How to improve your body image?
As a wellness coach, I focus mostly on emotional eating and helping people end that binge-restrict cycle they get once they jump on a diet. However, another important aspect of healing your relationship with food is also improving your body image as these two go hand in hand.On your journey to improving your body image, here are 6 things that actually can ruin the way you see yourself:
1. Constantly buying clothes that don’t fit or keeping clothes from several years ago in your closet hoping you will fit in them at some point. If you have tried every diet and still haven’t reached your goal, it means this new weight is your current weight. If you can lose but not maintain the new weight, again it’s not your ideal weight. The idea of keeping old clothes is a constant reminder that we have somehow failed in achieving that goal. THAT feeling of failure leads to emotional eating because as we feel defeated we turn to food for comfort.
2. Always on a new dietWhen your body feels that there is a restriction in food, it will after some point slow down- this is what we often hear when someone says they have a “slow metabolism”. When you are starting a new diet all the time, it will fire back with overeating that will make you feel (not look), but feel as if you are already bigger.
3. Scale is your best friendHave you noticed if you don’t weight yourself you may feel great about yourself and actually like what you see in the mirror UNTIL you step on the scale. The disappointment with the number you see is always greater than the feeling you had literally 5 minutes before. Our weight fluctuates and unless you take an average in a week you will constantly feel that your weight is unstable. If you weight yourself all the time, you can feel again that your body has gained weight/fat which in return will lead again to more self-sabotaging behaviour.
4. Body checking Are you the type of person that checks herself in every mirror or on every reflective surface? If so, over time, that will leave you with more body issues than before because all your thoughts are on the physical appearance. As our body can change also within one day (after eating you have more food in your belly therefore it’s not flat), It can leave a negative feeling when we see our reflection in the mirror.
5. Looking only for flawsThis is quite simple- if you are going to spend hours looking at your body in front of a mirror, at least look also at what you like. Don’t focus your attention ONLY on the “flaws”6. Stop following accounts that trigger youI say this all the time, but if you are triggered how someone eats, if you compare your physique to other people, it’s time to let it go. It doesn’t even matter if that body is real or not (photoshop) or if these people actually eat and exercise the way they do. Bottom line: they trigger you. Unfollow.