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  Ten Steps to a Healthy Body Image

This page was reviewed or revised on Saturday, October 26, 2002.

What is Body Image?

Everyone has a body image. You can find out yours by the way you describe yourself. It is basically the mental picture you have of your physical appearance and the attitudes and feelings you have toward it. An unrealistic body image occurs when your mental picture is unrelated to physical reality.

Most women in the western world reject their bodies, no matter what their actual body size or shape. Women despair about their heavy thighs, flat chest, or big stomach rather than appreciating their individuality and viewing their physical attributes favourable.

Why do so many women have an unrealistic body image?

The reasons for this may stem from both strong sociocultural pressures to achieve the ideal body size and shape, which is unattainable for most women, and lowered self-esteem.

Your level of self-esteem is related to your evaluation of a number of personal attributes - physical abilities, family role as well as body image. Undue emphasis is often placed on body image. Women tend to disregard their successes in all other areas and have low self-esteem because their body is not the ideal shape.

Our society is partly responsible for this in that looks, specially "leanness" is highly valued and "fatness" is stigmatized.

Why is Dieting Dangerous?

The desire to achieve an "ideal body" may lead to excessive and dangerous dieting. The person may get caught in an "on again -- off again" diet trap, where weight and self esteem go up and down like a yo-yo. For some people, this relentless pursuit of thinness becomes more extreme and leads to anorexia nervosa or bulimia.

Anorexia nervosa is an emotional disorder described by an intense fear of weight gain which ultimately leads to self-induced starvation. Victims experience drastic weight loss from excessive dieting and sometimes excessive exercising. Bulimia is also described by a fear of weight gain and victims are caught in a cycle of uncontrollable binge eating followed by an attempt to get rid of unwanted food or calories. To do this, bulimics may induce vomiting, abuse laxatives, fast or exercise excessively. Bulimics are not necessarily overweight or obese, but their weight tends to vary. These eating behaviours are abnormal, unhealthy and, in some extreme cases, life threatening.

Women in careers which place an emphasis on their bodies (dancers, models) and high achievers such as medical students, have been placed in a high risk group for eating disorders. However, health professionals are seeing the disorders in a much broader spectrum of women.

What can you do about it?

Begin by accepting that it's what's inside that counts, and work at describing the importance of looks in your life. Easier said than done? Here are some body image exercises* to help you work toward a more positive body image:

• Remind yourself of all the things you are besides a body. "I am...caring, worthwhile, growing", etc.
• Stop thinking that thinner thighs are the answer to all of life's problems. Deal with and set goals about the real issues in your life - relationships, job.
• Scales belong on a fish. Try to get yourself off of the scales. Too many people allow the scale to tell them how their life is going to be - "Tell me machine, how should I feel today?"
• Make a list of things you are waiting to get thin to do (wearing a belt, eating a chocolate chip cookie, buying clothes, visiting an old friend, family).
• Begin by doing two things per day that you would have done in the past, only if you were thinner. It may be the same things that you repeat each day for a while, then try riskier activities. Act like a person who is comfortable with her body. Watch what happens to the way you walk, interact, eat.
• Give up judgments about your body. If you find yourself critical of fat thighs, counter the thought with, "the sky is blue", a neutral thought to break emotional reaction to the negative one.
• Make friends with your body. You've tried wishing or hating body parts away. Try a tender message.
• Get rid of all clothes that don't fit. Wearing tight clothing only stresses to yourself how "not right" your body is.
• Spend five minutes daily looking at your body in a mirror - don't judge. Notice curves, length of arms, etc. Complement yourself.
• Find ways to "nourish" yourself, reward yourself other than by eating.

* Taken from the National Eating Disorder Information Center Bulletin, April/May 1987.