Sometimes when I talk with people, they say something that makes me really uncomfortable. It usually happens during a conversation about our relationships with our bodies and how we’re working with body acceptance. As they tell me how hard it is for them, they’ll often say something like: “I know none of this is hard for you! You love your body all the time!”

Y’all.

That isn’t true!

First of all, I don’t love my body all the time. And second, I don’t think the way “body love” is typically construed in these conversations is much like what I, or many people, experience at all.

Lived Experience

When this comes up, I do my best to quickly let people know that I’m very far from singing the praises of my body while running through a field of wildflowers 99.99% of the time. Most of the time, I’m just going about my day, not really thinking that much about my body beyond noticing its needs.

But can we just stop right there for a second?

Because noticing your needs and “just living your life” is huge! And, it’s definitely a form of body love! It’s just the more everyday version of it — body neutrality.

Body Neutrality

If you’re not familiar with the idea of body neutrality, it helps me to think about a continuum between body hate and body love. As with any continuum, the extreme ends are a small part while the middle is big and encompasses a wide range of experiences. This is where body neutrality lives — in our everyday experiences.

It’s getting dressed in the morning with less commentary from the negative peanut gallery in your head. It’s doing your work and not wondering what your coworker is thinking about how your body looks while you do. It’s moving your body how you want and eating how you want with less second-guessing and doubting about if you’re doing it “right.”

From the outside, it doesn’t look like much. It’s simpler than I would have thought possible or acceptable. And it’s also totally life-changing.

Love your body. Live your life.

What I love about body neutrality is how true to life it is. We think body love is going to be this big thing, a milestone everyone will be able to recognize (especially ourselves), a ticker tape parade. But it actually is something that gets woven into your life, often without you even noticing until something presents itself for contrast, like how you would have felt when Susan from Accounting brought up dieting in the past and how you feel now. Or how you would have responded in the past when you put on something that no longer works for your body versus how you respond to it now.

Body neutrality isn’t a stop along the way to body love.

It’s what body love looks like in everyday life.