The age of selfies and social media: My body image story
The relationship we have with our body is complicated, especially for people who were raised in the age of social media. Over the last few years, I‘ve been trying to understand the factors that have influenced my eating disorder, and I’ve had many sessions with two different therapists who had opposing theories on why I went down the road of self-destruction at the time.
In this blog post, I’m going to share my struggles with body image, my relationship with social media, and how I managed to recover from an eating disorder and develop a healthier relationship with food.
First of all, what do we mean by body image?
Body image is how we think and feel about ourselves physically, and how we believe others see us. Body image is not just about our weight, it can also be things like:
struggling to love and accept your body
comparing how you look with friends or people you follow on social media
feeling as though your body shape is not represented in the media
hiding your body because you feel ashamed by it
struggling to find clothes for your body, particularly if you have a physical disability
birthmarks, surgery scars or acne affecting how you feel about how you look
Dealing with challenges around body confidence
As a teenager, I was pretty shy at school and didn’t have much of a social life outside of my few friends. That’s why I’ve spent most of my time at home, playing video games, watching movies and TV series. Later on, I discovered Instagram and like most of my peers, I was captured by these images, especially those that glamorised the female body.
At the time, I did not realise that many of these women were underweight, or just how many of these images were carefully staged and photoshopped. To me, it was an aspirational female body – I thought that’s how I was supposed to look.
Needless to say, this mindset did not help me to feel good about myself. There was nothing I wanted more than to fit into those very specific beauty standards, which is why I saw my body as a constant “work in progress.” Slowly these thought patterns led to a complete obsession with food and my appearance.
It eventually snowballed into an eating disorder called anorexia nervosa.
Where do eating disorders come from?
One of my therapists suggested that the reason I was so susceptible to an eating disorder is because I did not receive a lot of validation from my family growing up, which led me to turn to the outside world to look for people’s approval. I think it accelerated my strive for perfection – my self-esteem depended on how I looked and how others perceived me on the outside.
It still pains me to remember my day-to-day routine when I was anorexic. Every morning would start with me weighing myself (and my food) to ensure that I stayed within my self-prescribed numerical limits. Thoughts crunching calorie numbers were some of the loudest - it overshadowed everything else that I had going on in my life back then. I used to feel exhausted from the moment I woke up and it was extremely difficult to gather enough energy just to walk myself to school. I’d cut out almost all of the activities that I used to enjoy, I just didn’t have any energy for them anymore.
Every single aspect of my life was affected by this disorder – my social life, my school life, and my personal life. All of my thoughts (that were mostly negative) revolved around food, weight and appearance. The only goal that I was actively working towards was my “goal weight.”
There is a misconception around people with eating disorders – people often assume that we don’t care about food as much as regular people as this illness is classified by a low intake of food. However, it is the complete opposite – food is something that we can’t stop thinking about. It’s impossible not to think about food when you’re constantly hungry. That’s why it takes so much energy away.
All I can say about is that mental illnesses are complicated and there are many factors that lead to someone going down this road.
Self-reflection and making a change
Two years into my eating disorder, my dad took me with him to Germany for his work trip. As we were cruising down the autobahn at a high speed, I was eating a bag of mixed nuts on the passenger’s seat, worrying about my caloric intake as usual. I’m not sure why but going outside of my small town made me think about myself and my life from a different perspective. I realised that I hadn’t been happy for a while and things that I used to enjoy in the past had become a burden to me.
This wasn’t an existence I wanted to experience. At that moment I was finally able to admit that I had a problem and that I must get myself out of this mindset if I wanted to be happy ever again.
Even to this day, I believe that the process of reprogramming my thoughts regarding body image and food was the most important thing I have done in my life. It was definitely an uphill battle, with many improvements and many relapses. It took another couple of years to get better, but finally, I can say that at the age of 25, I am fully recovered and satisfied with my body image.
Here are four strategies that I used to change my mindset.
1 - Practising self-awareness
Because eating disorders (and poor body image) are characterised by negative thinking, learning how to monitor my thoughts was one of the most helpful skills in improving my body image. As a teenager, I believed that I needed to be harsh with myself to develop self-discipline and reach my goal weight. As an adult, however, I know now that kindness is a much more productive alternative.
My negative thoughts used to sound something like this:
“If you keep eating this junk food, you’re going to get obese and rejected by everyone.”
I still get these ideas sometimes, but nowadays I am much better at spotting and challenging them. For example, to reframe this line of thought I’d counter-strike it with:
“No food is intrinsically good or bad. One unhealthy meal is not going to make you obese, just like one healthy meal is not going to make you fit. Enjoy your food now and eat healthier tomorrow.”
2 - Understanding that my body is more than its sex appeal
I believe that letting go of the fear of gaining weight was another big milestone in this battle. I’d feel extremely guilty when I’d eat something I did not believe to be “clean.” This is why I avoided social events like birthdays and Christmas as much as I could. As you can imagine, this is no way to live.
I now understand that much of this anxiety came out of fear of gaining weight and becoming unattractive. Fear of being rejected and not getting the validation that I craved so much. In a sense, I self-objectified myself. I prioritised what would make me look attractive, without understanding the true purpose of my own body.
To achieve a healthier body image, I had to learn how to see my body as something that belongs to me – a vehicle that carries me through life and keeps me alive. I think that it’s so much more helpful to think about what our bodies does for us on a daily basis, rather than hyper-focusing on our cosmetic flaws. If we can be grateful for all the things our bodies do for us, it can help us see them in a different light. At the end of the day, our value does not depend on our weight. As human beings, we are so much more than just our appearance.
3 - Being selective on social media
Research shows us time and time again that exposure to media featuring unrealistic body types is linked to poor body image. This is why I am a big fan of the ‘selective social media’ approach, where I can take control of what images and messages I allow into my brain.
I tend to review the accounts I follow to assess whether they make me feel insecure or empowered. If I get a sense that content does not have a positive influence on my mental health – I unfollow those accounts. These days I mostly look at the images of dogs and cats on my social feed, as they never fail to bring a smile to my face.
4 - Redefining my standards of beauty
I’ve learned a lot from my battle with anorexia and poor body image. I have learned about my own personal strength, which is more phenomenal than I ever would have realised. I have also learned the importance of a healthy lifestyle. Today I eat nutritional, well-balanced meals and enjoy taking care of myself and living my life.
The most important thing I have learned is to appreciate myself as a person, not how I look. My mother’s catchphrase ‘beauty comes from the inside’ does not fall on deaf ears anymore. I no longer measure my self-worth with a scale or tape measure. I feel beautiful because of who I am, how I treat others, and most importantly how I treat myself.
Beauty is not a pimple-free face, or a tiny waist, or shiny hair, or any other airbrushed quality we witness daily in the media. It is who you are on the inside. And though I am proud of discovering who I am through my struggle, my greatest hope is that others will never have to work through an eating disorder to discover who they are.
For more information about body confidence and eating disorders, visit the Beat website.
See our other articles and advice on confidence and self-care.