How to Love Your Body (Even If You Don’t Love The Way It Looks)

Updated July 2026

You probably did not come here because you want to gaze lovingly at your reflection every day without fail. You came because you are tired of the running commentary, the constant mental math, the way your imperfections take up so much space in your head that you struggle to enjoy yourself sometimes. Or maybe it’s just that you want to be a good example for your daughter, who you know will absorb the way you think about your body. Here is the good news: you do not have to love your body to for these things to improve.

There are two things I want you to hear. You are not vain, or broken, or doing this whole being-a-person thing wrong for feeling this way. And you are in good company. Unfortunately, about 90% of people say they dislike their bodies, So that includes the ones whose bodies you think you’d trade for in a heartbeat.

So this is not a post about forcing yourself to love your belly, or lie to yourself about what the world treats as “attractive” (although that’s a whole different post). Real body peace, in a culture that profits from your self-doubt, is not something you force. It is something you build, unpack, process, stew on and improve slowly. And if “love your body” feels like too big a leap today, that’s completely okay. This is really about learning to feel good, or even just neutral and comfortable, in the body you have.

How to love your body, in short: You don’t have to like the way your body looks to start treating it well. Body love isn’t a feeling you force. It’s something you build by unlearning the subconscious beliefs you have about bodies, speaking to yourself with less cruelty, dressing the body you have now, and giving it what it actually needs. It grows out of how you live, not how you look.

I promise this is possible, because I live on the other side of it. I can tell you honestly that I love the way my hips move in the pool and when I dance, and I love the way my body tells me when it’s time to eat, time to sleep, time to get out of the house. I did not start there. I’ll show you what it actually looks like for me further down.

Typically, when I’m working with someone on body image, they start to see progress once they start unlearning the beliefs they were handed down, not the ones they chose to believe. This is often hard because it’s the opposite of what we’re taught: the problem was never your body. It is what you were taught to want. Now I’ll explain what I mean by all of this. (If you’d rather start with something to do, skip ahead to the 7 practices to learn to love your body below.)

Why Loving Your Body Isn’t About How It Looks

The negative troll on your shoulder telling you your body is a problem and that people are thinking awful things about you did not come from nowhere, nor is it just the way it is. It was basically programmed into your brain.

Body image issues are not really about appearance, at least not completely. They are about how our culture treats different bodies. Young, white, thin, able, cisgender bodies get unearned privilege, and when you don’t fit that narrow ideal, it is easy to feel like something is wrong with you and to believe (even if subconsciously) that you should be striving for that. Remember that we are all born with different bodies and we all deserve to feel good and capable of living our fullest lives, no matter what our body looks like.

The problem is that the mainstream dialogue doesn’t speak about bodies as they should, all worthy of being and loving, just because they are (an ode to Sonya Renee Taylor).

The cruelest part, and the most freeing once you really get it, is that chasing the ideal does not deliver. Body image research shows that the more we try to achieve our “goal body,” the more conditional our self-worth becomes, and the more fragile our peace. Losing weight is very unlikely to make you as happy as you imagine. The other problem is that the target is constantly changing. It shifts with whatever celebrity or weight loss drug is trending, and it moves further away as we age and simply live our lives.

So no, wanting to shrink and lose weight is not a moral failing on your part. It is a rational response to a system that told you your worth was in your body size and in how hard you hustle to be the “best”.

A Quick Word: Body Positivity vs. Body Neutrality

If “love your body” feels impossible, you are not failing. You might just be reaching for the wrong tool. Body positivity asks you to love and celebrate how you look, which is lovely when it works and out of reach when it doesn’t. Body neutrality lets you off that hook: you don’t have to love or hate your body, you can let it just be and put your attention on what it does and how it feels. For a lot of people, neutrality is a far more doable doorway than positivity. (I go deeper on the difference, and when to reach for each, here.)

How Self-Acceptance Helps You Love Your Body

So if the problem is the ideal and not you, where do you actually begin? Well, there are many angles I think are helpful. And one essential piece is: by making a kind of peace with how you already are.

In her essential book, All About Love, feminist scholar and author bell hooks writes some of the most useful advice I’ve ever heard on the topic. She writes:

“When we can see ourselves as we truly are and accept ourselves, we build the necessary foundation for self-love. The more we accept ourselves, the better prepared we are to take responsibility in all areas of our lives. Taking responsibility means that in the face of barriers we still have the capacity to invent our lives, to shape our destinies in ways that maximize our well-being. Every day we practice this shape-shifting to cope with realities we cannot easily change”.

bell hooks

I find this truth to be both challenging and liberating: accept yourself now. There is no easier road.

This is the exact opposite of what the fear-mongering wellness world believes. They think shame is a motivator, that if they make you feel bad enough about your “imperfections,” you’ll finally fix them. That is oppressive, anti-feminist, hateful bs, and it does not work. Shame is a terrible motivator. It just makes people smaller, quieter, and more afraid.

A Bad Body Image Day Is Usually a Messenger, Not the Truth

Here is something I have learned from years of doing this work that you will not get from a affirmation graphic.

When a client tells me she is having a terrible body image day, my first question is usually not about her body. It is: did you eat enough yesterday? Did you sleep? Is something hard going on right now that has nothing to do with your body? What did the picture that you didn’t like make you FEEL like?

Because “I feel so fat today” is very often not about fat at all. It is hunger, or exhaustion, or anxiety, or loneliness. Our bodies are the one thing the culture told us we could control, so the brain quietly routes everything painful straight to it. Bad day at work becomes “my stomach looks huge.” A lonely week becomes “I need to lose weight.”

So before you believe the body thought, check four things. Are you hungry, tired, anxious, or lonely? If one of those is true, tend to it first. Eat something filling and sustaining, rest, call a friend, name the hard feelings out loud. Then notice whether the body feeling softens. Very often it does, not because your body changed in an hour, but because the actual need finally got met.

This is not a trick to make you ignore your body. It is learning to listen to what your body is really asking for, instead of taking every “I hate how I look” at face value and reaching for a diet to solve a feeling a diet was never going to touch.

You Can’t Only Think Your Way Into Feeling Good in Your Body

Most body image advice, including some of what you just read, lives in the head: notice the thought, challenge the belief, unlearn the culture. That stuff matters. But body image does not only live in your mind. It lives in your nervous system, in the actual felt sense of being inside your skin.

This is my favorite part of the work, and the part diet culture completely skips. You do not feel more at home in your body only by thinking better thoughts about it. You feel more at home in it by spending kind time in it. Movement that feels good instead of punishing. Warmth. Rest. Pleasure. Being touched, being fed, being warm and full and unhurried. These are not fluff. They are how the nervous system learns that this body is a safe and decent place to live.

So if the thinking-your-way-out approach has not worked, it is not because you are doing it wrong. It is because bodies are not only ideas – they are your home. Some of this you have to actually let your body experience in order to get there. But really, that’s the fun part.

7 Ways to Love Your Body (and Feel Good in It) Without Changing It

Real body love does not come from your appearance. It comes from how you live, how you talk to yourself, and how you treat your one and only body. Here are seven places to start, right now, as you are.

1. Stop Comparing Yourself to the Ideal

The thin ideal was built to keep you busy, small, and buying. Start by just noticing when you are comparing, and how it feels in your body when you do. (More on breaking the comparison habit soon.)

If this feels impossible: start by just considering or visualizing how it would feel to not compare yourself to more “ideal” bodies. Consider what it might feel like to not go down the shame spiral about someone else who has a “better body” than you. Imagine if you just did not see them as better. Yes, this is possible. I’ve done it.

2. Talk to Your Body Like Someone You Love

You have internalized a voice that critiques everything. Try offering it one kind thought a day: “thank you for getting me through today,” or simply “I’m listening.”

3. Dress the body you have now

Clothes that pinch or remind you of a smaller past only reinforce shame. Move the too-small stuff out of sight and wear what fits today. If you are in a season of weight gain, a rental service like Nuuly can get you clothes that fit now without a big commitment.

4. Curate your feed

If every body you see fits one mold, your brain starts to believe that mold is the norm. Please remember that AI is the new air-brush on steroids. Unfollow what makes you feel bad about your body, and fill your feed with people living full lives in all kinds of bodies. Representation rewires how you see yourself. (I keep a list of people to follow on my resources page.)

5. Get Curious About Your Body Image Story

Ask: what do I believe would change if my body looked different? Sometimes this surfaces real body grief, a grieving of the body you thought you’d have. You may be surprised how powerful this stage of the process is. A lot of people in the most pain are stuck in denial, in my opinion.

6. Give your body what it’s asking for

Hunger, rest, movement, touch. When you respond with care instead of control, you rebuild trust. The biggest one: feed yourself enough, consistently, not just when you think you have earned it. But every day, unconditionally.

The relationship with your body is built through trust. You learn to trust it and in return, it trusts you.

Don’t skips meals or force yourself to eat salad when you really want a sandwich. And likewise, try not to eat a giant piece of cake when your body is asking for vegetables, when you’re doing 100 other things, or as a means of dealing with difficult emotions.

How Food Fits Into loving your body more

Most of my clients come to me feeling like food is either a punishment or a reward for their body. But food can be a relationship. One that includes satisfaction, rhythm, nourishment, and emotional connection. If loving your body feels abstract, start here: feed it regularly, eat foods that taste good, and notice how your energy shifts when you stop skipping meals. Choose to respect your body, instead of expecting to love the way it looks.

7. Live Now, Not “When”

Waiting for weight loss to take the trip, go on the date, or wear the bright thing only delays your one life. It is allowed to feel hard and you are allowed to do it anyway. Take up the space. Get in the pool. Your body was never meant to stay the same, and that doesn’t make it unworthy of love.

What Loving My Body (Me, Emily) Really Looks Like

In More Than a Body, the Kite sisters noticed something in their research: when they asked people how it feels to be in their body, most people answered a different question, they described what they feared others would see. That is not the question. The question is how it feels to be in your body, from the inside.

Here is what I wrote one afternoon in New Mexico after reading that:

I love watching the way my hands and fingers move as I write or type or chop an onion. They just know how to do these things so eloquently that my brain wants them to, it’s instantaneous, smoothe.

I love the way my hips swizzle in the pool or when I dance. I love the way my skin feels when it’s gotten a bit too much sun and then right after I deeply moisturize it. I love the way my toenails look without polish on them.

I love wearing silk on freshly shaven legs.

I love the way my body feels when I’m turned on. This is totally an inside job and does not require another person to accomplish it. I love the way my body tells me when it’s time to eat, time to sleep, time to move, time to get out of the house. 

I love the way my energy feels when I’m huffing and puffing on a run or a hike. Yes, there is also usually a feeling of ‘damn, this is hard, maybe I should stop’. But then, on a day when I have the energy, a desire to feel that intensity a little more. I know this breathing is shaking something out. 

me, in my journal

All of it feels like loving myself. Noticing these small things is not so different from the way love feels.

I am not going to pretend I never have bad body image days. I do. I notice weight changing with seasons of life, my hair greying, my wrinkles multiplying. But I know, even in the discomfort, that this is normal and nothing to hide. Now, when my pants feel too tight, I take them off and put on something else. I remind myself that this says nothing about my worth, or my ability to love and be loved. And that I have something else that will fit better. Then I go out and live my life.

Your turn: free write for a couple of pages on that same question, how does it feel to be in my body, not what you fear others see. If you think it won’t work, do it for a week anyway and see. 

Frequently Asked Questions About Body Image

Ready to Go Deeper?

If you made it this far, you are already doing the brave work of untangling your body image from the noise. It can be tender and layered, and you do not have to do it alone. I offer 1:1 counseling and a group coaching program that meet you where you are. Body image work is a key component of all the work I do in Love Food Again and in Heal & Nourish. Book a discovery call to see what fits. It is free and if nothing else, can help you figure out what you want to work on.

Did this spark something? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

About Emily

Emily Van Eck, MS, RDN specializes in intuitive eating, mindfulness-based eating practices, embodiment with food and movement, and healing from years of weight-bias and disordered eating. She helps all kinds of people find balance, consistency, and peace with their eating habits so they can feel confident to get outta their heads and into their bodies. Emily is a registered dietitian and certified Intuitive Eating counselor with a master’s degree in nutrition science. Read more about her here.