Body Checking: What It Is and How to Stop
Written by Isabel Vasquez RD, LDN
Looking in the mirror to see how your outfit looks, weighing yourself every few months, or checking your teeth for lettuce are all normal behaviors. We all check our bodies to some extent! However, body checking can wreak havoc on your mental health when it becomes obsessive or compulsive.
In this article, you’ll learn what body checking is, why it’s harmful, and how to stop body checking. We have a lot to cover, so let’s dive in!
What is Body Checking?
Body checking is when you compulsively evaluate your body weight, shape, and/or size.
Compulsive is defined by Google as, “resulting from or relating to an irresistible urge, especially one that is against one's conscious wishes.” So when it comes to body checking, it may feel like you can’t help but do it.
Body Checking Examples
Some examples of body checking behaviors include:
Frequently and obsessively weighing yourself
Pinching or squeezing your skin or body fat
Fixating on specific body parts in the mirror
Trying to feel your bones
Checking to see if your thighs touch
Compulsively looking at your reflection in a window
Measuring your hips, thighs, or waist
Using your hands to measure body parts
Obsessively trying on clothes to assess how they fit
Comparing your current body to old photos of your body or people you see on social media repeatedly
Tracking your weight diligently
While some of these behaviors aren’t harmful in certain contexts (like taking body measurements before ordering clothes online), when they become compulsive, obsessive, and frequent, it becomes problematic.
How Common Is Body Checking?
While there aren’t concrete statistics on how common body checking is, most people body check to some extent. We usually look in the mirror to see how an outfit looks or check if our summer clothes still fit when the winter’s coming to an end.
If it’s sparse and doesn’t disrupt your life or your mental health, then it’s probably nothing to be concerned about. However, if it causes distress or preoccupation and impacts your eating or exercise habits, that may be a sign something bigger is going on.
Body Checking and Eating Disorders
Body checking generally reflects an overvaluation of shape and weight.
From my personal and professional experience with eating disorders, I can say that those with eating disorders including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder, often struggle a lot with body checking. The research supports this as well.
A 2022 study in the Journal of Eating Disorders found that those with anorexia nervosa had higher rates of body checking and body avoidance than those in recovery from anorexia nervosa or a control group, and a 2018 meta-analysis in European Eating Disorders Review found that compared to healthy controls, participants with various eating disorders had significantly higher rates of body checking and body avoidance—when you completely avoid looking at your body weight or shape.
Body checking can serve to reinforce an eating disorder’s obsession with weight and shape. It helps the eating disorder track weight changes and body changes to either celebrate or criticize the results.
When you have an eating disorder, body checking can become habitual and you may not even realize how often you’re engaging in these behaviors. However, whether your eating disorder is pleased or upset with what it sees, body checking often leaves you distressed and hinders long-term healing.
Even if you don’t have a clinically diagnosed eating disorder, you can still struggle with unhealthy body checking. Individuals who have subclinical eating disorders—those who have some eating disorder symptoms but don’t meet the official diagnostic criteria—, body dysmorphic disorder, or otherwise poor body image can also struggle with body checking.
What’s the Impact of Body Checking?
It can increase body dissatisfaction
According to a 2007 study in Behaviour Research and Therapy (CW: mention of BMI categories and eating disorders), body checking could contribute to downward fluctuations in body image.
The study divided 60 women without eating disorders into two groups—one who scrutinized certain parts of their bodies in the mirror (a form of body checking) and another who neutrally described their bodies.
The researchers found that, unlike the non-body checking group, most of the body checking group’s body dissatisfaction increased immediately after the self-scrutiny. This could suggest that body checking contributes to downward fluctuations in body image and working to reduce body checking can help level out feelings towards one’s body.
Furthermore, a 2022 study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health examining the relationship between body checking, body image avoidance, internalized weight bias, and body dissatisfaction found that more frequent body checking was associated with higher levels of body image dissatisfaction and greater internalized weight bias.
It may exacerbate disordered eating behaviors
A 2013 study published in Behaviour Research and Therapy (CW: mention of restrictive calorie amounts, BMI measurements, eating disorder behaviors) found that body checking was associated with dietary restriction on the day of and the day after the body checking in women with anorexia nervosa. (Note that 96.6% of the participants were Caucasian. Lack of diversity in medical research is a huge problem!).
This suggests that body checking could increase restriction and as a result, perpetuate eating disorder behaviors.
How to Stop Body Checking
Since body checking is linked to poor body image and perpetuates an overvaluation of shape and weight, it’s helpful to reduce these compulsive checking behaviors. Here are some tips to stop body checking.
Bring awareness to your body checking behaviors
As I mentioned above, especially if you have an eating disorder, body checking can become habitual. You may not even realize you’re doing it since it is a compulsive urge.
To stop body checking, first you’ll have to start realizing that you’re doing it.
Reflect on the list of body checking examples above and see if you are engaging in any of those behaviors.
Are you obsessively weighing yourself or obsessively checking how your clothes fit?
Are you measuring body parts or constantly checking to see how your clothes fit?
These are some ways you may be body checking. Before taking action to stop it, just bring awareness to when and how you’re doing it.
Reflect on what function it’s serving
Body checking serves some sort of function, otherwise, you wouldn’t be doing it. However, after reading this article, you now know that it’s maladaptive. It doesn’t actually make you feel better in the long run.
Before you take action to stop body checking, reflect on the function that it is serving you. Maybe it helps you feel more in control. Maybe it quenches your need for certainty. Maybe it distracts from other stressors in your life. It may also be related to weight bias, as this study addresses.
There are a lot of reasons you may be body checking, and you may need to process these underlying reasons with a licensed mental health professional.
Reduce your access to body checking
To start reducing body checking behaviors, reduce your access to the tools that allow you to engage in them.
For example, if you obsessively weigh yourself, remove the scale from your house so it’s not as easy to do. If you constantly look in the mirror, reduce how many mirrors you have in your house. If you compulsively measure your body dimensions, then ditch the measuring tape.
It may not be practical to eliminate certain behaviors entirely, like checking how your outfit looks, but for others, like weighing yourself at home, eliminating them entirely may be the best thing for your mental health.
Be conscious of whether body avoidance is present
The opposite of body checking is body avoidance, which is also a cause for concern. Body avoidance is when you avoid looking at your body shape or weight entirely. It’s another manifestation of the overvaluation of these things.
So, as you work to reduce body checking, be conscious as to whether you’re swinging to the other extreme by, for example, avoiding looking at yourself in the mirror entirely.
A healthy body image comes with a balance between the two without it being maladaptive or compulsive.
Seek professional support
If you’re struggling, seeking out support from a mental health professional can help you process the underlying challenges at the root of your body checking. Especially if you have an eating disorder or suspect you might have one, support is key to healing. (Check out Project Heal’s eating disorder treatment and support resources for people of various identities and income levels!).
Final Thoughts
Body checking is a manifestation of overvaluation of body weight, shape, and size. It may include obsessively weighing yourself, compulsively measuring your body dimensions, pinching skin or fat, and more. Ultimately, it is maladaptive and may even increase body dissatisfaction and restrictive eating behaviors.
In order to stop body checking, it can help to bring awareness to the behaviors you engage in, reflect on the purpose they serve, reduce your ability to engage in body checking behaviors, and seek professional support.
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