Battling Bad Body Image

Ugh, body image. This used to be a real problem for me every. single. day. I know that lots of other people struggle with it, so I thought I would share my experience with the blogosphere…

A couple of years ago I was at a low point when it comes to health/fitness/body image. I weighed more than I had in a very long time (long time=8 years). This is kind of embarrassing to admit, but you know that Bruno Mars song "Just the way You Are"? Well, back then every time I heard it I would cry, and definitely not in a good way. I did not feel beautiful or amazing and I wanted to feel that way so stinking badly.

Here's the thing: in my head, I knew that I was not overweight,  I really never have been. However, the number of times I have looked in the mirror and called myself fat are countless. I've been trying to figure out where it started, and I really don't know.  While I tend to always have a goal weight in mind, I got to a point where wanted to simply feel good about myself no matter how much I weighed, so I decided to make a conscience effort to work on it. 

I decided then to start working on the way I see myself. I had no reason to be feeling badly other than my own weak mind (i.e. no one had said anything negative to/about me and my husband would always tell me how beautiful I am, I had just kept telling myself I wasn't good enough and I really believed it).

I did some googling to find some articles on body image and found some great advice/thoughts:

When you Look in the Mirror, do you Like What you See?

Is your body image positive or negative? If your answer is negative, you are not alone. Women in the U.S. are under pressure to measure up to a certain social and cultural ideal of beauty, which can lead to poor body image. Women are constantly bombarded with "Barbie Doll-like" images. By presenting an ideal that is so difficult to achieve and maintain, the cosmetic and diet product industries are assured of growth and profits. It's no accident that youth is increasingly promoted, along with thinness, as an essential criterion of beauty. The message we're hearing is either "all women need to lose weight" or that the natural aging process is a "disastrous" fate.

Learning to Love What You See in the Mirror

We all want to look our best, but a healthy body is not always linked to appearance. In fact, healthy bodies come in all shapes and sizes! Changing your body image means changing the way you think about your body. At the same time, healthy lifestyle choices are also key to improving body image.

•   Healthy eating can promote healthy skin and hair, along with strong bones.

•   Regular exercise has been shown to boost self-esteem, self-image, and energy levels.

•   Plenty of rest is key to stress management.

A few other ideas I found about improving self body image:

•   Most of us judge each of our body parts individually -- my thighs are too fat, my breasts too droopy, my lips too thick. Try experiencing your body as a whole, rather than as separate parts that need improvement.


•   Notice how much time you spend worrying about your looks instead of being aware of what is going on inside of you or around you. Try practicing mindfulness, a technique used in meditation and yoga.


•   Give up the media for a week. Forego reading magazines (especially fashion magazines!), watching television, or surfing the Internet. When you get the urge to click the remote control, go for a walk or invite a friend over for tea and conversation. At the end of the week, notice if you feel differently about yourself.


•   Kill your inner supermodel. If you have an image of perfection in your head to which you’re constantly comparing yourself, get rid of it. You think your nose is too big? Compared to whose? You consider your stretch marks “flaws”? Where is it written that our bodies should be free of lines or marks or scars? Such bodies do not exist in real life.

I spent a few months focusing on changing my attitude.  I actually didn't want to work out when I first started trying to improve my body image, because I really wanted to be okay with the present tense me no matter what shape I was in (does that make sense?). So I waited about a month, until I started to feel the effects of my efforts, before starting to run again.

It worked!

It was a total mental thing. I just started looking in the mirror and telling myself that I was good enough and that I am beautiful.  Whenever I had the temptation to pinch my side fat, I would tell myself a loud and resounding no!  Then I would look myself up and down in the mirror and point out to myself the things that I do like about my body.  I would think about that inner supermodel, and then I would consciously push her from my mind.  I couldn't tell you exactly when it started to sink in, but eventually it did and nowadays I feel great! Not to say that my body image is perfect.  I still go through cycles of losing and then gaining and then losing weight, but I am so much happier with myself.