Defeating Poor Body Image

Body image issues are very personal and it's not really a 'do this and it will all be better' scenario, but I understand where you are coming from - it helps to hear about people who have 'overcome' or at least 'learnt to deal with' their own body image issue.
All I can do is relate my story - I can't say this is an answer or that you should do what I did, but I hope it helps somewhat.

Background: I come from big northern European stock but I grew up in a Mediterranean country where folk were smaller than me. I also had adults in my life who constantly put me on diets and told me I needed to lose weight. Suffice to say I have body image issues. When in college I went through a traumatic event and the way I deal was by controlling my food which developed in to a full blown eating disorder. It took a few years and a lot of counselling but I started eating normally again.

Today: I am a weight I am happy with. Most days I look in the mirror and I'm happy with what I see there. I feel good about my appearance and about myself in general. That being said I still have bad days where I look in the mirror or down at my body and am disgusted, but I've come to accept them for what they are - flukes and they pass, quicker than you might expect.

How I got here: I'd love to say 'I found my inner strength and stopped caring what the world thought, I just started loving me, for me.' Unfortunately I'm not that woman. What happened was I surrounded my self with people who loved me for me, who see who I am and think that that person is beautiful. It took a few years but eventually I started seeing myself as they see me.

Hello! I understand your reasoning and I wish to add my take on this issue.

Like you, the more I lost weight in the past the stronger my feeling was to dislike my body even more.
Something was going on and I couldn't shake it.
What I did was to replace my negative thoughts with 2 positive ones (or more as time went by).
So for example, my aim for the week was to tell myself what part of my body I liked when I was stuck thinking my *insert body part* were too disgusting or the likes, EVERY DAY.
Sometimes I'd forget but got back on track. I immediately felt something shifting and at the end of that week I was feeling better.
After 2 weeks I started believing in what I was saying. And eventually. I stopped telling myself negative things and appreciated my body. Even when I was not gaining or losing weight.

I was celebrating what I can do that is not related to what I look like.

I hope you will find something that suits you soon :-)

From time to time, I find myself feeling this way too. But then I always bring it back to why I feel like this, me, my progress sin't enough. It doesn't feel like enough because I'm still comparing myself to whatever brainwashing that's been put out there for us. So sometimes it feels like even progress isn't good enough. And then I remember, I'm not doing this to win some competition with anyone else, I'm doing this to become a better "me", not to be shifted from one category to another by social standards.
My physical improvements won't solve the other problems in my life, but they are an accomplishment, so I should let myself celebrate and enjoy it instead of always saying its not enough and keep working on the other things, non-physical, that need just as much attention.
The best days are when this thinking doesn't even factor in, when I can undertake a physical challenge and survive it. That keeps me going, keeps me hungry to improve and that high keeps me going through those body image lows. Because regardless of how I feel about what my body looks like or how it looks period, I know it can do amazing things. That makes me thankful for my body, as it is.

I understand how you feel. When I was 300 lbs, I always thought if I lost the weight, I'd feel wonderful and beautiful and everything would be perfect. Now that I've lost over 150 lbs, I feel just as bad about myself as I did then. I know it isn't logical, but now all I see when I look at myself is the excess skin and other issues. Perhaps I would feel different if I hadn't developed an eating disorder and dropped down to almost 100 lbs, and then gained weight back, but I really don't think I would.

Self-confidence and self-esteem is totally a mental thing, and losing weight won't change that. We have to work on that aspect ourselves. When I start feeling down on myself, I try to remind myself about the good things. I'm healthier now than I ever have been. I'm happier. I have the ability to move and enjoy my body, while a lot of people don't.

One thing that helps my mindset is to keep a gratitude journal, even if it's only in my head, of the things in life I am grateful for. Sometimes it can be something about my body, like the fact that I have the ability to be active, other times it can be something like a beautiful sunset or my family, or even peanut butter. It helps to keep me in a positive mindset.

I apologize in advance, but, WALL OF TEXT WARNING! I very rarely do this, but I need to get this off my chest so bear with me.

I've always had issues in the body image and self-esteem departments. I was a morbidly obese person, a bit socially awkward, not the most successful in the bunch, not moving forward in life as much as I wanted, not having the best childhood, life throwing curveballs at me all throughout in many aspects, not having the best health.. and so on.

One day a switch flipped in my head after a conversation that happened in my head when a friend I believed looked like perfection personified told me that she absolutely hated her fingers and that's why she always kept her hands in her pockets. Fingers? Seriously? I did not show it but I felt furious. What a self-absorbed thing to say to a morbidly obese person with bitten nails and thinning hair.. How superficial.. How insensitive.. You're bloody perfect!

Then it hit me! How superficial it is of me to think that. How insensitive to make this about me when she was genuinely struggling with that. But.. that's nothing compared to what I'm struggling with. I wanted to scream about my own imperfections, then I remembered there was a 3rd friend with us who I had very strong secret feelings for. She had ALS. It would be self-absorbed and plain rude to talk about my huge thighs when she is struggling with a REAL life-threatening problem that left her with imperfections in every aspect. But she is the most beautiful being on earth to me, even with her awkward walk and distorted smile. It was a rude awakening.. I was in love with someone who looked nothing like those poster girls, and not so much with someone who did..

Then it was a train of thought spiraling out of control. That obese woman who was wearing a very unflattering body hugging shirt I saw in the street the other day, I didn't even think about her until now. What if I'm just living in my own world and those who matter don't even care what I look like and those who don't, don't even think about me?

The problem with self esteem is that it's not a switch that can be either on or off. It's so multi-layered that any advice in that regard may not be very helpful. It took quite some time, but slowly I learned to accept myself. I realized my pitfalls: being a perfectionist and comparing myself to others. I needed to go through the painful process of admitting that I'm not perfect and I can't be perfect in every aspect no matter what I do. I can be "better" in some aspects but never perfect. Some things can be changed, but others can't. There will always be people more beautiful, successful and fortunate than me, and I will always be more beautiful, successful and fortunate than some people. That's just how life works. Beating myself about it will not change anything.

A few years later I met a guy who later became my boyfriend, and we were perfect for each other. He was very thin and we looked like laurel and hardy next to each other. Neither of us cared what the other looked like, we were really in love! It helped me move forward in my journey towards self acceptance.

It took years, but I gradually accepted myself the way I am. Accepting does not mean liking, I mean I still hate some aspects of my looks, I just don't let this be more than just a passing thought. It usually quickly turns - as a self defense mechanism - into something amusing and interesting. It's hard to explain but I learned to be amused by my imperfections rather than annoyed. For example you can see how I handled, in my mind, the unflattering phases my body went through during weight loss in this thread: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1419292-do-certain-body-shapes-carry-weight-better

Funny thing, when I started having a more positive outlook in life beautiful things started to pop up out of nowhere on my body. I suddenly had great eye color, and cute collar bones. I suddenly started admiring my these little beauty marks that happened to be in all the right places.. etc. I now savor my successes and laugh off my failures with determination to try again. I now notice how popular and loved I am, how my friends always come to me for advice, how they say they're never bored around me, how much more interesting my inner world is, and how silly I was for locking myself inside my own brain focusing on nothing but negatives.

It took many years, and I'm not really sure what it was, but somehow my outlook on life has changed and even though I get these moments where I wish something on me looked otherwise, they're not nearly as destructive as they used to be.

tl;dr: It's a personal journey, just keep your eyes open to what the simplest things around you can teach you about yourself.

A number of years ago my mother's best friend died after a long fight with cancer. My mom's friend was a beautifu, petite women that always cared too much about what others thought and lived her life in constant worry of gaining even 3 pounds. She had an amazing spirit and glow about her but even in her 60's carried with her a terrible self body image.

When she died she was cremated - at the funeral my mother was thinking about the wonderful friendship they had and how close they were and then realized that she could only picture her friend's face and became very aware that she couldn't picture the rest of her....as many times as her friend made comments about her "ugly legs" or "flat butt", my mom couldn't picture what her legs looked like or whether or not she really had a flat butt. She thought it was an odd thought to have at a funeral but realized how sad it was that her friend lived her entire life worrying about her body not being perfect when really at the end, no one remembers you for those things anyway. The people that love you and care about you will remember things like how your smile brightened up a room or how just the sound of your laughter made them smile....they will remember you for the kind words that you said to them or the soft touch you gave to them when needed.....how kind you were, how compassionate you were or maybe how daring you were.

My mom shared this with me because my poor self image came at the age of 14. I stopped wearing shorts and would not wear a bathing suite in public unless I had a large beach towell wrapped around me. I used clothing to hide the things I didn't like, the things that I thought "should" look better . Having people tell me how pretty I was made it worse for me because I thought if people thought a had a pretty face that they would expect the rest of me to be pretty too. My mom hated that I felt that way and never knew how to help me with it....until her friend died and she shared that story.

I went to the beach last year and for the first time actually walked up and down the beach, IN A BIKINI WITHOUT A BEACH TOWELL and it was absolutely freeing. I didn't worry about what anyone would think, I just enjoyed the feeling of the sand between by toes and the ocean water washing over my feet.

Have you ever been to the beach with someone that has said "oh wow, look at the fat women in a bikini over there....can you believe she would have the nerve to wear that"? I say kudos to that fat woman because she has mastered the battle of poor self image. Yes, is she unhealthy and all that.....my point is simply this....she is loving life, on a beach, in a bikini!!!!

This was really powerful. Thank you for writing. You're absolutely right--and I will remember your post for a long, long time, and carry it in my heart always.