what is negative body image?
Poor body image, or negative body image, can look different for every person. At a baseline, it is having a difficult time accepting or being kind to your body. It is normalized in our culture to be dissatisfied with how we look and always be looking to change something, whether cosmetic, related to weight, muscle mass, etc.
Living in a culture like this one is challenging. We are all almost set up to hate the way we look at some point in our lifetime. Not to mention how many different phases our bodies go through as we age, adapting to those changes is difficult, we don’t need diet culture telling us not to accept aging on top of that!
Why it is important to focus on improving body image?
Negative body image can be a culprit to many other health and emotional concerns. A big one being the development of an eating disorder. At Bamboo Nutrition, we work with many individuals who express grave body dissatisfaction and this typically results in some sort of disordered eating behaviors. Not everyone who restricts, diets, binges, or over exercises will develop an eating disorder, but those behaviors do place you at high risk for the development of one. Other consequences of negative body image may include difficulty with self-esteem and relationships, depression, anxiety, insecurity, marital problems including sex life, and more.
Negative body image impacts us in so many ways. Therefore, it is worth addressing.
I want to share with you 4 important things I think you should do right away if you are wanting to improve your body image. I have worked with hundreds of individuals with eating disorders and disordered eating, where negative body image is a central part to their work with me. These are absolutely things we discuss in our individual sessions early in our work together in order to lay the foundation for body image work.
4 things to start doing to improve body image
1. Establish treatment with a therapist who is specialized in body image and other concerns that may be impacted by your negative body image, such as anxiety, depression, eating, movement, etc.
The following 3 recommendations to improve your body image can fill you with a lot of emotion. It is very hard to address body image alone and see improvement. Therefore, we encourage you to find a professional who can help you take all this self learning, awareness and practice and put it into positive, meaningful steps towards healing. This professional will help you go deeper, unpack the emotions and learn more about yourself.
Negative body image usually does not exist on its own. It can be accompanied by an eating disorder, disordered eating, trauma, PTSD, anxiety, depression, and more. Therefore it would be wise to carefully select a professional with the most expertise in the things that encompass these concerns.
2. Write down your beliefs about beauty, your body, and health.
Sometimes we have to start with being really honest with ourselves and unpacking where these beliefs come from. This work could be several days, months, or years. This is why step one is to find a professional to begin treatment, so when you do this hard work of increasing self awareness, you have someone who is an expert to help you dig through and learn more about yourself in a way that will push you towards healing and not just hurt you more.
3. Adjust your social media- make it a safer space.
Unfollow accounts that make you feel bad about yourself every time you see one of their posts. If you compare yourself to the person in the pictures or videos, unfollow immediately. It is hard to do this if you ultimately really like the person as an individual. You can save their account for when you are in a better place emotionally and do not instantly compare yourself to them. If there are accounts that are encouraging you to change your body, to follow a diet or engage in disordered movement or eating behaviors, these are not good accounts to follow.
You may have to unfollow certain friends that like to post before-and-after photos, or are members of Weight Watchers and other diet schemes and fill their feed with that information. You may have to unfollow friends or family members who you compare yourself to and wish you looked like. Again, you can always follow these folks at a later time when you are in a better place, but it is not worth the negative thoughts to have these accounts pop up on your feed, and it is not helping your relationship with these people to be having these thoughts every time you see their posts.
There are so many accounts out there that have images of individuals of all body types, races, and abilities. It can be really refreshing to follow accounts that fill your feed with diversity and remind you that the world we live in is made up more of many bodies, not only than the ones in the celebrity world, fitness world, or beauty industry.
Follow accounts that encourage health-promoting behaviors, that also encourage self compassion, self care, therapy, and self acceptance. There are many intuitive eating accounts of dietitians that share wonderful information on food that is not encouraging of diet culture or body shaming. There are also many therapists on social media that share wonderful skills, tips, and advice on how to get through difficult body image situations, thoughts, etc.
I’m not a stranger to social media, I understand that the people we follow sometimes are only a small percentage of our feed because of the algorithms and paid advertisements. When “inspired content” or advertisements come up that are harmful to your work in healing your body image, select “hide this” or “I am not interested/stop showing this to me” to adjust what you are seeing. This part probably takes the longest and is sometimes why people choose during the beginning stages of body image work to get rid of social media all together.
4. Aim for body tolerance or body neutrality.
These are words you may learn with your body image specialist, but the goal to improving body image is not to love yourself. For most of us, we are just striving to be less unkind to ourselves, or perhaps to be neutral-
For example, I don’t hate my stomach, but I don’t necessarily like it. I understand we all have stomachs that look different and stomachs can change in terms of size, feel, appearance, throughout our lives and that is okay. I don’t want to wear pants that make me conscious of my stomach all day long and I don’t want to wear shirts that also make me conscious of my stomach all day long. I want to be comfortable and focus on the other things in my life like friendships, faith, family, work, etc.
Body tolerance and neutrality is a big goal in and of itself. Don’t make the mistake in thinking you have failed or are settling for an “easy goal.” Woah woah woah… this is not easy. Nothing about body image work is easy. Read that earlier paragraph again. Doesn’t that sound nice? To be able to free up some mental space, to not hate a body part? To wear comfortable clothing and acknowledge that this body part will change overtime and that is ok? This, my friend, is the beautiful work of body image recovery. This is a wonderful place to be. Of course, we would hope for all of our clients to experience positive body image and peace with their body, but for many of us, body neutrality is a goal that we would also be very happy maintaining for awhile.
How do you practice body neutrality?
Start first by not using negative and hurtful language to describe yourself. Begin thinking of those body parts in terms of their function and purpose. Our body’s main purpose is not to look “pretty” in those jeans… what is the real purpose behind your upper leg? Your calf? Your ankles and feet? What do they provide you? Are you grateful, even just a little bit, for what that body part allows you to do? Alright. Now we are getting somewhere! This is how you need to practice thinking until it becomes more natural.
Utilize the therapy skill, opposite action. When you have a negative thought about a body part, use opposite action and verbalize a neutral thought about that same body part. Or you could use physical action and kindly rub, pat, or hold that body part. At first it may feel like you are doing this all day long. It will become less and less overtime and that is how you know that you are achieving body neutrality.
body acceptance is possible
From reading this passage, I hope I have instilled hopefulness for you about regaining acceptance and kindness of and towards your body again some day. This is not easy work and at Bamboo Nutrition we have dietitians and therapists who would love the opportunity to guide and encourage you through this work.
If you’re ready to take steps towards a more neutral, tolerant, or even accepting body image, click the button below and start a conversation with us :)