Body Positivity and Body Acceptance: Is There Really a Difference?

              Today I want to talk about body positivity and body acceptance.

Prior to writing this post, I was adamant that there was a distinct difference between the two. I was a proponent for body acceptance, not body positivity.

I mean, realistically, how am I supposed to be positive about my body 24/7 365? Unabating body positivity sounds exhausting. Aren’t I allowed some days to simply accept my body the way it is, rather than love it unconditionally?

Because, as controversial or perhaps problematic as it may sound, I do not always love my body. Some days I wake up and I am not happy with it at all. Some days I legitimately feel like I look like a potato. On those days, I still try my best to accept my body for what it is, and I am grateful for what it can do, but I do not necessarily feel positively about it.

Also, if my bad body image days are not a setback in my recovery, isn’t that still a win?

Upon doing more research on the body positivity movement, I learned that body positivity is an umbrella term for both body love and body acceptance. After absorbing this new information, I shifted my stance to being a proponent for body positivity; however, I still had trouble marrying the idea of body acceptance with body love. The two seemed too different, almost like opposing sides of one binary.

When I first began recovering from my eating disorder, I thought of recovery as a strict binary; either you recovered and started radically loving your body or you remained stuck in your eating disorder and continued hating your body. Very black and white, all or nothing thinking. When I thought about recovery with this attitude, recovery felt impossible. At the time, I could not fathom a reality where I unconditionally loved my body, and therefore I could not imagine myself ever fully recovered.

              My clinician at Walden’s partial hospitalization program challenged my all or nothing attitude towards recovery. (*Disclaimer* It is not uncommon that people with eating disorders or disordered eating have an all or nothing attitude. Part of recovery is actively questioning and dismantling this attitude.)

During one of my routine check-ins, my clinician asked how following my meal plan was going. I told her that although I was following my meal plan, I had to tell myself that I was going to do an extra work out later to burn off the extra calories. (I felt that my meal plan was dense compared to my prior diet.) But I also felt like this thinking was wrong- that I was doing recovery wrong.

              She responded by asking me if I was working out afterwards or if this thought process was simply how I justified following my meal plan. I told her no, despite this thinking, I was not doing an extra workout to compensate for the extra calories. Still unclear if I was “doing recovery right,” I asked her if lying to myself was sustainable. Tricking myself in eating a healthy amount of food did not exactly scream “stable mental health.”

              My clinician then explained to me that if I had to do some mental gymnastics to follow my meal plan in the beginning of recovery, it was okay. In the end, it was not so much that I was tricking myself, but that I was tricking my eating disorder.

She promised that if I were patient and stayed consistent with my meal plan, I would one day no longer need to do mental gymnastics to get myself to eat.

I will not lie, at the time, I was very skeptical of this.

Despite my skepticism, I continued to “trick” my eating disorder into feeding me.

And my clinician was right; as the months and years went on, I found myself no longer needing to trick my eating disorder. Eating enough felt more and more comfortable all on its own.

I am now at the point in my recovery where I am even eating intuitively. My eating disorder no longer dictates my day. (I am not going to lie, my eating disorder voice still talks to me sometimes; however, I have learned that I can tell it to f*** off.)

So, what does me struggling to follow my meal plan have to do with body positivity and acceptance?

Well, first off, I learned from my clinician that I did not need to recover perfectly. Recovery itself is not perfect, not in the slightest. It was okay if I had non-sustainable coping mechanisms to get through my meal plan in the beginning, because it was the practice that counted.

Second off, I had to accept my body changing throughout my recovery to continue recovery. And for the first few months of recovery, I faked acceptance. I did not believe that I was accepting my body, however, my actions were proving otherwise; me not engaging in eating disorder behaviors suggested that yes, I was accepting my body.

I did not have to like or even love my body, I just needed to practice not hating it.

As I became accustomed to accepting my body, I found that I was beginning to love my body. I just had to accept it first. I could not go from hating it to loving it. Acceptance was my steppingstone.

Even now, when I have a string of bad days of just accepting my body, I know there will be more days to come of loving my body. It is all about patience and, honestly, faking it until you make it.

I used to think positive affirmations were silly. However, there is power in language. There is power in the words you tell yourself, even if you do not initially believe them. I would not be where I am in my recovery without positive self-talk. Sometimes my positive self-talk is just barely keeping me from hating my body; but it is still positive, and it works.

I now believe that body acceptance and positivity are not that far off from each other. After writing this post, I have discovered that the two work together intimately.

You do not have to love your body, but you do have to accept it. It is your home; you can always grow to love it.

Be kind to yourself today.

With love,

Emily