{"id":81526,"date":"2025-08-19T15:47:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T15:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/81526\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T15:47:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T15:47:10","slug":"tom-grennan-says-therapy-helps-with-his-body-dysmorphia-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/81526\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Grennan says therapy helps with his body dysmorphia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Glynn<\/p>\n

Culture reporter<\/p>\n

\"BBCBBC<\/p>\n

Tom Grennan performed during BBC Radio 1’s recent Big Weekend in Liverpool<\/p>\n

Singer Tom Grennan has said having therapy has helped him with issues around body dysmorphia, calling himself his “own biggest critic”. <\/p>\n

Speaking on You About? – the performer’s BBC podcast<\/a> with his best friend, broadcaster Roman Kemp – Grennan spoke about how it affected him.<\/p>\n

“I definitely have body dysmorphia,” he said. “I’m always constantly thinking I am bigger than I am. Or I’m always pinching my belly. It’s not a healthy mindset at all, and I fully admit that.”<\/p>\n

Eating patterns and gym training habits, he noted, can have a big impact on his mental health. “Sometimes I wouldn’t be training for the purpose of staying fit,” he added.<\/p>\n

“I’d have a binge with eating and then I’d be like, ‘I need to go and train now to make sure these calories or this food isn’t put on to me – which is an unhealthy way of being.”<\/p>\n

Tom Grennan opens up about his body dysmorphia<\/p>\n

Feelings of guilt often follow eating binges, he admitted. For example, when one biscuit turns into half a packet, he said, he can be left thinking: “I’m gonna be fat. I’m gonna be so unfit.”<\/p>\n

With reference to how he viewed himself and his own body, the Little Bit of Love singer continued: “I’m at home in the mirror going to my missus, ‘I’m fat’ and she’s like, ‘are you alright? You’re not’.”<\/p>\n

He said he had been “scared of going back” to an unhealthy lifestyle. “I always think I need to stay at this point.”<\/p>\n

The singer from Bedford has previously spoken<\/a> on the same podcast about how being physically attacked on a night out when he was younger changed his life and sent him “spiralling”.<\/p>\n

In the latest episode, the 30-year-old revealed he was in “a good place with it” right now, regarding his body dysmporhia, after having had therapy which he finds helps to “actually love yourself more”.<\/p>\n

What is body dysmorphia?<\/p>\n

According to the NHS website<\/a>, body dysmorphia – or body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) – is “a mental health condition where a person spends a lot of time worrying about flaws in their appearance. These flaws are often unnoticeable to others.”<\/p>\n

It affects both men and women of all ages but is most common in teenagers and young adults.<\/p>\n

“Having BDD does not mean you’re vain or self-obsessed,” it continues. “It can be very upsetting and have a big impact on your life.”<\/p>\n

Symptoms can include worrying a lot about a specific area of your body and spending a lot of time comparing your looks with other people’s, as well as either looking at yourself in the mirror a lot or avoiding mirrors entirely.<\/p>\n

People with body dysmorphia also go to a lot of effort to conceal flaws with clothes and make-up, or pick at their skin.<\/p>\n

\"GettyGetty<\/p>\n

Grennan also played in this year’s Soccer Aid match at Old Trafford<\/p>\n

TV and radio presenter Kemp shared some of his own experiences with Grennan on the pressures of body image and around weight in show business.<\/p>\n

“I can’t look at a picture of myself if it’s on the day because it will upset me for the rest of the day,” the One Show host noted.<\/p>\n

“I’ll be judging everything, and it won’t be about what I’m actually doing, it’ll be about how I look. And I don’t want to live like that.”<\/p>\n

The former model recalled witnessing one extreme example of such pressures for one young woman at a fashion show in Milan. “We were doing the rehearsal, and she fainted on stage,” he remembered.<\/p>\n

“We tried to give her food, because she needs to eat, but [she was] straight up refusing,” he added. “I saw that on a regular basis.”<\/p>\n

Kemp also recounted how someone in a pub recently told him he looked “a lot fatter on telly”.<\/p>\n

He said: “I fluctuate a lot, but that’s just because sometimes you’ll be working more, like anyone.”<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Grennan went on to tell BBC Breakfast how he had channelled some hard life lessons, heartbreak and advice from his mum too into his new album, Everywhere I Went, Led Me to Where I Didn’t Want to Be.<\/p>\n

“I was lost and I was young and I was stupid sometimes, and my mum could see something wasn’t right,” said the singer, who has two previous number one albums to his name.<\/p>\n

“And a lot of people could see, but I was very much [like], ‘no I need to be going full at it and doing everything I can to become a big star’ or whatever.”<\/p>\n

He added: “But actually none of that matters. Peace of mind is my mantra at the moment.<\/p>\n

“When you’ve got peace of mind everything falls into place and you can see your way out of anything.”<\/p>\n

If you are affected by this article you can access support and information at BBC Action Line<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul Glynn Culture reporter BBC Tom Grennan performed during BBC Radio 1’s recent Big Weekend in Liverpool Singer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[49,48,84,393,394],"class_list":{"0":"post-81526","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}