Ep 110 - Body Love vs Body Positivity

<p>Welcome to this week’s episode of How to Love Your Body </p> <p>The terms body love, body neutrality and body positivity along with Body acceptance and body image all get tossed around a lot in this work and many use them interchangeably but all of these things are different.</p> <p>Today we are going to talk about the differences, what they mean for your journey and what to focus on in this phase of your journey.</p> <p>Let’s start with body positivity:</p> <p>This one is unlike the others. Body positivity is a social movement, it has its roots in the fat acceptance movement. It works along side racial justice, trans and queer inclusive, and disability movements. So when people ask, why is body positivity so political ? This is why - it IS, it’s a political movement. </p> <p>The other terms we are talking about are more about the individual - and likely what many are talking about on their platforms when they use the term body positivity.</p> <p>Most people - even publications use these terms incorrectly. Take this article title for instance “ Forget body positivity: How about body neutrality?” This doesn’t make sense - body positivity is a movement and body neutrality is an individual experience of one’s body.</p> <p>Let’s dive into Body Neutrality, it is usually the first step for people on their journey out of the diet mentality and into a healthier relationship with food and their bodies. </p> <p>Body Neutrality empowers you to embrace yourself as you are, including the parts you don’t like about yourself. This means avoiding self hate but also being ok not liking the way you look all the time. It's about respect and acceptance.</p> <p>The power in body neutrality is that you don’t have to lie to yourself, bypass the emotional work and just pretend to love your body - you can work on slowly becoming okay with who you are as you move along in your journey.</p> <p>An example of body neutrality is to turn your thoughts from negative “I hate the way my arms look”, to factual and objective