How Thinking You're Fat Could Actually Be Making You Fatter

How often do you stand in front of the mirror and wish you were thinner?

How often do you look at other women and compare yourself to them?

No matter what you do, you’re body shaming, and it’s all over the place these days. Whether it’s in magazines or on TV, everyone wants you to know that you’re not good enough.

But if you have a bad attitude about your body image, it might translate to your body, too.

A new study of over 300 women shows that there’s a pretty strong connection between poor body image and poorer health, regardless of how much you weigh.

In fact, shaming your own body can even make you gain weight, or even make you sick.

What’s the connection? Researchers believe that the more you hate your body, the more you’re ashamed of what it does, whether it be sweating, menstruating, even eating. When you feel ashamed of all the (frankly, amazing) stuff that your body does, you stop caring for it.

It’s the kind of mindset that makes you eat a whole bag of Doritos when you feel like you’ll never be as thin as Cara Delevigne, or that leads you to skip the gym because you think you’re too fat to be there.

People with this mindset were shown to develop more frequent headaches and other infections, like diarrhea.

This finding also contradicts the belief that body shame motivates people to lose weight. In fact, when people are shamed into losing weight, they actually gain an average of three and a half more pounds than those who aren’t bothered about their weight at all.

This could be due to stress-eating or increased cortisol caused by the stress. 

Whatever it is, it’s time to bring it to an end. It’s being proven more and more that hating yourself doesn’t actually help you in the long run, so why do it? Admire all the things your body can do and take care of it instead of trying to destroy the only thing you have.

It’s much harder to love yourself than it is to hate yourself, because you’ve been trained to hate. But once you stop wishing for another body, the one you have may begin to work for you.

Do you have any tips for taking care of your body?