Body Image: When You Don’t Feel Comfortable in Your Body
- Kelina Fili
- Jul 21
- 5 min read
Understanding body image, body checking and the small steps that can help
Body image is often spoken about as though it is simply a matter of liking or disliking what you see in the mirror. In reality, it is much more layered than that. It includes the thoughts, feelings and beliefs you hold about your appearance, as well as the meaning you attach to it.
If you struggle with food, body image can take up an enormous amount of mental space. You might think about your shape throughout the day, repeatedly check certain areas, compare yourself with others or avoid your reflection altogether. It can be exhausting!
It can also feel very convincing. On a difficult day, the thought “my body is the problem” may feel like a fact rather than a thought. But how you feel about your body is not always an accurate reflection of how your body looks. Body image is an experience, and that experience can change even when your body has not!
Body image is not fixed
Have you ever felt relatively comfortable in your body in the morning, then completely different by the evening? Your body is unlikely to have changed significantly within those few hours, but your experience of it may have.
Body image often becomes more difficult when we are stressed, tired, lonely, low in mood or feeling exposed. Social events, photographs, clothes shopping, comments from others and changes in routine can also bring it to the surface.
Sometimes the mind uses the body to make sense of a broader feeling of discomfort: “I feel bad, so something must be wrong with my body.” Feelings that are difficult to understand or express may instead become focused on how the body looks.
This does not mean the distress is imaginary. It simply means that changing your body may not address what is actually hurting in that moment.
Instead of asking only, “What is wrong with my body today?”, you might gently ask, “What else is happening for me today?”
The promise that never quite delivers
Does this sound familiar?
“Once I lose weight, I’ll stop worrying.”
“Once my body changes, I’ll feel confident.”
“Once I look right, food will become easier.”
The difficulty is that the target rarely stays still. A body that was once imagined as “good enough” can quickly become unacceptable again. The rules become tighter; the checking becomes more frequent. Body image difficulties rarely resolve through weight or shape change alone.
Life is not about creating the perfect body so that you can finally start living. It is about gradually loosening the idea that your body must meet certain conditions before you are allowed to participate in your own life.
Body checking: when reassurance becomes part of the problem
Body checking includes any repeated behaviour used to assess, monitor or seek reassurance about your size or shape.
Checking can bring a brief sense of certainty or control. Unfortunately, that relief rarely lasts for long. Instead, it directs more attention towards the body and teaches the brain that there is something important (or threatening) that must be monitored.
Think about being told not to picture a pink elephant. The instruction itself brings the image straight to mind. Body checking can work in a similar way: checking in the hope that you can stop thinking about your body often makes the thoughts louder and more persistent.
It may also affect what happens next. You might notice that weighing yourself changes your mood, makes eating feel harder or increases an urge to restrict, binge, compensate or withdraw. Looking at the whole pattern can be more useful than focusing only on the checking itself.
The other end of the spectrum: body avoidance
Body avoidance may include avoiding mirrors or photographs, hiding your body, missing out on events because of how you feel you look or wearing clothes primarily to avoid any awareness of your shape.
Avoidance can feel protective, particularly when body distress is intense. Over time, it reinforces the belief that your body is something you cannot tolerate seeing or feeling. Both checking and avoidance keep the body at the centre of your attention: one through constant monitoring and the other through constant efforts not to notice.
The reason behind a behaviour matters. There is nothing wrong with liking loose clothing or choosing comfort. The helpful question is whether the choice reflects your style and comfort, or whether fear is making the decision for you.
You do not have to love your body
“Love your body” can sound positive, but when you have spent years feeling at war with it, the idea may feel unrealistic; or even worse, like another standard you are failing to meet. Body positivity is one possible approach, but it is not the only one.
Body acceptance means allowing your body to exist as it is today, without having to approve of every part of it. You do not have to promise that you will feel this way forever. The task is simply to make a little more room for the body you have today.
Body neutrality shifts attention away from appearance and towards function, experience and living. Rather than replacing every negative thought with a positive one, you practise giving appearance less importance. Your body allows you to work, rest, think, laugh, heal, connect and experience the world around you.
You may move between positivity, acceptance and neutrality depending on the day. The most useful approach is the one that feels accessible to you now.
Small places to begin
Improving body image is rarely about suddenly feeling confident; it involves noticing familiar patterns and practising a different response.
You could begin by noticing one checking or avoidance behaviour without trying to change everything at once. Pay attention to what happens before it, what you hope it will give you and how you feel afterwards. What might the behaviour be helping you manage or avoid in that moment?
If you feel ready, experiment with delaying it, reducing its frequency or responding to the urge differently.
On a difficult body image day, widen the question. Are you tired, overwhelmed, lonely, hungry, stressed or comparing yourself more than usual? What would support the whole of you in that moment, not just change how you look?
Try not to turn body image work into another thing to do perfectly. The aim is not to never have a negative thought about your body again. It is to give those thoughts less authority over what you eat, what you wear, where you go and how fully you take part in your life.
If thoughts about your body are affecting your eating, relationships, mood or day-to-day life, you deserve support. This is particularly important if body distress is linked with restriction, binge eating, purging, compulsive exercise or other compensatory behaviours.
Comments