Tuesday 6 March 2018

Body Confidence

Body dysmorphia and body confidence are like two repelling magnets. When you look in the mirror and see a dysmorphic version of yourself, it is almost impossible to be truly body confident because you have no way of knowing what you actually look like. When I stare at my reflection I don’t see what everyone else sees. I’m told by friends and family that I’m slim and athletic but how can you believe what others are saying when the image that stares back at you is completely different? This is what it’s like to live with body dysmorphia.

When you have suffered with an eating disorder, you may recover physically and have periods of positive mental health but, in my experience, the niggling thoughts never fully disappear. Despite my mental health being the best it’s been in years, I still have relapses. Sometimes these relapses are small and easy to get over, but sometimes they threaten to undo all of my progress. I’m taking the time to write about this because I’m currently in the midst of a relapse. At the moment it doesn’t seem to be a significant one but I’m acutely aware that if I don’t nip it in the bud soon, it could evolve into something much worse.

The best way to counter a relapse and return to a positive mental state is to work on body confidence. I wish I could sit here and write about how recovery has brought me an endless and fruitful supply of body confidence but it hasn’t. In fact, body confidence has been one of the few things that has been absent from my recovery. I am no longer addicted to excessive exercise or calorie tracking or body checking; however, I still despise what I see in the mirror 95% of the time. I realise that this is a problem not limited to eating disorder sufferers and that due to societal beauty standards body positivity is not yet normalised. Yet, as someone whose weight has fluctuated significantly in the past two years, body confidence seems an almost utopian fantasy to me.

I’m now at a point in my life where things are slowly beginning to improve and become more stable. I can confidently say that over the past four months my mental health has improved tenfold. I’m truly happy for the first time in years but still the one problem which holds me back is my body confidence. I love myself but I don’t love the body I live in and that’s what I’m planning on working on. I realise this process, as with most long-term projects, will not be a linear one. I understand that there will be times where I think I’ve made a breakthrough only for my optimism to be quashed the next day with a bout of self-loathing. I anticipate that this won’t be easy but I’m putting this out there to hold myself accountable.

My plan is to switch my version of body positivity from aesthetics to functionality. Ultimately your body is there to look after you and whether or not your stomach is permanently flat and toned does not equate to how healthy you are. I know that when I look after my body by cutting back on alcohol consumption, exercising regularly and eating a balanced diet I can’t help but feel happy in my own skin. Knowing that I’m treating my body with the love and respect it deserves creates an automatic surge of self-love and confidence. Everyone has days where they look in the mirror and don’t like what they see but what about if every time you begin to criticise your external appearance, you complimented the amazing things your body is capable of instead? What if your focus shifted from whether or not you have a thigh gap, to how your legs carry you everywhere every single day? It’s hard to criticise your body when you think about the miraculous things it can do.

It’s easy to sit here and write about all the ways one can work on body confidence but over the past couple of weeks I have realised that unless I work on countering the last of my mental health problems, I’ll never be able to enjoy all the new amazing things in my life. I’ll keep being held back by body insecurities and that’s something I refuse to let happen anymore.

So, if you’re struggling with the same issues, think about how much happier you would feel if you actually started to love yourself unconditionally and work from there.