Are you upset with your body or with yourself?

Are you judging the way your body looks or your behaviors?

Are you frustrated with the way you feel in your clothing or the reason you feel that way?

Blaming your body for the mental struggles you’ve faced that have manifested into destructive behaviors like binging, restricting, obsession, fixation, overeating, body checking, & other extreme measures is going to worsen your behavior.

Something I’ve found, not just in my own journey, but in working with 100s of competitors worldwide is that most of the time, a negative body image is correlated to negative behavior patterns.

We have been conditioned in this sport to correlate our choices to our physique.

Throughout a prep we reinforce our actions by celebrating the the body getting tighter.

Then in improvement season, when you go off track or you go against your expectations (or others) or start to see changes like your growing body, you start to feel bad about yourself & attribute it to you being a failure.

I have met a few competitors who struggle with their body image even when their actions are aligned with their goals but the severity is usually lower because they still feel congruent with their vision of growing season compared to the person who didn’t manage their food intake as expected & then attribute even normal growth to their mistakes and struggles & then foster more self-judgment.

If you are struggling with body image, try these steps:

1. set new expectations for yourself (don’t go back to trying to be the prep version of yourself!!)

2. Set 3 non-negotiable to do’s each day that will make you feel good (ex: water, a mindfulness meditation, stretching, eating a meal in distracted…)

3. On days your body image feels better, take note of what is / was different about that day

4. Spend 3+ min each day acknowledging what your body does FOR you

5. If you’re body checking often, try to turn your mirrors around or put a cardboard or sheet in front of the mirror so you have to move it every time you get the urge to check your body

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