DEVELOP A POSITIVE BODY IMAGE

Body image is defined as perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and behavioral reactions to body appearance and size.  Your self esteem is linked to how you feel about your body image - negative or positive.

A negative body image can lead to negative behaviors that interfere with your self esteem.  These behaviors can include avoiding social activities or subconsciously sabotaging goals you have identified (i.e. overeating because “I’ll never reach my goal weight anyway”).

It’s not easy in today’s society to escape the obsession with thinness.  Developing a positive body image is not easy.  Does losing weight positively affect your body image?  Not necessarily.  Formerly overweight people often feel they still are carrying around that extra weight.  They may have lost the extra weight, but they haven’t lost the feeling that they are still unacceptable in the way they look.  A positive body image is more than appearance.  It involves respect and compassion for yourself.  When you have compassion for yourself, you accept and understand yourself, even your imperfections.

So how do you develop a positive body image, even if you are not at the weight you are striving for?  Identify what contributes to your negative body image.  Take a look at the following three contributors to negative body image.

1.  The Antecedent Situation

These are the situations or events that trigger your negative body image.  They can be:

·    parties where you know other people will be wearing sleeveless or short dresses and you dread wearing revealing clothing

·    comments about your weight from family members, friends, or others

·    summer vacations involving swimming and swimming suits

Do you have other situations that trigger your negative body image?  Record these.

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2.  Beliefs and Behaviors

This is what we say to ourselves as a result of the antecedent situation.  It’s all that negative self talk and criticism of our appearance and our behaviors as a result of the antecedent behavior.  It’s private self talk that leads to our negative body image. 

What leads to negative beliefs and behaviors?

·   comparing yourself to an unrealistic ideal, such as a model, actress, someone you repeatedly see at the gym or walking in your neighborhood, or someone extremely thin

·    zeroing in on one area of your appearance that you may dislike, and magnifying the importance of this trait or feature

·    blaming the way others treat you because of how you look and how you think they are treating you because of the way you look

·   wearing unflattering clothes because you feel you can’t wear attractive clothes until you are down to your goal weight.

3.  Consequences

What are you missing out on because of your beliefs about the way you look?  The way you react to situations is based on your negative self talk about the way you look.  Do these sound familiar?

·   You can’t exercise because of how you will look in exercise clothes. 

·    You can’t go to the party because of how you will look in a sleeveless dress. 

·     You can’t go shopping for new clothes because nothing looks good on you.

·    “Just wait until I lose a few pounds and my life will be different - all for the  best”.

What you are missing out on is the reality of the present moment.  You’ve probably heard the old expression, “you’re just spinning your wheels.”  And, that is just what you are doing.  This type of thinking prevents you from recognizing and preventing the consequences of your negative self talk.  You sidetrack yourself from facing the truth that you are contributing to your destructive thoughts.

In the following space, write down how your negative thinking has prevented you from living in the present.  If you have difficulty writing this down, write down what you would do if you were down to your goal weight that you are not doing now?

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Why can’t you do these things now?  Look at what you wrote down and then write down how you can do those things now.

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SO......HOW DO YOU CHANGE?

This self talk - how we interpret, evaluate, and believe the situations we encounter, are called cognitions.  We respond to our interpretations of ideas of events, situations, people and objects.  It is these interpretations that affect how we behave.  In cognitive behavior modification, the goal is to change these cognitions that lead to undesirable behaviors.  How, you ask?  

How do you disarm your critic?  TO CONTINUE - Click here for information on positive affirmations.