PSA for Women to Stop "Body Checking"

You know the drill. You’re having a great day out with your friends and then you pass by a mirror. You can’t help but to stop and check your appearance quickly as you’re walking by. You notice your hair messier than when you left the house, those jeans aren’t flattering, and you might be bloated from that delicious lunch you just enjoyed with your girlfriends.

All of the sudden your positive mood being surrounded by your friends turns into a judgment fest around your appearance.

As women, a lot of us will stop to check how we look consistently throughout the day. Whether that’s looking in a mirror, feeling our stomach, or weighing ourselves. Most of us are so used to “body checking” that we don’t even notice it’s a problem. We’re doing this, not to compliment ourselves, but to make sure we look okay and aren’t changing in any way that we see as negative.

Lee, of Lee From America, set out to stop women from doing this daily habit.

“I was looking to see what my body looked like. But not in a normal way. I was looking to criticize it, to see if it had changed. I was so fearful of it changing, that I would obsessively check it to make sure that it stayed the same,” Lee wrote in her blog post.

Lee writes about how body checking took over her mind and her life. She would keep images of her stomach on her phone to check her “progress” when really it was to obsessively make sure she wasn’t changing. Her inner dialogue was so mean and dark that she finally realized she needed to change.

“Once I accepted that no matter what my belly looked like, I’d hardly be satisfied, I made the decision to stop body checking. This decision changed my life. I was no longer preoccupied with my shape, weight, or the way my body looked. I felt free,” she wrote.

Lee says she stopped cold turkey. One day she decided she wasn’t going to let this control her for another day and simply stopped. You don’t have to throw out your scales and mirrors to stop body checking. Once you are aware that you do it, it will be much easier to stop doing it.

Find a group of girlfriends and support each other through this journey to stop body checking and find happiness in the skin you are in!