Improving Body Appreciation to Promote Intuitive Eating and Disorder Recovery
Eating disorders almost always come with disrupted body image.
Pathologies like body dysmorphia as well as tendencies like thin-ideal internalisation, body shame, and dissatisfaction, are often associated with disordered eating patterns.
Considering these psychological cues while referring to eating disorder recovery is critical. Recovery is broader than just changing the eating habits themselves.
Seeing the big picture might help make recovery easier and more permanent.
Linking body appreciation and intuitive eating
Analysing the link between body appreciation, intuitive eating, and eating disorder recovery has been incredibly informative on the role and place of body appreciation in that scheme.
Intuitive eating implies a close connection with body hints, listening to hunger and satisfaction cues as well as following your body’s will for different types of food.
It requires a level of trust in your body. Trust that is often disrupted when you are affected by any kind of eating disorder.
A higher level of body appreciation can lead to better eating disorder recovery via intuitive eating. This finding suggests that interfering primarily with body appreciation can consequently reduce eating disorders’ incidence without acting directly on eating behaviours.
Body appreciation itself can be a target to promote intuitive eating and thus decrease eating disorders.
Furthermore, when comparing the body appreciation level of people who recovered from an eating disorder to people who never experienced any, levels of body appreciation and tendency towards intuitive eating are highly comparable among the groups.
On the contrary, when comparing these two previous groups to people currently experiencing eating disorders or in the middle of the recovery process, the differences are well visible. Body appreciation and intuitive eating are both significantly lower for them.
Working on body appreciation
“Body appreciation is characterized by having a positive view and acceptance of one’s body regardless of physical appearance, weight, shape and imperfections, respecting one’s bodily needs, and exhibiting healthier behaviors that dismiss unrealistic body expectations displayed in the media.”
Body appreciation is highly influenced by our environment. Low consumption of appearance-focused media, self-objectification, social comparison, and thin-ideal internalisation is associated with higher levels of body appreciation.
This is good and bad news.
Our society is shaped in a way that makes it hard to avoid being exposed to thin ideals, body objectification, or to compare yourself to everyone around, especially with image-based media like Instagram.
However, even if you can’t avoid that type of exposure completely, it doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about it.
You have the choice of hiding from the types of media that trigger those feelings and changing the way you are using these media.
Take a step back from social media, and unfollow any account that makes you feel bad about your body or trigger any kind of comparison. Surround yourself with body-positive people, whether it is online or in person. Set boundaries with people in your daily life that tend to make you feel bad about your own body and needs.
Take it step by step and seek help if needed. Improving your body's appreciation level isn’t the easiest thing and won’t be a magic cure, but it will help you and the people around you to recover more easily and permanently.
Just don’t ignore it.
