Individuals with eating disorders may be more vulnerable to eating disorder behaviours following acute increases in negative affect, weight- and shape-based self-esteem saliency, and body dissatisfaction. This study investigated the relative effectiveness of two prominent and clinically-applicable emotion regulation strategies – cognitive reappraisal and mindful awareness – and an active control strategy (distraction) for reducing acute distress in an eating disorder sample. Participants with anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and other specified feeding or eating disorder underwent a body image distress induction and, following the induction, were instructed to practice cognitive reappraisal, mindful awareness, or distraction. State negative affect, weight- and shape-based self-esteem activation, body dissatisfaction, eating disorder urges, and perceived likelihood of engaging in eating disorder behaviours were measured before and after strategy implementation. Cognitive reappraisal resulted in greater reductions in body dissatisfaction than mindful awareness, and there was a trend toward greater reductions in body dissatisfaction compared to distraction. Similarly, cognitive reappraisal resulted in greater reductions in saliency of weight- and shape-based self-esteem schemas compared to distraction. The strategies did not differentially reduce negative affect, eating disorder urges, or perceived likelihood of engaging in eating disorder behaviours following the induction. Findings indicate that cognitive reappraisal may be the strategy of choice to reduce cognitive aspects of state body image distress. The three strategies appear to be similarly helpful in facilitating short-term reductions of the affective components of state body image distress. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)