3 Reasons NOT to Love Your Body
Here’s a hot take (and one you might not expect from me):
Loving your body is NOT a realistic or useful goal for everyone.
Yet the surging popularity of body positivity culture can easily make us feel like we don’t have a healthy relationship with our bodies if we’re unable to look in the mirror and affirm what we see.
The body positivity movement encourages affirmations like:
“I love my body.” “All bodies are beautiful.” “I’m grateful for my body.”
But is this REALLY how we should all strive to think about our bodies?
I’m not so sure…
Let me explain:
When new students begin their Food Body Self journey, they’re far more familiar with feelings of hatred, loathing, and resentment toward their bodies.
For them, and many others, perhaps including you, feeling positively toward your body is such a far cry from where you’re at now, that reaching that point seems impossible.
The good news is, you don’t have to strive for warm and fuzzy feelings toward your body. You don’t have to love it or find it beautiful.
Before we talk about an alternative relationship with your body you can cultivate, here are 3 reasons you might not want to aim for a positive body image at all:
1. Positive affirmations can backfire.
Psychologist Joanne Wood’s “self-comparison theory” suggests that we want to hear words that are coherent with our existing sense of self more than hearing positive words about ourselves.
In other words: we resonate with messages that confirm who we already think we are, and we find messages (including affirmations) that conflict with who we think we are to be unsettling.
In one of Wood’s experiments, she divided participants into those with high and low self-esteem and had them repeat phrases to themselves like, “I am a lovable person.”
It turned out, those with low self-esteem felt WORSE after repeating the positive affirmations.
Why might this happen?
It’s possible that when you say a phrase like, “My body is beautiful,” but you don’t believe it’s true, you reflexively look for evidence that supports the belief you already hold—that you don’t think your body is beautiful—beliefs like, “I find my stomach disgusting” or “I hate the way my butt looks.”
Rather than getting closer to believing the positive affirmation, you strengthen your belief in the opposite.
2. Positive affirmations can reinforce moralistic thinking.
When you’re working toward believing positive thoughts about your body, you may feel tempted to evaluate your progress by categorizing positive thoughts as “good” and negative thoughts as “bad”.
When thinking kind thoughts about your body, you may label yourself “good” and feel yourself deserving of praise.
And when you slip up and have a negative thought about your body, you may label yourself “bad”...which could then lead to you believing you’re failing to change, hopeless, or deserving of punishment or criticism.
This is exactly the kind of black-and-white thinking that can sabotage progress and consistency because what follows is often more self-criticism, a loss of motivation, and/or avoidant behaviors like emotional eating. And these results can further fuel an undesirable feedback loop.
3. Attempting to think positively about your body will keep you focused on your body.
If your goal is to have positive thoughts about your body, your attention will remain focused on your body and how you think about your body. The more attention you bring to your body, the more opportunities you’ll have to be critical of it, particularly when you’ve spent a long time (for many individuals, years or decades) picking it apart, feeling hateful, resentful, or inadequate.
And I don’t know about you, but thinking about my body all the time sounds exhausting. In fact, I know it was exhausting.
Now here’s the fun part:
A positive body image doesn’t have to be your goal. You don’t have to try to “feel good naked.” Instead, you can aim to “feel neutral naked.”
In Food Body Self coaching, we use the acronym BARN to describe the pillars of a healthy relationship with your body. BARN stands for Body Acceptance, Respect, and Neutrality.
Rather than “I love my body” and “my body is beautiful”, BARN beliefs sound like:
“This is my body.” “My body is deserving of respect.” “I am more than my body.”
Body-neutral beliefs are less likely to trigger negative thoughts toward your body, moralistic thinking, and encourage you to relinquish your thoughts about your body to the background of your mind.
Plus, from a place of neutrality, you’ll be closer to your goal if you decide to continue working toward body positivity, AND body neutrality is still a valid and healthy place to stop for good. Win-win.
If you struggle with difficult or cruel thoughts about your body on repeat and body positivity doesn’t resonate with you, Food Body Self coaching can help you cultivate Body Acceptance, Respect, and Neutrality.
Imagine the relief you could feel if you spent less time fighting with your body when you get dressed, less time obsessing over body parts in front of the mirror, and less time hiding from photos or feeling disgusted by the way you look in them.
Instead, you could get dressed and undressed without giving your body a second thought, observe your body in the mirror and move on, and show up in photos without needing to scrutinize them.
If there’s one thing I can promise you it’s that no matter where you’re at now, peace with your body is within your reach.