World Mental Health Day 2023 | How body image can take a toll on mental health and wellbeing

Body dissatisfaction affects mental health by preventing us from connecting easily with family and friends, or enjoying the activities we enjoy. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

Note to readers: Healing Space is a weekly series that helps you dive into your mental health and take charge of your wellbeing through practical DIY self-care methods.

Perhaps you’ve always thought of body image as a foreign thing. After all, Indians have had a great capacity for tolerating all kinds of bodies. Many men are dad bods and many women are mom bods, and that’s largely been okay. We’ve also prided ourselves on having a variegated and healthy diet. “My grandfather used to…” we say, as though we are walking everywhere, doing our own household chores, and doing the heavy lifting in industries, farms, and offices around the country.

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Fact is, our lifestyles have changed drastically with technology, interventions of convenience, burnout levels of work-demands, and large-scale food processing. Even if you were eating greens, pulses, proteins, like the doctor ordered, you have no clue anymore if anything you’re sourcing is nutritionally potent. Hence, we rely on a chain of vitamin prescriptions, protein powders, supplements and home remedies. We go on yo yo diets, intermittent fasting (intermittently), and ways of living and consuming that are not sustainable long-term. It is more expensive to eat avocados and drink almond milk (and more harmful to the environment) than it is to eat your locally grown fruits and vegetables. The net result is not that we lose weight or gain weight, but that we are constantly doing one or the other and fretting over it. Neither satisfies us. No diet is enough, and no solution is perfect. We worry over our food and our bodies.

Research shows comprehensively that body image issues are correlated to poor mental health. We are influenced by media reportage, OTT or big screen imaging of what the desirable body is according to current trends. We model food behaviours from peer pressure, social media and groups that we either belong to or seek to belong to. If ‘fitness’ is a great fad at the top rung of your profession, you’re likely to want to take up running, or golf, or cricket or football, or whatever it is people in your aspirational group take to. However, these are not necessarily dictated by knowledge or consideration of what is healthy for you, just what the health trend currently is. As a result, you can feel, despite all the dieting, exercising and personal training, that you are not at your optimal.

Research in India published in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry (2020) shows that 80 percent both men and women would choose a body type other than the one they have. For women, it is the pressure of media images of ideal women; for men, the pressure to be ‘athletic’ is not just high but unrealistic. The body dissatisfaction gives rise to disordered eating patterns. A high intensity workout that is actually good for you, and suited to your body type and health needs, is likely to require you to eat a nutritionally sufficient, consistent and filling set of meals, mainly because activities like swimming, yoga, strength training and long-distance running require muscle strength. Yet, people subject themselves to starvation and exclusionary diets (without a doctor’s consultation) in the name of fitness. This has less to do with health or fitness, and is more an outcome of body dissatisfaction.

Body dissatisfaction affects mental health by preventing us from connecting easily with family and friends, or enjoying the activities we enjoy. A simple example is people who don’t go to social events, or to the gym or for a morning walk or swim, because they don’t look gym-ready or don’t want to attract comments about how much they’ve lost or gained weight. So they avoid normally pleasurable activities that now have become loaded with mission and purpose – to fit into a dress, or trouser size, which is an unrealistic goal given advancing age and changing body types or life changes (such as having a baby, or having had a surgery).

We are constantly attempting to achieve an image goal set by family, friends, society about what healthy is. This pendulum can also swing the other way – we are so fed up by the chatter around what is healthy for us that we completely ignore it. Both are contributory factors to body image issues. In the long term, they lead to social isolation, depression, self-dissatisfaction, and rebound habits like binge eating, pendulum snacking, and stress, anxiety and worry over mealtimes. You come to stress about what should be a normal everyday activity that encourages you to go out and live your best life, satisfied, energetic and capable of meeting the demands of your day.

Arriving at an equanimous and correct perception of one’s own health does require us to shut out the incessant health chatter from ignorant sources, find a doctor and nutritionist who are qualified and reliable, and focus on what is a realistic body consideration for our optimal health, in a way that can be sustainable long-term.

How to have a realistic body perception

- Shut out the chatter from family and friends and well-meaning well-wishers. Have a polite response that shuts them down.

- Don’t prevent yourself from heading into social situations out of concern about what you look or feel like. The more you connect, the more comfortable you become with yourself.

- Have a nutritionally realistic understanding of what is healthy for you and what is practical for you. A nutritionist who asks you to eat avocados every day to the exclusion of your traditional meals is not the one, unless you live on an avocado farm.

- Consult a doctor for a realistic body weight for you and your vitals, and before you consume vitamins, supplements, ayurvedic potions. Do not self-administer medicines beyond their advised prescription date.

- Have a form of movement that is comfortable and long-term sustainable for you. And be comfortable with what these put together create an image of for you.