How I Stopped My Negative Body Talk

Many years ago, while getting dressed to go on a hike, I caught my reflection in the mirror and was, once again, unhappy with what I saw. My negative body talk was off and running, completely consuming my thoughts as I drove to one of my favorite trails.

My plan to enjoy a lovely day of hiking along the coast became tainted by the relentless voice in my head telling me that my body was a problem that needed to be fixed.

Completely Fed Up
While I had struggled with negative thoughts about my body for decades, this time I hit the tipping point.

I could not go on this way.

I was completely fed up with hating my body.

I was done wasting so much of my life at war with my body and decided, once and for all, to do something about it.

And for the first time ever, doing something didn’t mean changing my body. It meant changing my relationship with it.

No More Body Bashing
One of the first steps I took was changing my internal body talk.

When I stepped out of the shower, instead of dodging my reflection in the bathroom mirror and running for cover under a towel to avoid a distressing body-bashing session, I opened the shower curtain and faced my reflection head-on.

I practiced gazing at my body without ruthlessly picking it apart, without zooming in on my perceived flaws, without judging and agonizing over what I had been conditioned to believe was wrong.

Instead of thinking “My stomach is disgusting” or “I hate my thighs,” I simply thought “This is my body.”

I didn’t try to make the leap from body loathing to body love, from body negativity to body positivity. Nor did I force myself to say positive affirmations. There’s nothing wrong with any of these things; they just felt very inaccessible and insincere for where I was at.

Instead, I focused on what felt attainable. I aimed for a neutral place to land.

“This is my body” felt about as neutral as I could get.

I still often didn’t like what I saw in the mirror, but unconditional body acceptance wasn’t my initial goal. Ending my negative body talk—and the downward shame spiral it triggered—was.

By swapping negativity with neutrality, I no longer got swept away by my critical thoughts. I was able to stop focusing and fixating on my body and just move on with my day.

One of Many Steps
Of course, changing my body talk didn’t come quickly or easily. And it was just one of many challenging and necessary steps I needed to take to make peace with my body and embrace our inherent body diversity.

Certainly, divesting from diet culture and uprooting my anti-fat bias were absolutely essential, major steps.

And while I refer to all these actions as steps, they are really ongoing practices that enable me to be as resilient and inclusive as possible in a world that’s constantly lying to us about what our bodies are supposed to look like to be considered acceptable, healthy, worthy and valuable.

Neutralizing my internal body talk was a starting place for me. Perhaps it can be for you, too.