Body Positivity vs. Body Neutrality: What’s the Real Difference—And Why It Matters in Healing Your Body Image
Struggling to Love Your Body? You’re Not Alone—Here’s Why Body Neutrality Might Be the Shift You Need
If you’ve ever felt like body positivity doesn’t quite fit, you’re not alone. Maybe you’ve tried repeating affirmations or following influencers who preach self-love—but it still feels fake. That doesn’t mean something’s wrong with you. It might just mean that what you need isn’t body positivity—it’s body neutrality.
For many women—especially those who are high-achieving, perfectionistic, or deeply self-aware—being told to "just love your body" can feel disorienting or even invalidating. You may understand intellectually that your worth isn’t tied to your appearance, but emotionally? That’s a harder bridge to cross. Add in years of cultural conditioning, body shame, or disordered eating, and suddenly the pressure to feel confident can feel like just another impossible standard.
That’s where body neutrality comes in. It offers a gentler, more grounded approach to healing—one that meets you where you are.
In this blog, we’ll explore:
The difference between body positivity and body neutrality
Why body positivity doesn’t work for everyone
How body neutrality offers a gentler, more sustainable path to healing body image
What Is Body Positivity?
Body positivity began as a social justice movement rooted in fat acceptance and inclusivity. It challenged beauty norms and pushed for visibility and respect for marginalized bodies—fat bodies, disabled bodies, trans bodies, and more.
But over time, it became more mainstream. Brands and influencers co-opted the message, and the focus shifted from radical acceptance to performative self-love. Now, "body positivity" often looks like thin, white women posting posed bikini shots with captions about loving their flaws. The message of body positivity has gotten lost and it’s not your fault for having an adverse reaction to the phrase.
The core idea of body positivity is this: you should love your body no matter what. For some, that message is empowering. But for others—especially high-achieving women who already feel pressure to perform and "get it right"—it can backfire. The expectation in of itself feels like too large a leap to make when you’re already struggling with body acceptance let alone, body positivity. The very individuals who often feel the most pressure to be “body positive” are frequently the ones carrying deep-seated body shame and internalized fat-phobia—shaped by personal experiences, cultural messaging, and systemic bias.
So why does the same society that wants these individuals to hate themselves also expects them to love themselves? What in the double-bind, illogic is that? — If you’re feeling frustrated, you’re not alone and you’re not crazy. There is a different way to relate to your body that doesn’t involve forcing love or positivity where it doesn’t feel natural.
What Is Body Neutrality?
Body neutrality is a newer concept that offers an alternative to the pressure of constant self-love. Instead of pushing you to love your body all the time, it invites you to respect your body and shift your focus away from how it looks to how it functions, feels, and supports your life. Body Neutrality is also in alignment with the Health at Every Size (HAES) movement which focuses on taking care of and nourishing one’s body in a balanced and mentally healthy way. Body neutrality is about meeting your body where it’s at, not forcing things you don’t actually feel to ring true.
It sounds like:
"My body allows me to do what I love."
"I don't have to love my stomach to nourish it."
"I can acknowledge discomfort without spiraling into shame."
Body neutrality isn’t about silencing your struggles or pretending you don’t care about your appearance—it’s about expanding the conversation beyond it. It offers a way to disengage from the relentless monitoring, measuring, and managing of your body’s aesthetics and opens space to reconnect with your lived experience inside your body.
It’s a philosophy rooted in:
Self-compassion: meeting your body with care instead of criticism
Psychological flexibility: allowing for a range of emotions, not just positive ones
Function over form: focusing on what your body does, not how it looks doing it
This shift can be especially healing if you’ve spent years in diet culture, struggling with disordered eating, or trying to “fix” your body into something more acceptable. It disrupts the loop that says your worth is dependent on how you look, and replaces it with a more sustainable approach rooted in respect, curiosity, and care.
Importantly, body neutrality makes room for complexity. You don’t have to feel grateful for your body every moment. You don’t have to ignore valid frustrations. But you do have permission to stop obsessing. To stop performing. To stop making peace with your body conditional on loving it first.
Body neutrality says: you don’t have to love your body to treat it with care.
And that is so revolutionary and empowering for anyone who has felt at war with their body for years. Rather than swinging back and forth between hating your body and deeply desiring body love, it is a grounded center. It’s a way of relating to your body that honors your history, makes space for the present, and builds a future that’s not driven by punishment, perfectionism, or pressure.
And for many women—especially those recovering from perfectionism, disordered eating, or chronic body shame—it can be a quiet revolution. A subtle but powerful reorientation toward peace.
Why Body Positivity Doesn’t Work for Everyone
Let’s be honest: body positivity can feel like another performance. It can feel forced, like you're trying to fake something you're just not feeling. And honestly? In a world where beauty standards keep getting more intense and impossible, the whole thing can start to feel kind of exhausting and out of touch.
For high-achieving women who are used to excelling and hitting benchmarks, the message "you should love your body" can sound like a command. And when that love doesn’t come easily?
Cue the inner critic:
"Why can’t I just be confident like other women?"
"I’m failing at self-love."
"If I really healed, I’d be proud of my body."
“Let’s face it— I’m never going to love this body.”
“I hate this body so much!”
“Why can’t I just feel accepted and loved?”
In this way, body positivity can become a new metric for success—one that often leads to more shame.
It also tends to gloss over real, painful experiences in the context of a fat-phobic society that oppresses fat people and absolutely operates with a beauty hierarchy. To ask an individual to simply embrace “body positivity” is to ignore real pain points like:
Living in a fat-phobic culture
Navigating chronic illness or disability
Coping with trauma and internalized body shame
Feeling disconnected from your body due to neurodivergence or dissociation
Experiencing the effects of "pretty privilege"—or more accurately, the lack of it
When these struggles are ignored or minimized by shiny self-love slogans, it’s not inspiring—it’s invalidating.
And let’s talk about pretty privilege for a second, because this isn’t just in your head. Research shows that people who are perceived as more conventionally attractive often receive better treatment across the board: they’re more likely to be hired, earn more money, be considered trustworthy, and even receive more lenient treatment in the legal system. Meanwhile, those in larger or less traditionally attractive bodies are often judged more harshly, stereotyped, and left out of opportunities—whether consciously or not.
So if you’ve ever thought, "Of course I want to love my body, but it feels impossible," you’re not being shallow or dramatic. You’re living in a world that literally rewards beauty and punishes deviation from it. Wanting to fit in and feel safe is deeply human. Body neutrality doesn’t ignore that—it meets you in it. It says, yes, the system is unfair. And still, you deserve peace in your body—not because the world has changed yet, but because you are worthy of that peace, regardless of how the world sees you.
The Power of Body Neutrality (Especially for High-Achieving Women)
Body neutrality meets you where you are. It doesn’t demand a specific emotional outcome. It doesn’t tell you to fake confidence or pretend you’re at peace when you’re not. Instead, it invites you to explore a new way of relating to your body—one that centers on respect, function, and presence rather than appearance.
It asks questions like:
Can you offer your body respect, even if you don’t love how it looks today?
Can you shift focus from how you look to how you feel?
Can you make choices based on care and connection, not punishment or shame?
This approach is especially powerful for:
Women who are tired of obsessing over their appearance
Perfectionists who feel they need to "win" at body image
Neurodivergent folks who experience the body in nonlinear or complex ways
Anyone who has spent years inside diet culture or controlling food as a form of self-worth
Body neutrality offers a release from the all-or-nothing thinking that so often accompanies body image struggles. It’s not about waking up and loving every inch of yourself. It’s about creating a little breathing room—space to relate to your body in ways that aren’t governed by harsh inner narratives or social comparison.
It also acknowledges that the body is not a static object to be judged, but a living system that changes, reacts, evolves, and carries your history. This makes room for grief, for trauma, for pleasure, and for slow trust-building.
Many high-achieving women find this shift incredibly freeing. When you’ve spent your life pushing, perfecting, and performing, body neutrality can feel like a radical exhale—a chance to opt out of the constant evaluation loop.
And with that freedom comes mental and emotional energy that can be redirected into things that actually bring joy and meaning—relationships, creativity, movement, rest, and simply existing without an agenda.
5 Ways to Practice Body Neutrality
So you might be thinking, "Okay, this sounds nice in theory, but how do I actually do this?" You’re not alone. Body neutrality isn’t a switch you flip—it’s a practice. It’s something you return to over and over again, especially on the days when the old noise gets loud. The good news? You don’t have to overhaul your entire mindset overnight. Small, meaningful shifts in how you speak to yourself, care for your body, and move through the world can make a real difference.
Here are five simple but powerful ways to start building a more neutral, grounded relationship with your body:
Focus on function.
Instead of judging how your legs look, thank them for getting you from point A to point B.
Instead of hyper-fixating on your body’s appearance, practice gentle and natural gratitude for what your body did for you today.
Use neutral language.
Shift "I hate my arms" to "These are my arms."
Instead of “My stomach looks disgusting” try “My stomach looks like a human stomach” (it may seem odd or silly, but it’s kinder).
Engage in body respect habits.
Eat regularly, stop skipping meals, nourish your hunger.
Consider any and all ways to respect your body like getting more sleep, hydrating more, and taking any medications or supplements that are helpful to you.
Rest when you feel fatigued, overworked, or just don’t feel like going out.
Check in with your body when you feel sick and attune accordingly.
Reflect upon your values around physical intimacy and with whom and how you want to share your body with so that you may feel respected.
Set media boundaries.
Curate your feed. Rid it of fat-phobic rhetoric.
Follow people who show up as their full selves, not just filtered bodies.
When you come across fat-phobic discussion online, practice scrolling along instead of engaging at your own expense.
Do not watch tv/movies that are offensive to fat people or that inflame your wounds around disordered eating, diet culture, and body shame
Reflect upon any other media boundaries that support your practice of body neutrality
Ask, "What do I need right now?"
Not "How do I look?" but "Am I tired? Hungry? Stressed?"
Attunement is the ultimate form of self care and it is about seeing what you need right now and delivering it empathetically and accurately.
Take good care of yourself to foster not only body-respect but self-respect.
These simple shifts create space to be with your body instead of constantly fixing or managing it. They also look out for oppressive body ideals and focus on protecting your peace.
As discussed, while it would be so great for society’s values to shift around beauty standards, it is likely not happening anytime soon. In the meantime, empower yourself by taking action today and practicing some of the examples above.
If you are lucky, you only get so many years in this life. So many older people on their death-beds admit regret to not loving and accepting themselves more. Particularly, women regret fussing over their body size and appearance so much. — You don’t have to force a fake loving relationship towards your body, but you do deserve to begin respecting it today.
You Don’t Have to Love Your Body
Here’s a radical truth: you don’t have to love your body to be okay.
Let that sink in for a moment. You don’t have to wake up feeling radiant. You don’t have to stand in front of the mirror and recite affirmations you don’t believe. You don’t have to pretend to feel confident when you’re quietly unraveling. Love isn’t the prerequisite for healing—it’s not the entry fee for peace.
You’re allowed to feel frustrated. Disconnected. Numb. Even angry. Those feelings don’t disqualify you from showing up for your body—they’re part of the work.
Sometimes the most profound act of self-care isn’t loving your body, but simply not hating it for a moment.
Sometimes it’s choosing to eat lunch when the inner critic tells you you didn’t "earn it."
Or wearing the more comfortable outfit even if it doesn’t feel flattering.
Or allowing your body to rest without demanding it look different first.
Healing isn’t about forcing positivity. It’s about building something steadier than that—something honest and sustainable. It’s about shifting from performance to presence. From pressure to permission.
You deserve that. You deserve a relationship with your body that doesn’t hinge on perfection, discipline, or endless improvement.
And if body positivity feels like another unreachable standard—you’re not alone. Body neutrality offers a softer path. One that says: come as you are, and let that be enough for now.
A Middle Path Toward Healing
Body image work is not about flipping a switch from shame to confidence. It’s a slow, layered process of unlearning, reconnecting, and choosing care over criticism.
Body neutrality can be a resting place—a space between hate and love—where peace becomes possible.
If you’re navigating a complicated relationship with your body, you don’t have to do it alone. I specialize in working with women who are ready to stop struggling with food and body image—and start healing for real.
If you’re curious to learn more about shifting towards a stance of body neutrality, reach out for a Free 15 minute consultation call. I’m happy to help because I’ve walked this road myself and know how to guide others on it. Hope and healing is possible.