Gyms closed, child care vanished, and while food became a comfort for some, others had their appetites squelched by anxiety. The yearlong media diet of bad news may have also given them a new wrinkle or two.

And these are just things that may have happened by following social distancing recommendations. Americans who contracted COVID-19 may still be reckoning with difficult physiological changes, including hair loss and even tooth loss. If you’ve been feeling trepidation about your post-lockdown looks, know you’re not alone. In January, David Frederick, an associate professor of health psychology at Chapman University, asked Americans to describe how the pandemic influenced their body image. Forty-eight percent of female respondents said it contributed to negative feelings about their weight. When asked about overall feelings of attractiveness, 43% of women and 26% of men said COVID-19 negatively affected how attractive they felt.

It doesn’t have to be like this, though. “You are enough; your body is enough,” said Joy Cox, who studies weight stigma at Rutgers University. “I don’t think we say that enough, honestly.” Instead of thinking about your body’s imperfections, why not focus on the fact that your body carried you through a global pandemic, emerging as a survivor on the other side? Take a moment to think about the part of your body that’s vexing you. Then think about where that anxiety originated. Chances are, someone told you that part of your body was a problem, Cox said. “If it was a family member who said, ‘Oh, look at that pudge,’” she said, that person might be carrying around other people’s perception of their own body, not necessarily what a person thinks of it herself.

What matters is what you think about your body because, simply, you are the person living in your body. Cox urges you to strip away the negativity others have implanted and start facing your body with facts. Those thighs? They are strong and have carried you for miles. Your arms? They can haul the grocery bags in one trip. Your neck? Holds up a brain full of important information.

Even if no one has ever found fault with your body, you have most likely internalised ideas about how bodies should look. Chances are, those ideas are divorced from our actual health. These ideas are connected to capitalism’s incessant need to sell diet products, said Connie Sobczak, co-founder and executive director of the Body Positive, a non-profit that leads body-positivity training. Creating a hierarchy of good, better and best bodies generates market opportunities for selling what we need to get those bodies.

Take a good look at your media and social media consumption. Consider unfollowing or muting thinness-championing friends, influencers and celebrities. When you start purposefully noting diet culture whenever you see it, you’ll be astounded at how it has permeated our daily discourse. “Start by telling yourself you are grateful and thankful for what your body can do for you,” she said. Then remind yourself that your body is enough, that you deserve to take up space and that every body belongs in this world.

The New York Times