Re: Re: Body check

[Guest guest]

Well, there's a fine line between doing too much body checking and not checking at all, and I long ago crossed over to the "don't look, don't think" mode. I flee mirrors and photographs like a vampire fleeing crosses and garlic. There's got to be some middle ground here, but I can't find it so far. I still avoid my image at all costs, averting my eyes to avoid all reflections of myself (again, like a vampire). And yes, I too am judgmental about the size of my shadow--something I hadn't realized until you mentioned this. Seeing my actual reflection can send me into depression for weeks, and I keep getting flashes in my mind of how bad I look, like a PTSD victim with flashbacks. I can barely stand to look at my face in the morning when I put on my makeup.

I took baby steps this summer by wearing short-sleeved tops for the first time ever in the summer (I swear--even as a child I used to insist on at least three-quarter sleeves and pitch a fit if my mom made me wear sleeveless), and I'm wearing sleeveless t-shirts as my pj tops. I find this distracting enough, as I do body checks on my arms all the time now, because I can see them even without a reflection. I'm working on coming to acceptance with just this body part. That alone is hard. I know that yesterday I must have had four or five evil thoughts about my arms being too flabby and too large because I was at work and even though I had on a short-sleeved jacket over my top, I felt "too exposed" all day.

Laurie

Re: Body check

Wish I had a good answer for this one. In my office, there's a full length mirror opposite the paper towel dispenser, so that it shows your profile when you're facing the dispenser. Every single time I use the restroom and wash my hands, I end up looking at myself in the mirror and checking to see how big my butt looks while I'm drying my hands. It's brutal. For now, I just try to look without judgement (rarely happens!). I'm hoping that as I get deeper into IE and work on some of my body image issues, I'll be able to accept it better than I do now. But that seems a long time in the future.

Josie

>

> How do you refrain from doing body checks? I find that i do this subtly and deliberately. i do it on myself when I see myself in a mirror or my shadow. I'm about 184 lbs.( my doctor weighs me and announces my weight, I don't go near a scale)and that may be my "normal weight" factoring in my age, genetics and activity level. How do I accept this?

>

[Guest guest]

Well, there's a fine line between doing too much body checking and not checking at all, and I long ago crossed over to the "don't look, don't think" mode. I flee mirrors and photographs like a vampire fleeing crosses and garlic. There's got to be some middle ground here, but I can't find it so far. I still avoid my image at all costs, averting my eyes to avoid all reflections of myself (again, like a vampire). And yes, I too am judgmental about the size of my shadow--something I hadn't realized until you mentioned this. Seeing my actual reflection can send me into depression for weeks, and I keep getting flashes in my mind of how bad I look, like a PTSD victim with flashbacks. I can barely stand to look at my face in the morning when I put on my makeup.

I took baby steps this summer by wearing short-sleeved tops for the first time ever in the summer (I swear--even as a child I used to insist on at least three-quarter sleeves and pitch a fit if my mom made me wear sleeveless), and I'm wearing sleeveless t-shirts as my pj tops. I find this distracting enough, as I do body checks on my arms all the time now, because I can see them even without a reflection. I'm working on coming to acceptance with just this body part. That alone is hard. I know that yesterday I must have had four or five evil thoughts about my arms being too flabby and too large because I was at work and even though I had on a short-sleeved jacket over my top, I felt "too exposed" all day.

Laurie

Re: Body check

Wish I had a good answer for this one. In my office, there's a full length mirror opposite the paper towel dispenser, so that it shows your profile when you're facing the dispenser. Every single time I use the restroom and wash my hands, I end up looking at myself in the mirror and checking to see how big my butt looks while I'm drying my hands. It's brutal. For now, I just try to look without judgement (rarely happens!). I'm hoping that as I get deeper into IE and work on some of my body image issues, I'll be able to accept it better than I do now. But that seems a long time in the future.

Josie

>

> How do you refrain from doing body checks? I find that i do this subtly and deliberately. i do it on myself when I see myself in a mirror or my shadow. I'm about 184 lbs.( my doctor weighs me and announces my weight, I don't go near a scale)and that may be my "normal weight" factoring in my age, genetics and activity level. How do I accept this?

>

[Guest guest]

Well, there's a fine line between doing too much body checking and not checking at all, and I long ago crossed over to the "don't look, don't think" mode. I flee mirrors and photographs like a vampire fleeing crosses and garlic. There's got to be some middle ground here, but I can't find it so far. I still avoid my image at all costs, averting my eyes to avoid all reflections of myself (again, like a vampire). And yes, I too am judgmental about the size of my shadow--something I hadn't realized until you mentioned this. Seeing my actual reflection can send me into depression for weeks, and I keep getting flashes in my mind of how bad I look, like a PTSD victim with flashbacks. I can barely stand to look at my face in the morning when I put on my makeup.

I took baby steps this summer by wearing short-sleeved tops for the first time ever in the summer (I swear--even as a child I used to insist on at least three-quarter sleeves and pitch a fit if my mom made me wear sleeveless), and I'm wearing sleeveless t-shirts as my pj tops. I find this distracting enough, as I do body checks on my arms all the time now, because I can see them even without a reflection. I'm working on coming to acceptance with just this body part. That alone is hard. I know that yesterday I must have had four or five evil thoughts about my arms being too flabby and too large because I was at work and even though I had on a short-sleeved jacket over my top, I felt "too exposed" all day.

Laurie

Re: Body check

Wish I had a good answer for this one. In my office, there's a full length mirror opposite the paper towel dispenser, so that it shows your profile when you're facing the dispenser. Every single time I use the restroom and wash my hands, I end up looking at myself in the mirror and checking to see how big my butt looks while I'm drying my hands. It's brutal. For now, I just try to look without judgement (rarely happens!). I'm hoping that as I get deeper into IE and work on some of my body image issues, I'll be able to accept it better than I do now. But that seems a long time in the future.

Josie

>

> How do you refrain from doing body checks? I find that i do this subtly and deliberately. i do it on myself when I see myself in a mirror or my shadow. I'm about 184 lbs.( my doctor weighs me and announces my weight, I don't go near a scale)and that may be my "normal weight" factoring in my age, genetics and activity level. How do I accept this?

>

[Guest guest]

I think all this is very relevant, Meg; thanks so much for posting it: very good food for thought. I have problems with positive affirmations (which someone else mentioned in another post)--I wish they would work on me, but I can't for the life of me think of anything but Stuart Smiley on Saturday Night Live, trying to get Jordan to use positive affirmations. A hilarious skit, but it sort of ruined me for using affirmations.

Roth's distinction between being aware and being judgmental, though, is a good thing to remember. For years I wouldn't even let myself be aware of my problems around food, and I tried as hard as I could to keep off the subject with other people, too. One of the freeing things about IE for me is that I feel I can talk about it with less shame (wish I could say "no shame," but not quite yet) because I don't feel like such a failure. Elena's post of being convinced that she had to have firm control of her body really brought that old feeling home to me: I used to feel such terrible shame because I "couldn't control myself."

Now I feel I can acknowledge that I'm working on changing things for myself, I think because I now feel my past failures were not because I'm weak-willed (there's that judging voice), but because for years I bought a bill of goods from the ill-informed dieting industry.

You're right, too, about sometimes feeling pretty and sometimes ugly, and it having nothing to do with weight. That reality does bear more thought.

Thanks again for posting this--everything you say is spot-on. I have that Roth book as a sample on my Kindle; will buy it for sure now.

All best,

Laurie

Re: Body check

I just had another thought about this that I thought I would share. Actually, less my thought and more Geneen Roth. This morning after I had worked out at the gym, I caught myself being critical of my image in the mirror in the locker room. I tried the "positive thing" approach, and I guess it was a nice mix to the negative thoughts I was having but I don't think it really got to the root of the issue.

Anyway, I've been reading "Breaking Free From Emotional Eating" by Geneen Roth the past few days, and the chapter I started on today happened to be about judgement- judging ourselves, our bodies, dealing with judgements of loved ones. If you are interested, it was a good and relevant read. I think what struck me the most after reading the chapter is the distinction that Roth makes between judging and being aware. She says that awareness begets change while judgement usually just makes the situation worse. She had a number of exercises to do on judgement; in general, I think the most useful thing she said was to try and be aware and to question (not berate) yourself about why you are judging yourself or about what the reality of the situation is.

My experience, I don't know about others here, is that I have times when I feel unattractive and I have times when I feel attractive, and I do think that this is kind of separate from reality. I think I could look exactly the same on two different days and feel totally ugly on one and feel pretty on the other, and I think that has been true no matter what weight I've been at. So judging myself and berating myself over my looks probably has limited utility. It's probably more useful to gently question why I am thinking this way than to get caught up in the action.

I don't know if that helps, but I felt like it was relevant.

>

> How do you refrain from doing body checks? I find that i do this subtly and deliberately. i do it on myself when I see myself in a mirror or my shadow. I'm about 184 lbs.( my doctor weighs me and announces my weight, I don't go near a scale)and that may be my "normal weight" factoring in my age, genetics and activity level. How do I accept this?

>