A Body To Love

by Tracy Gaudet, M.D.

Not merely a reflection in the mirror, your body image affects your whole health. Find out what it has to say

Anne, a 24-year-old patient who had come to me for a routine exam, worked out regularly and was an ideal weight. Nonetheless, during the course of our appointment she rattled off a dozen things she “hated about her body.” She thought she was proportioned all wrong, with breasts too small and hips too big. She refused to go to the beach with her friends because she felt so self-conscious.

As a physician, I interface with women and their bodies every day. While some of my patients have a healthy body image, many don’t. I see women of all ages who are lightning quick to point out their so-called problem areas. Hips, stomach, thighs, breasts, lips—there’s not an inch that escapes scrutiny. The degree of criticism, even loathing, can be alarming. Pointing to her arms, a patient of mine in her fifties asked, “Have you ever seen something so ugly?” These women would never speak of anyone else so harshly. But about themselves, there’s often no-holds-barred judgment.

These judgments aren’t based on logic. Our bodies are concrete, physical. But there’s frequently a distortion between what they are and how we perceive them. When women criticize their bodies, it’s as if they’re talking about something separate from themselves. In my view, this is possible because most of us “live in our head” much of the time, disconnected from the flesh and blood that carries us around every day. When you feel separate from something, you can look upon it as an outsider. And if you’re playing the role of the critic, you don’t have to look far to find the ideal against which to measure yourself: Images of “the perfect body” are everywhere. Whether yesterday’s waifs or today’s sculpted, washboard-abs models, it’s an impossible standard.

None of this is news, but people aren’t aware of how far-reaching the consequences are. Women internalize these images, often from an early age, and then begin to objectify and criticize their own bodies—as if it’s their body’s job to be perfect. When it fails to meet these standards, which is inevitable, women punish their bodies in some obvious and less-than-obvious ways. In my experience, for many women who overeat or undereat, are sedentary or work out obsessively, smoke or drink too much, or have unhealthy sexual relationships, the root cause is often a distorted body image.

So how do you forge a healthier relationship with your body? Simply spending more time “in” it helps. For those who don’t exercise, taking daily walks with your attention turned to your body (noticing how it moves, how it feels) can be a great start. For those who do, instead of tuning out with magazines or focusing on burning calories, simply feeling the sensations—your muscles working, your feet hitting the ground—can begin to reconnect you to your body. And, though it might sound paradoxical, one of the most powerful tools for healing body image is guided imagery. Done with a practitioner or by yourself, imagery can help us understand and integrate parts of ourselves from which we’ve become disconnected.