Negative Body Image

• Do you have a negative body image, complete with harsh body critic, that chatters in your head?

• And what does it take to have a positive body image?

At my Mind over Fatter workshops I quite often ask everyone how many of them would like to be married to the voice they hear in their head when they look in the mirror?

Sadly, there its seldom that a hand in the room goes up. This has been equally true whether I have been doing a workshop for an overweight group at a hospital or whether it was one of my Shape magazine workshops packed with over 200 slender, and (by cultural standards) gorgeous women who really had no visible reason for having a negative body image.

A positive body image

Thomas Cash the renowned body image researcher estimates that about 2/3 of your self esteem is determined by your body esteem!

Let's face it: to be a woman living in many parts of the Western world is to be immersed in a culture obsessed with thinness. 'Thin' in this context carries with it connotations of 'desirable,' 'sexy,' 'healthy,' and not to forget 'happiness ever after.'

Body Confidence
is our birthright

What makes the difference between looking at the picture of the legs above and knowing they are a toddlers legs or an adults legs? Why, when we know they are baby legs do we ooh and ah over their cute dimples, but when those same legs are adult - why does that harsh body critic get going?

So what happens then that our positive body image gets replaced with a negative body image? How does that come about? Often it only takes 5 or 6 little words from someone (who may not even be a harsh body critic), or a nickname (like tub-tub or fatty or whatever) for us to stop thinking we're wonderful and to start with what I think of as 'body-worry.'

And it's body dissatisfaction where all the rot really sets in. It's this body critic that makes us compare ourselves (usually unfavorably with others), it keeps us ever vigilant trying to hide parts of ourselves that we feel particularly self-conscious about.

• Why are we so thin-obsessed? It wasn't always like this!
• Why is it that if you have a positive body image - you're almost thought of as abnormal?

• Why is plastic surgery one of the fastest growing 'medical' specialities?

• How did it happen that our bodies became what we base so much of our worth on?

We've been conned into thinking that shrugging off a poor body image and replacing it with a positive body image is a simple matter of losing weight. Weight loss is apparently the answer to all your problems.

Don't ever forget this: there is BIG money invested in the keeping us insecure. As long as you have a negative body image, you'll be spending plenty money!

Positive and negative body image...they're fickle

Take a few moments to look at the model body here - how does your body feel by comparison? How do you match up?

That's what happens every time we flip through the pages of a glamor magazine because if you're like the average woman, you were definitely feeling less confident about your body having compared it. Jut looking at the picture had given us a negative body image!

Now take a picture of someone much fatter than you - and again compare yourself - do you feel any better about your body now?

So how we feel about our bodies changes according to our mood, who we are with and how our bodies feel physically. So whether you are having a good body image or a bad body image day, can change depending on your perceptions, emotions and circumstances.

But here are a few things we can say about how you feel in your body:

• it's not based on fact.

• it's not inborn - it's learned.

• it's not a 'Deep Truth' - it's a surface truth.

Deep truths are those that are stable - they don't change from one culture to a next or from one historical period to a next.

Lose weight
= Losing your negative Body Image

Without a mental diet - no amount of losing weight will change your body esteem. I know from working with models - you know those glamorous figures we all think we'd die to become (and yes, I know people who literally have died trying to look gorgeous) - how insecure they are and how riddled they are with negative body images.

You may be surprised to hear this but most models I've met are in agony over their bodies.

And no amount of thinness can buy a deep internal happiness either - if that were the case models would be happy and I'd have been ecstatic when I was anorexic... and I wasn't - I was miserable.

Pssst.... I'd like to let you into a secret that it took me years to discover: Living in a joy-filled body is less about the size of your tummy or the breadth of your hips than it is about the size of your spirit, the breadth of your love.

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