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Body checking

Body checking is a compulsive behavior characterized by the frequent and repetitive seeking of information about one's body size, shape, weight, or muscularity.^[1] Common forms include excessive mirror checking, pinching or measuring body parts, frequent weighing, comparing one's body to others, and wearing tight clothing to assess fit.^[2] This behavior is often driven by dissatisfaction with body image and serves to confirm or refute perceived flaws, but typically reinforces negative self-perceptions.^[3] Body checking is a key maintaining factor in body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) and eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, where it exacerbates preoccupation with appearance and contributes to obsessive-compulsive tendencies.^[4] It is also observed in muscle dysmorphia and general body image disturbances. Research indicates that higher levels of body checking correlate with increased body dissatisfaction and symptoms of depression and anxiety.^[5] As of 2025, body checking has gained attention in the context of social media, where platforms like TikTok promote trends that may intensify the behavior among adolescents and young adults.^[6] Interventions often focus on cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) to reduce body checking and promote body acceptance, with studies showing reductions in associated distress.^[7]

Overview

Definition

Body checking refers to the habitual and compulsive engagement in behaviors designed to gather information about one's body size, shape, weight, or appearance, typically motivated by underlying dissatisfaction with physical form.^[8] This repetitive self-scrutiny often manifests as an automatic response to perceived flaws, serving to temporarily alleviate anxiety but ultimately reinforcing negative body image perceptions.^[2] Unlike casual or functional observations of one's body, such as adjusting clothing, body checking is inherently evaluative and distress-inducing, frequently occurring in individuals with heightened appearance concerns.^[9] Common examples of body checking behaviors include pinching or squeezing skin to assess fat levels, measuring circumferences of body parts like the waist or thighs, and engaging in prolonged mirror gazing focused on disliked areas.^[10] Other prevalent actions involve weighing oneself multiple times daily, comparing one's physique to idealized images from media or peers, and seeking verbal reassurance from others about appearance adequacy.^[11] These actions are not isolated but form a pattern of vigilance that can consume significant time and emotional energy.^[12]

Historical Development

While historical accounts of conditions like hysteria in the 19th century involved somatic preoccupations and anxiety manifesting in physical complaints, the specific concept of body checking as repetitive evaluative behaviors for perceived flaws was not formalized at that time. The modern conceptualization of body checking emerged in the late 1990s within eating disorder research, particularly through the seminal work of Fairburn, Shafran, and Cooper (1999), who described it as a core mechanism in the overevaluation of shape and weight in cognitive-behavioral models of anorexia nervosa, where repetitive checking distorts body perception and perpetuates pathology.^[13] This period marked a shift to structured psychological frameworks, highlighting body checking's role in maintaining body dissatisfaction. In the 2000s, body checking was further integrated into cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) models for eating disorders. In 2002, Thomas F. Cash and colleagues developed the Body Checking Questionnaire (BCQ) to assess these behaviors empirically.^[14] The concept expanded to body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), where research documented similar checking rituals, such as excessive mirror gazing, as central to the disorder's maintenance, informing targeted interventions.^[15] Post-2010 developments have highlighted digital influences, with social media platforms amplifying body checking through photo editing, filters, and comparison-oriented content.^[16] Recent 2020s research has focused on online variants, such as app-based measurements and virtual try-ons, showing how these tools intensify dissatisfaction and extend checking behaviors beyond physical mirrors (as of 2023).^[17] Influential studies, including ecological momentary assessments, demonstrate that digital body checking correlates with heightened anxiety in non-clinical populations, underscoring its evolving role in contemporary body image concerns.^[18]

Characteristics

Behavioral Patterns

Body checking in ice hockey involves deliberate physical contact using the shoulder, hip, or body to separate an opponent from the puck, executed through specific techniques to ensure legality and safety. Common patterns include shoulder checking, where a player drives their shoulder into the opponent's torso while maintaining skates on the ice and head up; hip checking, involving a controlled drop to use the hip against the opponent's side; and full body checks, applying pressure with the chest or upper body during puck battles.^[19]^[20] These actions begin with the checker's stick on the puck, targeting the midsection above the knees and below the shoulders to avoid penalties for head contact, elbows, or hits from behind.^[21] Triggers for body checking typically arise in high-pressure situations, such as forechecking to disrupt passes, defensive zone coverage to clear the crease, or neutral zone transitions where an opponent gains speed with the puck. For instance, defenders often initiate checks when an opponent hesitates or turns away from the boards, aiming to create turnovers without leaving their zone vulnerable.^[22] Ambiguous plays, like loose puck scrambles, can prompt incidental contact escalating to intentional checks if positioned legally.^[23] Frequency of body checking varies by league rules, player position, and game context, ranging from prohibited in youth non-elite play (ages 12 and under) to integral in professional leagues like the NHL, where defensemen average 5–10 checks per game depending on style. In checking-allowed leagues, aggressive teams exhibit higher rates, correlating with physical play styles that increase injury risk by up to 67% compared to non-checking environments.^[24] In severe cases, excessive checking leads to penalties or ejections, disrupting team strategies.^[20] Gender differences are significant, with body checking permitted in men's leagues but banned in most women's international competitions since the early 1990s to prioritize skill and reduce injuries, though the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL) introduced limited checking in select games as of 2023.^[25] Cultural influences shape patterns, particularly in North American hockey where physicality is emphasized, leading to more frequent checks than in European leagues favoring speed and puck control.^[26]

Motivational Factors

Body checking in ice hockey is primarily motivated by strategic objectives to regain puck possession, disrupt opponent momentum, and establish physical dominance, providing immediate tactical advantages like turnovers or zone entries. Players engage to neutralize threats, such as stripping the puck during a rush or pinning opponents against the boards, fostering a sense of control in fast-paced play.^[20] In professional contexts, these actions stem from team systems emphasizing defensive pressure, where checking creates scoring chances through forced errors.^[27] Reinforcement occurs via positive outcomes, including successful puck retrievals that boost player adrenaline and team energy, encouraging repetition while escalating physical intensity. For example, a well-timed check can shift game momentum, reducing opponent confidence and increasing home crowd support, though improper execution risks penalties that negate benefits.^[26] This cycle maintains the behavior as a core skill, balanced by rules to prevent injury escalation.^[28] Social influences motivate checking through coaching drills, peer expectations in competitive environments, and media highlights of big hits that glorify physical play. Among youth players, introduction of checking at age 13 or later builds motivation via skill progression, with studies showing no loss in competitive edge despite reduced injury rates of 59% in concussions.^[24] Exposure to NHL role models reinforces the tactic as essential for success.^[29] Individual differences, including body size, aggression, and position, modulate checking use; larger defensemen are motivated by physical leverage (r = .44 correlation with hit frequency in pro data), while agile forwards prioritize timing over force. Longitudinal youth studies indicate initial motivations for excitement evolve into habitual defensive tools, sustaining engagement without undue risk when delayed until ages 15+.^[28]^[30]

Psychological Components

Cognitive Elements

Body checking is underpinned by cognitive distortions that involve inaccurate or biased interpretations of one's physical appearance. Individuals engaging in frequent body checking often overestimate the visibility and severity of perceived flaws, magnifying minor imperfections such as slight asymmetries or skin irregularities into prominent defects.^[31] This magnification is one of eight key distortions identified in the Assessment of Body-Image Cognitive Distortions (ABCD) scale, which measures erroneous thinking patterns like the belief that others notice and judge one's body flaws more intensely than they actually do.^[31] Additionally, selective attention plays a central role, where individuals hyper-focus on negative features—such as specific body parts deemed unsatisfactory—while ignoring positive or neutral aspects, thereby perpetuating a narrowed perceptual field.^[32] These distortions contribute to a skewed self-appraisal, where the body is evaluated through a lens of unrealistic scrutiny. Underlying these distortions are maladaptive schemas, which are deeply ingrained beliefs about the self in relation to appearance. A primary schema involves the conviction that personal worth is inextricably linked to physical attractiveness, often encapsulated as "My value depends on how I look," prompting constant monitoring of one's body to confirm or disconfirm this belief.^[33] The Appearance Schemas Inventory-Revised (ASI-R), developed by Cash and colleagues, assesses such schemas through subscales measuring self-evaluative salience (tying self-esteem to looks) and beliefs about appearance's influence on social outcomes.^[33] These schemas foster hypervigilance, a state of heightened alertness to potential appearance threats, where individuals habitually scan their bodies for discrepancies against internalized ideals, reinforcing the cycle of checking behaviors.^[34] Cognitive models of body checking integrate these elements by framing checking as a maintainer of biased self-perception. In Thomas Cash's cognitive-behavioral framework for body image disturbance, including the Situational Inventory of Body-Image Dysphoria (SIBID), situations involving body checking behaviors elicit negative emotions and reinforce distorted cognitive appraisals, creating a feedback loop where repeated checking confirms preconceived flaws rather than providing objective reassurance.^[35] This model posits that checking behaviors, driven by schemas and distortions, sustain cognitive rigidity by limiting alternative interpretations of one's appearance, thus embedding the process within broader body image disturbance frameworks.^[36] Empirical research supports these cognitive mechanisms, demonstrating correlations between body image concerns and heightened cognitive rigidity. Studies indicate that individuals with elevated appearance-related concerns exhibit reduced cognitive flexibility, such as difficulties in set-shifting away from appearance-focused thoughts, which correlates with the severity of body image disturbance. Recent experimental work has also revealed paradoxical effects, where repeated body checking reduces subjective certainty about checked body parts, potentially motivating further checking despite objective measurements.^[37]^[38] Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) evidence further reveals attentional biases in body checking, with activation in brain regions like the anterior cingulate cortex during exposure to body-related cues, indicating preferential processing of perceived flaws that aligns with selective attention distortions.^[39] For instance, experimental induction of body checking has been shown to immediately enhance attentional bias toward body stimuli, as measured by body visual search tasks, underscoring the causal link between checking and cognitive processing biases.^[40]

Affective Elements

Body checking often elicits a complex array of immediate emotional responses, characterized by short-term relief from anxiety followed by negative self-conscious emotions. Individuals engaging in body checking may experience a temporary reduction in anxiety or distress, as the act serves as a reassurance-seeking behavior that momentarily alleviates uncertainty about one's appearance.^[41] However, this relief is typically fleeting, giving way to subsequent feelings of guilt, disgust, or shame when the checking reveals perceived inadequacies, such as unflattering body contours or size discrepancies.^[41] These post-checking emotions reinforce a cycle of self-criticism, where the initial comfort is overshadowed by heightened emotional discomfort.^[42] Over the longer term, habitual body checking contributes to sustained affective disturbances, including elevated body dissatisfaction and lowered overall mood. Frequent checking behaviors are positively associated with weight- and body-related shame and guilt, which in turn exacerbate depressive symptoms and general negative affect.^[43] Among individuals prone to body image concerns, increased checking intensity leads to greater negative emotionality, potentially fostering a pervasive sense of inadequacy that diminishes positive mood states. Recent studies as of 2025 have also linked social media addiction to heightened body checking through increased social appearance anxiety, further amplifying shame and depressive symptoms among college students.^[42]^[44] These long-term impacts highlight how body checking, while intuitively soothing, ultimately intensifies emotional vulnerability and mood dysregulation.^[43] The emotional dynamics of body checking can be understood as a maladaptive emotion regulation strategy that paradoxically perpetuates negative affect. Although checking provides immediate anxiolytic effects, it sustains a feedback loop wherein shame and guilt from the process prompt further checking episodes, pervasively undermining emotional well-being.^[41] This cycle maintains heightened self-conscious emotions, as the behavior reinforces avoidance of deeper emotional processing while amplifying distress over time.^[45] Empirical evidence from diary and ecological momentary assessment studies underscores these affective patterns, revealing stronger correlations between body checking frequency and heightened shame among frequent checkers. For instance, momentary assessments show that elevated body shame predicts subsequent checking behaviors and is more pronounced on days involving disturbed eating, illustrating the real-time emotional escalation.^[45] Cultural variations further modulate these effects, with stronger associations between body checking and shame observed in collectivist societies like Korea compared to individualist ones like Germany, where social norms amplify appearance-related guilt.^[46]

Associations with Disorders

Role in Eating Disorders

Body checking serves as a core maintaining factor in eating disorders, particularly anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN), by perpetuating distorted perceptions of body shape and weight. This behavior aligns with the DSM-5 diagnostic criterion of undue influence of body shape and weight on self-evaluation, which is central to both disorders. A meta-analysis of 34 studies found that individuals with eating disorders display significantly elevated body checking compared to healthy controls, with a large effect size (d = 1.26, p < .001).^[47] In clinical samples, up to 92% of patients with eating disorders report engaging in body checking, far exceeding rates in nonclinical populations.^[48] In AN, body checking reinforces restrictive eating patterns by amplifying dissatisfaction and the sense of failing to control shape and weight. Frequent checking, such as pinching skin or examining reflections, heightens negative body image, prompting immediate compensatory actions like caloric restriction or excessive exercise to mitigate perceived flaws.^[49] For example, ecological momentary assessment studies show that higher daily body checking frequency predicts next-day dietary restriction, independent of prior restriction levels.^[49] This cycle distinguishes body checking in AN from general body image concerns by directly sustaining underweight maintenance through targeted behavioral responses. In BN, body checking contributes to the initiation and perpetuation of binge-purge cycles by intensifying shape-related dissatisfaction. Such behaviors foster body shame and appearance anxiety, which indirectly promote binge eating as an emotional escape, followed by purging to regain a sense of control. A representative case involves an individual who, after mirror checking and noting abdominal "fat," experiences overwhelming distress leading to a binge on high-calorie foods, then induces vomiting to counteract the intake and align with weight-control ideals. Unlike broader body image issues, this process in BN specifically escalates the episodic nature of disordered eating through repeated dissatisfaction-driven triggers.

Role in Body Dysmorphic Disorder

Body checking manifests in body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) as a core compulsive behavior, often involving ritualistic actions such as excessive mirror gazing, palpating or measuring perceived defects in body parts, and seeking reassurance about appearance. These behaviors are driven by obsessive preoccupations with imagined or minor flaws, typically in non-weight-related areas like facial features, skin, or hair, and serve to temporarily alleviate anxiety but ultimately reinforce the disorder's cycle of distress. According to DSM-5 criteria, such repetitive acts are time-consuming, occupying at least one hour per day on average, and contribute significantly to functional impairment.^[15] Research indicates high endorsement rates for body checking in BDD, with studies reporting that 87-95% of individuals engage in mirror checking and 82-95% in inspecting or touching specific body parts. The checking cluster of symptoms is nearly universal, affecting over 99% of patients in clinical samples, and is associated with greater severity in cognitive aspects like preoccupation compared to other disorders. These rituals are classified as safety behaviors that maintain distorted body image perceptions, similar to compulsions in obsessive-compulsive disorder, from which BDD is nosologically derived.^[50]^[15] In contrast to its role in eating disorders, where body checking often reinforces weight-focused dietary restrictions, in BDD it more frequently prompts avoidance behaviors, such as shunning social interactions or mirrors altogether, to evade perceived scrutiny of flaws. This differentiation underscores BDD's emphasis on aesthetic defects beyond body size, with checking exacerbating isolation rather than directly influencing caloric intake. Clinical studies highlight that while endorsement rates overlap (up to 92% in eating disorders), the intensity and non-weight focus in BDD lead to distinct patterns of distress and impairment.^[51]^[52]

Assessment and Diagnosis

Diagnostic Criteria

Body checking is not classified as a standalone diagnosis in the DSM-5 or ICD-11 but functions as a behavioral specifier within broader disorders, particularly body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) and eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.^[15]^[53] In the DSM-5, BDD requires preoccupation with one or more perceived appearance flaws, accompanied by repetitive behaviors or mental acts—such as mirror checking, measuring body parts, pinching skin, or comparing one's body to others—that are time-consuming and performed in response to appearance concerns.^[15] These behaviors must cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other functioning, and the diagnosis excludes cases better explained by an eating disorder.^[15] Similarly, in eating disorders, body checking manifests as a component of distorted body image and overvaluation of shape and weight, contributing to the diagnostic criterion of undue influence on self-evaluation, though it is not explicitly required for diagnosis.^[54] The ICD-11 aligns closely with the DSM-5 by placing BDD under obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, defining it by persistent preoccupation with minor or unobservable appearance defects, leading to repetitive behaviors like frequent appearance checking or camouflaging attempts that impair daily life.^[53] Clinical indicators emphasize persistence, with body checking deemed significant if it occurs repeatedly (e.g., daily or multiple times per episode) and results in notable distress or functional interference, often assessed through its duration and impact on quality of life.^[51] For instance, in eating disorders, frequent body checking correlates with heightened psychological distress and reduced physical health-related quality of life.^[51] Body checking frequently co-occurs with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) traits, reflecting shared phenomenological features like ritualistic behaviors, which has influenced its diagnostic framing in both systems.^[15] Historically, the ICD-10 categorized BDD under somatoform disorders as hypochondriacal disorder, focusing on somatic preoccupations without emphasizing behavioral rituals; the shift in ICD-11 to the OCD-related category highlights the compulsive nature of actions like body checking.^[55] Diagnostic challenges arise from subjective reporting biases, where individuals may underreport checking frequency due to shame, denial, or poor insight, potentially leading to underdiagnosis in comorbid presentations with eating disorders or OCD.^[51]

Evaluation Methods

The primary standardized instrument for assessing body checking behaviors is the Body Checking Questionnaire (BCQ), a 23-item self-report measure developed by Reas et al. in 2002.^[56] It evaluates the frequency of these behaviors over the past month using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from "never" to "always," with items covering three subscales: overall appearance and weight checking (e.g., examining clothing fit or reflection in windows), specific body part checking (e.g., measuring the stomach or thighs), and idiosyncratic checking rituals (e.g., pinching skin to assess fat).^[56] The BCQ demonstrates strong psychometric properties, including internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.93 for the total scale) and test-retest reliability (r = 0.90 over two weeks).^[56] Other tools complement the BCQ by capturing related aspects of body image distress that often co-occur with checking behaviors. The Situational Inventory of Body-Image Dysphoria (SIBID), originally developed by Cash in 1994 as a 48-item measure (with a validated 20-item short form published in 2002), assesses the frequency of negative body-image emotions across interpersonal, physical, and social situations using a 5-point scale; its subscales, such as those involving grooming or clothing-related distress, indirectly inform checking tendencies in eating disorder contexts.^[57] Additionally, self-monitoring diaries enhance ecological validity by prompting individuals to log instances of body checking in real-time, including triggers, duration, and emotional consequences, as employed in clinical workbooks and ecological momentary assessment studies for eating disorders.^[58] Assessment methods for body checking encompass both self-report and observational approaches. Self-report instruments like the BCQ are predominant due to their accessibility and established reliability, but observational techniques, such as video-recorded sessions in laboratory settings, allow researchers to quantify overt behaviors like mirror gazing or postural adjustments without reliance on retrospective recall. These methods provide convergent validity when compared to self-reports, though they are resource-intensive and primarily used in experimental research rather than routine clinical practice. Despite their strengths, evaluation tools for body checking have notable limitations. Instruments like the BCQ were developed in Western samples and may require validation in diverse cultural contexts. Emerging post-2020 digital tools offer real-time tracking of eating disorder symptoms including mood and behaviors via user-logged entries and reminders, though their specific application to body checking and long-term validation remains ongoing.^[59]

Interventions and Management

Therapeutic Approaches

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) integrated with exposure and response prevention (ERP) serves as the primary evidence-based therapeutic approach for addressing body checking behaviors, which are often ritualistic compulsions maintaining body image disturbances in eating disorders. In ERP, individuals are gradually exposed to body-related triggers, such as mirrors or scales, while preventing the checking response to reduce anxiety and disrupt the cycle of avoidance and reinforcement. A randomized controlled pilot study of ERP adapted for anorexia nervosa (AN-EXRP), involving 12 sessions alongside inpatient care, demonstrated significant improvements in caloric intake and eating-related anxiety among 30 participants, with reductions in rituals like body checking linked to decreased fear (Spearman's ρ=0.40, p=0.03).^[60] Systematic reviews of exposure therapies in eating disorders further support ERP's efficacy, noting reductions in body dissatisfaction through mirror exposure components, with controlled trials showing marginal benefits over standard CBT alone for binge-purge symptoms, though isolation of effects remains challenging due to integrated protocols. Adaptations of CBT incorporating mindfulness-based approaches, such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), target the cognitive-affective cycles underlying body checking by promoting acceptance of body-related thoughts and alignment with value-driven actions rather than compulsive rituals. In a group-based ACT intervention for eating disorder patients (n=37), delivered over 12 weekly sessions with a self-help component, participants exhibited greater reductions in eating disorder symptoms, including body image disturbances like checking and avoidance, compared to treatment as usual (TAU; n=40), with effect sizes three times larger in restrictive subtypes.^[61] At 2-year follow-up, 78.4% of ACT recipients achieved symptom scores below clinical cutoffs on the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q), versus 60% in TAU, indicating sustained disruption of maladaptive cycles.^[61] Emerging adjunctive interventions, such as body image-focused group therapy, have shown preliminary efficacy in reducing body dissatisfaction as of 2025.^[62] Pharmacological adjuncts, particularly selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like fluoxetine, are used to manage comorbid anxiety or obsessive-compulsive features that exacerbate body checking in eating disorders. While not directly targeting checking behaviors, fluoxetine has shown indirect benefits by alleviating obsessive thoughts in weight-restored anorexia nervosa patients. Reviews of SSRI use in eating disorders emphasize their role in comorbid conditions, such as OCD-like rituals, with fluoxetine aiding psychiatric comorbidity resolution during CBT. A multicenter RCT (n=93) found no significant overall benefit of fluoxetine compared to placebo in preventing relapse over 1 year in weight-restored AN patients (non-relapse completion: 26.5% vs. 31.5%), though potential benefits were noted in subgroups with higher depressive symptoms.^[63] Long-term outcomes emphasize relapse prevention through habit reversal training (HRT), a behavioral component that enhances awareness of checking urges and substitutes competing responses, often integrated into CBT or ERP protocols. Systematic reviews of HRT in obsessive-compulsive related disorders highlight symptom reductions of 59-74% in analogous repetitive behaviors, with maintained effects at 3-month follow-ups in small RCTs, suggesting applicability to body checking for sustained habit disruption.^[64] In eating disorder contexts, combining HRT with exposure yields durable improvements, as evidenced by 6-12 month follow-ups in exposure trials showing abstinence rates up to 70% from related compulsive episodes.

Prevention Measures

Prevention measures for body checking emphasize proactive strategies to reduce its emergence in at-risk groups, particularly adolescents, by addressing environmental and behavioral triggers before clinical symptoms develop. School-based educational programs, such as the Media Smart initiative, deliver media literacy curricula designed to equip students with skills to critically analyze unrealistic body ideals in media, thereby diminishing triggers for body checking behaviors like frequent weighing or mirror inspections. This evidence-based, 8-lesson program targets late primary and early high school students and has demonstrated effectiveness in reducing weight and shape concerns, key precursors to body checking in eating disorders. A randomized controlled trial of its targeted online version showed significant improvements in body image and disordered eating prevention among youth, with sustained benefits at follow-up. Similarly, programs like the Body Project use cognitive dissonance techniques to challenge thin-ideal internalization, leading to notable decreases in body dissatisfaction among adolescent girls. Public health campaigns play a vital role by countering idealized body images through body positivity initiatives and promoting diverse representations in media. For instance, efforts to foster positive family discussions involve guidelines for parents to avoid appearance-based comments during meals and encourage focus on health and functionality rather than aesthetics, which helps prevent the modeling of checking behaviors in children. In the 2020s, regulatory actions have advanced, including proposals for mandatory labeling of digitally manipulated images in advertising to mitigate harms from idealized content on social media platforms, protecting adolescents from heightened body image pressures. Early intervention in primary care settings includes routine screening for body image disturbances among adolescents using validated tools to identify early signs of checking behaviors, coupled with brief motivational interviewing sessions to enhance self-efficacy and promote balanced body perceptions. Motivational interviewing has proven effective in adolescent health behavior change, including those related to body image and eating concerns, by eliciting intrinsic motivation for positive shifts. Longitudinal studies of these prevention approaches indicate substantial benefits, with school-based programs achieving 20-30% reductions in body dissatisfaction and associated checking behaviors over time, underscoring their role in averting escalation to eating disorders.

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A negative relationship between cognitive inhibition and idiosyncratic body checking was evident. ... Impairments in cognitive inhibition lead to rigidity ...
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The situational inventory of body‐image dysphoria: Psychometric ...
Aug 23, 2002 · Objective Among the facets of the multidimensional body-image construct is the experience of dysphoric emotions about the body in specific ...
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Weak central coherence, cognitive rigidity and disordered eating in ...
We found both cognitive rigidity and weak central coherence to correlate with severity and frequency of disordered eating behaviours and cognitions.
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Neural mechanisms of perceptual and affective body-image ...
Apr 27, 2023 · Attentional bias changes according to the body size of the presented stimuli. Notably, body size discrimination ability does not differ between ...
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Body checking induces an attentional bias for body-related cues
The present study examined the influence of body checking on attentional bias for body-related cues by manipulating body checking behaviors in nonclinical ...
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Longer-term consequences of increased body checking in women at ...
Dec 26, 2024 · Body checking reduces negative emotions in the short term, but over time contributes to the development and maintenance of eating disorder pathology.Missing: diary | Show results with:diary
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(PDF) The role of body shame, social appearance anxiety, and body ...
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An evaluation of the Body Dysmorphic Disorder Symptom Scale as a ...
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Jun 13, 2013 · It was hypothesized that participants with probable EDs would report more severe BDD symptoms than healthy control participants, although less ...
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[PDF] Body dysmorphic disorder and olfactory reference disorder
The Working Group reviewed the classification and diagnostic criteria of BDD in DSM-5, as well as cultural variations of BDD and olfactory reference disorder ...
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a self-report measure of body checking behaviors - PubMed
Objective: The purpose of this study was to develop a brief self-report inventory to assess body checking behaviors.
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The Situational Inventory of Body-Image Dysphoria (SIBID) measures dysphoric emotions about the body in specific situations. A 20-item short form was developed.Missing: checking | Show results with:checking
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[PDF] Binge Eating Workbook_FINAL_123119
Self-monitoring food logs are a tool used to treat all ea1ng disorders. ... Record your body-checking behaviors on the following chart over the next two weeks.
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An Analysis of Aesthetic Concerns Identified by Video Conferencing
Nov 2, 2022 · Negative thoughts about the shape and size of the face and other body parts predominated, as well as body image checking/avoidance behaviors ...
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(PDF) Validation of the Body Checking Questionnaire (BCQ) in an ...
Aug 10, 2025 · The aim of this study was to validate the Body Checking Questionnaire (BCQ) in an eating disorder population, using students in psychology as control.
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Smartphone Applications for Eating Disorders: A Systematic Review ...
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