Body Image

If you or someone you know has an eating disorder, including anorexia and bulimia, reach out to Student Counseling Services to get the support that you need.

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Body Image

According to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA), body image is how you perceive your physical body when you picture yourself or when you look in the mirror. It is what you believe about your appearance, how you feel about your body, and how you feel in your body as you move. It is important to your mental health and well-being to have a positive and healthy body image.

Eating Disorders

An eating disorder is a mental and/or physical illness that is serious, but treatable. Students who have an eating disorder may have compulsive thoughts about their weight and extreme behaviors when food is involved. For more information on Eating Disorders, visit the NEDA website.

Eating Disorder Screening Tools

These screening tools can help determine if it may be time to seek professional help.

Know the Warning Signs

It is important to understand some of the signs and symptoms of disordered eating. NEDA provides examples of emotional and physical signs used to detect eating disorders and body image distress.

Additional Self-Help Resources

  • Life Without Ed
    by Jenni Schaefer
    A unique approach to treating eating disorders for eight million women in the United States suffer from anorexia nervosa and/or bulimia (and men too.) The road to recovery is a rocky one. Many succumb to their eating disorders. Life Without Ed offers hope to all those who suffer from this disorder.
  • Overcoming Binge Eating, Second Edition: The Proven Program to Learn Why You Binge and How You Can Stop, Second Edition
    By Christopher G. Fairburn
    This trusted bestseller provides all the information needed to understand binge eating and bring it under control, whether you are working with a therapist or on your own. Clear, step-by-step guidelines show you how to: Overcome the urge to binge; Gain control over what and when you eat; Break free of strict dieting and other habits that may contribute to binges; Establish stable, healthy eating patterns; Improve your body image and reduce the risk of relapse.
  • Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and Women Paperback
    By Renee Engeln, PhD
    In Beauty Sick, Dr. Renee Engeln, whose TEDx talk on beauty sickness has received more than 250,000 views, reveals the shocking consequences of our obsession with girls’ appearance on their emotional and physical health and their wallets and ambitions, including depression, eating disorders, disruptions in cognitive processing, and lost money and time. Combining scientific studies with the voices of real women of all ages, she makes clear that to truly fulfill their potential, we must break free from cultural forces that feed destructive desires, attitudes, and words—from fat-shaming to denigrating commentary about other women. She provides inspiration and workable solutions to help girls and women overcome negative attitudes and embrace their whole selves, to transform their lives, claim the futures they deserve, and, ultimately, change their world.
  • You are enough: Your guide to body image and eating disorder recovery
    By Jen Petro-Roy
    Many eating disorder books are written in a way that leaves many people out of the eating disorder conversation, and this book is written with a special eye to inclusivity, so that people of any gender, socioeconomic group, race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, or chronic illness can benefit. Eating disorder survivor Jen Petro-Roy draws from her own experience with anorexia, OCD, and over-exercising, as well as research and interviews with survivors and medical professionals, to deliver a toolkit for recovery, written in a easy-to-understand, conversational way. 

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