A unfavorable physique picture can result in issues that transcend your emotional and psychological well being. Feeling dangerous about your physique can have an effect on your bodily well-being if you happen to keep away from visiting the physician out of concern of being judged or shamed and due to this fact miss out on key preventive care measures, Dr. DeCaro factors out.

A unfavorable physique picture that results in an consuming dysfunction could endanger your bodily well being. “Those that prohibit their [food] consumption would possibly expertise varied well being problems equivalent to malnourishment, cardiac abnormalities, gastrointestinal points, muscle loss, and osteoporosis,” DeCaro says. “And those that wrestle with binge consuming would possibly expertise excessive ldl cholesterol, sort 2 diabetes, or hypertension.”

A phrase of warning, nonetheless: Whereas a optimistic physique picture is mostly an excellent factor, being unrealistically optimistic could cause you to miss actual well being points. “There’s a lot [in our culture] about physique acceptance — that it’s best to settle for your physique the way in which it’s — however typically that may give the fallacious message to people who’re at an unhealthy physique weight,” says Paakhi Srivastava, PhD, an assistant analysis professor on the Heart for Weight, Consuming and Life-style Science (WELL Clinic) at Drexel College in Philadelphia.

For example, weight problems can put you at greater threat of assorted medical situations, and if you happen to keep away from taking steps to mitigate these dangers and enhance your well being (within the title of being physique optimistic or for every other motive), that may be harmful, Dr. Srivastava says.