The impact that body image is having on our values and sense of self-worth

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Hello and welcome to another episode of Zevo Talks. This month we’re exploring the topic of body image and its profound impact on our overall health and well-being. My name is Sarah Keene, well-being consultant with Zevo.

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And today I’m really excited to explore a subject that’s very close to my heart and certainly one that I’ve struggled with in the past and not yet quite mastered personally, but certainly do have extensive experience in this area.

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I spent about just shy of seven years running boot camps and witnessing firsthand the prevalence and intensity of negative body image and self-judgment that so many people experience. And so in this session today, I’ll be briefly touching on this subject that affects so many of us in varying degrees and bring attention to some of the simple ways that we can begin to cultivate a healthier and more positive view of ourselves.

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So to begin, I guess it’s important to clarify what we mean by body image because there’s many different ways it could be interpreted. And of course, there’s many different layers to this. So body image in its simplest sense is, in essence, how we see ourselves.

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But as we layer up on top of that, it’s what we then believe in the stories we create about how we see ourselves. And subsequently to that, how that makes us feel and how it even impacts how we move and present ourselves to the world and then goes on to affect our choices in daily life, whether it’s in relation to health behaviors like nutrition, movement, or indeed social activities, whether we engage or avoid.

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So body image, it’s really pervasive and can have a profound impact on how we feel and function on a day-to-day basis. A negative body image is shown to increase our risk of engaging on a healthy lifestyle behaviors, particularly very restrictive eating or over-exercising other disordered eating patterns and weight control behaviors.

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Contrary to this, a positive body image can really serve to improve our sense of self-esteem and self-acceptance and really lay the foundation for a much healthier relationship with others as well as with these health behaviors like how we move and with our food.

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And so it’s really important not to brush this aside and shrug it off as just the way things are, but really to take time out and shed light on something that could be significantly impacting your quality of life.

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And so over the duration of this short podcast, we’re just going to explore a few little red flags around what may indicate that your body image is not so positive. And from that, then we will begin to look at ways that you can begin to cultivate this healthier view of yourself going through 10 quick tips, but first we’ll really kind of dive into the heart of the issue.

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So let’s take a look at some indicators that maybe your body image is not so positive. One instant indicator may be intense discomfort or difficulty, accepting compliments, particularly in relation to your appearance and your physical form.

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Now, of course, there can be a multitude of reasons for that, but that could be one red flag in conjunction with some of these other following items. Another having a low sense of self-esteem, obsessively thinking about your body and your appearance and investing a lot of time and energy, perhaps distinguishing here, not from a space of enjoyment and curiosity, but rather from a space of contraction where there’s a tension that you need to must or have to present yourself in a certain way.

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Putting excessive emphasis on the significance and importance of your weight, shape, or size, frequently comparing yourself and your body to the appearance of other people. and making regular changes to your eating and exercise behaviors in an attempt to control or change your shape.

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Again, not from that space of enjoyment and curiosity, but rather from that kind of tense, contracted space of necessity. We’re drawing from things that maybe you previously enjoyed, certain sports or social activities, avoiding intimacy and various social settings.

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And a major red flag and one that often tends to go hand in hand with this kind of lower or less positive or negative body image can be that association with some negative mental health outcomes such as depression or anxiety and engaging in risky harmful health behaviors like excessive drinking and smoking.

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And so if any of those sounded familiar or you recognize them in yourself or maybe someone you care about, you might want to take on board some of the following items to support you in progressing towards a greater kind of sense of ease in your body and a greater more positive view of yourself or indeed for someone else.

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So what can we do to improve it? So the start point with anything health related when we embark on creating change really is self-awareness. The moment we start to become aware of something is the moment that we invite that possibility for change and improvement.

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So increasing our self-awareness anywhere along that trajectory from that initial view of ourselves, whether it’s in the mirror or in a photo or you see yourself on video, and it’s noticing the narratives that get triggered and beliefs and the stories and the reactions that instantly fire.

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So self-awareness can come in at that point, but equally it can come back in when you begin to notice your mood is low or you’re agitated or suddenly maybe a less preferable state or emotion is present, beginning to inquire a little about that and perhaps it links back to this lower body image as a causal factor, perhaps.

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And then also when you notice you’ve gone into default or conditioned behaviors, and it could be in terms of, again, in relation to how you’re exercising or eating, you might suddenly notice that you’re acting in a default way and bring your self-awareness into that point and begin to question, okay, well, why am I doing this the way I am?

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So self-awareness can come into play at anywhere along this line of connection. But the moment we bring in that awareness, the next step really is cultivating this capacity to be present with what is there and notice.

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And as I said, you’re looking at your reflection. It’s noticing what the beliefs and the judgments may be. Here a crucial part and a skill to develop is the ability to be able to discern between what is an objective awareness and what is a judgment or a point of view that you’re holding that may be very diminishing.

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I’m going to use the example of body weight here because I think many people can relate to this. So an objective awareness may be that there is two kilos of excess body weight residing around the midsection, okay, around the belly and hips.

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And if we want to get very technical, we could call it adipose tissue. So that’s an objective awareness. A judgment is I am so fat. And this is a default that many people typically gravitate into where we process and translate an objective awareness into a point of view and a story very rapidly.

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It moves through many filters. And before we know it in a blink of an eye, we have come up with a conclusion. The issue here with identifying with what is observed, so I am so fat, is that identity piece, suddenly that becomes enmeshed with who you believe you are.

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And at that point when it becomes identity, it becomes much more difficult to change because there’s also this sense of permanence that comes with identity unconsciously, even though the objective reality is that we are continually changing and transforming and we’re incredibly dynamic and our bodies are incredibly dynamic.

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And there’s a huge turnover of cells and they turn over at various rates, different tissues have a turnover of different rates, but the whole body is in essence continually recreating ourselves. So who we are and what we are physically, mentally and emotionally is incredibly dynamic.

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And yet there can be an unconscious tendency towards a static sense of self, a static and stagnant sense of identity. And when we reaffirm something like I am so fat, it in essence locks us into that and that can make change a lot more difficult than when we return to that objective awareness, which creates a lot more that they wiggle room for things to change and move in a more preferable direction.

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So these would be the pillars and that could be a bit of a leap for some people, especially if even many of the words I’m using here might necessarily be that familiar, the language or this might not be that familiar.

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And so in this instance, we’ll go through then kind of 10 maybe easier access points to begin to cultivate that sense of positive self image in maybe smaller bite size chunks. So number one, appreciate what your body can do.

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So there used to be a song that my mom played when I was little and it went, I got my arms, got my legs and it went through the whole body and celebrating all the different parts of the body that we have and really appreciating what these different parts of the body could do.

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Sounds so simple, sounds so basic and yet in health coaching, this would be one of the strongest, it’s a big backbone of supporting behavior change is really acknowledging and appreciating what you’ve got and what does work.

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You may be familiar with what we give our attention to and what we place our focus on tends to build momentum and growth. And so if we’re always focusing on what is wrong with us and what is not as we believe it should be, that can quickly spiral and create momentum.

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And so the opposite is also true. So taking time out to appreciate what your body can do and what it’s capable of rather than what it can’t do. On the back of that dovetailing very closely is noticing your strengths, noticing your attributes.

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I often share a story about my daughter when she was about four and she came into me and she was rubbing the end of her hair and she looked at me, who’s just big blue eyes and she just goes, isn’t it beautiful?

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And she said it with such innocence, like she’d been given this little gift. There was no sense of like ego or look at me. There was just this raw appreciation for what she was observing about herself in that moment.

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She was just like, oh, isn’t this beautiful? Like there was just this, yeah, a real appreciation and an innocence in it. And it was an invitation in that moment for me who, as I said, is this scenario I’ve firstly struggled with for a long time to really appreciate again, like I spoke in point one about the gifts of what we have.

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So part again in our culture in Ireland, certainly this is something that has never been encouraged certainly in my experience. And so there can be a little bit of discomfort in shifting our focus towards what I actually like about myself and what I admire about myself.

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And yet it can be undone from that space of innocence, appreciation can be just such a nourishing and nurturing practice. so that might be something to explore. The next one is expanding your point three, expanding your definition of beauty and whether it is through films and TV and advertising or social media.

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Since we’ve been born there’s been projections of what is beauty and if we look retrospectively over decades we can really take that macro perspective and appreciate that the version of beauty changes decade to decade and is quite a dynamic thing and yet again it can be one of those things that we tend to have a sense of universality, sorry tripping over that word, but something that’s universal and yet it’s quite individual and can be quite unique in truth.

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And also beauty can express in so many ways beyond just visual. We have beautiful sounds, beautiful touch, beautiful presence, beautiful words, beautiful acts of kindness. There’s many, many ways beauty can express should I say and so really appreciating that can help reinforce again.

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I know when we’re talking about something as physical as body image but it can help to lessen the load on making body image the most significant source of beauty and that physicality as the most significant source of beauty.

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Looking at yourself point number four, looking at yourself as a whole person. So again this dovetails on expanding your horizons on what is beautiful and then really appreciating the many layers so you are so much more than your body and really remembering that in these moments where you might go and gravitate into critiquing what you are observing and in that space and reorienting your focus again once more towards maybe some of your gifts and capacities and your big heart and your capacity to feel and to create and yeah the many different layers and dimensions there are to you as an individual.

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Never in human history have we collectively been aware of, and indeed consumed by, our physical appearance. Thanks to widespread access to camera technology and constant exposure to social media where perfection is continuing to be accepted as normal, understanding the effects this can have on our mental health is fundamental to having a positive relationship with your own body and how to deal with the beauty standards around us.

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Zevo Health has a number of trainings that will assist you and your organization on a journey to a better relationship with your body image and well-being. Contact us today to start your workplace well-being journey.

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The next thing is being aware, number five, of what the attitudes are in your social circle. And having more awareness around that can be profoundly liberating, because it’s not that you’d have to extract yourself from it, but simply being aware of what might be influencing unconsciously why you are judging yourself, the way you judge yourself, or why you feel that way you feel about your body image.

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So certainly shining a light on what the attitudes are in your social circle, and perhaps proactively reaching out to engage with or connect with individuals that role model more how you would like to feel and how you would like to be in your body.

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Number six, we spoke about at the start before I went into the 10 steps around that ability to increase your self-awareness and notice that discernment between the objective awareness and what you then make it mean, the judgment or the point of view or the story that comes in around it.

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So a simple strategy there, maybe just simply labeling the inner critic, whether you wanna put a name on it or just label it as the critic is present. And even saying it out loud, in my experience, it can be the funniest thing.

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It can turn something that is otherwise very serious and intense into something that actually is quite laughable. Once we give, I worked once with a coach who said, give the critic the mic. And once we give the critic the mic and speak it out loud, it can often in and of itself really help to diffuse the power and the intensity that it would otherwise have if it’s repeating on loop in the back of our minds.

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So labeling the inner critic and then perhaps even questioning it with sincere curiosity rather than judging yourself then or trying to get rid of it or resisting against it. This can be another pitfall that we can fall into where the point of view comes up and instead of noticing it and being curious about it, we go and judge ourselves for having that point of view or wonder where that point of view came from and why we would be,

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you know, and it can spiral into compounding that self-criticism paradoxically. And so labeling the critic, giving it the mic and then perhaps being questioning it and being curious. By that, I mean really exploring is this true and kind of absolutely know without a shadow of a date that this is true.

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In cognitive behavior therapy, there’s a three step process, just a really simple little practice called the three Cs. So we catch the thought and challenge it. So that’s being curious about how true it is and then choose our response.

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So what would we prefer to reaffirm instead? So catch the thought, challenge it and choose the response. It might be a useful one to play with. On the back of that, step seven is reaffirming your preferences.

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And so for the individual, if we go back to the example, you may notice that there’s two or three kilos of excess body weight around the core, around the midsection, reaffirming the preference rather than gravitating into the self-judgments.

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So I notice that there are three kilos. My preference is that I reaffirm the new body weight or whatever the preferred outcome may be that it’s muscular and toned when I feel my hips. Whatever, that’s just a tiny example, but you can play with this in a way that maybe is more accessible and relatable for you.

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But reaffirming the preference rather than spiraling down into the conclusion is the invitation there. Point eight, wearing clothes that make you feel good. So some of you may have direct experience of putting on an outfit and looking 10 pounds heavier, 10, whatever the equivalent kilos.

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So… I know back to Ellie. My daughter got an outfit for Halloween last year. And it was a really fluffy kind of chic sort of chic, cheap quality like woolly jumper and woolly leggings to match. And quite literally, when she put it on, her body doubled in size.

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And we had a great, we had a great laugh about it. So it is important to just have, again, that awareness around what we wear and how we wear it, how profoundly it can impact on that image we have of ourselves.

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And and there’s a whole industry built around helping people to dress in ways that really help them to feel good about themselves, irrespective of their size and shape. And so, again, it might be just the easiest access points out of this 10 points that I’ve discussed for you today.

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And that helps you build momentum then towards exploring maybe some of the others for other people. Maybe this isn’t quite the level to work on, but it’s just sharing some simple ways to enhance how you feel.

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Point nine, viewing media and imagery through a new lens. So really, really becoming again, more self-aware, except more aware around the impact that media is having on you. And noticing more about the subtle messaging that may be in imagery that’s presented, particularly in advertisements or perhaps in movies.

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And also being aware of influencers and those who are present themselves in social media. And as we mentioned at the very beginning, the prevalence of the use of filters and touching up photos and really bearing in mind and being attentive to the fact that you’re not comparing yourself against something that is a complete illusion.

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So enhancing that media awareness is another route to notice. And then lastly, point ten, being kind to yourself. Self-care. And this sort of loops back to point one, appreciating what your body can do and really noticing then almost like little self rewards.

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You know, how can you nourish and nurture your body as it is today? What nice thing could you do for yourself that you feel better in your body? Whether it’s a foot rub or a nice lotion or oil for your skin or a hot bath or a nice walk out in nature.

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And exploring, you know, and even perhaps having this in the back of your mind as a question to ask yourself, you know, what can I do for myself today to nourish my body? How can I take take care of my body today?

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And the reason I share this as well as point number ten is because oftentimes the very opposite gets triggered when we do go into judgment of ourselves and the body can be then neglected and almost for want of a better word, but in ways, you know, abused.

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And and so this helps to switch that pattern. And if you found that perhaps when you don’t feel good in your body and your body image is low and then you reach maybe for comfort fruits, for example, and it perpetuates that cycle then of being bad about yourself and continues to loop.

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So being kind to yourself acts of self care. And I know self care sometimes is an overused term for some people might feel it’s a bit overused in ways, but maybe reframing it in a way that actually resonates.

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Like, what could you do for yourself today that would feel amazing? What would what could you do that would be enjoyable and might only take one or two minutes? And whether it’s even a relaxing visualization or a little bit of breath work or making yourself a lovely, delicious cup of herbal tea or some nice, nice soothing drink and just exploring ways on a daily basis to be kind to yourself.

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So this topic body image is really huge. And today’s podcast was just a little high level, high level snapshot of of this topic that is so relevant and such a backbone to our overall health and well-being and something that certainly can when we give it attention and focus.

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radically change and improve how we feel and function and move through the world. So I hope you’ve enjoyed listening today and will leave with one or two little ideas to maybe experiment with and explore and thank you for your attention.

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We look forward to seeing you on another episode of Zevotalks in the near future.