110+ Positive Affirmations for Body Image (for Bad Body Image Days)

Using positive affirmations for body image can be really effective when it comes to improving how you feel about yourself and your body, but what are they exactly?

Positive affirmations for body image are self-affirming statements spoken in the present tense and repeated over and over again until we start to rewire how we think about ourselves and our bodies. As we repeatedly affirm to ourselves how strong and worthy we are, our brains start to believe it. This helps boost confidence and self-esteem, which makes them perfect for bad body image days and improving our body image overall.

With the rise of social media, many people have found themselves comparing their body to others’, dissecting how they look every time they’re anywhere near a reflective surface, and finding themselves entirely dissatisfied with how they look. Over time, this becomes worse and worse as negative thought feeds into more negative thoughts, which branch out and create even more negative thoughts.

Bad body image can lead to:

• Eating disorders
• Body dysmorphia
• Self-destructive behaviour
• Substance/alcohol abuse
• Self harm
• Social anxiety and isolation
• Depression
• Relationship problems

With a reported 70% of adult women withdrawing from activities due to feeling insecure about their body, it’s highly likely that, if you’re reading this, you struggle with poor body image too.

Affirmations for body image are a great addition to your life if you struggle with your self-esteem, confidence, and/or accepting your body.

Positive affirmations for bad body image days

1. I am worthy
2. I am enough as I am
3. I am a beautiful human being inside and out
4. I am confident
5. I am strong
6. I am a powerful Goddess
7. I love who I am
8. I love the person I’m becoming
9. I embrace change
10. I accept my body
11. My weight is not my worth
12. I am loved and lovable
13. I live my life to the fullest
14. I choose not to care about a number on a scale
15. I choose to nourish my body
16. My body is worthy of delicious food
17. I am totally and unapologetically myself
18. I rock any outfit
19. I am desirable
20. Tasty food nourishes my soul
21. I feel no guilt for nourishing my body and soul
22. I move my body in ways that feel good to me
23. I am grateful I get to move my body in ways that feel good
24. I choose myself
25. I choose to love myself every single day
26. I choose to respect myself
27. I have my own back
28. I am amazing
29. I am sexy just as I am
30. My perceived imperfections make me perfect
31. I am human and that’s okay
32. I am unique
33. I am special
34. My body is miraculous; it’s carried me through life
35. I choose to love myself throughout my growth
36. Bodies change and that’s okay
37. I am grateful for my body
38. I deserve care and love
39. Other people’s opinions of me are none of my business
40. I choose to stop trying to change to fit society’s beauty standards
41. Beauty standards are BS
42. I choose to make peace with my body
43. My looks don’t matter to the people who matter
44. The human being I am is more important than how I look
45. I am grateful that I get to age
46. I choose to honour my hunger
47. I practise self-care to feel good
48. I deserve self-care and to have my needs taken care of
49. I choose to no longer obsess over food
50. I choose to no longer obsess over my body
51. I no longer see myself in a negative light
52. I choose to no longer weigh myself
53. It’s okay to love myself
54. I look like me, no one else, and that’s enough
55. I trust my intuition
56. I choose to listen to my body
57. I choose to be a good person
58. I am worthy of recovery
59. I choose health, whatever that means to me
60. Moving my body feels good
61. Loving my body feels good
62. Nourishing my body feels good
63. I’ve got this
64. Progress isn’t linear; I’m doing this at my own pace and that’s okay
65. I am not my disorder
66. It’s okay to enjoy food that isn’t ‘clean’
67. Food is neither good or bad, it’s just food
68. I choose to ignore food labels and stigma
69. I choose to reject negative influences
70. I choose to redirect negative self-talk
71. I choose to think positively
72. I choose not to compare my body to others’
73. I accept the rough with the smooth with love
74. People love to be around me
75. My smile lights up the room
76. I have a positive impact on the world
77. It’s okay to not be the best at everything
78. I am worthy of energy
79. Food is fuel for our bodies and brains
80. Food is not the enemy
81. I love food!
82. I choose health at every and any size
83. Losing weight will not complete me; I am already complete just the way I am
84. Emotional avoidance doesn’t solve anything
85. I choose to no longer engage in self-destructive behaviour
86. It’s okay to find comfort in food
87. I need food to survive; I choose to survive
88. My body is capable of amazing things
89. Beauty is subjective; I am always beautiful
90. My inner beauty shines out
91. I vow to love, respect and care for my body for the rest of my life
92. Eating food gives me energy to live my life
93. Hating my body is a waste of time
94. Hating my body holds me back
95. Loving my body helps me grow
96. My body is deserving of rest
97. My body is my home
98. I love what I see in the mirror
99. I love the skin I’m in
100. I choose kindness for myself and others
101. A goal weight is just a number that doesn’t matter
102. Weight loss will not make me happy, it never has
103. I am successful without looking like society’s idea of perfect
104. My body is a gift that I choose to treasure
105. I will no longer feel shame for what I look like
106. I will no longer feel shame for what I eat
107. I no longer have a dream body; I have my dream body because it’s mine
108. Fat does not equal bad or ugly
109. Fat is simply an adjective
110. I choose to ditch the diet and live my life
111. Life is too short to waste on hating my body

The best way to stay consistent with affirmations that I’ve found it is by using affirmation cards.

They help inspire you, as well as remember which affirmation you’re focusing on, which helps transform your confidence and discover self-worth.

Check out my affirmation card club for brand new affirmation cards every single week!

Can affirmations change your body?

To put it bluntly: repeating affirmations for body image will not directly change how your body physically looks.

However, if you have a distorted, warped vision of how you look in the mirror and affirmations help put you see yourself for who you really are (a normal, awesome human being), it may appear as if your body has changed.

What’s more, if your body image has had an affect on your exercise schedule and eating habits, once you start repeating positive affirmations and potentially stop engaging in these behaviours, your body might also change.

Saying this, if you want to start repeating affirmations to change your body, this isn’t the right blog post for you.

I invite you to focus on who you are within and practise self-acceptance, rather than constantly strive to change who you are. In my experience, true self-love comes from accepting your body in all its forms and learning your worthiness within, not changing how you look on the outside.

I implore you to work on loving you for who you are, no matter what you look like, and giving yourself total permission to live life to the fullest, regardless of a number on the scale.

How do you write an affirmation for positive body image?

If you didn’t find an affirmation for body image that resonated with you above, here are a few steps you can follow to write your own.

1. Think about what do you want to change about yourself. What do you not like about your body? What are your main pain-points?
2. Narrow this list down to no more than three things. It can get a bit overwhelming if you’re trying to repeat 10 affirmations every day, so I invite you to pick no more than three and focus on these first. You can move on to other affirmations in the future, if you feel you need to.
3. Now flip the negative statements about yourself so that they go from negative to neutral or even positive. For example, if you believe your body is unworthy of love, flip this on its head by writing the affirmation, ‘my body is worthy of love, just the way it is.’
4. Write these affirmations down on a piece of paper or in your journal. Write them in the present tense and in your own voice, as if you were telling them to a friend. Don’t be too shy to throw in a swear word or two if this helps you harness your inner power (I find this helps them resonate on a deeper level as I feel like I’m really hyping myself up.)

I personally write down two affirmations that I’m working on in my journal every morning and then repeat them three times in my head.

I also repeat them if I catch myself engaging in negative self-talk.

Should I use affirmations for body neutrality or body positivity?

Affirmations for body image are a really effective way to help improve confidence, self-esteem, and how we see ourselves overall. However, what if you want to delve a bit deeper into the world of body positivity, self love or body neutrality?

As someone who has overcome eating disorders, poor self-esteem, and self-destructive behaviours, and still struggles with bad body image days and needs to repeat affirmations for body image regularly, I personally preach pursuing body neutrality first.

I recommend this for a few reasons:

1. Feeling neutral towards your body is often ‘easier’ than feeling positively towards it, particularly if you regularly engage in negative self-talk. It feels much more achievable. Oftentimes, we don’t even bother attempting to love ourselves because the word ‘love’ is too heavy and feels too impossible to reach. If we only aim for ‘accept’ rather than ‘love’, it makes the mountain seem like more of a hill, which is much more manageable.
2. Our bodies change. It’s part of life. If we become too attached or focused on loving an aspect of our looks that could – and likely will – change in the future, we risk shattering any progress we’ve made and having to start from square one. If we’re neutral towards how external looks, it won’t matter nearly as much. For example, if you don’t like your hip dips and then spend years working on loving them, only for your hips to change shape again as you get older, you now have to start loving your new hips all over again. If you’re just neutral towards your hips, no matter what shape or size they are, then change won’t affect you as negatively.
3. Being neutral with our own bodies helps us remain neutral towards other peoples’ bodies. Part of self love, in my opinion, is to not only stop being cruel to ourselves, but to others as well. It might be a tough pill to swallow, but repeatedly judging our own bodies so harshly often leads to us judging others’ bodies in the same way, either consciously or unconsciously. If we start being accepting of ALL bodies – Fat bodies, Trans bodies, Disabled bodies, BIPOC bodies – we can also start being more accepting of our own. So, be self-aware, hold yourself accountable, and when you catch yourself judging someone else for the way they look, have a word with yourself, consider why you feel this way, and work on it.

It’s obviously totally up to you. However, I found it really liberating to pursue feeling neutral towards my body over plunging into body positivity.

You can still love your body and practise self love, but this love comes from deeper within.

It comes from feeling inherently worthy and enough, regardless of what your outer shell looks like.

It comes from a knowing that you’re amazing and good person, no matter how much you weigh, and acknowledging that our dress size does not reflect our worthiness as human beings.