Breaking the Habit: Understanding Body Checking and How to Stop

Ever wonder why we so obsessively check our bodies, using this behavior as a measure of our worth? Devote time to this enlightening episode where we dissect the intentions behind body checking, an often-overlooked aspect of disordered eating and negative body image. We delve into the science behind this behavior, the emotions it triggers and the false sense of control it offers. More importantly, we reveal how this obsessive practice fuels and maintains unhealthy eating patterns that can manifest into more serious eating disorders.

Join us as we explore the vicious cycle of body checking, shedding light on its impact on those battling disordered eating. Feel the importance of understanding the science behind this behavior to break free and regain control over your life. We offer practical steps that anyone can start implementing immediately; from cultivating awareness and resisting the urge to body check, to rewiring your brain to adopt new behaviors and fostering a healthier relationship with food and body. We also emphasize the need for self-compassion and patience during this journey. This episode is a crucial resource for anyone struggling with body image issues or those looking to comprehend them better. Listen in, and start your journey towards a healthier, happier you today.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Okay, let's get into it. I am excited about this one specifically because I think that people don't talk about it enough as a behavior of disordered eating, diets, chronic dieting, being stuck with food and body eating disorders. And I think it needs to be talked about because, like other behaviors, like restriction and binging and all the other behaviors that come along with disordered eating and body image struggles, body checking is a huge part of a huge piece, a huge behavior that can keep people stuck, and it's often misunderstood, it's not addressed too often and often and then so we don't have this awareness to start changing it and shifting this, understanding it and then therefore moving forward in our relationship with food and body. So, without further ado, let's dive into body checking, its purpose, how it will keep you stuck in your body image and food struggles, and how to get out of it. So what is body checking? Body checking refers to an obsessive thought and behavior about appearance, usually used to judge your weight and shape. It may present as frequent hopping on the scale, looking in the mirror, maybe pinching or wrapping a hand around your stomach, waist, thighs, arms, comparing yourself against others, checking the fit of your clothes, measuring yourself, asking others for a reassurance. It can show up in a variety of pervasive waves and and this is definitely not an all-inclusive list. So why do we body check? The way in which one may body check looks different for everyone, but the theme of why one may want to body check is quite similar.

Speaker 1: 1:53

Body checking is done in an attempt to feel better about one's body, more specifically, about the parts of one's body that they may wish were different. Okay, so I'm gonna ask you that question when you think of why you body check. What is the purpose? What are you trying to get out of it? Oftentimes it's done in an attempt to feel better. So that might be to feel better because you feel like you're gaining some control, that you are able to have a handle on it, you're able to understand, you're able to relieve some anxiety, because it is a compulsive behavior you get some sense of safety from. But body checking is done in an attempt to feel better and I'm curious and want to ask you to reflect on your own experience and ask yourself why do I body check? And you may never have asked that, it's just something that's automatic. But right now I want you to pause, take a second and ask what is my intention with body checking. What am I trying to get out of it? This is going to be an important question to answer for yourself as we move forward with today's episode. So the belief is that body checking is going to provide us with some relief and help us in decreasing the anxiety or worry we are feeling, making us feel better or feel more in control. So take your experience and we're going to move into the next concept, which is understanding what body checking actually is doing. What is it actually doing for us? So we have intention with body checking to serve a purpose right to make us feel better, to make us feel in more control. But let's raise awareness around what it's actually doing. Is it doing what you intended? Are you getting what you wanted to out of body checking? Are you getting some other undesirable impacts and consequences of body checking as well? So what does body checking actually do for us?

Speaker 1: 3:57

The problem with body checking is that we are looking for. When we body check, what we are looking for is not actually what we receive. Something I like to compare it to is when people ask Dr Google to feel some relief about symptoms they may be experiencing. However, in actuality, doing so sends us just ends up making us feel more nervous, more scared, more confused. Googling symptoms provides this false sense of security that usually leaves us feeling worse, more anxious. Body checking is similar in that the reassurance may only be momentary and then followed by an even more heightened anxiety, fear and distressing emotions. However, do not take my word for it. Experience is the greatest teacher.

Speaker 1: 4:49

I want you to try raising some awareness around your body checking behaviors. How do you feel before body checking and after body checking? Do you actually get what you are looking for? Start tracking, start becoming more familiar with how body checking impacts you. So ask why am I doing this? Before you do it, how am I feeling before you do it? Think about how you're feeling during and after. Maybe rate it on like distress, tolerance of, I'm sorry. Rate it as how much anxiety it brings, right From zero to 10, or how much, how distraught you are from zero to 10,. What's your stress level? And compare before, during and after. See where it brings you.

Speaker 1: 5:34

Now, how does body checking keep you stuck in a disordered relationship with food, in a shaming relationship with your body, in a disintuned relationship with food and body? How does it keep you stuck? Well, it absolutely keeps you stuck. Body checking fuels and maintains disordered eating and negative body image. It is like many other eating disorder behaviors or disordered eating behaviors such as restriction or over exercising. These behaviors all strengthen that disordered eating voice and that body image voice, right, the negative body image voice. So, just like restriction and over exercising, body checking, although you might think it's harmful and might not be aware of its consequences, they are strengthening the eating disorder, disordered eating, chronic dieting voice.

Speaker 1: 6:24

And this is, in fact, something that I start working with clients on right away is starting to understand and eliminate, essentially, body checking behaviors. And people see that as they start to decrease body checking, of course their mind is gonna be less on their body, they're going to not use that coping, that maladaptive coping with their emotions, and their emotions aren't going to be heightened as often with body checking, right. So we're not going to that negative place. So it's super, super helpful. But we're gonna I'm kind of jumping out of myself we're gonna get into that. So how does it keep you stuck? It absolutely maintains it. So there's a helpful model that I usually share with people and of course, I can't share this with you through audio, but I'm gonna explain it to you. Okay.

Speaker 1: 7:18

So with body checking, with this body checking cycle, what happens is that we have these feelings of anxiety or worry, or loss of control and fear, and so what we do is we have this desire to feel better and get rid of those feelings and so, in turn, we use body checking as that coping, we hop on the scale, we look in the mirror, et cetera. But then what happens is you continue in that cycle and you go back to more feelings of anxiety, worry, loss of control and fear, which brings you to more desire to feel better and get rid of those feelings. So you use the body checking, coping, and then you get back to the feelings of more anxiety and fear and you can't get out of that cycle. Right, it's just. It's consequently like the effect of body checking to stop these negative emotions negatively reinforces and maintains the body checking behavior and you get stuck in this cycle. Okay, so how do you get out of the cycle? How do you break the body checking cycle? And of course, that's going to be to reduce and stop body checking, but it's also to take care of those emotions and to understand those emotions and adopt healthier coping and also, of course to work on your relationship with food and body.

Speaker 1: 8:40

So before we go into that, I wanna talk about the research of body checking when it comes to disordered eating. And this research is really, really helpful because with this study, the aim of it is to test the negative and positive emotions prior to and following body checking in people with disordered eating as compared to people without disordered eating, and the results were significant and what they found can really help for you to apply this logic to your own relationship with body checking. So participants with eating disorders showed a significantly higher frequency of body checking than the control group that did not have a disordered eating, and these higher scores of negative emotions were found more in the eating disorder group than the control group. They also found that there was a greater increase in negative emotions pre to post body checking in participants with eating disorders compared to healthy controls. So if you have a, if you struggle with your relationship with food and body, using body checking behaviors are going to lead to an increase in negative emotions, whereas with people who have a healthy, happy, maybe more flexible, more accepting, loving, respectful relationship with their body, that body checking is not gonna impact them because they're not using it in the same way and they have a different relationship with it. So what does this mean? Let's interpret these results. I'm sure you can conclude this, but negative emotions seem to play in an important role in the maintenance of disordered eating and also appear to trigger disordered eating behaviors. The study shows that it is considered to be a relevant factor in maintaining this vicious circle of the eating, disordered eating and body checking. So therefore, contrary to what the eating disorders thought say, that body checking will decrease anxiety and bring control, body checking and actuality leads to an increase in amplification of negative emotions and thus increases disordered eating, body shaming behaviors. To combat these negative emotions, body checking behaviors play an important role in disordered eating, in negative body image, as it is a behavioral manifestation of body image disturbance and is positively correlated with a degree of disordered eating pathology.

Speaker 1: 11:17

So how do we break this cycle? Okay, so the cycle of feelings of anxiety, worry, loss of control, fear, then the desire to feel better and get rid of those bad feelings. So then we body check by hopping on the scale. How do we get out of it? So we don't just keep going round and round and round, right, because what's gonna happen is that's going to strengthen it more and more and more. So what we need to do is we need to resist body checking and replace it with another behavior that does not focus on your body and that does not use body bashing or body consistent body checking up on in order to help cope with tough emotions. So we this. What this is going to do with practice is put less focus on your body, help us to learn other ways to cope and take care of ourselves, and decrease other urges like, maybe, disordered eating, restriction, binging, negative self-talk and body bashing in other ways. So how we break this cycle is is to put less focus on the body and to learn other ways of coping, and this is absolutely possible for you. So how can we do this? How can we get started? Well, listening to this podcast is a perfect way to get started.

Speaker 1: 12:43

Like anything in your journey through to get a more positive relationship with food and body, changing behaviors doesn't happen overnight. It requires patience, self-compassion and grit. Simply stopping body checking is not an easy feat after years of body checking. So here's a few places that we can start. Step one is I want you to start raising more awareness around body checking. Ask yourself these following questions why do I feel I need to body check right now? How am I feeling before body checking, during body checking and after body checking? How does it impact my mood? What emotions am I trying to take care of through body checking? Where do I think this will bring me? How does it impact my relationship with food and my relationship with body? And start tracking them so you can start raising awareness around how this is changing, the different maybe patterns you see. Start tracking and raising awareness.

Speaker 1: 13:49

The next step is to work on resisting the urge to body check. So after you have that awareness, you'll be more aware of when you go to body check. And we need to start rewiring your brain to automatically go more often from body checking to a more healthy, a healthier behavior that's going to suit you better. Okay, now with rewiring your brain. We know that this takes time and it takes work, and also by doing something different and carving a new path in your brain. It's going to be uncomfortable at first, but the good news is that we can absolutely adopt new behaviors. We can start to carve out a new road, remember, because this road isn't as traveled, it's not as strong and we can't as easily take the path. So it takes a lot of intention.

Speaker 1: 14:36

The more you you actively try and take this new pathway of maybe when you decide you want to body check instead, you go outside, you take a couple breaths, you maybe put some ice on your forehead, you call a friend, you say something positive to yourself, you put on your favorite song and dance, whatever that might be. The more you do that, the more automatic that will become and the less intention you will need to put into body checking. And you'll see that when you go, when you're wanting to go body check whether it's looking in the mirror or jumping on the scale you're able to say, oh, nope, not going to do that and move on with something else. Okay. Or say, or ask yourself why do I feel the need? Oh, maybe I feel sad. Okay, I'm going to do this thing that actually helps me with take care of this sadness rather than brings more anxiety in those negative emotions. Okay, so we want to weaken that old path by trying something new, by resisting body checking and trying something new. And the more and more we have this experience, the the less and less will body check and the better we will feel.

Speaker 1: 15:42

So, as we conclude here. I just want to again give you compassion, because it's really hard to be stuck in this and it's really hard to maybe feel completely safe to give it up. That's totally understandable if you've listened to this and you're asking yourself can I do this? And the answer is, well, I, I can, but there's part of me that feels very unsafe when to let go of body checking. I feel like I need to. I need to keep body checking in order to have control over my body or food, and that that is very normal a question that is something I hear very often.

Speaker 1: 16:22

So what I would say to do if you are in that position and if body checking is something that is harder to get rid of because of your relationship with how you trust food and how you trust body, I would have you explore your relationship with food and your relationship with body with some professionals to understand and build trust with food in your body and knowledge about how we can trust food and our body. Okay, maybe need we need to undo some of those beliefs that we might have around, just from what society gives, what diet culture gives, about telling us that we can't trust food and that we we need to keep control of our body and make sure we're consistently weighing ourselves and keeping our body in check. That's very normal in this society. I would encourage you to listen, of course, to the other episodes on this podcast. Still attempt to practice to decrease body checking. At least try and decrease. Take it one step at a time, but also maybe explore those other barriers that are keeping you from wanting to try and decrease body checking.

Speaker 1: 17:31

Okay, so, listen to the other podcast and, of course, I would invite you to DM me to see if you are a good fit for our food and body image program, where we go in-depth into all of these different aspects with food and body, including body checking, and help you to get there to full food and body image freedom. So with that, I will go ahead and wish you the best of luck. You got this. Wherever you are in your journey, this is there for you. You might have to take a few other steps before you can conquer the body checking, and that is okay. I wish you all the best and I'm here with you every step of the way until next time. Have a wonderful day.