Letting Go of Your Obsession with Weight

Contributor: Staff at Timberline Knolls Residential Treatment Center

No matter your shape, size, or weight, it’s virtually impossible to get through a day without someone (or something) trying to convince you that you’re too big, too small, too heavy, or otherwise too far away from what a supposedly “perfect” body should be. So, how does one avoid weight obsession?

In our media-saturated world, images of unrealistic bodies are everywhere, from movie screens and television commercials to magazine covers and social media feeds. This unending barrage of unachievable standards can have a profound negative impact on your physical health and your emotional well-being.

Today, with shelter-in-place orders and similar restrictions being implemented throughout the nation in response to the coronavirus pandemic, many people are spending greater amounts of time alone and online. Although it is far too early to document the impact that this is having on individuals who are struggling with eating disorders, poor self-image, and related concerns, it clearly merits increased attention.

A Persistent Problem With Weight Obsession

Current influences such as social media and the coronavirus pandemic may be exacerbating this problem, but it is not a new phenomenon. For example, a 2010 study in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior explored the relationship between social comparisons and weight control behaviors among adolescent girls.

“In the U.S. culture that emphasizes and even at times rewards anti-fat attitudes (Puhl and Heuer 2009), girls often experience pressure to conform to normative ideals that equate being thin with being beautiful (Littleton and Ollendick 2003),” the study’s authors wrote in the introduction to their report. “As a result, an alarming number of girls report feeling dissatisfied with their bodies and engage in unnecessary or unhealthy weight-loss behaviors.”

Adolescent girls are not the only demographic group that is negatively impacted by weight obsession or body-related pressures, even when those pressures are designed to inspire and not demoralize. An Australian study that is scheduled to be published in the June 2020 edition of the journal Body Image found elevated levels of body dissatisfaction and negative mood among young women who view “fitspiration” photos online.

“One of the most consistent and influential forces on young women’s body image is the media’s depiction of idealized and often unobtainable body types such as a thin and fit ideal,” the study’s lead author, Dr. Ivanka Pritchard of Flinders University, said in a March 10, 2020, article about the study. “These findings provide further evidence highlighting fitspiration and aspiring to a thin and fit ideal as a potentially harmful online trend.”

Dangerous Responses To Weight Obsession

Continued pressure to alter your size, shape, or weight can cause you to become dissatisfied with your body, or it can worsen any anxiety or apprehensions you’ve already been experiencing. Body dissatisfaction, in turn, can prompt you to engage in a variety of self-defeating activities, including excessive exercising, restrictive dieting, and dangerous compensatory behaviors.

It is impossible to reduce any of these emotions or reactions to a single cause. But in many cases, they may involve misguided attempts to regain or reassert control. There’s nothing wrong with setting goals or exerting greater responsibility over your life. But, it’s essential to make sure that your efforts to control your body or your behaviors don’t result in a weight obsession or involve taking harmful actions in order to achieve dangerous goals.

One trap many people fall into is defining success solely by how much they weigh. At first, setting a goal to achieve a specific weight can feel like a productive, measurable objective. But it’s important to remember the following:

• Weight is just one of the many components that contribute to overall health. Ignoring other factors can jeopardize your physical and emotional well-being.
• Trying to adjust your weight to conform to unrealistic societal expectations puts you at risk of selecting a target weight that is unhealthy and unsustainable.
• Focusing solely on weight increases the likelihood that you’ll engage in risky or dangerous behaviors in order to reach your goal.

Finally, remember this: You should never allow any number on any scale to determine or constrain your unique value as an individual, your capacity for experiencing joy, or your ability to achieve your greatest potential.

Redefining Success

We live in a data-driven, results-oriented world. In school and at work, the difference between success and failure is often determined by your ability to make measurable progress toward clearly defined objectives.

But when it comes to your physical health, your emotional well-being, and your overall quality of life, success isn’t something that can (or should) be reduced to a number. If you’ve become hyperfocused on your weight, here are three suggestions that may help:

Focus on the journey, not the destination. When your goal is to achieve a certain target weight, you may be tempted to take dangerous “shortcuts” to get there. Focusing on the process instead of the result is an excellent way to protect your health.

For example, instead of setting a goal of losing a certain amount of weight in a week or a month, make it your goal to eat a certain number of healthy meals during that time period. This is still a measurable objective that you can track, but in this case, you’re charting beneficial activities, not results that can be achieved via unhealthy behaviors.

Enjoy the experience. When you exercise solely for the purpose of reducing weight, the activities can quickly become tedious as well as dangerous. But when you find ways of staying active that you actually enjoy, the experience of exercising becomes its own reward. Your exercise regimen doesn’t have to involve excruciating hours on a treadmill. It can include evening walks around your neighborhood, relaxing bike rides on the weekend, and an array of other gentle and enjoyable pursuits.

Appreciate everyday successes. Every day provides us with a multitude of opportunities and myriad reasons to be grateful. Take the time to acknowledge and appreciate so-called simple pleasures such as the smell of fresh coffee in the morning, a text message from a good friend, the chance to master a new skill or a stunning sunset. When you embrace a mindset of gratitude, you will shift your focus from negative thoughts about yourself to positive emotions about the world and your place in it.

None of these tips will magically transform your life into a blissful, stress-free experience. But each of them can empower you to focus your attention on what truly matters most: your health, your happiness, and your ability to live a hopeful and satisfying life.

---

Sources

Keough, M. Online fitness trend #fitspiration makes women feel worse, research finds. Posted March 10, 2020. Retrieved from https://blogs.flinders.edu.au/caring-futures-institute/2020/03/10/online-fitness-trend-fitspiration-makes-women-feel-worse-research-finds/

Mueller, A. S.; Pearson, J.; Muller, C.; Frank, K.; and Turner, A. (2010). Sizing Up Peers: Adolescent Girls’ Weight Control and Social Comparison in the School Context. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 51(1), 64-78. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022146509361191

Pritchard, I.; Kavanagh, E.; Mulgrew, K.; Lim, M.; and Tiggermann, M. (2020). The effect of Instagram #fitspiration images on young women’s mood, body image, and exercise behavior. Body Image, Vol. 33, 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2020.02.002

---

About Our Sponsor:

At Timberline Knolls Residential Treatment Center outside of Chicago, Illinois, we provide specialized care for women and adolescent girls who are living with eating disorders.

---

The opinions and views of our guest contributors are shared to provide a broad perspective of eating disorders. These are not necessarily the views of Eating Disorder Hope but an effort to offer a discussion of various issues by different concerned individuals.

We at Eating Disorder Hope understand that eating disorders result from a combination of environmental and genetic factors. If you or a loved one are suffering from an eating disorder, please know that there is hope for you, and seek immediate professional help.

Reviewed & Approved on April 6, 2020, by Jacquelyn Ekern, MS, LPC
Published April 6, 2020, on EatingDisorderHope.com