Transforming Body Image

Transforming Body Image:  Learning to Love the Body You Have by Marcia Germaine Hutchinson is a self-help book for women who have negative body image (though it wouldn't be difficult, I think, to adapt the content for men to make use of, as well).  Each chapter in this book provides mental exercises and workbook-style questions for the reader to answer on her own.  Hutchinson makes a point of focusing attention on mental, rather than physical, changes, but unlike some other books on this topic, this one isn't all about feeding the reader pages of insincere flattery.  Hutchinson's methods are very introspective and are designed to take time and real effort.  There are stories from women who have taken Hutchinson's workshop using these exercises, and though the four women featured in the final chapter were still working through their issues well after the workshop had taken place, they all had significantly improved mindsets about their bodies.

In my opinion, the fact that these women were still works in progress, so to speak, lends Transforming Body Image a certain amount of credibility.  It proves that Hutchinson isn't trying to sell readers some kind of quick fix in her book.  Changing your self-image is not something that can be accomplished overnight, and this book acknowledges that and encourages readers to take their time and really focus on each exercise individually until they feel they've improved in each step.  It rings very genuine to me.

Love Your Body

Love Your Body by Louise L. Hay is a small book of positive affirmations designed for you to say out loud to yourself every day; there is an affirmation for many different parts of the body, and there is a blank page for each as well, so you can write in your own thoughts and affirmations to go along with the ones Hay has come up with.

For a self-help book, I actually do not think Love Your Body is at all helpful.  I'm sure affirmations work for some people, but the ones Hay provides in this book are mostly all the same few things repeated for every single body part she goes through.  I thought this was supposed to be full of affirmations to help someone be better able to try and accept the parts of themselves they dislike, and to eventually develop a more positive self-image through the continued use of the affirmations.  But since there is very little in each affirmation that is even relevant to the body part being "focused" on, I fail to see how it should help.  Some of the affirmations aren't even for body parts - there is one for breath, and quite a few for various internal organs such as the liver, kidneys, and bladder.  Here's an example for you - the affirmation for the spleen:

"My only obsession is with the joy of life.  My true identity is one of peace and love and joy.  I choose the thoughts that create joy for me in every area of my life.  My spleen is healthy and happy and normal.  I am safe.  I choose to experience the sweetness of life.  I love and appreciate my beautiful spleen!"