<p>A new trend of “mirror-fasting” which includes abstaining from looking at your reflection for a month to a year can stop you from obsessing over your looks, a team of US bloggers have claimed.<br /><br /></p>.<p>The trend started in the US when bloggers such as Autumn Whitefield-Madrano, a 36-year-old freelance writer based in Queens, New York, launched a blog on mirror fasting, the Guardian reported.<br /><br />“I’d become aware that I had a ‘mirror face’. Whenever I saw my reflection I’d open my eyes a little wider, suck in my cheeks a little and tip my chin down in an effort to make myself look more like I wanted to. It made me feel really vain,” she was quoted as saying by the paper.<br /><br />She embarked on her first month-long mirror fast in May 2011, in an effort to become less self-conscious about her face.<br /><br />“I didn’t want to do it because I felt bad about myself per se – I was just concerned about how often I was thinking about my appearance. I wanted to see how much my mood was affected by the way I perceived my looks,” she said.<br /><br />At the end of the experiment, she reported feeling “calmer and more serene”, although she admits her second month-long fast in July 2011 was more challenging. She has now made mirror-fasting an annual event.<br /><br />Her fellow blogger, Kjerstin Gruys, a 29-year-old sociology graduate in San Francisco, mirror-fasted for 12 months in the runup to her wedding.<br /><br />She said shopping for her wedding dress “triggered a renewed – and very unwelcome – sense of vain insecurity” about her appearance.<br /><br />“I felt ill at ease when reflecting on the dress situation. Was all that really necessary? Did my happiness over the dress outweigh the self-centred obsessing I had gone through to get it?” she wrote on her blog.<br /><br />A study, published in the journal Behaviour Research and Therapy earlier this year, found that British women stare in the mirror around 38 times every day and men 18 times a day. <br /><br />Dr Phillippa Diedrichs, a research psychologist at the Centre for Appearance Research in Bristol however believes that “mirror-fasting” would not have a long-term positive impact on body image.<br /></p>
<p>A new trend of “mirror-fasting” which includes abstaining from looking at your reflection for a month to a year can stop you from obsessing over your looks, a team of US bloggers have claimed.<br /><br /></p>.<p>The trend started in the US when bloggers such as Autumn Whitefield-Madrano, a 36-year-old freelance writer based in Queens, New York, launched a blog on mirror fasting, the Guardian reported.<br /><br />“I’d become aware that I had a ‘mirror face’. Whenever I saw my reflection I’d open my eyes a little wider, suck in my cheeks a little and tip my chin down in an effort to make myself look more like I wanted to. It made me feel really vain,” she was quoted as saying by the paper.<br /><br />She embarked on her first month-long mirror fast in May 2011, in an effort to become less self-conscious about her face.<br /><br />“I didn’t want to do it because I felt bad about myself per se – I was just concerned about how often I was thinking about my appearance. I wanted to see how much my mood was affected by the way I perceived my looks,” she said.<br /><br />At the end of the experiment, she reported feeling “calmer and more serene”, although she admits her second month-long fast in July 2011 was more challenging. She has now made mirror-fasting an annual event.<br /><br />Her fellow blogger, Kjerstin Gruys, a 29-year-old sociology graduate in San Francisco, mirror-fasted for 12 months in the runup to her wedding.<br /><br />She said shopping for her wedding dress “triggered a renewed – and very unwelcome – sense of vain insecurity” about her appearance.<br /><br />“I felt ill at ease when reflecting on the dress situation. Was all that really necessary? Did my happiness over the dress outweigh the self-centred obsessing I had gone through to get it?” she wrote on her blog.<br /><br />A study, published in the journal Behaviour Research and Therapy earlier this year, found that British women stare in the mirror around 38 times every day and men 18 times a day. <br /><br />Dr Phillippa Diedrichs, a research psychologist at the Centre for Appearance Research in Bristol however believes that “mirror-fasting” would not have a long-term positive impact on body image.<br /></p>