How much of it is body dismorphia?

alondrakar

Interested in your thoughts - are there people here who will never been happy with their appearance no matter the progress made? I thought about this during my walk yesterday. I was looking at my arm and it seemed so slim/skinny. It was as though I was looking at someone else's arm because in my opinion, this arm I was staring at did not match the body that I see in the mirror every morning. So I wonder, even if I lost the other 10-15 pounds, will it be enough?

MikePTY

There are absolutely people who aren't happy with their appearance, regardless of the progress. The truth is our happiness with our bodies has a lot of to do with things other than what our bodies actually look like. Happiness with ones body really comes from within. Sometimes we have to accept that the standards that we have been influenced to think are realistic really aren't, and that it's okay if our bodies never get there.

I am still 20 pounds overweight, and I feel like I am "happy" with my body. That doesn't mean I am not trying still to change it. Of course I want to improve. But feeling positive about how I am now is a choice that I try to make.

Luke_rabbit

I find it best to concentrate on my health rather than my appearance. Not only will I never love the way my body looks, but, also, my body is constantly changing/aging. Focusing on how I look would be a constant disappointment.

Sure, I am short, have too many surgery scars, some gray hair, and, frankly, weird feet. On the other hand, my last triglyceride reading was 40!

Luke_rabbit

Deleted

LyndaBSS

Yes, you have an hour to edit. There's what looks like a bolded asterisk on the top right, next to the 3 button strip.

In a perfect world, we would all love and be confident in the bodies we have. Sadly, that's far from reality.

AnnPT77

alondrakar wrote: »

Interested in your thoughts - are there people here who will never been happy with their appearance no matter the progress made? I thought about this during my walk yesterday. I was looking at my arm and it seemed so slim/skinny. It was as though I was looking at someone else's arm because in my opinion, this arm I was staring at did not match the body that I see in the mirror every morning. So I wonder, even if I lost the other 10-15 pounds, will it be enough?

Are there such people? Sure. Sometimes it's easy to see, in a particular thread (often, it's young women who already very thin, but see themselves as fat, or young men who call themselves "skinny fat" but feel they must cultivate such low intake that even the best strength training program can't help them achieve their desired "look"). In other cases, it's more borderline or questionable whether the person's self-perception is askew. (Some of us like different "looks" vs. others.)

I think many/most of us who lose weight are likely to have a temporary period of disconnect where we look in the mirror and see ourselves as we think of ourselves based on long experience, not as we actually appear at the moment. It takes some time for the self-perception to catch up. (Even my thin-person clothes looked absurdly tiny to me for awhile; now they look normal, and the old ones look huge. ).

But inaccurate visual self-perception is one thing, and self-disgust or distaste is another. And unrealistic goals are yet another: Wanting to look like an IG fitspo model who only looks that particular way with the right lighting, pose, dehydration, photoshop, etc.; or wanting to look like a body type that is not within the realm of possible for our individual skeletal structure. (I will never have narrow shoulders, or delicately-thin fingers (which is fine with me, BTW, but if it weren't . . . .)).

I think it's useful to find a way to locate one's sense of self-value in something instead of or at least in addition to appearance: Health, performance, feeling great, being the best self we can be, good character, generosity, empathy, intelligence, knowledge, whatever. I also think it's possible to be happy or at least reasonably point-in-time satisfied with one's appearance, while still wanting to work on improving it. I'm pretty happy with my body - it's strong and can do pretty cool stuff - but I can think of ways I'd like to improve.

Will you be happy with your appearance in 10-15 pounds? Of course no one else can answer that, but I suspect you can be, partly based on whether you decide to be . . . even if you still want to work on improvements. Just guessing, though. :flowerforyou:

zebasschick

i've never seen myself accurately in a mirror. i used to be anorexic years ago - at 104 pounds, i saw a slightly heavy person, but i was self-aware enough to know that was impossible at that weight, so i forced myself to eat. admittedly not as much as i should have, but i never dropped below 97 pounds, and at 5' 3", i stayed healthy (although thing except for my thigh muscles) and at that time was very active.

i also see my face in a variety of ways, mostly depending on my mood - with the same expression, i seem different to myself. i'm not disgusted, but when i was a teenager, i was surprised to sometimes look in a mirror and see what seemed a somewhat unfamiliar face. that doesn't happen to me anymore, but while i see my body and face detail-accurate, my feelings shape how i view me.

JeromeBarry1

Dismorphia doesn't stand a chance against David: "I am great and fearfully made".

seltzermint555

zebasschick wrote: »

i've never seen myself accurately in a mirror. i used to be anorexic years ago - at 104 pounds, i saw a slightly heavy person, but i was self-aware enough to know that was impossible at that weight, so i forced myself to eat. admittedly not as much as i should have, but i never dropped below 97 pounds, and at 5' 3", i stayed healthy (although thing except for my thigh muscles) and at that time was very active.

i also see my face in a variety of ways, mostly depending on my mood - with the same expression, i seem different to myself. i'm not disgusted, but when i was a teenager, i was surprised to sometimes look in a mirror and see what seemed a somewhat unfamiliar face. that doesn't happen to me anymore, but while i see my body and face detail-accurate, my feelings shape how i view me.

Although details of our experiences are very different, I can relate to this also. I've never seen myself quite accurately. I think I've always seen someone who is around 200-220 lb and size 18 clothing. Whether I was 300 lb or (now) a size 10 and sometimes 8. When I saw photos of myself at my heaviest I was SHOCKED and now I see photos of myself and am mildly shocked, too, because what I see when I look in the mirror is different. VERY different.

I still think of myself as plus sized and have found myself saying things to that effect and other people are like, "WHAT? You're thin". I know I'm not technically thin but in my mind I do think I am a lot heavier than I actually am. After six years of maintaining a lower weight I'm not at all used to that, still.

Currently I feel like I don't really recognize myself in the mirror. I feel like I look much older and prettier than I expect. I don't mean that in a vain way, but in my head I'm MUCH uglier & more masculine-looking and far younger. So it's a weird feeling to see instead, a pleasant enough feminine face who is approaching her middle age. FTR it's not a feeling of gender dysphoria for me, nothing that extreme, more of a failure to acknowledge/see the reality of my own appearance.

Pricklypineapple422

There are definitely people who will never be happy, and sometimes I feel that way about myself. What has made me realize the amount of weight I have lost is getting new clothes that actually fit. I tried a new pair of pants the other day and exclaimed to my husband that they made me look skinny. His response was, "Of course you look thin, you ARE thin." Until that moment though I didn't see myself as thin. I think wearing ill fitting, baggy clothes made it impossible to actually see myself as a smallet size. Even today, I received a half marathon training shirt in the mail and thought it looked so nice, but then told my husband I didn't think it would fit because it looked so small. He told me to out it on, and sure enough it fits perfectly. For me, I think it is just going to take some time to adjust to my new size.

Diatonic12

People are being marketed based solely on their appearance. Sometimes it comes down to specific body parts. In general, looks are a poor motivator. If it was really all about the looks we would all stick to exercise and eating plans most of the time. Using looks for your motivator tends to make you feel worse. It's better to focus on what we can do and not how we look. Cute isn't everything.

hixa30

I would guess that it's not common, simply because if you look at a random group of people in a Western country, the majority of them are overweight or obese. Half of these will be dieting, with a sampling similar to what it's like here on mfp.

I'm sure that there are people with body dismorphia, but I've never met someone in real life with it. I have met many people on a diet.

glovepuppet

I've met the extreme version, like people with eating disorders, but I think a vast number of people have a small degree of it, combined with an unrealistic beauty standard. Especially women. We're raised to see ourselves in terms of flaws to be improved.

cbihatt

glovepuppet wrote: »

I've met the extreme version, like people with eating disorders, but I think a vast number of people have a small degree of it, combined with an unrealistic beauty standard. Especially women. We're raised to see ourselves in terms of flaws to be improved.

Truth.

quiksylver296

MikePTY wrote: »

There are absolutely people who aren't happy with their appearance, regardless of the progress. The truth is our happiness with our bodies has a lot of to do with things other than what our bodies actually look like. Happiness with ones body really comes from within. Sometimes we have to accept that the standards that we have been influenced to think are realistic really aren't, and that it's okay if our bodies never get there.

I am still 20 pounds overweight, and I feel like I am "happy" with my body. That doesn't mean I am not trying still to change it. Of course I want to improve. But feeling positive about how I am now is a choice that I try to make.

Same. My body is strong and powerful and lets me do the things I want to do. I love this body.

But I had to love myself first. I've never really hated myself, but I was critical. I'm not so critical any more. That little belly pouch helped grow a pretty great kid. Those size 11 feet make me pretty darn good at balance poses in yoga. Etc.

Hannahwalksfar

I still buy clothes that are too big as I haven’t yet mentally adjusted. It takes time

Roza42

I've lost a bit over 100 lbs last year and a half. When I see a full length reflection I'm surprised. Because when I look at myself I see all the fat spots. Partly because at 170 lbs I am broad shouldered and my upper body is pretty thin while my tummy and legs are not.

MsLaTisha83

I am in a really weird place right now when it comes to how I see myself and how I feel about my body. Historically, I have always felt like I was "too fat," except one time I got on the scale when I was 16 and saw that I was 112 lbs. It was at that moment that I realized, I'm really not fat and should probably stop restricting what I am eating. Now, I am at my heaviest weight at 203 lbs, I am unhappy about how I look and how I feel, but I also tell myself "you're not THAT big." So I went from thinking I was "too fat" when I was at an ideal weight for my height to thinking it's not THAT bad, when in reality, it is. I look in the mirror, I see one thing. I look at pictures of myself, I see another thing. I feel like I can't trust what I "see" anymore. I am working on loving myself the way that I am now while making daily healthy choices with the knowledge that it all comes together, eventually.

jayemes

quiksylver296 wrote: »

Those size 11 feet make me pretty darn good at balance poses in yoga. Etc.

I always say I'm tall, so if I didn't have size 10 feet I'd topple over all the time

kshama2001

quiksylver296 wrote: »

MikePTY wrote: »

There are absolutely people who aren't happy with their appearance, regardless of the progress. The truth is our happiness with our bodies has a lot of to do with things other than what our bodies actually look like. Happiness with ones body really comes from within. Sometimes we have to accept that the standards that we have been influenced to think are realistic really aren't, and that it's okay if our bodies never get there.

I am still 20 pounds overweight, and I feel like I am "happy" with my body. That doesn't mean I am not trying still to change it. Of course I want to improve. But feeling positive about how I am now is a choice that I try to make.

Same. My body is strong and powerful and lets me do the things I want to do. I love this body.

But I had to love myself first. I've never really hated myself, but I was critical. I'm not so critical any more. That little belly pouch helped grow a pretty great kid. Those size 11 feet make me pretty darn good at balance poses in yoga. Etc.

Yep, I was unhappy with my size 11 feet when I was in school, but learned to love them after starting yoga and balancing poses.

I have a large frame and felt awkward when being intimate with normal height men, so sought partners on the excessively tall side. My OH is a foot taller than me, which is great.

whmscll

When I got married 10 years ago and was trying on wedding dresses I had to sneak photos of all of them to look at later because I could not tell from just looking in the mirror if I really liked them. I don’t have this trouble with other clothes (usually), it was weird. I am happy overall with the new me (still 2 pounds from goal) but sometimes I think there is still so much to improve. Wish my butt was perkier. Wish my “bat wings” were completely gone (they’re almost gone) and my thighs didn’t juggle at all when I walk. Should I still lose some body fat? Should I get another Dexa scan to measure body fat? So much craziness.