How to Improve Your Body Image - Tried and Tested Methods
Body image refers to the perceptions, beliefs, thoughts, feelings and actions you hold that pertain to your physical appearance. A positive body image promotes self-esteem, self acceptance, good physical and mental health, positive relationships and a positive attitude towards food and exercise. Conversely, negative feelings related to our outward appearance can have serious implications for our health and quality of life. A poor body image lowers self esteem, can cause inter-personal anxiety and social withdrawal, can jeopardise sexual relationships, is related to depression and can bring about disordered eating behaviours.
The people who are most resilient to threats and challenges to their body image are not so because they are beautiful or thin. Instead, they:
Are protected by not relying on their physical appearance for their identity or self worth and
Keep their looks in perspective by investing in other things for self-fulfilment such as family, friends, achievements, work and leisure interests.
This sounds all well and good, like “yeah I’d love to feel that way, but I don’t”.
So, how do you achieve a positive body image?
Below are 10 scientifically proven methods for bolstering your body image, most extracted from Dr Thomas Cash’s The Body Image Workbook.
If you find any of the tips below helpful or feel that you would benefit from a more thorough approach to addressing your body image, I highly recommend working through this book in it’s entirety.
Be interested in why you hold negative feelings towards your body
Get acquainted with yourself in the mirror - in a non-judgemental way
Mindfully self monitor during negative body image experiences
Keep a body image diary
Face your body image avoidance
Overcome your appearance checking and appearance fixing
Become a flexible groomer
Find pleasure and mastery in physical activity
Build on other aspects of your life
Protect yourself from cultural bombardment and don’t get health messages and thin ideal messages mixed up.
Be interested in why you hold negative feelings towards your body.
Your body image develops over time starting from childhood and is influenced by a huge range of experiences. The factors that influence your body image can fall in to one or more of a bunch of categories:
Forces from the past that have shaped the way you view your physical appearance
Current influences: the events and experiences in everyday life that determine how you think, feel and react to your looks
Cultural influences
Interpersonal experiences: with family or peers
Physical characteristics or changes
Personality traits of risk or resilience
It can be helpful to break down your life to date in to a period of stages: early childhood / later childhood / early adolescence / late adolescence / adulthood to now and take notes about how you looked at each stage and the influences on how you felt at each stage. This will help you to form a narrative around what has moulded your body image in to the shape it is today. The better you understand, the better you can address the challenges facing you.
Importantly, understanding the factors that have influenced your body image is different from blaming them. Blaming your past or forces outside of your control may help you justify having a problem, but it doesn’t help you solve it. Labelling yourself as a helpless victim does nothing to help you change. Change will only occur if you begin to take responsibility for the choices you make here and now.
Get acquainted with yourself in the mirror - in a non-judgemental way.
When we look in the mirror, our commentary on what we see is typically laced with judgement: I really hate what I see. My belly is too big. My thighs touch. I have cellulite. My ass is flat. My hair looks awful.
Our interpretations of our reflections are:
Biased so heavily towards our flaws. We don’t focus on our positive attributes and only point out what we dislike.
Judgemental, in that we don’t just observe ourselves; we critically evaluate and,
Mindless, in that we are often unable to objectively observe our thoughts and feelings. Instead, we immediately react to them with emotion.
Looking at the reflection in the mirror is a confronting experience for many because of these reasons above.
Practice standing in front of the mirror looking at your body from head to toe, looking at every area of your body. Be mindful not to zoom in on “problem areas” or skip over areas of your appearance that you do actually like. Allow yourself to spend an equal amount of time on every part. From head to toe, describe each aspect or feature of your body, as though you were describing your appearance to an artist who is to sketch you without seeing you. Be objectively descriptive, not evaluative or judgemental. Do not use subjectively critical words like ugly, blotchy, bad or fat. If you become aware that you expressed a judgement or criticism, pause to look at the feature again and use a more objective, factual term. During this process, be aware of any feelings you experience and briefly describe them. EG, I am feeling calm or I am feeling anxious. Then continue. Do this every second day for ~four to five sessions with day one being fully clothed and progressively removing layers as the days go on.
The objective of this process is to start to recognise the judgements you have of your body and replace them with more mindful and objective observations.
“And in any case, it was not the physical details or the clothes and the accessories which mattered most. It was the personality which made the difference between being badly dressed and well dressed.”
— Elizabeth Jolley
Mindfully self-monitor during negative body image experiences.
During periods of heightened awareness of our body image, we critically evaluate our appearance, draw rapid and mindless conclusions and then blame our appearance for our unhappiness. We feel and respond so reactively, with no opportunity for rational thought or objective appraisal.
If you no longer want to be controlled by negative emotions around your outward appearance, you must be able to remove yourself from your subjective, judgemental experience and observe your thoughts and behaviours in an objective way.
“But I’m always analysing my looks. I’m always aware of what it looks like and how it makes me feel — awful! It doesn’t help.” Being intensely aware of your appearance or deeply immersed in emotion is not self-monitoring.
When a negative body image experience affects you, ask yourself:
What am I feeling?
What just happened to make me feel this way?
What am I saying to myself in this situation?
How am I reacting or wanting to react behaviourally to this experience?
In monitoring your thoughts and behaviours in a mindful way, you become consciously attuned to specific aspects of your own ongoing experience. This is a skill that can be developed through practice.
Keep a body image diary.
There are two primary ways to externalise your thoughts: writing and speaking. To make sense of what is going on within your mind, it can be helpful to get it out and on to paper so you can see it more clearly.
You can use a body image diary in two ways: retrospectively [reflecting on past and perhaps recurrent experiences] and as a tool to work through negative body image experiences when they occur. You might first like to use the diary retrospectively to develop the skill of reporting on your emotions and behaviour in a mindful way so that you are more able to call on this skill in a more heated environment [EG, in the midst of a body image episode].
Populate your diary with the following prompts:
What events triggered your feelings about your looks?
What thoughts and interpretations about yourself and the event were going through your mind at the time / what was the mental conversation you were having with yourself?
How did you react emotionally to the situation? Answer this question in terms of the type, intensity and duration of the emotions experienced.
How did you react behaviourally to the situation? Did you try to get out of the situation / did you become withdrawn / did you attempt to fix or conceal part of your physical self / did you take your feelings out on others or yourself?
Most importantly when keeping a body image diary, be mindful and accepting of your entries and of yourself. Your body image diary is not a place for judgment — just observe the episode as it unfolds, as judgement-free as possible. You will get better at this over time.
As I said above, practice answering these prompts retrospectively at first, reflecting on past events that have triggered you. Then pre-populate your diary with these prompts to use in the future during a negative body image episode. You’ll be much more likely to use your journal in the heat of the moment if some of the work is already done for you.
IG post: “I want to lose weight so I will feel better about myself” -- there are two seperate goals inherent in this statement
Face your body image avoidance.
Body image distress often leads us to employ self-defence mechanisms to try to correct or conceal perceived flaws in our appearance. Ironically, such self-protection actually promotes self-rejection — by rejecting the acceptability of your body, you end up worsening your body image and your self-esteem.
People with negative body image will go to great lengths to avoid displaying their “defects” to themselves and to others. They will either:
Run: avoiding practices, places, people or poses that reveal their perceived flaws or,
Hide: concealing what they dislike about their looks using clothing, make up or other cosmetics.
It is empowering to overcome these behaviours so they can no longer control you. You can do this by gradually exposing yourself to the thing you are avoiding. However, to do so requires courage, commitment and your acceptance of momentary discomfort. Here’s step by step how to approach it:
Write a list of practices, places, people and poses you avoid [ways you run]. Each item should be highly specific.
Assign each a score out of 100 for how confident you are to overcome them: 100 being extremely confident and 0 being not confident at all.
Place them in order from 100% confidence to 0% confidence, so the items you are most confident in overcoming are at the top of the list.
Check that there is a reasonable range of ratings among your list. You should have about half over 50% and half below 50%. If nearly all of your items are below 50, it is a hard to-do list. If nearly all are above 50, it is an easy to do list. Try to even out a bunched up list by modifying the details of the tasks to make them more approachable or more challenging as needed. We want the spread to be even so you can progressively build up to the more daunting tasks, building your confidence in yourself as you work towards the most challenging items.
Once your list is ready, prepare for your first task: what will you do, when and where will you do it, for how long and how will you cope with the uncomfortable feelings that will inevitably present themselves?
Then dive in to task one.
As you move up the ladder, if any item seems too hard, break it down in to smaller steps. EG, if you are lacking confidence in your ability to have your partner see you naked, you could perhaps build your confidence in the task by first having your partner see you in your underwear.
A few important notes:
Only ever focus on the current task at hand. Don’t allow yourself become overwhelmed and disempowered by future tasks you are not up to yet. You will be better prepared by the time you get there.
This process will be uncomfortable. Your goal is not to be totally free from discomfort while facing what you normally avoid. Your goal is simply to carry out the activity, to accept any discomfort you feel and to comfort yourself.
Finally, praise yourself and enjoy the success! Working through any of your avoidance behaviours is a daunting task. Try to avoid coming away from each task with thoughts like “ yes, I did it but….” If you went in there and had a go, you have made positive steps. No buts!"
Once you have worked through the ways in which you “run” from your body image, you will do the same thing for the ways in which you hide, following the same steps. This time step one will be writing a list of things you don’t like about your appearance and ways in which you conceal it. You will rate your confidence in your ability to refrain from using each particular action to conceal your looks and work through them in order. Importantly, choose situations in which not engaging in your hiding behaviours is reasonably acceptable for everyone. EG, no one expects you to rock up to your corporate job in track pants or go to a formal wedding without make up on.
Facing your body image avoidance takes time, planning, risk taking and patience. But, overhauling self-defeating habits of falsely protecting yourself from your own thoughts and emotions can be seriously life changing. Don’t give up. Giving up is an act of avoiding failure, but of course it doesn’t really work because nothing changes. When nothing changes, nothing can gets better.
Overcome your appearance checking and appearance fixing.
Appearance checking involves compulsively checking and rechecking your appearance. Appearance fixing involves seeking remedies to fix whatever you believe might be wrong. These are other types of self defeating behaviour, where your self-protection actually amplifies your self-rejection.
Appearance checking is often preceded by recurrent thoughts that something is wrong with your appearance which makes you feel ill at ease. Your self talk nags you about how you look and you need to be reassured that you look okay. Checking on your appearance seems like an easy option to calm your mind and obtain relief from your unsettling worries about your appearance. Appearance fixing will then follow the check and you will meticulously manage your appearance until you are satisfied that you look okay.
Both feel like things that we must do to avoid thinking and feeling that something about our looks is flawed or viewed negatively by others. Because checking and fixing temporarily calm our concerns, we keep doing them, despite the clear or partial realisation that they are obsessive.
There are a few different methods you can use to begin to overcome and free yourself from these behaviours:
Obstruction: can be used for checks that require certain “tools” or conditions such as a mirror or body weight scales. How could you alter the environment to make your ritual more challenging? Remove the mirror or scale from the bathroom perhaps? Obstruction is useful as a short-term approach as avoiding one thing to avoid another is hardly a psychologically productive long term plan. But, it is a helpful technique to set the wheels in motion.
Delay your rituals: pre-checking, there is often a nagging, relentless feeling that you need to check something. By delaying your checking for just a short time, you take the power back from your anxious urge. Waiting it out will be uncomfortable for a while, so you will need to learn to sit with the discomfort. Again, this is something you will get better at over time.
Restricting your rituals: setting rules and limits around your checking rituals can be highly effective. Restrictions might include setting time limits on doing your hair and make up or setting limits on how many times you can visit the bathroom to use the mirror on a night out. You can start with more generous limits and progressively tighten them up over time. EG, first allowing yourself one hour for doing your hair and make up and reducing this by 10 minutes each day until you get down to a duration you are satisfied with.
Cold turkey: controlling your checking or fixing completely can greatly increase your confidence in your ability to eliminate these habits completely. However, going cold turkey is obviously a hefty challenge. You may want to try this approach first on weaker rituals; things that you don’t find so challenging to avoid. With success in these, you may like to push yourself towards taking down some more firmly engrained, more challenging habits over time or, after first successfully obstructing, delaying and restricting more challenging habits.
Become a flexible groomer.
There are loosely three different types of people when it comes to regular grooming:
Groom to hide: those who repeatedly check and fix their appearance and actively cover up their perceived flaws
Gloomy groomers: those who have given up on their looks. They mostly neglect their appearance believing either that nothing could ever improve their looks or that they lack the ability to do so. Some rationalise their behaviour with thoughts that grooming is somehow bad — self absorbed or provocative.
Flexible groomers: are neither preoccupied with compulsive grooming nor neglectful of their appearance. They have discovered a happy medium between getting more glammed up when they want to, but being comfortable in their appearance without the addition of cosmetics and beautiful clothes.
IG post: societal standards cannot harm you unless you buy into them.
To improve your body image, it is helpful to become more of a flexible groomer. Flexible grooming offers you choices and demonstrates to you that your appearance is acceptable under a variety of conditions.
You can begin to adopt a more flexible approach to grooming by first, continuing to lessen your defensive grooming [your run and hide behaviours], then developing behaviours that provide positive appearance-oriented experiences: play with and have fun with your appearance, wear different styles of clothing, try different hair styles, make up and cosmetics. Free yourself from certain styles and allow yourself to experience your appearance in an array of different ways.
“Queen Victoria, for all her obvious faults, accepted her physical limitations and was keenly curious about those around her. That kind of curiosity allows for absorption and connection and is one of the best ways to undermine any anxieties about the way we look and where we might fall short.”
— Julia Baird
Find pleasure and mastery in physical activity.
Mastery: gratifying feelings or a sense of accomplishment from reaching a set goal. EG, learning a new skill, developing strength or improving a run time.
Pleasure: simply having fun. It doesn’t require reaching a goal, just enjoying an activity because it inherently feels good. EG, dancing or taking an exercise class purely for the fun of it.
We can derive mastery and pleasure from physical activity.
Some activities provide both mastery and pleasure. EG, I really enjoy powerlifting but I also derive satisfaction from improving my skills and my strength.
For health and fitness activities to have a positive impact on your body image and self worth, they must nurture your experience of physical competence or well-being. They do not necessarily require substantial improvements in fitness; nor do they require reductions in body weight. Read that again.
To get more out of exercise and to improve your body image via exercise, you should shift your attention away from your appearance or weight control and focus more on seeking the experiences of mastery and pleasure.
To start working on this, make a list of things that have provided mastery and/or pleasure for you before, or things that you suspect may provide those benefits and try them out for yourself. Perhaps you’ve tried or would like to try powerlifting, yoga, running, Crossfit, swimming, hiking, dancing, whatever! Write a list and commit to trying each activity out for yourself and find what provides you with meaningful goals to strive for and/or provides opportunities to have fun.
Importantly, mindfully engage with your feelings of mastery and pleasure during each activity as an ongoing practice. Constantly check in on how you feel about your physical improvements, if you’re still enjoying it and if your motives for engaging in the activity are still positive.
Build on other aspects of your life.
There are in essence two ways to build your body image: make your physical appearance feel less important or fill your life with other things that are more important. How could you possibly define yourself by your appearance when you are slaying your career, play a vital role in a sporting team, make a full time job of ensuring your best friend, Mum and sister always feel ultra loved and ultra supported, are volunteering for an animal rights organisation and your kitty just thinks you are the best thing to ever happen to the world? Adding new and exciting things to your life may start as a conscious distraction from your outward appearance but overtime, have the power to grow in to huge parts of your life that bring you purpose and fulfilment and allow you to give back to the world around you. Join a team, enrol in a course, start a side hustle, pick up an instrument, volunteer for an organisation, learn to sew — all of these things will show you what a jet of a human you are and how much value you add to the world, even with a stomach that isn’t perfectly flat and hair that has zero volume whatsoever.
Protect yourself from cultural bombardment and don’t get health messages and thin ideal messages mixed up.
It is well documented that Instagram has the most negative effects of all social media platforms, and how many hours per day are we spending on it? Get real with yourself — that girl you’re following because she is #fitspo, is she really influencing you in a positive way? Or would you do better to give you IG a bit of a clean out?
Be wary not to get health messages and thin ideal messages confused — they are not the same thing. Health and thinness are not synonymous and there are plenty of behaviours that can make you thin that are not at all healthy.
IG post: weight loss diets and healthy diets are not the same thing
Skinny teas, keto diets, veganism, carnivore diets, the banana diet, excessive exercise — none of these things are inherently physically healthy, nor are their pursuits regularly driven by a positive and healthy mental state. The World Health Organisation defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Engaging in a restrictive diet or excessive exercise to drive weight loss and improve your body image would likely have damaging effects on all three of your physical, mental and social well-being. Thinness and health are not the same thing.
Improving your body image is perhaps significantly more challenging than just changing your physical appearance, but it is significantly more rewarding and psychologically freeing. We can change our outward appearance as much as we want, but until we come to accept ourselves as we are, nothing will ever be good enough. In closing, I can’t recommend highly enough Dr Thomas Cash’s The Body Image Workbook. This article only indicates a few activities he suggests, but the way in which he paints body image and brings attention to our own cognitive biases is mind blowing. If body image is something you would like to learn or talk more about, please don’t hesitate to contact me either. I am always happy to chat and help where I can. I’ll leave you with this quote.
“It can take a while to become the woman you want to be and to evaluate the misogyny or critical eye we too often internalise. Vanity, for the most part can lead to a great deal of unhappiness.”
— Julia Baird