Thread: Muscle Dysmorphia

A while ago i read about muscle dysmorphia (a psychological condition that when you see yourself, mainly your body, you are never satisfied. Its like anorexia, only the opposite. you never have enough muscle and/or never big enough). Unfortunately, i think i suffer from this. I have made great gains, and still continue to grow (i want to do my first show next summer). But whenever i look in the mirror, i am never, and will never, be satisfied.

Don't get me wrong please. I love bodybuilding for all else that comes with it (dedication, desire, challenge and everything else). Its almost too much though. Its like i live to bodybuild. I base my weekly schedule on days on and days off. The best part of my day is in the gym, when i'm pumped up. That is when i feel the best.

My friends, family and even strangers i don't know come up to me and compliment me on what a nice physique i have. I don't know if it's me being the humble and modest person i naturally am or what, but i don't even thank them because truly inside i feel like its not all that great. Some days i'll see myself in the mirror, and be like "you're coming along nice". But unfortunately most days its "i need more upper chest, rear delt definition, lower lats, higher traps, outer thigh sweep, tighter obliques, thicker tri's, longer bi's and more outer calves"...(you get the point).


Now i know bodybuilding, like life, is a journey, not a destination. I realize it takes years upon years of discipline (training, eating, sleeping), and i am relatively young.

But do some of you feel like this as well?

I think the difference between this disease and something like anorexia and/or bulimia is that most of us do not take it to the point where our "obsession" is unhealthy. We are always achieving to be bigger and more defined, etc...but we do it in a healthy way for the most part.

It is when we start obsessively juicing, eating insane foods, doing strange things to our bodies, overtraining like mad that this becomes a harmful problem. There is such a thing as a healthy addiction...it is when it becomes unhealthy and begins to affect other areas of your life in a negative way that it is a bad thing.