How to Disconnect Your Self-Worth from Your Body Size
If you want to learn how to stop connecting your self-worth with how you look in the mirror or the number on a scale…
…start taking a look at your thoughts about other people.
When you see other bodies, what thoughts emerge?
Are some bodies good and other bodies bad?
Does someone “look better” if they lose weight and “look worse” if they gain weight?
Do you feel impressed by the “after” in “before and after” photos?
In a couple where one partner is significantly heavier than the other, could the smaller partner “do better”?
To clarify, I’m not talking about knowing intellectually that body size does not affect a person’s worth. I’m talking about what your immediate, reflexive thoughts are when you see other bodies.
Your automatic thoughts will more accurately gauge what your current set of ingrained beliefs about bodies is like.
And your current set of beliefs will dictate what you believe about your own body—including how you feel about your image in the mirror or the number on the scale.
Here’s why your beliefs are so crucial:
The way your body looks is a neutral circumstance. Meaning there is nothing inherently good or bad about it.
Therefore, if negative emotions arise when you look at your body, it is because you are thinking negative thoughts about your body.
And you are thinking negative thoughts about your body because of your current cognitive programming: you believe that larger bodies are worse than smaller ones and perceive your own body as “too big” or “heading in the wrong direction.”
This may all sound obvious to you: negative thoughts lead you to feel negatively about your body. So let’s break down how to go about making some helpful shifts in your beliefs.
The reason I asked you earlier to think about how you feel about others’ bodies is because your beliefs, opinions, and expectations (in other words, your mindset) toward bodies extend beyond the confines of your own skin.
You may think, “I completely accept [my friends’/family members’/strangers’] bodies. It’s okay for them to be fat. Just not me.” But when you say, “Just not me,” you are in fact rejecting the idea that a larger body is an acceptable one to live in. The only way to make it psychologically safe to exist in your body, and for others to exist in theirs regardless of size, is for you to let go of the, “Just not me.”
The three primary reasons I hear for why people are so resistant to accepting a larger body size—why they can’t let go of “Just not me”—boil down to:
“Other people won’t like me.”
This belief summarizes thoughts and expectations surrounding how you are perceived by others such as, “my partner/potential partners won’t find me attractive,” “people won’t want to be friends with me,” “I’ll be the fat one,” and, “no clothes will look good on me.”
“I won’t be happy.”
This belief summarizes the set of ideas that falsely limit what you can do, e.g. “I can’t take a yoga class until I lose some weight.” More broadly, you believe you can’t live a happy, fulfilling life while in a certain body size, or that you will never be accepting of your body and therefore never happy with yourself.
“I won’t be healthy.”
There is a lot of debate about this. What we know so far is that higher body fat percentages can increase the risk of certain diseases, but we also know that body fat alone is not an accurate indicator of someone’s overall health.
More importantly, if you value your health, you can pursue health-promoting behaviors regardless of what size body you are currently in.
A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Each of the above beliefs, “Other people won’t like me,” “I won’t be happy,” “I won’t be healthy,” and any other limiting beliefs you hold related to your body size are extremely important to recognize and change because they can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
When you operate under the belief, “Other people won’t like me,” you’re predicting that you will experience social rejection, and thus loneliness.
In his book Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, author John T. Cacioppo writes:
“When loneliness takes hold, the ways we see ourselves and others, along with the kinds of responses we expect from others, are heavily influenced by both our feelings of unhappiness and threat and our impaired ability to self-regulate…
…The person who starts out with a painful, even frightening sensation of being alone may begin to see dangers everywhere on the social landscape. Filtered through the lens of lonely social cognition, other people may appear more critical, competitive, denigrating, or otherwise unwelcoming. These kinds of interpretations quickly become expectations.”
What this means is that when you believe other people won’t like you, you’re more likely to (intentionally or unintentionally) reject others and to interpret the behavior of others as rejecting you.
Similarly, when you believe, “I won’t be happy,” you stop yourself from taking actions that might prove your thoughts to be untrue. For example, if you believe that you can’t perform the activities you desire until your body changes, you’ll never sign up for the yoga class, and thus never discover that yoga is for every body.
And if you believe, “I won’t be healthy,” you may stop yourself from engaging in other health-promoting behaviors. For example, you may believe that you don’t “deserve” as much rest and recovery time between workouts because you haven’t “earned” it yet.
How to Change Your Thoughts
Now that you understand some of the impacts of your beliefs about your body and how they can impact your real-life outcomes, here are two effective strategies to go about changing them:
Thought Examinations
Rather than focusing on your thoughts about yourself as an individual, we’re going to bring in your thoughts about others as we begin to examine and challenge your pre-existing thoughts.
“Other people won’t like me.”
Are you willing to be friends with someone despite their body size? Do you have any friends in larger bodies? If the body of a friend changed, would you like them any more or less?
And, if you’re willing to accept others despite the size or shape of their body, is it possible that you’re not the only person on the planet who is willing to befriend or date someone regardless of body size?
On the flip side, if you’re not willing to accept others because of body size, let’s get curious. Why is that?
“I won’t be happy.”
Is there anyone you know that lives a good life despite their body size?
If you can’t think of anyone, could it be that the individuals you know may not be thriving because of underlying struggles, such as unprocessed trauma, mental health challenges, or other life difficulties that aren’t their body size?
“I won’t be healthy.”
You can’t accurately judge someone’s health based on their weight, because you cannot see their blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar and hormone levels, or mental health, to name a few key indicators.
That being said, there are plenty of things you can do for your health regardless of your current size, like engaging in gentle movement like walking (or any type of movement you enjoy), eating mindfully, preparing fundamental, healthy foods in a way you enjoy, getting plenty of sleep, and learning how to process your emotions in healthy ways.
If you were to engage in more of these behaviors, do you believe that your health would improve?
If not, would you be willing to test that hypothesis?
Behavior Experiments
In order to change the way you feel about your body, you will be greatly served by challenging your beliefs out in the world. This means taking new actions.
For example, a friend of mine decided to go to a barre class, testing the belief, “I can’t engage in activities I enjoy until my body is smaller.”
Before the class, she predicted that the only people she would see participating would have toned, lithe bodies. She expected to be the odd one out, “the fat one.”
Upon attending the barre class, she quickly noticed that it was full of average bodies—some thinner than hers, some about the same size, and some larger. The class was full of women who wanted to move their bodies and have fun—which is exactly what she did.
What have you been putting off doing? Where can you test your own hypothesis that you can’t engage in certain activities until your body is different?
Similarly, to test the belief, “I won’t be healthy,” would you be willing to engage in health-promoting behaviors to see if your own markers of health improve? Those markers could be your blood pressure, blood sugar levels, or other self-reported, subjective indicators like your mood and energy.
In order to stop connecting your self-worth with how you look in the mirror or the number on a scale and start believing new thoughts about your body and yourself, you can either start internally, by challenging your thoughts about yourself and others, or you can start externally, with behavior experiments.
If you want to supercharge this process with expert guidance, warm accountability, and personalized practices, our Food Body Self® program has even more “quests” for you to embark on to rewire your thoughts about your body so that you can feel confident and comfortable in your own skin.
When you go through life believing, "The scale dictates whether I am good enough," it pervades every explanation you make about your behavior, your past, and your capabilities and drowns you in a sea of unworthiness.
But you can disconnect your self-worth from the scale and take back your power when you choose to be deliberate about what you believe.