Empowering Me!

How can you empower yourself to make better decisions with regard to body image and living healthily? You must begin by DECIDING and then ACTING on that decision. The steps of an effective behavior change are as follows: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance. I hope that through reading some of this blog you have been able to move a step or two. Each step is important and the amount of time spent on each step varies with each individual. You need to move at your own pace but you need to KEEP MOVING!

This behavior change process can be applied to body image in the following way (as an example, this is not the only way it could work!): Precontemplation: You aren't even aware that how you see yourself so seriously affects your health and therefore you're not thinking about changing it. Contemplation: You have learned through this blog and other resources that body image has everything to do with how you're feeling and you've decided that making a lifestyle change could be beneficial to you. Preparation: You start noticing more how you see yourself, the kind of things you and others say about your body, and your reactions to these comments. You examine your priorities and decide what is important to you in a body and how to achieve that in a healthy, balanced way. You come up with a plan of action. Action: You begin to put your plan in motion. You may fall off course sometimes but you don't let this deter you. You are determined to make this new behavior (such as complimenting yourself daily) a habit. Therefore, you understand that small setbacks are not the end of the world and should be viewed as part of the process, not as total failure. Maintenance: Don't stop now! You've made this behavior a habit but you still have to work at it everyday. You realize that this change isn't just a temporary fix - it's a lifestyle change.

Try this out and see how it works for you! Let me know how it goes. :)

Media and Body Image

I recently read this book called Packaging Girlhood by Sharon Lamb. I think it brought up a lot of good points (although overall, I think the book was a little bit too intense for my taste). It's all about how girls are sold specific images of what they can be in life. There's the pretty girly girl, the tomboy, the sporty girl, the gothic girl, etc. While I think these are all pretty accurate, I think that there is so much more to girls (which is ultimately the point of the book). For example, I don't think that as a teenage girl I would have fit into any one of those categories. I loved playing pirate ship, playing kickball, and dressing up and having pretend tea parties. Where does that kind of girl fit?
My point is, girls need to see that they can be any type of girl they want to be. It's part of what having a healthy body image is all about. If you can see yourself as God sees you, you can understand that you can be so much more than the choices the media gives you.

What to do?

I think one of the problems with body image is that you often see someone struggling with it and you don't know how to help them. You cannot change their view of themself so what can you do? I don't really have an answer to this question - I just wanted to see what all your thoughts are. One of my roommates yesterday said that she said something negative about herself and her boyfriend said "I don't like it when you say things like that." Perhaps that's the best way to handle it.

Just for Fun

I was looking around and came across this blog that caught my attention just by the title "adios barbie!". I think Barbie is such a great example of society's absurd expectations. Let's face it, if Barbie were real, she wouldn't be able to get out of bed. Here's another site that talks about how to build a positive self esteem for a fabulous body image.

So tell me something good. . .

Alright so we've gone through a few of the negative impacts body image can have (and we'll probably go through several more). But how can body image affect your life if you have a positive perception? And how do you get that positive image? I think that these questions are important for individuals as well as parents. This article speaks about how parents can help their children develop a healthy relationship with food. Of course, healthy eating is just one part of being healthy overall. Exercise is also a key component to treating yourself well and loving your body. Girls Health organization helps girls understand how much exercise they should be getting and how to incorporate it into their lives so that it is fun instead of drudgery.

News Report on Body Image

Oh the Places You'll Go

The body image you have has a huge impact on your life. It is the paradigm through which you see the world. That means that if you have a positive and healthy image of yourself, you are likelier to see the world as a place of opportunity and a safe place where you can be yourself. The more you don't like what you see in the mirror the easier it is to become sullen and withdrawn, sometimes convinced that all the world hates you and despises you. I think it is interesting to see what kind of person everyone becomes based solely on how they see themselves. This website is a great resource on having a healthy body image and healthy living. It also has a section on eating disorders, which is one thing people with a poor body image can struggle with. Depression is another issue that can come about from dealing with a poor body image.

What do you see?

There's this film we've been watching in my women's health class called Thin. It's a documentary of girls who struggle with eating disorders at a rehab center. At one point, one of the girls starts crying during their community meeting and screaming that she wants to be thin and that there are so many girls at her school her are thin and she's not one of them, but to us in the audience, it is apparent that she is well below a healthy weight. One of the activities they do at this rehab center is that they have the girls trace their life-size body on a wall. They then have the girls stand in front of these pictures - the difference between the drawing and the real body is striking. These girls honestly believe themselves to be much bigger than they actually are. So that leads me to a few questions:
Where do we get this distorted image of our own bodies?
What are the consequences of having a negative or positive body image?
What can we do to come to love our bodies?
What resources are out there to help those who are deeply struggling with body image?

I hope to be able to explore these questions in more detail later. Until then, I think that this commercial gives us a lot to think about.

Introduction to Body Image

Body image has a huge impact on the health of girls today. Body image can be affected by a myriad of things - family, friends, and the media to name a few.

For example, I've recently been reading this book called "The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl" by Shauna Reid. The book is Shauna's story of how she had such a negative image of herself that she indulged herself in bad habits - 350 pounds worth of bad habits! When she decides that she's had enough of being obese she begins to change her lifestyle to lose the pounds and maintain a healthy weight. The part that I find interesting and relevant to the topic is that she goes into great detail of how she felt as a child. She believed that she was fat and her mother reinforced this idea. She was afraid to go swimming because she didn't want t0 be showing so much of her body, she began secretly binging, and she turned more inside of herself and away from her family, friends, and the world in general. Much of this is due to her negative self image. She recalls how, years later, she looked back at pictures from her childhood and discovered that she was a normal-looking, healthy-seeming child! She was so sure the whole time that she was fat that she let it inhibit her daily movements. Had she had a more positive image of herself, perhaps she would have been able to adopt healthier habits.

Like I said earlier, there are many things that influence your body image. For more information visit this awesome website!