13 Negative Body Image Sayings To Avoid

There are many of us who don’t feel happy about our bodies. Way more than you might think. In a 2016 survey, Yahoo Health uncovered that over half of all women surveyed were body ambivalent or body negative. And while many people contribute to this negative mindset, what often is to blame is our own thoughts and attitude towards ourselves.

For both men and women alike, we have all kinds of thoughts over the day and some of them can be very harsh towards ourselves in multiple ways. Many people feel a lack of self-worth or they’re not confident about themselves and a lot of that can boil down to us thinking that leads us to those conclusions.

When it comes to our bodies, if we spend a lot of our time body-shaming ourselves, this can lead us to believing those things and never changing them.

With this in mind, we want to be covering some phrases that drag ourselves down. By talking about these phrases, we can better learn to avoid these in the future and replace them with more positive body-images.

By keeping an eye on these phrases and removing them, this could help us with feeling happier, but also to boost our weight loss efforts as well.

“I Can’t Believe I’ve Eaten All That – I Was So Bad”

While we are what we eat, some people have stretched that simple saying to a literal limit. They base their self-worth entirely on how they are eating. This can lead to people feeling angry, frustrated, or overall negative every time they feed their cravings or when they’re eating unhealthy foods.

If you are stuck in this loop, our suggestion is to remind yourself that what you are eating has no bearing to your worth as a person. Food is good and we need it, and it’s okay to give yourself permission to enjoy that food without feeling guilty about it.

Don’t criticize your choices. If you want to make a change, gradually make a change. But keep to your favourite foods and tell yourself you love eating them.

“If I Lose Five More Pounds Then…”

When it comes to weight loss, many people fail this for various reasons. The biggest though is when looking at the scale. For many people, they associate their progress and success by the number on that scale.

This phrase is negative because our health is a mixed bag. So much so that the weight on the scale isn’t always a good indicator of whether you’re healthy or not. For example, muscle weighs more than fat, therefore an athlete or bodybuilder could technically weigh more than someone who is massively obese in the right circumstances.

The point is – it’s important that you shift your goals a little and begin looking at your actions for weight loss over what the scale is telling you.

“I’ll Be Happy When…”

Similar to the five more pounds loss, this is another bad phrase because you’re associating your happiness with progress. This can be anything from your biceps being a certain amount of inches to losing a certain amount of weight or being able to perform something athletic.

Having goals and dreams is great, but when you begin associating those to what’ll make you feel happy, you’ll never be satisfied nor happy. There is always going to be other goals and ambitions you have.

Instead, train yourself to be happy in the moment and be happy that you make even the slightest bit of progress. Progress is progress and that’s a good thing.

“I’m Fat/ Disgusting/ Ugly”

Many people think of word “fat” as a bad word, but there can be circumstances where it’s appropriate. That being said, most people use this phrase in a negative way. Instead of doing something about it, they use this phrase to continue bashing themselves.

Saying this is equivalent to saying you’re not good enough and that you need to be different. It’s not exactly a motivating phrase if you are looking to lose weight.

Similarly, telling yourself you are disgusting or ugly is even worse. The thing with these three phrases is that these don’t often lead to you changing. You’re not going to feel motivated if you are stuck in a state where you are constantly berating yourself.

The more you use these phrases, the more you paint a picture of this as your reality. And it’s a reality that people aren’t going to be too keen to change. Mainly because they’ve talked themselves into a corner that this is the way things are.