Body Neutrality, Acceptance and Confidence: What's the Difference?
Terms such as 'body acceptance', 'body confidence' and 'body positive' are thrown around a lot lately, both online and in the media, but not everyone means the same thing when using these terms.
For many people, the desire to change their body is their incentive for exercising, losing weight and resorting to diets to do so. This isn't a case of shallow vanity; this is a perfectly natural and understandable response to living in a culture obsessed with appearance (i.e. Diet Culture).
Many of us are wondering how on earth we're meant to like or even accept our bodies when we're being told from all angles that something isn't right about them and needs to be changed. Whether it's thigh gaps, body hair, 'mum tums', visible abs, buns of steel, or any other part of our body, society decides to pick apart.
In my coaching programme and in my Body Image Workbook, I walk people through three distinct stages:
Body Neutrality - Shifting your focus away from your physical appearance and onto the other parts of what makes you, you.
Body Acceptance - Learning how to show your body respect and compassion and reach a place of peaceful acceptance with it.
Body Confidence - Reaching the stage where your body images doesn’t hold you back from enjoying the life you want.
“I hate my body, I hate being seen in swimwear on holiday and I avoid exercising in public. I don’t feel comfortable in anything I wear. I have clothes in my wardrobe which I’m hoping to slim into… they’ve been there for 15 years. I usually wear something baggy to cover up my body.”
Does this sound like you?
This coaching workbook is designed to help you move from a place of hating your body, to a place of respecting and accepting your body, while also recognising that you are so much more than your appearance.
After completing the coaching exercises your body image will no longer hold you back from the parts of life you've been missing out on.
This workbook is split into three parts of coaching exercises:
1. Body Neutrality - Shifting your focus away from your physical appearance and onto the other parts of what makes you, you.
2. Body Acceptance – Learning how to show your body respect and compassion and reach a place of peaceful acceptance with it.
3. Body Confidence – Reaching the stage where we don’t let our appearance or, more accurately, the thoughts we have about our appearance, hold us back from enjoying the life we want.
//UPDATED - June 2021 // My bestselling workbook has now been expanded to include more coaching exercises and information to help you heal your body image!
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About the Author & Store Owner:
Karen Lynne Oliver, BA, MA, is the Founder of Beyond The Bathroom Scale®, a hub of self-help resources to aid with recovery from disordered eating and body image. Karen is also the Programme Director of The Health Mindset Programme™, a 6-month online self-help programme for anyone who wants to improve their body image and relationship with food.
Karen has had articles published in on HuffPost UK and has been featured in The Metro and Cosmopolitan Magazine. Her award-winning blog and coaching programme is based on the Health at Every Size ® approach to health and draws on the principals of Intuitive Eating, the Body Positivity movement, Motivational Interviewing (MI), Positive Psychology and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), in order to help busy women tackle disordered eating, overcome emotional eating and recover from long-term dieting via a holistic, research-led online coaching programme.
A former Social Worker, Karen comes from an academic background of Psychology and Sociology. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Sociology, specialising in health and society and a master’s degree in Social Work. She has trained in Counselling skills and Psychotherapy-based approaches such as CBT, DBT and Motivational Interviewing.
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"Beyond The Bathroom Scale" is a Registered UK Trademark and the intellectual property of the website owner, Karen Oliver, trading as Beyond The Bathroom Scale, part of Lynne Media ('our', 'we', 'us').
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What is ‘Body Neutrality?’
For many people, body confidence or even body acceptance, can feel unrealistic after years of hating their bodies.
For anyone who struggles with eating disorders, chronic illness, or disability, it can be a huge challenge to accept our bodies as they are, especially when they are a source of pain and frustration. We may even feel betrayed by them.
Body Neutrality is a good place to start for anyone who wishes to improve their body image, as the principal behind it is to shift your focus away from your physical appearance and onto the other parts of yourself. By doing this, we remove the pressure to ‘love our bodies’ and instead work towards finding love for ourselves.
What Is ‘Body Acceptance’?
Body acceptance is having an objective view of your body and being OK with it. It’s about making peace with it for what it is, in that moment, and accepting that our bodies will naturally change throughout our lives. It's recognizing that our appearance has literally no bearing on ourselves, as people, because we're exactly that, people, we're not emotionless bodies walking around for ornamental purposes. Every single one of us is valuable and our weight and appearance doesn't alter that.
We can take body acceptance one step further and embrace the parts of our bodies that we do like and emphasise these. We can also show appreciation for our bodies and all they do for us, via self-care.
What is ‘Body Confidence’?
When we feel confident about our bodies, we don’t let our appearance (or, more accurately, the thoughts we have about our appearance) hold us back from enjoying the life we want.
This might look like wearing swimwear on a beach, wearing clothes because you like them and not because they hide your body, having sex with the lights on, or dancing with friends at a party.
