Body image and dieting – why changing your mindset is more effective than changing your body
If you are unhappy with your appearance, weight or body shape the likelihood is that you’ve spent years trying to work out how to change it.
Perhaps you have been jumping from diet to diet, over exercising or have even considered surgery.
Every year millions of women diet in order to change their body. In fact at least 50% of adult women are on some kind of weight loss regime at any given time, in order to help themselves feel better about it.
For many people I work with, this has literally hijacked their life – 24 /7 thoughts about food, their weight or shape– so there’s no room for anything else.
Is this the same for you?
If this is impacting your life, I wonder if you would consider the possibility that changing the way you think about your body is the solution as opposed to the relentless focus on physically shrinking it?
Yo-yo dieting – where weight is lost and regained in a never-ending cycle, has a significant negative impact on body image. A study was conducted with 88 larger bodied women who lost an average of 23 kilos following a weight loss diet. Their body image initially improved. However, when they had regained only an average of 2 kilos a few months later, their body image deteriorated significantly. And we know that weight regain is expected in up to 95% of participants following any weight loss diet.
Yo-yo dieting of course impacts health in many ways – check out my past blog – The hidden costs of yo-yo dieting for more info on this.
If you are a compulsive dieter, it’s first important to reflect on what your motivation is for dieting. Is it for physical health and wellbeing? Or to appear more ‘attractive’ – a fat phobic fear that you will be judged for not achieving the thin body ideal. Perhaps you don’t feel like you fit in or are worthy of love and respect?
Of course, looking after your body is important for your physical and mental health but it is extremely difficult to do so consistently if you despise it.
It is a myth that losing weight is the only way to feel good about your body. By learning to respect it you will be far more likely to look after it in a sustainable way.
This is why when clients who have been dieting for years, want to improve their health, we need to move the focus away from weight loss.
Yes- this can feel scary at first.
But with the right support it is possible to move forward.
Once you begin to see and feel the true benefits – your motivation and confidence will grow. This is when I see many clients loosing excess weight as a side effect of the changes they make – it is no longer their focus but becomes possible as they begin to think differently about their body and themselves.