I also offer access to my Body Image Benchmark Quiz to help you measure your success.

Summer:
Body image changes often happens slowly and incrementally over time. And often you don’t even realize how much of a change has happened until a few months go by and you realize you’re not feeling a certain way anymore or behaving in a certain way anymore. You might realize, hey, I went to a party without feeling self conscious about how I look.

This is eat the rules, a podcast about body image, self worth, anti dieting, and intersectional feminism. I am your host summer Innanen. a professionally trained coach specializing in body image self worth and confidence and the best selling author of body image remix. If you’re ready to break free of societal standards and stop living behind the number on your scale, then you have come to the right place. Welcome to the show.

This episode of eat the rules is brought to you by you on fire you on fire is the online group coaching program that I run that gives you a step by step way of building up your self worth beyond your appearance, with personalized coaching for me incredible community support and lifetime access to the program so that you can get free from body shame and live life on your own terms.

Get details on what’s included and sign up for the next cycle at summer innanen.com forward slash you on fire. I’d love to have you in that group.

This is episode 302. And I am revisiting podcast from a couple years ago called How to know if you have a healthy body image. And I’m talking about how to know if you have a healthy body image. And the number one tool I use with clients to assess this, you can find the links mentioned including the link to that benchmark quiz at summer innanen.com forward slash 302. So you can get your free copy by just going to summer innanen.com forward slash 302. You can download that and you’ll get the benchmark quiz that I’m talking about in this episode. Before we begin, I want to give a shout out to Abigail who left this review. I stumbled upon this podcast during a really difficult time of struggling with Orthorexic eating habits and weight gain. And she made me feel so loved comforted and held as I navigated this change to break up with diet culture, explore body neutrality and weight gain. I really appreciate her. Oh, Abigail, that really means a lot. Thank you so much. And I hope you’re so much further along now because you left this review a couple years ago but I hope you’re so much further along now and doing really well. And thank you so much for your kind words. You can leave a review for the show by going to Apple podcasts search for eat the rules and click ratings and reviews and click to leave a review. Don’t forget to grab the free 10 Day body confidence makeover at summer innanen.com forward slash freebies with 10 steps to take right now to feel better in your body. And if you’re a professional who works with people who may also have body image struggles at the free body image coaching roadmap at summer innanen.com forward slash roadmap,

let’s get started with the show.

In this particular episode, we’re gonna talk about how to know if you have a healthy body image and what it means to have a positive body image why I think it’s so important to be able to measure your body image to have some form of assessment so you can gauge where you’re at with your body image. And I’m gonna give you the assessment tool that I use with all my clients. We’ll talk about some of the signs and symptoms, the things that I look for when I’m assessing someone’s body image, and how that impacts all the different areas of our life. What is a positive body image I have talked about this quite a few times throughout the different body image series episodes. So I highly recommend checking those out. You can get them at summer innanen.com forward slash body image series. But I’ll give you just the Coles notes. My dating myself with that reference, it’s really about knowing that you are valuable and worthy. And you feel good enough, regardless of how you look. And specifically, we look at the intensity of the negative thoughts that you have the frequency and intensity so the frequency is important. But sometimes you can have negative thoughts and they’re sort of neutral. So really we’re also looking at the the impact of those on how you feel about yourself as a whole and your emotional, your emotional state. And so I really look at self worth and body image is just like one little tentacle out of self worth. But the reason why I go to self worth is because that’s really the core of it, right? Like if we know we are good enough, regardless of all these other external things, that we’re not going to fret so much about our body anymore. Like we might like how we look in the mirror or we might Not like how we look in the mirror, but that’s not going to shake us, it’s not going to define how we feel about ourselves in a particular moment. And self worth is really about knowing who you are, and knowing that who you are is valuable and worthy. And that’s the foundation of the work that I do with people that’s like, really, that’s, that’s it, man, that’s the magic. And once we have that, then the body image stuff like really just gets so much easier. And there’s obviously things you can do just specifically to address different body image concerns. And I do deal with a lot of that as well. But if we don’t have the foundation, then you keep coming back to the body image stuff that keeps showing up. And it’s just like rearing, it’s like a whack a mole, right.

And so that was a bit longer than I was thinking about doing when I wanted to just recap what makes a positive body image. But maybe that’s a good reminder to you. And so what I think is so important that we need to be doing, if we are going to actively work on our body image, we need to have a way to assess where our body images, and we’re gonna go with it. And a way to then look at that three and six months later and say, how much has changed for me, because body image changes happen really slowly and incrementally over time. And we often don’t realize how much of a change has happened until a few months roll by. And maybe we are getting dressed in the morning. And we’re like, you know what, I don’t fidget with my shirt anymore, or I don’t change my outfit three times. And I haven’t done that in a couple of months. And I didn’t even realize it until just now when I was thinking about that these changes can happen. And we don’t even know that they’ve happened. I compare this to having a child. For example, the other day, a person I know posted on social media, something about their child watching a Blippi video, and Blippi is this super annoying YouTube children’s entertainer. And I saw that video and I thought to myself, Oh my gosh, like we haven’t watched Blippi in almost a year. And I didn’t even realize it like that phase just passed. But I didn’t reflect on it until that trigger of seeing my friends video prompted me to reflect on it. And that’s kind of what happens with body image. And if you don’t have kids, and you don’t relate to that, totally cool, it might be similar to watching a plant grow. And I’m not saying that people who don’t have kids have plants. And I’ve got a couple of plants, although they generally die. But we do have a couple of plants in the moment. And you don’t even realize how much they’ve grown until it’s been a few months. And maybe you need to report them or you have to change their location. So you just you’re not really noticing the changes as they’re happening over time. It’s not until maybe a period of time has gone by something triggers you to reflect on it. And then you can look back and be like, Oh my gosh, that has changed. And when we’re doing body image work, that’s so important, but I want to put those measurements in front of you. So you can actually have something to look back and reflect on when we can actually measure our body image we are number one, we’re gonna have an idea of where we’re starting, we’re gonna know what specifically we struggle with. And we’ll also have an idea of like how much it’s actually impacting our life, because I think sometimes we don’t realize how much of a burden it is because we’re just carrying it around every day. And it’s like this thing that just becomes familiar and comfortable, even though it’s not comfortable at all. But it gives us a way to assess where we’re at. And then it gives us a way to figure out what we want to work on. And then it gives us most importantly, something to loop back around with and celebrate our progress and see where we’ve improved and be like, This is amazing, I obtained so much. And I’m so proud of myself. And it might tell us where we maybe need to focus our attention a little bit more. And that’s okay, too.

That’s why I wanted to give you your own copy of this body image and Mark quiz, you can get it at summer innanen.com forward slash 259 in the show notes for this episode, and it’s all yours for free that I love it when I work with clients. I’ve been using this for over eight years. Now, when I first put this into place, I am a very analytical person. And I wanted something to be able to specifically measure people’s progress when they worked with me. So they could say, yes, I’ve had these really great changes happen. And so it’s a series of 25 questions that I use that you rate on a scale of one to 10. And they look at all the different areas of body image and we’ll talk about what those are in a second. And then we retake that quiz in three to six months to see how you’re doing and to celebrate your progress and it is amazing what people experience. It’s incredible. Some people their score, like doubles, some people it’s goes up, I would say on average, like a maybe 50% And it’s okay, if you’ve worked with me before you’re listening to this and your score didn’t go up that much. As we’ve talked about, it just means that maybe there’s some time and attention that needs to be spent in a particular area that you can get support on. This assessment is not a measurement of your worth. It is not here to make you feel bad about yourself. It is here to give you a starting point and to give you something to find assess later on to look back on and be like, Oh my gosh, this is amazing. All these things have changed. That didn’t even really notice them because I’m just living my life now. So some of the things that I really want to measure is one, the amount of negative thoughts that we have. So the quantity of negative thoughts as well as the intensity, as well, and how those are impacting your emotions, your self worth and your behaviors. So do you compare yourself to others? How do you show up in social situations? Do you feel self conscious? Or do you avoid intimate situations? I also want to look at how much anti fat bias or fat phobia we carry towards ourselves and others? So are we afraid of gaining weight? Are we judgmental towards our own body? Like do we make assumptions about our own body? Or do we make assumptions about other people’s bodies? And I also want to look at how much our sense of self worth is really reliant on our appearance? And how much is reliant on what other people think of you. So like, do you kind of modify or change how you are in front of others to gain their approval, are you terrified of criticism, all these different things really tie into that. And we can also look at some other things that really intersect with this work like perfectionism. So all or nothing thinking, feeling like nothing you do is ever good enough, having unrealistic expectations on yourself, having your your worth tied up in like what other people think of you having criticism really be something that you fear, feeling guilty or apologetic, all of these different things really intersect. And so there, those are all things that I include on this assessment form. And I wanted to offer this benchmark quiz to you as a free download, yay. So that you can assess your own body image and really to give you hope that it is possible to change. I’ve worked with hundreds of people over the years, and they see pretty significant changes in about three to six months. And that’s what we’re working towards. And then the trajectory just keeps going up from there. Like that’s, that’s just sort of the starting point as we set the foundation, and then we want to continue to see it increase. But that doesn’t just happen by like doing nothing, right, like change doesn’t happen by chance. It really takes practice and intention and patience. And when we really do commit to do putting in that work. And it doesn’t take a lot of time, I can tell you that. Yesterday I was sitting and having dinner and I was going through a self doubt spiral I was I was thinking just some really negative thoughts about myself and about certain things. And I used one of the tools in the program that I always teach to people and teach to people and everything I do with them. And I just did it while I was eating. And it was just this process of like kind of, you know, really reshaping my thoughts thinking about what I was actually feeling the emotions, offering myself self compassion. And I just did that while sitting there eating dinner. And it was amazing how that really did shift and gave me a new perspective in that in just that one little moment, it wasn’t like a ton of time, I’d have to pull out a journal, it was just while I was eating dinner. And that’s, that’s the work really, right. Like, it’s not about like adding another hour to your day to do stuff.

I mean, sometimes, you know, you can gain a lot by maybe adding 10 minutes here or there to do some of this work. But when I work with people, I really take into account that, you know, time is precious, and we don’t have so much of it. And so I want to make things as easy and as impactful as possible. But that was sorry, that was a side tangent on that. But my point is that it just takes practice and intention, like the intention to actually say, I’m gonna sit here in this moment, and work through this thing that’s really hurting me right now, and move to this place of self compassion. And that really opens you up to so much freedom. And so please don’t beat yourself up for whatever score you got. Most people I work with probably score like under five for most of these questions, maybe even I think a lot of people score like ones and twos when I start working with them. And so it’s not your fault that you feel this way. It’s our culture. It’s the way we’ve been programmed. It’s the way we’ve been conditioned.

What I really want you to get out of this is to track your progress, it is so important to celebrate our progress, it’s so important to look back and reflect on how far we’ve come that is going to really continue to fuel your you just your sense of self worth and your ability to continue going. And so wherever you can in whatever aspect of your life it’s so important that we celebrate ourselves and so this is just one way that I do that when I’m working with people and if you are a professional listening to this there is a pretty direct copyright included in this particular freebie download. So if you’re looking at this and you’re like I would love something like this to work with my clients, please email me with for permission with that this is something that I teach people to create on their own or body image coach certification program, but I just wanted to just give that little side note in this episode if you’re listening to this, and okay, that’s it for today’s body image series episode. I hope you took something away from this. At the very least. go celebrate yourself in every area of your Life and definitely go grab the freebie at summer innanen.com forward slash 259 so that you have a starting point as well. As always, I’d love to be your coach so you can check out how to work with me at summer and then.com. Or if you are wanting to get in on my incredible group program you on fire, get details on that at summer innanen.com forward slash you on fire.

Thank you so much for being here today.

I hope you enjoy the freebie and I’ve got some really good body image series episodes coming at you over the next few weeks. Thank you so much for being here and listening rock on. Thank you so much for listening today. Don’t forget to grab your benchmark quiz at summer innanen.com forward slash 302. I really appreciate you being here. I’ll talk to you next time rock on.

I’m Summer Innanen. And I want to thank you for listening today. You can follow me on Instagram and Facebook at summer Innanen. And if you haven’t yet, go to Apple podcasts search eat the rules and subscribe rate and review this show. I would be so grateful. Until next time, rock on.

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