“I spent years trying to shrink myself into a version of me that was easier for other people to look at. The journal didn’t make me love my body overnight. It made me finally see it.”
Listen, I used to think body positivity was something for other women. The ones who posted unbothered mirror selfies with captions about “loving every curve.” Meanwhile I was over here avoiding full-length mirrors and calculating how much I could suck in before a meeting started.
Then I started a body positivity journal. Not because I was healed. Because I was tired. Tired of spending my energy hating something that was literally carrying me through my whole life — through the long workdays, the 6am commutes, the nights I stayed up building my business, the hugs I gave my people.
And I’m going to be honest with you, sis — I didn’t expect it to work. I thought it was going to be another thing I started and abandoned by week two. But something shifted. And I want to tell you exactly what happened, because if you’re where I was, you deserve to know it’s not as far away as it feels.
Why Body Positivity Felt Fake at First
Here’s the thing nobody tells you about body positivity: it doesn’t start with loving your body. It starts with not actively hating it. And for a lot of us, we’ve been so conditioned to critique every inch that we don’t even notice we’re doing it.
I remember standing in front of my closet before a work presentation, and I had this whole negotiation in my head. “If I wear this, it hides the stomach. If I wear that, it makes my arms look smaller.” I wasn’t choosing an outfit. I was choosing a disguise.
That’s when I realized the body positivity conversation I’d been avoiding wasn’t about becoming confident. It was about becoming free. Free to just… exist. To show up to my own life without a dress rehearsal of self-criticism first.
💡 Quick Tip
Before you start a body positivity journal, do a 24-hour “critique audit.” Every time you catch yourself saying something negative about your body — even in your head — write it down. No judgment. Just notice. Most of us are shocked by how many times a day we do it. That awareness is step one.
What a Body Positivity Journal Actually Looks Like
So let me tell you what this journal is not. It’s not a gratitude journal where you force yourself to write “I love my thighs” until you believe it. That approach made me feel like a liar and a failure at the same time.
A body positivity journal is more like a conversation with yourself. A place to untangle the stories you’ve been carrying about your body — where they came from, who taught them to you, and whether they’re actually yours.
Here’s a real entry from my journal, week three:
“I realized today that I’ve been dressing for my mother’s voice in my head since I was twelve. She never said I was fat. But she was always on a diet. And I learned by watching. Today I wore the shorts. Nobody died. The world kept spinning.”
That’s what body positivity actually looks like in practice. It’s not a destination. It’s a slow unraveling of all the nonsense you absorbed without consent.
💊 What Works: The Body Is Not an Apology Journal – A guided journal by Sonya Renee Taylor that gives you actual prompts instead of blank pages. If you’ve ever stared at an empty notebook and felt paralyzed, this one holds your hand through the body positivity work without being cheesy about it.
What Actually Works (And What to Skip)
I’m going to save you some time and money, girl. Here’s what actually moved the needle for me, and what was a waste of energy.
What Actually Helped:
✅ Writing one body positivity note to yourself every morning before you check your phone — even if it’s “my hands typed 47 emails yesterday and showed up again today”
✅ Tracking what triggers your negative body talk — was it a comment? A scroll session? A stressful meeting? Patterns reveal everything
✅ Replacing one critique with one function — “I hate my stomach” becomes “my body digested three meals and carried me through a hard day”
✅ Writing letters to your younger self about the body you were taught to hate
What Was a Waste:
❌ Forcing yourself to say affirmations you don’t believe yet — your brain rejects them and you feel worse
❌ Following body positivity accounts that secretly just show a different body type to aspire to
❌ Waiting until you “feel ready” — you’ll never feel ready, you just start
70% of girls and women report body image anxiety — and the average woman has 13 negative body thoughts per day
Let that sink in. Thirteen times a day you’re telling yourself something is wrong with you. That’s not a personal failing — that’s a habit. And habits can be rewired. That’s exactly what the body positivity journal did for me. It took thoughts I didn’t even know I was having and made them visible. And once you can see something, you can change it.
The Truth Nobody Tells You About Body Positivity
Here’s the insider truth: body positivity is not the same as body neutrality, and honestly, most of us need body neutrality first.
Body positivity says “I love my body exactly as it is.” Body neutrality says “my body is not the most interesting thing about me, and I don’t need to have a strong opinion about it today.” For me, body neutrality was the doorway. It took the pressure off. I didn’t have to love my stomach. I just had to stop making it my whole personality.
And here’s the other thing nobody says out loud: the body positivity journal started affecting everything else. I started negotiating my salary differently because I wasn’t spending all my energy shrinking. I started showing up to meetings without rehearsing my exit. I started saying no to things that didn’t serve me because I’d practiced saying no to the voice in my head.
“The way you talk to your body is the way you’ll talk to yourself in every room you enter. Change the conversation in private and watch what happens in public.”
That’s the part that surprised me most. Body positivity wasn’t just about my body. It was about my whole life. My confidence at work. My boundaries in relationships. My willingness to take up space in rooms where I used to apologize for being there.
How the Journal Rewired My Brain (The Actual Science)
I’m not going to pretend I’m a neuroscientist, but here’s what I learned along the way that made it click. Your brain has these neural pathways — think of them like ruts in a dirt road. Every time you think “my arms are too big,” you deepen that rut. The journal is you actively filling in that rut and carving a new path.
It’s called neuroplasticity. Your brain can literally rewire itself based on what you practice. So when you practice body positivity — even when it feels forced — you’re building new pathways. After about 30 days, it stopped feeling forced. After 60, it started feeling natural. After 90, I caught myself doing it without thinking.
💡 Quick Tip
Set a 5-minute timer for your body positivity journal. Five minutes is enough to write three sentences. The goal isn’t to write a novel — it’s to show up consistently. Consistency is what rewires the brain, not length.
Real Life Changes I Didn’t Expect
Let me give you the receipts. Six months after starting the body positivity journal, here’s what changed:
I stopped avoiding photos. I used to dodge every camera at family events and work gatherings. Now I take pictures with people I love. Not because I love every angle. Because I love the people in the frame more than I hate the angle.
I moved differently. I started walking more, not to burn calories but because my body felt better when I did. I stopped seeing exercise as punishment and started seeing it as maintenance for the one vehicle I’m stuck with forever.
I stopped commenting on other women’s bodies. This one snuck up on me. Once I got honest about my own body talk, I noticed how much I was projecting onto other women. “She looks good” and “she’s gained weight” both needed to go. Now I compliment women on their energy, their style, their ideas.
I made better boundaries. I stopped letting people talk about my plate, my body, my workouts. I stopped letting diet culture sneak into my friendships. And I got more honest with myself about what I actually want for my health instead of what I think I’m supposed to want.
I got more ambitious. This one surprised me. I always thought body confidence was a vanity thing. But once I stopped spending so much energy on self-criticism, I had energy for other things. Like asking for the raise. Like launching the thing. Like showing up in rooms where I used to feel small.
Body Positivity Isn’t About Letting Yourself Go
I want to address something because I know some of you are thinking it: body positivity doesn’t mean you can never want to change anything about your body or your health. It means you stop hating yourself into change. You stop using shame as fuel.
I still have health goals. I still want to feel strong. I still want to move my body and eat in a way that supports my life. But the energy is different. It’s not “fix what’s broken.” It’s “care for what’s already whole.”
That shift matters because shame-based motivation is unsustainable. It burns out. It makes you quit. But care-based motivation? That lasts. That compounds. That builds a life you don’t need to escape from.
This is the kind of stuff women talk about inside TechMae every single day. No judgment, just real ones keeping it real.
Related: This post is a must-read for women on their journey.
Start Here
You don’t need a fancy journal. You don’t need a therapist’s permission. You don’t need to wait until Monday. Here’s exactly what to do tonight:
Your First Body Positivity Journal Entry:
✅ Open a note on your phone or grab any notebook
✅ Write down the first negative thought you had about your body today
✅ Ask yourself: where did that thought come from? Who taught me that?
✅ Write one thing your body did for you today that had nothing to do with how it looks
✅ Set a reminder on your phone for tomorrow — same time, five minutes
That’s it. That’s the start. You don’t have to have a breakthrough tonight. You just have to show up. And then show up again tomorrow. And then again the day after that.
The body positivity work is not a quick fix. It’s not a 30-day challenge where you emerge a new woman. It’s a slow, quiet, daily practice of treating yourself like someone you actually care about. And honestly? That’s the most important work you’ll ever do.
You might also love this article – one of our most shared.
This Is Your Sign to Stop Doing It Alone
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