“I would sometimes fantasize about going to the gym and working out for a really long time. I wanted people to notice how frail and emaciated I was.”
This is what one client told me about her “ideal” body image when she was deep in her anorexia.
The role of comparison is regularly discussed when talking about negative body image and how it contributes to the development and maintenance of an eating disorder. It’s well understood that comparing to others or images in the media has a detrimental effect on body image and self-esteem. What is not widely talked about is the role of fantasy and how it also can fuel an eating disorder.Most of us have an ideal of how we want our bodies to look yet we rarely discuss that ideal or the meaning of that image in our head. To learn more about this read my article recently posted at EatingDisorderHope.com.
