How to Retrain Your Brain on Body Image
In an excerpt from her new book, When Life Happens, Dr. Rachel Goldman walks you through how to change your internal narrative.
Reported by Women's Health Magazine.
Your brain isn't wired to love your body—it's wired to compare it. And right now, in 2026, that's harder than ever. Between GLP-1s reshaping bodies overnight, AI filters perfecting every angle, and an infinite scroll of curated versions of everyone else, body image has become less about how you look and more about the psychological toll of constantly measuring yourself against an impossible standard.
According to Women's Health Magazine, clinical psychologist Rachel Goldman, PhD, makes a distinction that should hit different: body image isn't about your body. It's about your relationship to your body—how you think about it, feel in it, and the narrative you've constructed around it over time. That means you can struggle with body image at any size. There's no magic weight where you suddenly feel "fixed." And yes, that scale number you obsess over? It holds power only because you've given it permission to dictate your entire day.
The Stories We Tell Ourselves
Here's where it gets real: the messages you internalized about your body—from diet culture, from social media, from the people around you—became a story. And like any story, it can be questioned and rewritten. The body you see in the mirror on a good day versus a bad day hasn't changed. What's changed is the lens you're looking through. Sometimes that lens is clouded by mood, stress, hormones, or the cruel voice in your head that wouldn't dare speak to a friend that way.
Goldman's framework is straightforward: notice the negative self-talk, challenge whether it's even true, ask yourself if you'd say it to someone you love, then reframe it into something kinder. Repeat. It's not positive affirmations on steroids—it's the unglamorous work of building a new neural pathway, muscle-by-muscle, thought-by-thought. Small daily practices (affirmations, gratitude for what your body does, kind words in the mirror) aren't fluffy; they're the repetition required to actually rewire your brain. This takes time. It won't feel natural at first. That's not a sign it's not working.
Body respect—even on the hard days—beats body love every single time.
Read the original at Women's Health Magazine.
