Body Image Treatment
What is body image?
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Your beliefs about your appearance including assumptions and self-perceptions
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How you feel physically and emotionally about your body – shape, size, height, and weight
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Your perceptions and interpretations of your body as you move
What are the signs of body image issues?
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Becoming overly preoccupied with your body shape, appearance, or weight
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Feeling dissatisfied about your body and frequently comparing yourself to others
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Having feelings of shame and self-consciousness regarding your body
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Engaging in unhealthy behaviors to change your appearance including vomiting, yo-yo dieting, and/or taking laxatives
How do you treat body image issues?
When people think of health, they often envision a thin person. Thinness does not necessarily equate to health or happiness. Health comes from our efforts at nourishing our bodies, mentally and physically. Mental health involves engaging in self-care by talking to yourself with compassion, using yourself as your own measuring stick, and turning down the volume of your own self-criticism. Physical health involves choosing nutrient dense foods and engaging in physical exercise because you deserve to take care of yourself. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, we tend to punish our bodies through sleep deprivation, working ourselves too hard, restrictive eating or over-eating, or excessive physical activity to try and “fix” our bodies to fit a certain mold.
I strongly believe in the “Health at Every Size approach.” This approach celebrates body diversity and honors differences in our ascribed attributes like size, age, race, ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual orientation, religion, class, etc. The “Health at Every Size” approach also challenges some of our cultural assumptions regarding weight and size and even challenges some of our scientific understanding of health. The foundation of this approach is compassionate self-care. Self-care and self-love are about appreciating what your body can do for you and celebrating your body’s ability to move. Solely focusing on a calorie in and calorie out approach while neglecting to consider cultural norms, familial traditions, and our bodies own satiety/comfort is not the way to develop life-long healthy habits. Honoring our body’s signals and internal cues of hunger, satiety, and appetite using a mindfulness approach has been shown to be more effective in developing healthy habits. Eating in an attuned and flexible manner while honoring your body’s own internal cues is the key to gaining more control over eating and physical activity.
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