What is Body Neutrality? (And How it Can Help You)

There is a big movement, especially on social media, to be body positive. It is the idea that you feel positive about your body—embracing how it looks, how you feel in it—most of the time. It is meant to lead to more self-confidence, self-love, and total acceptance of your weight, which all sounds great!

… But what if you’ve spent years absorbing diet culture messaging? Or you eat emotionally and that leads to feelings of shame and guilt around your body? It can seem impossible to get to a place where you unconditionally love your body and actively feel positive about it.

This is where the idea of body neutrality comes in.

Being “neutral” about something means you don’t have any positive or negative feelings about a topic, it simply is. This is something you can apply to how you feel about your body. If you constantly beat yourself up after going clothes shopping or suck in your stomach every time you look in a mirror, you might find ALL your ideas around your body are negative. The idea is to start to shift towards feeling neutral about your body, doing away with your inner critic but also not replacing it with positivity you don’t (yet) believe. Instead, begin to shift your focus by considering how your body works for and with you, and re-examining the cultural messaging around bodies. Here are some things you can try to begin to shift your relationship with your body:

• Realize that you’ve been overly tough on your body and decide you can work together.
• Think about, or even get out in your journal, all the messaging you’ve been exposed to that says thin = better, healthier. Chances are that your idea of beauty didn’t come from within you!
• Focus on how your legs and feet carry you through the day—your body is your vehicle to get through life!
• Your sight, smell, taste, and even digestion all let you enjoy foods and gives you the energy to get through the day.
• Try stopping a negative criticism in its tracks. You don’t have to replace it with an overly positive thought, but you might instead say “stop” or “I don’t need that thought.”

Remember that mental shifts like this take time to become a new habit, so be patient with yourself. Plus: trying to love your body every day is another form of perfectionism that can lead to feeling inadequate when you don’t live up to it (because perfection is an illusion!).

💛 Your peace awaits.