longevity and Cancer Program at IFOM Milan, author of international bestseller, The Longevity Diet, and a global leader in nutrition and longevity science.

Natural solutions, whole-health benefits: Our products and programs work with your body, tapping into its innate ability to heal

Biotech-level scientific rigor:

Back in 2020 they were selling  Fasting Bars and the Fasting Shake, to support intermittent fasting and to make it easier to eat for longevity every day.

This made me giggle…Dr. Valter Longo pioneers longevity research with the first study on the impact of food on the rate of aging in yeast. The paper was rejected by journals.

What do they sell? 

• Shakes, bars and soups starting at a subscription of $225/month (oh and they’ll throw in a scale as well because they clearly are selling the idea that weight loss = health and longevity)
• You get some type of coaching with a “longevity dietitian” which I’ve never heard of and I’ve been a registered and licensed dietitian in this field for over 15 years

Bottom line, they’re selling you weight loss shakes and bars under the guise of “longevity” and “tapping into your body’s innate ability to heal itself” – from what I’m not sure, aging I assume is what they mean? Their website is full of buzzwords and phrases and pseudoscientific word salad, and I can promise you that this isn’t going to actually make you healthier or live longer than just doing the recommended preventative healthcare, and the boring tried-and-true ways of taking care of your body in the ways we talk about all the time on this show. You don’t need to spend $225/month on these unregulated supplements that taste like crap to be able to do that. 

If you have an example of Wellness Woo that you want to share, send it to me at rebuildingtrustwithyourbody@gmail.com. 

Ok, that’s enough of that. Moving on to today’s main topic…The Hidden Reason You Don’t Trust Your Body and the lies your brain is telling you. 

Body Dysmorphia: First of all, we need to get clear on our language here, because the words actually do matter. 

Body dysmorphia

• Perceiving your body inaccurately. That’s what “dysmorphia” means. 
• People with clinically diagnosable body dysmorphia tend to get fixated on specific parts of their bodies like their nose, or chin, or arms, or wrinkles, or calves. 
• True body dysmorphia isn’t about a fear of fatness. The way that our culture is throwing around the term body dysmorphia these days is usually inaccurate, and what most people are referring to when they say they have body dysmorphia is that they have body image distortion.
• Common Behaviors Include:
  • Mirror Checking/Avoidance: Spending hours looking in mirrors or, conversely, covering them to avoid seeing the “flaw”
  • Camouflaging: Using clothing, makeup, or hats to hide the perceived defect.
  • Social Withdrawal: Avoiding work, school, or social gatherings out of fear that others will notice the flaw.
  • Excessive Grooming/Exercise: Spending excessive time grooming or exercising to correct the flaw (e.g., muscle dysmorphia).
  • Comparison & Reassurance Seeking: Constantly comparing appearance to others or seeking validation that they are not “ugly”.
  • Unnecessary Medical Procedures: Frequently seeking dermatological or cosmetic procedures with little to no satisfaction

Negative body image

• Dissatisfaction, shame or unhappiness with your body size or shape, often driven by societal expectations and weight stigma.
• Part of negative body image is often distorted body image – and this is often what people are calling “body dysmorphia” that’s really not. Body image distortion is when someone things they’re fatter than they really are, or when they think they’re thinner than they really are. It’s a distortion in size, shape or weight that connects with negative body image and body dissatisfaction. 
• So yes there’s distortion, but dysmorphia is a separate clinical diagnosis. 

The reason this matters is that we need to be clear on what’s going on and what to do about it. Body dysmorphia is more of an OCD-type fixation on specific things about your body. Negative body image or body dissatisfaction is more of a diet culture and disordered eating issue. And yes, you can have a warped view of your body (especially if your body size has changed up or down, where you might still see yourself the way you used to be), but that distortion will usually resolve as we address the underlying body shame. 

How Body Distortion Turns Into Lies About Your Body

Here’s the part most people don’t realize…Body dysmorphia or body image distortion doesn’t just make you feel bad about your body. It actually changes the story your brain tells you about your body.

And that story starts to feel like objective truth with a capital T.

Here’s how the cycle usually unfolds.

Step 1: The Distorted Perception

Something that could be pretty neutral happens.

You look in the mirror.
You feel bloated after a meal.
Your jeans feel slightly tighter.
You see a photo of yourself.

Your brain immediately interprets that through a distorted lens, and then instead of it just being a neutral observation, the thought becomes:

• “I look huge.”
• “My body is getting out of control.”
• “I’ve gained so much weight.”
• “Something is wrong with my body.”

The key thing here is that the perception itself is already distorted. But it feels completely real.

Step 2: Your Brain Creates a “Logical” Explanation

Once your brain believes the distorted perception, it starts building a story around it to make sense of it. Our brains do this all the time.This is where the lies start forming. Your brain says things like:

• “You shouldn’t be eating this much.”
• “You need to be more disciplined.”
• “You can’t trust yourself with food.”
• “If you don’t control this, it will get worse.”

And here’s the most challenging part…These thoughts feel real, and responsible and rational. Because they’re trying to solve a problem your brain believes exists.

Step 3: Control Becomes the Solution

Once your brain believes your body is a problem, control becomes the obvious solution. So you start trying to manage it through exerting more control over your food, weight and exercise behaviors. That might look like:

• Eating less to “compensate”
• Skipping meals
• Trying to be “good” with food
• Tracking what you eat
• Weighing yourself frequently
• Avoiding certain foods
• Forcing yourself to work out and burn a certain amount of calories

Your brain believes it’s protecting you, so therefore this feels useful and protective – but this is where things start unraveling. Because now you’re responding to a distorted signal. It would be like when your smoke alarm goes off while you’re cooking dinner and there’s no actual fire, but you panic, run out of the house and call 911 instead of just opening a window to let the smoke out and turning off the alarm.

Step 4: The Evidence Gets Misinterpreted

Here’s where the cycle reinforces itself. When you restrict food, ignore hunger, or try to control your eating, your body eventually pushes back, and you end up with:

• intense hunger
• cravings, and charmed foods calling to you
• overeating episodes
• food obsession and tons of food noise
• fatigue
  

And your brain interprets this as proof. “See? You can’t trust yourself with food.”

But what actually happened was this: The distorted body perception created a problem that didn’t exist, and the control behaviors created the obsession and feeling out of control that followed. So then your brain learns the wrong lesson. Instead of realizing the distortion was the issue, it concludes: “My BODY is the problem.”

And the cycle continues.

The Real Consequence

Over time, this pattern completely erodes your trust with your body. You stop trusting:

• your hunger
• your fullness
• your appetite
• your body’s stability
• your ability to eat normally

So you turn to outside authorities like diet rules, food plans, and (of course) the scale.

Because if your brain keeps telling you your body is unreliable, it makes sense that you’d start looking for something else to guide you. This is why so many people become tethered to the scale. When you don’t trust your perception of your body, you start searching for a number to tell you what’s “really” happening.

The Scale Becomes a “Reality Checker”

When someone doesn’t trust their perception of their body, they look for external data. The scale becomes:

• A truth detector
• A reassurance device
• A punishment device
• A way to confirm fears

But the scale doesn’t solve the distortion. It actually reinforces it and solidifies it in your brain. Why? Because every emotional reaction reinforces the neural pathway: “My body is a problem that needs constant monitoring.”

How This Destroys Trust With Food

Now let’s connect this directly to intuitive eating…When someone believes their body is:

• Too big
• Out of control
• Flawed
• Constantly “getting worse”

They naturally try to control food. Which leads to:

• Restricting food
• Ignoring hunger
• Feeling guilty after eating
• Binge/restrict cycles
• Obsessing about “being good”

And then they conclude: “See? I can’t trust myself with food.” But what’s really happening: They’re reacting to false alarms from a distorted internal body image system.

The Real Reason Intuitive Eating Feels So Scary

For someone with body distortion, intuitive eating feels terrifying because it requires TRUST:

• Trusting hunger
• Trusting fullness
• Trusting body signals
• Trusting weight fluctuations

But if your brain is screaming: “Your body is out of control!” OF COURSE trusting it feels impossible! Your brain believes it’s protecting you.

The Shift: Learning to Question Your Internal Narrator

Just because you feel huge doesn’t mean your body has actually changed. (and even if your body has changed, and even if your body is objectively a fat body – we also need to question the underlying assumptions and biases that these are an inherently bad thing)

Just because you feel out of control with food doesn’t mean you are.

Just because you feel inadequate doesn’t mean you are.

Start asking yourself:

• Is this fact or fear?
• Is this my body speaking or my body image distortion?
• What does my body need from me today?

What Rebuilding Trust Actually Looks Like

Trust isn’t built by:

• Fixing your body
• Losing weight
• Eating perfectly

Trust is built by:

• Honoring hunger
• Responding to fullness
• Practicing neutrality toward your body
• Reducing scale reliance
• Gathering real evidence that your body works

Over time the brain and nervous system learn: “My body isn’t the enemy.” You PROVE to yourself that you can trust yourself and your body…by showing yourself that you can. 

Closing Takeaway

I want to leave you with this…

If you’ve spent years believing your body is the problem…it can be incredibly unsettling to realize the real problem might be the distorted lens you’ve been looking through.

But remember this: Your BODY hasn’t been lying to you. Your brain just learned some very convincing stories about it.

And that’s exactly what I want to help you unlearn. Now I do have a free tool to help you with this. It’s my custom Body Image Journal Guide which is filled with prompts to help you break through the body image distortion, and heal your body image from deep within. You can grab those at nondietacademy.com/bodyimage or DM me “BODY IMAGE” and I’ll send it to you. 

Journaling using these specific prompts is one of the most powerful and impactful ways to rewrite the inner body image dialogue inside your head. And if what we talked about here today resonated with you, you’re not going to feel better about your body or make peace with food until we address these underlying narratives. Like I said at the beginning of this episode, if your brain is telling you these lies and distortions about your body, every decision you make that’s built on those assumptions will also be wrong – and this keeps you stuck in that cycle where you don’t trust yourself or your body because your brain is lying to you and distorting things, and your daily behaviors are based on these warped thoughts. We need to fix the thoughts and the perception of your body so that you can choose behaviors that are aligned with reality and what your body actually needs. Staying stuck in that cycle of shame and fear about your body and your weight is a surefire way to stay stuck in your relationship with food as well. So let’s get you unstuck. Grab the free guide at nondietacademy.com/bodyimage, and if you need additional support my DMs are always open. 

That’s a wrap for this episode, and in case nobody has told you today – you are worthy just as you are. We’ll talk again soon.

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