What if you could begin to improve your body image in just two simple steps? And perhaps you already have the right tool at your fingertips. Some of us are on social media for hours a day. By changing who you follow on social media, you can begin to improve your body image and how you feel about yourself.
Body image is how we think and feel about our bodies, our weight, and how we look. When you are struggling with an eating disorder or disordered eating, lack of nourishment for the brain can result in worse body image. If your brain isn’t nourished properly, it’s really hard to think critically about negative thoughts that arise. There are some studies that show improving your body image can take up to seven years to improve. Now, before you click away and give up on any self-improvement, hear me out. While the first step in improving your body image should ideally be working with a dietitian and beginning the nutrition rehabilitation process, you can also start working on your body image right away. Here’s how to begin to improve your body image in two steps:
Unfollow people that make you feel bad about yourself
It should be a given that we need to unfollow and eliminate people in our lives that make us feel awful, but for some reason, many of my clients still follow people on social media that do just that. If people you follow elicit any of the following feelings or emotions, I recommend hitting that unfollow/mute/block button now:
Cause you to compare yourself and feel inadequate
Elicit feelings of negativity towards your weight or parts of your body
Make you feel guilty or shameful for eating certain foods (bonus points if they are walking around in a grocery store pointing to snack foods in the aisles)
Create more stress around health behaviors such as not eating the “right” foods or exercising enough
Enable disordered behaviors such as restriction, overexercising, purging, or laxative use (hello, skinny teas)
Now, you might think you are all done here, right? You unfollowed toxic people and influencers on social media! But, there is a crucial next step that needs to be taken in this process.
Follow diverse social media accounts
Just as it can infiltrate our brains to see toxic behaviors and influencers on social media, it can positively impact our body image if we follow diverse folks on the apps. Think about it: if you are only following thin, white, able-bodied people on social media, then of course anything other than those body types are deemed “abnormal” in your brain and you will work towards trying to change it. But if you follow folks with different abilities, ethnicities, body sizes, ages, and genders, you are more likely to show yourself more compassion and kindness without constantly trying to change it. Because the truth is, the world is full of diverse people! Models, influencers, actors, and musicians might be plastered all over the media, but they really only represent a small portion of the general population.
Not sure where to start? Here is a list of my favorite fashion folks over on Instagram to get started.
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