You may be body checking without even realizing it. Here are a few examples:
- Do you scrutinize your body shape or a specific body part every time you look in the mirror?
- Is it common for you to look down at your thighs while driving to see their size?
- Do you immediately analyze your appearance in every picture taken of you?
These are just a few examples of body checking, a harmful habit that so many people don’t even know they have. If any of these resonate for you, or call to mind something similar that you find yourself doing, keep reading.
When you understand your body checking behavior, where it comes from, and how to stop, you can finally free yourself from the exhaustion it brings.
What Is Body Checking
The term “body checking” refers to a frequent, repetitive behavior in which a person will monitor their size, weight, shape, and other external features. This could take the form of ritualistically stepping on scales, looking in mirrors, touching certain body parts, or adjusting clothes to hide “problem areas.”
It can also manifest in the urge to habitually compare or seek validation about your appearance from others. This habit isn’t exclusive to people with an eating disorder. Anyone can fall into this habit.
The Harmful Effects of Body Checking
Many of us think about how we look or check ourselves in the mirror sometimes—this in itself is not necessarily unusual. However, body checking becomes a harmful habit when it:
- Turns into chronic body dissatisfaction.
- Feeds an existing issue with body dysmorphia.
- Interferes with daily activities
- Impacts your mental health, self-esteem, or body image.
Not to mention, there’s a strong correlation between obsessive body checking and more severe, harmful symptoms in those with diagnosable eating disorders, like anorexia or bulimia.
According to a recent study in the Eating Behaviors Journal, body checking can also increase weight loss tendencies such as caloric restriction, compulsive exercise, or self-induced vomiting and laxative abuse. In addition, as body checking persists and escalates over time, it can put you under extreme emotional duress—even to the point of self-harm or suicidal thoughts.
Don’t let this harmful habit reach a point of danger for your mind or body. It’s time to take action and ask for help if you:
- Have trouble focusing on other areas of life outside your appearance.
- Experience incessant body comparison, either in real life or on social media.
- Spend excessive amounts of time or money to change specific features.
- Feel your mood shift based on your reflection in a mirror or weight on a scale.
- Increase exercise and restrict calories in order to punish or control the body.
- Avoid wearing clothes that will draw attention to your areas of insecurity.
- Isolate from relationships or social events as a result of poor body image.
- Let this habit interfere with your career obligations or personal commitments.
- Spend excessive time each day mirror checking.
- Have welts, bruises, and irritation on your skin due to frequent pinching.
How to Stop Body Checking
As with any disordered behavior, it’s not as simple as “stopping” one day. This is something you might not even recognize yourself doing in the first place. Use the following strategies to bring awareness to your body checking and then take steps toward stopping. Doing this can also help you begin to shift your negative body image and develop body neutrality.
If you feel your body checking has become something you need help with—or you’re not sure if you do—let’s talk. Book a free consult with Kindful Body to see how we can support you on your healing journey.
1. Recognize When You’re Body Checking
This takes a lot of attention and awareness, which you’ll build over time. Start by noticing how often you:
- Look in the mirror during the day
- Criticize your appearance
- Check your face or your body in a reflection
- Analyze yourself in a photo
- Touch your stomach or other body parts you struggle to like about yourself
This awareness is step one. Once you know you’re doing it, you can start to reduce the amount of times you do it each day.
2. Set Boundaries to Reduce Your Urges
In addition to how often you body check, it’s helpful to know what triggers the behavior. Here are some examples of triggers and the related boundary you can consider setting.
Scrolling on social media evokes the impulse to body check? Unfollow accounts that elicit body comparison or dissatisfaction, and create limits on these platforms to reduce your access.
Are you trying to fit into clothes that are too small for your body? Choose outfits that make you feel both comfortable and confident.
Do you step on the scale every day or regularly? Remove them from your home or set a boundary to start checking just one time/week.
Do you look at yourself every time you walk by a reflective surface, like a building? Only allow yourself to check your reflection when you’re looking in a bathroom mirror or getting dressed.
The more boundaries you establish based on your unique experience, the easier it will be to recognize the urge and stop yourself from doing it.
3. Develop Healthier Coping Mechanisms
You developed body checking as a coping mechanism. For example, it may be a tool to make sure you are worthy of love, kindness, and compassion from others—if you look the “right” way, then you are worthy. This is why it may give you a sense of relief when you do it. It can also increase anxiety if you don’t get the validation you’re looking for.
Here are some coping mechanisms that can help you minimize the impulse to body check, while nurturing a more balanced, compassionate view of yourself.
- Meditation teaches you to focus on the present instead of insecurities, anxieties, and harmful beliefs about yourself.
- Affirmations equip you to reframe negative self-talk with truths like, “I am more than my appearance,” or “My worth is not based on how I look.”
- Hobbies can serve as healthy distractions when temptations arise.
4. Reach Out for Professional Support
Body checking is something many people do—but it’s also closely related to disordered eating and eating disorders. When working with a professional mental health specialist or therapist, you can create personalized strategies to curb your behaviors and unpack underlying mental health issues such as trauma, anxiety, or low self-esteem.
Working through body checking could be the first step toward recognizing your disordered habits and committing to eating disorder recovery.
Experience Freedom from Body Checking With Kindful Body
Whether you know the roots of your body image issues, or you’re not quite sure where they stem from, you can take these steps right now to minimize this harmful habit.
If you want to ditch compulsive body checking and are struggling to do it on your own, reach out to our compassionate team here at Kindful Body for a free 15-minute consultation. This could be the first step toward making peace with your own appearance.
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