Body Acceptance & Appreciation

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This is the audio version of the blog post about the same topic. A big part of healing your relationship with your body is learning to accept it. Accepting your body includes appreciating all that it does for you and being grateful for it. We often direct a lot of judgment toward our bodies. While it’s great to have health and fitness goals, unnecessary self-criticism can be harmful to our relationship with our bodies and to meeting these goals.

Body acceptance is a component of body neutrality, which is a position that lies between body positivity and being judgmental or critical of your body. Forcing ourselves to say that we love our bodies can be intimidating, and frankly, not always genuine. Body neutrality means that there’s no pressure to love your body when you don’t (although it’s wonderful if you do!). Instead, it’s about accepting, respecting, and appreciating what it can do for you. It’s also about detaching your inherent worth from your body or how it appears.