How Striving for Perfection Fuels Disordered Eating
Diet culture tells us that there’s nothing more important than striving for perfection. Yet, contrary to the societal narratives our mainstream media often tries to normalize, there is no perfect body size, weight, shape, or skin tone.
Nor is there a perfect way to eat and exercise. While most of us know (at least on some level) that perfection does not exist, the urge to pursue it can still longer—and worse, interfere with our daily lives.
According to a recent survey, more than 90 percent of U.S. adults, ages 25 to 55, would label themselves perfectionists, and 72 percent believe this affects their mental health. Perfectionism can cause feelings of inadequacy, self-criticism, depression, anxiety, emotional burnout, risk aversion, and an intense fear of failure.
And that’s not all—perfectionism is also a common predictor of body image issues or eating disorder behaviors. Let’s explore how striving for perfection can fuel disordered eating habits and how to combat this for a healthier relationship with yourself.
What Does It Mean to Strive for Perfection?
The harmful side of perfectionism can be tricky to dissect because our performance-based culture tends to glamorize this trait.
Society often rewards those who strive for perfection, referring to them as successful, conscientious high-achievers. But that’s not the whole story.
The thing is, many perfectionists equate their self-worth to the results they achieve. This can fuel rigid patterns of behavior, irrational or compulsive thinking, and resistance to compromise. Here are some ways you may have seen this play out in your life:
Holding yourself to expectations that you wouldn’t place on anyone else
Enforcing unreasonable or inflexible parameters on yourself to reach a certain goal
Refusing to show yourself compassion for human errors and mistakes
Attaching a moral value to setbacks (“I am a problem” instead of “I have a problem”)
Measuring your perceived success in metrics (pounds lost, miles run, etc.)
Seeking external affirmation from others to determine how you should feel about yourself
Avoiding the risk of failure at all costs—often to the level of procrastination
Trying to control an unpredictable circumstance with extreme rigidity
Rushing to overcompensate for an error without taking any time to learn from it
Believing that imperfection will ultimately lead to rejection or abandonment
Maintaining black-and-white ways of thinking or behaving (“I’m either a success or a failure—there’s no in between”)
What Causes the Drive for Perfection?
Some folks are naturally prone to certain traits like meticulous precision, neuroticism, or detail orientation, indicating that perfectionism could be as much as 32 to 46 percent hereditary. Still, there are many environmental factors that also influence this behavior.
Interestingly (and yet not surprisingly), perfectionism is transdiagnostic, which means it can present in any mental illness and often acts as a treatment barrier.
In addition to genetics, we can pick up this trait from many places, people, and experiences. Here are a few common scenarios that can lead to striving for perfection:
Family expectations: Being raised in a family that places a high value on performance or achievement can send the message that your worth is tied to success.
Cultural influences: Coming from a cultural framework that emphasizes determination, competence, ambition, and self-reliance can fuel a perfectionistic mindset.
Mental health issues: Having a mental illness, like anxiety or OCD, can cause you to strive for perfection to control overwhelming emotions and compulsions.
Traumatic experiences: Dealing with the effects of neglect, abuse, loss, or bullying can compel you to wield perfectionism as a tool to avoid any further trauma.
How Does Striving for Perfection Fuel Disordered Eating?
It’s not hard to see how the relentless nature of perfectionism can escalate into body image issues or disordered eating habits.
This need to strive for perfection has been shown to reinforce harmful tendencies such as compulsive exercise, caloric restriction, or body checking and comparison, according to the Eating and Weight Disorders Journal.
Perfectionists are more likely to use exercise and similar behaviors as compensation for food intake or an avenue for weight control, the journal explains. Their mood states and view of self will often fluctuate in response to these behaviors as well.
For example, burning calories could result in a sense of accomplishment, while eating a certain food or missing a workout causes fear of inadequacy to creep in. Here are some other examples:
Not allowing yourself the freedom to eat specific foods or take a rest from exercise, even if you have no opinion about someone else making those choices
Comparing how you look to others or searching for validation about your appearance
Feeling like a failure if you have to miss a workout for any reason, even illness
Equating the idea of weight loss or “thinness” with cultivating a perfect body
Punishing yourself after meals, either with a purge or an intense exercise session
How to Stop Striving for Perfection
Eating disorder patients who also deal with perfectionism tend to have lower remission rates (around 40 percent) than those without this tendency. While this can make it harder to heal, it’s certainly not impossible.
Use the following strategies to empower yourself to break this cycle of striving for perfection, so you can discover healing, self-compassion, balance, and an inherent sense of worth.
Combat an “all-or-nothing” mindset.
Perfectionism can cause you to think in extreme black-and-white terms. For instance, you might perceive a workout as either a “complete success” or an “abject failure.”
To challenge this, Salene M. W. Jones, Phd., suggests:
“Counteracting all-or-nothing thinking can be challenging. But one effective technique is to simply notice it. This cognitive distortion usually sorts the world into two categories—good or bad—so it can be easy to notice once you start looking.”
Set realistic, flexible healing goals.
The perfectionist in you is going to want to heal in the most perfect way—and yet, there is no perfect (or linear) way to heal.
Set realistic flexible goals for your healing journey. Meg McCabe, Life Coach and Eating Disorder Recovery Coach, calls these “baby goals”—here are some examples she gives:
Write down one recovery affirmation in your planner a day
Follow your meal plan for two days instead of seven (just to prove you can do it)!
Decide to skip one or two workouts this week (if you engage in excessive exercise)
Journal before or after you engage in a behavior to build awareness
Call your sister or a friend when you have an urge
Focus on self-care for 10 minutes
Go to a recovery support group (just to try it out)!
Unfollow 3 triggering social media account(s)
Love yourself through the setbacks.
Use self-compassion to counter perfectionism. I love this practice, called a Self-Compassion Break, from Kristen Kneff, the founder of Mindful Self Compassion.
The 3-step process allows you to label the moment of suffering, connect to humanity, and then come back to compassion for yourself in that moment.
Cultivate a trusted support network.
Surround yourself with relationships that make you feel safe to navigate all the messy parts of healing, without insisting that you handle it perfectly.
This can include a therapist, dietitian, community group, friends, or family members, who encourage you to release perfectionistic tendencies. Knowing others are in your corner can ease the pressure to meet unrealistic ideals.
Check out these 30+ free eating disorder support groups, which can serve as a wonderful source of support, compassion, and understanding.
Freedom from Perfectionism Is Attainable—and Help Is Available
Perfectionism is so common—but it doesn’t have to be your norm.
Here at Project Heal, we remove the barriers to treatment, so you can experience affordable care from a licensed clinician who will affirm your race, culture, sexual orientation, gender, physical abilities, religion, and other identities.
If you want to take the next step on this healing journey, reach out to our team for support!
