Starting your day reading a few body positivity quotes can empower you more than you think. In our society, whether your a woman or a man, the pressure to have the perfect body can seem overwhelming. Being bombarded with images implying that there is something wrong with your body can be damaging to your self-esteem and can kill your motivation even if you are in the process of a fitness journey.
Positivity quotes, or affirmations, have long been recognized as an effective way to combat the negative self-esteem destroying messages we receive throughout the day. Body positivity quotes focus on bringing your attention to the positive instead of the negative things you may think about your body. Reading a few body positivity quotes daily can drastically alter how you view your body.
We are what we think after all, and if you can effectively change your mind, you can change your life. Sometimes it helps to hear positivity quotes from those who are leaders in their fields but wisdom can come in the form of body positivity quotes from unknown sources as well. Let’s take a look at fifty of the best body positivity quotes that can help you reshape the way you see your body.
Body Positivity Quotes to Reshape Your Thoughts
1 “Whatever is deeply, essentially female–the life in a woman’s expression, the feel of her flesh, the shape of her breasts, the transformations after childbirth of her skin–is being reclassified as ugly, and ugliness as disease. These qualities are about an intensification of female power, which explains why they are being recast as a diminution of power. At least a third of a woman’s life is marked with aging; about a third of her body is made of fat. Both symbols are being transformed into operable condition–so that women will only feel healthy if we are two-thirds of the women we could be. How can an “ideal” be about women if it is defined as how much of a female sexual characteristic does not exist on the woman’s body, and how much of a female life does not show on her face?”
–Naomi Wolf
2 “Beauty shouldn’t be about changing yourself to achieve an ideal or be more socially acceptable. Real beauty, the interesting, truly pleasing kind, is about honoring the beauty within you and without you. It’s about knowing that someone else’s definition of pretty has no hold over you.”?
–Golda Poretsky
3 “Aim high and don’t sell yourself short. Know that you’re capable. Understand that a lot of people battle with a lot of things – depression, body image or whatever else – so know that it’s not just you. You’re not alone.”
— Holly Holm
4 “Value yourself for what the media doesn’t – your intelligence, your street smarts, your ability to play a kick-ass game of pool, whatever. So long as it’s not just valuing yourself for your ability to look hot in a bikini and be available to men, it’s an improvement.”
–Jessica Valenti
5 “Body acceptance means, as much as possible, approving of and loving your body, despite its “imperfections”, real or perceived. That means accepting that your body is fatter than some others, or thinner than some others, that your eyes are a little crooked, that you have a disability that makes walking difficult, that you have health concerns that you have to deal with — but that all of that doesn’t mean that you need to be ashamed of your body or try to change it. Body acceptance allows for the fact that there is a diversity of bodies in the world, and that there’s no wrong way to have one.”
–Golda Poretsky
6 “I have a body, but I am not my body. I have a face, but I am not my face.”
–Iyanla Vanzant
7 “Real women are fat. And thin. And both, and neither and otherwise.”
–Hanne Blank
8 “Lighten up on yourself. No one is perfect. Gently accept your humanness.”
–Deborah Day
9 “To wish you were someone else is to waste the person you are.”
–Sven Goran Eriksson
10 “If anything is sacred the human body is sacred.”
–Walt Whitman
11 “Your worth is not measured by the size of your waist”
–- Unknown
12 “It’s also helpful to realize that this very body that we have, that’s sitting right here right now…with its aches and its pleasures…is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive.”
–Pema Chodron
13“Is ‘fat’ really the worst thing a human being can be? Is ‘fat’ worse than vindictive, jealous, shallow, vain, boring or cruel? Not to me.”
– J.K. Rowling
14 “Even I don’t wake up looking like Cindy Crawford.”
– Cindy Crawford
15 “You don’t have to like everything about yourself to love yourself.”
– Tres Adames
16 “Another person’s beauty is not the absence of your own”
– Unknown
17“You are imperfect; permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful.”
– Amy Bloom
18 “If you can’t say anything nice about yourself…practice.”
– Unknown
19 “I am imperfect and yet my imperfections, like any great work of art, are what make me a masterpiece”
– Kelsey Silver
20 “Even if you’re in the process of trying to change your body, you need to be content with what it is, right here, right now. Because if you can’t be happy with yourself now, you won’t be happy with yourself ever.”
– Anastasia Amour
21“In a society that profits from your self-doubt, liking yourself is a rebellious act. Loving yourself is anything but naive. If you don’t become your best friend, who else will? If you don’t convey confidence in what you do, don’t expect others to trust you. We are what we believe we are. When you embrace your true identity, there’s no room for self-doubt. The shadow of self-doubt might show up unexpected. It’s up to you to move from darkness to light.”
– Unknown
22 “You have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”
– Louise Hay
23 “Don’t let your mind bully your body.”
– June Tomaso Wood
24 “The one thing you can control is how you treat yourself. And that one thing can change everything.”
– Leeana Tankersley
25 “Your insecurities have too much of an imagination. Be careful with that.”
– Andra Knox
26 “Self-care is how you take your power back.”
– Lalah Delia
27“There is no wrong way to have a body.”
– Glenn Marla
28“Healthy emotions come in all sizes. Healthy minds come in all sizes. And healthy bodies come in all sizes.”
– Cheri K. Erdman
29 “If you left it up to everyone else in the world to decide, your body will NEVER be good enough,”
–Michelle Elman
30 “I refuse to let something as insignificant as a size or number on a scale determine how I feel about myself. I am grateful for my body, my health and the life that I have, and no arbitrary number should have any impact on that,”
– Iskra Lawrence
31 “There’s only one of you, so why would you want to look like everyone else?”
– Adele
32 “When you accept yourself you are freed from the burden of needing others to accept you.”
– Unknown
33 “True beauty is not related to what color your hair is or what color your eyes are. True beauty is about who you are as a human being, your principles, your moral compass.”
– Ellen DeGeneres
34 “I keep telling myself that I’m a human being, an imperfect human who’s not made to look like a doll, and that who I am as a person is more important than whether at that moment I have a nice figure,”
– Emma Watson
35 “One day I had to sit down with myself and decide that I loved myself no matter what my body looked like and what other people thought about my body.”
– Gabourey Sidibe
36 “You can’t eat beauty; it doesn’t sustain you. What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion, for yourself and those around you. That kind of beauty enflames the heart and enchants the soul.”
– Lupita Nyong’o
37 “Workout because you love your body not because you hate it”
– Unknown
38 “You will never speak to anyone more than you speak to yourself in your head. Be kind to yourself.”
– Unknown
39 “Life is too short to spend another at war with yourself.”
–Ritu Ghatourey
40 “The next time you think of beautiful things don’t forget to count yourself in.”
–Unknown
41“Your self-esteem won’t come from body parts. You need to step away from the mirror every once in a while, and look for another reflection, like the one in the eyes of the people who love you and admire you.”
– Stacy London
42 “Kindness makes you the most beautiful person in the world no matter what you look like.”
–Unknown
43 “It’s also helpful to realize that this very body that we have, that’s sitting right here right now… with its aches and its pleasures… is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive.”
– Pema Chödrön
44 “Treat yourself as if you already are enough. Walk as if you are enough. Eat as if you are enough. See, look, listen as if you are enough. Because it’s true.”
– Geneen Roth
45 “You are allowed to be both a masterpiece and a work in progress, simultaneously.”
– Sophia Bush
46 “This is it: This body is home. This is where I live and hang my hat. This is where I settle into my hips and sit easily in myself, slung together with strong muscles and bones, made gentle and forging with flesh. This body is durable, has lasted for years, hunkered down through fierce storms and allows for the peaceful erosions of age. It is like a cottage on the shore: weathered and well made, a place where a person could comfortably live. I like it here. It is my own.”
–Marya Hornbacher
47 “Be proud of your scars. They have everything to do with your strength, and what you’ve endured. They’re a treasure map to the deep self.”
– Clarissa Pinkola Estés, PhD
48 “The body is a multilingual being. It speaks through its color and its temperature, the flush of recognition, the glow of love, the ash of pain, the heat of arousal, the coldness of non-conviction…It speaks through the leaping of the heart, the falling of the spirits, the pit at the center, and rising hope.”
– Clarissa Pinkola Estés, PhD
49 “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
50 “Think of your body like a magical garden – always growing and changing, full of color and life.”
– Christiane Northrup, MD
Final Thoughts About Body Positivity Quotes
These fifty positivity quotes are just the tip of the iceberg of good food you can feed your self-esteem in order to inspire and empower. Coming from the voices of doctors, actors, authors, and many others these positivity quotes are an awesome way to remind yourself not to focus so much on the opinions of others or where their journey is taking them.
Whether you’re on a fitness journey, are recovering from an injury, just had a baby, or simply have encountered too negative words or images that have warped how you see your body, positivity quotes can be taken just like medicine to remedy the problem.
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