@daisyjo This is the way. I never had particularly bad body image issues (like...low-to-normal raised-in-the-US-in-the-90s body image issues), but starting to lift weights and track how much I could lift completely turned my issues around and took my relationship with food to a new level.
It was a couple different things:
1. Not eating enough one morning and failing a weight that normally was easy for me, and suddenly feeling what food was doing for my body
2. Feeling strong & good about my body aesthetically, weighing myself after a while, and realizing I'd gained weight...and not caring
3. Realizing that the feeling of post-workout burn shifted my body awareness to the things I was proud of instead of the things I was self conscious of
Now when the little feeling-fat-demons rear themselves in the back of my head, I hustle off to the gym when I can, but because it immediately changes the way I
feel about my body, not because I'm telling myself something about how it'll make me look or what I'll weigh. Which is a subtle sounding difference but it is night and day mental health-wise!