5 Things You Can Do to Create a Digital Environment that Supports Positive Body Image
Diet culture is everywhere, and it can make it difficult to support your journey towards a positive body image. There are advertisements for weight loss drugs on buses, influencers documenting their calorie intake on social media, and photos of extremely thin celebrities on the front pages of magazines. It can be exhausting and triggering to be confronted with this every day, especially when you’re trying to let go of diet culture and accept your body as it is.
How can you decenter weight and diet culture in your digital life when it’s so present in every part of life? It’s all about focusing on the things you can control and creating an digital environment that supports your mental health and body image journey.
Hit the Unfollow or Mute Button
It can be difficult to recover from diet culture and focus on improving your body image when you’re constantly confronted with creators who post What I Eat In a Day videos or weekly updates on their weight loss journey.
Take a closer look at who you’re following and how their content impacts your mental health. Does the way they talk about food put you back into a dieting mindset? Is their approach to exercise making you feel like you’re not doing enough? Then you might feel better if you unfollow them and aren’t exposed to their content.
If the person whose content is triggering for you is a friend, family member, or coworker whom you can’t unfollow without raising concerns with them, you can consider using the ‘mute’ button. That way, you still follow them but their content won’t show up on your feed.
Blacklist Hashtags and Use ‘Not Interested’ Tools
Most social media apps have a feature that allows you to prevent posts with certain hashtags to show up in your feed. Consider which hashtags or keywords are linked to the most triggering content and add them to your list of blacklisted keywords and hashtags, for example #weightloss #weightlossjourney #skinnytok #diet #whatieatinaday
Social media apps also have features that allow you to flag content you’re not interested in. If you click the ‘Not Interested’ or ‘Show Less of This’ button, the app will hopefully show you less of this content and learn which content you’re interested in.
Uninstall Those Diet Apps
Have a close look at the apps your phone. Are there any apps that are related to dieting, weight loss, or exercise that remind you of the restriction mindset? If the My Fitness Pal button on your home page reminds you of the days of tracking your calories, it might be time to uninstall it and say good riddance.
Turn off Movement or Exercise Reminders
Smartwatches can be wonderful and increase accessibility, but the constant reminders to get up and move, to close your movement rings, or to burn more calories can be very triggering if you’re trying to recover from diet culture.
Pay attention to which notifications and reminders are making you feel bad or anxious throughout the day, and turn them off.
Set a Time Limit for Social Media Apps
Social media can be a place of connection and community, and for many people the thought of uninstalling social media apps and deleting their account is too radical. If you don’t want to be cut off from your online community, or if you simply find joy in scrolling through these apps, then you could consider setting realistic time limits for these apps.
There are apps that allow you to set time limits, but most phones also have their own time limits you can set. If you find yourself regularly overriding the time limit, you can consider letting a family member or friend set a password for the override so you can’t do it yourself.
Want to Know More?
If you would like more personal mental health support in your journey towards body acceptance and making peace with food, please feel free to reach out via yasmine@outofthewoodscounselling.net or schedule a free 15-minute call to see if we’re a good fit.
