Feeling “Off” in Your Body Lately? This Might Be Why.
On the burnout-body image spiral, how exhaustion impacts our self-perception, and what we can do to get a little more comfort.
If you’re feeling a little flat…maybe a little zombie-adjacent…or the kind of wrung-out where even a quiet weekend or a handful of decent nights of sleep barely makes a dent—you’re not alone.
These past few months (years? what is time anymore?) have been heavy. Messy. Unrelenting. And so many of us are carrying something deeper than ordinary tiredness.
We’re experiencing burnout.
Burnout is that total-body depletion that happens when we’ve been stretched past our edges for too long—mentally, emotionally, physically. For some, it’s work. For others, caregiving. Maybe it’s chronic illness. Or a decades-long battle with body image and food. And then there are the horrors that never cease—a constant stream of news and headlines that keep our nervous system on a perpetual rollercoaster. All of this gets tangled up in the impossible task of meeting societal expectations…proving our worth…pretending we don’t need rest or softness or care…trying to show up for everyone else while we quietly suffer.
Let’s be very clear, though: burnout is not our fault.
It’s more than an individual experience; it’s a symptom of living in systems that demand more than we can give. And plenty of research has shown the devastating effects this has on our well-being—elevated cortisol, depression, anxiety, loneliness, insomnia, a chipped-away sense of self. These aren’t personal failures; they’re the predictable outcome of a culture that values our productivity over our humanity.
If you want to read more about the science in a narrative form, this book by Emily and Amelia Nagoski is wonderful.
But what I want to talk about today is the connection between burnout and body image—or really, burnout and embodiment.
Because burnout isn’t just about working too much. I love the way Nedra Tawwab describes it below—she really articulates the way burnout relates to not treating ourselves kindly. And something I find myself writing about, repetitively, is how similar controlling our body through controlling our food is to the dynamics of an unhealthy (or toxic) relationship.
This kind of overextension (as Nedra puts it) results in depletion that doesn’t just dim our joy, it disconnects us from ourselves. From the body that carries us, senses the world, and lets us live this one precious life.
Think of it this way: every single thing we experience happens through our body. So when we’re running on fumes, giving and feeling past capacity, it absolutely changes how we feel in our body—and inevitably, how we feel about our body. The worse we feel physically, the more vulnerable we are to emotional strain… and the more strain we’re under, the harsher our body thoughts tend to get. A loop with no exit ramp.
Prolonged stress leaves us feeling out of sync with our bodies.
Our sleep shifts, our digestion protests, our bodies feel foreign. And diet culture—ever opportunistic—swoops in to tell us that the pain we feel is a sign that our body is the problem, not the impossible pressure we’re under.
So we double down. We tighten the reins. We try to “fix” ourselves instead of asking why we’re hurting.
Suddenly the whispers of body shame get louder.
They always do when we’re depleted.
The less we rest, the more vulnerable we are to believing lies about our worth.
When burnout takes hold, this means we are deeply lacking what keeps us safe and what keeps us human: rest, nourishment, and ease. So our self-talk gets sharp. Compassion thins. Every perceived flaw feels louder. And without the emotional capacity to soften toward ourselves, those messages go unchallenged.
So as we move toward the end of the year, I hope you’ll gently notice the conditions you’re living in—and how they shape the way it feels to live inside your body.
I hope that, instead of reaching for body control or food rigidity, we can try something different.
Let’s reclaim what burnout steals: connection, care, and self-compassion. When we interrupt the cycle, even in small ways, we rebuild trust with our bodies—remembering they’re not projects, but homes.
Here are a few gentle reminders that might help, even if just a little bit:
Give yourself permission to slow down.
Rest isn’t something you earn. It’s something you need. A rested body is a safer-feeling body—one that’s easier to treat with gentleness.
Practice body neutrality.
Burnout makes everything feel extreme. You don’t need to love your appearance to care for yourself. Aim for kindness and respect.
Honor your boundaries.
Burnout thrives where “yes” is automatic. Protecting your time, your energy, and your emotional space (including online) strengthens your sense of worth—and that inevitably supports your body image, too.
Speak to yourself with warmth.
Criticism can feel automatic, but it isn’t inevitable. It’s just the script we’ve been handed, and the one we’ve kept practicing. Remind yourself that you’re navigating a hard season. Your body is doing everything it can to support you. It deserves support back.
The overlap between burnout and negative body image is real, but the same practices that help us recover from burnout can also help heal our relationship with our bodies.
When we ask why we feel so uncomfortable in our skin, we can often trace it back to the conditions around us, not to a personal failing.
And when we understand that, we can meet the discomfort with curiosity and care instead of control.
I’d love to hear what this brings up for you.
What does burnout feel like in your world?
Have you noticed how exhaustion shapes the way you feel about your body?
And what’s your favorite way to rest — the kind that feels like an exhale?
Burnout for me lately feels like I’m in an elevator that doesn’t ever stop on a floor. It’s just hurtling through space with no end goal.
My job is easy and I work from home, so I judge myself for wanting more time off. I also don’t get a lot of PTO, so I can’t always take time off, even when I need a mental health day.
I also am really struggling with rest lately. I set off to rest more at the beginning of the day, but then my thoughts get too loud and I can’t sit still. I also deal with a lot of guilt over being unproductive or lazy because I see so much rhetoric lately about how unhealthy it is to be sedentary. For me I think I’ve struggled with my eating disorder for so long that it’s hard to disentangle being active from my identity. So when I’m less active, it feels like I’m losing a part of myself. I’ve always been very active, but I know that the last 18 years has been filled with overexercise. It’s such a hard behavior to conquer in the current climate and when I live in a community where everyone around me is really active.
When I do allow myself to rest, which I really want to do more often, I love to curl up on my couch with a warm, fuzzy blanket in my pajamas.
This is a really insightful and thought-provoking post! I hadn’t considered burnout within the context of body image before, and this makes a tremendous amount of sense. Something that was really shocking to me was how much I started sleeping after I committed to ED recovery in earnest. It’s been about two years, and I still sleep far more than I ever have in my life. I struggled with feeling VERY guilty about this (lazy, unproductive, etc.), but I also recognize that, after decades of depleting and pushing my body to its limits on little fuel and no rest, my body is finally healing. It’s been fascinating to see the positive recovery-related effects since letting myself sleep more!