Checking our reflection in mirrors is a natural part of our routine. However, excessive body checking can lead to an unhealthy preoccupation with your body weight and shape, ultimately causing distress.

What is Body Checking?

Body checking involves frequent, intentional, often compulsive monitoring of your appearance, by looking in mirrors, weighing yourself, or comparing yourself to others. While it’s normal to check your reflection occasionally, doing it too often can increase feelings of anxiety and dissatisfaction with your body.

Why Body Checking Can Be Harmful

It’s essential to understand that body checking can lead to obsessive thoughts about your appearance. Research has shown that focusing too much on your body’s physical details can actually make you feel worse over time. Here’s why:

• Overanalysis: If you repeatedly focus on a specific area of your body, your brain will start to fixate on tiny, often unnoticeable changes. This can lead to overanalysis, where you notice imperfections that others wouldn’t even see.
• Mood Affects Perception: How you feel emotionally plays a big role in how you perceive yourself in the mirror. For example, if you’re feeling down, you’re more likely to see flaws that aren’t really there.
• Seeking Imperfections: If you look for flaws, you’ll find them. Our brains are wired to focus on what we think is wrong, rather than what’s right, making us more critical of ourselves than necessary.
• Flawed Memory: We can’t keep an accurate memory of how we look. The way we recall our reflection is often distorted, meaning the image you have in your mind is likely far from reality.

It is worth noting that complete avoidance of reflection in mirrors can be equally problematic if it is associated with feelings of anxiety, shame, and body dissatisfaction.

Tips to Manage and Reduce Body Checking

If body checking is starting to interfere with your mental health, it’s important to take action. Here are some practical steps you can take to reduce its impact:

1. Monitor Your Frequency: Start by tracking how often you check your body. Simply becoming aware of how frequently you do it can help you actively try to reduce the habit.
2. Challenge the Facts: Remind yourself that your perception of your body is not always accurate. Your mood and emotions significantly influence how you see yourself. The reflection you see isn’t always the reality.
3. Focus on Self-Worth: Remember that your body shape or weight does not define your value as a person. Your worth goes far beyond your physical appearance, even though society tries to convince us otherwise by promoting overevaluation of body weight and shape.
4. Seek Professional Help: If body checking is causing you significant stress or affecting your daily life, consider reaching out to a therapist. They can help you work through these behaviours and support you to improve your relationship with your body.

Conclusion

Body checking can easily become a habit, but it’s important to recognise when it starts to negatively affect your mental health. By understanding the psychological impact it can have and taking steps to reduce its frequency, you can begin to focus on what really matters—your overall well-being and self-worth.

If body checking is affecting you more than you’d like, it’s important to seek support from a professional who can help you work on your body image.

References:

1. Jansen A, Smeets T, Martijn C, Nederkoorn C. I see what you see: The lack of a self-serving body-image bias in eating disorders. Br J Clin Psychol. 2006;45(1):123-135. doi:10.1348/014466505X50117
2. Reas DL, Grilo CM. Body checking and avoidance in overweight patients with binge eating disorder. Int J Eat Disord. 2014;47(6):681-686. doi:10.1002/eat.22322
3. Smeets MA. What’s left of your body image when you are not looking at yourself in the mirror? Behav Res Ther. 1997;35(2):91-98. doi:10.1016/s0005-7967(96)00085-1
4. Walker DC, Murray AD, Gschwandtner AH, Anderson DA. Relationships between social media use, body checking, and body image concerns. Body Image. 2022;41:128-136. doi:10.1016/j.bodyim.2022.04.004