Can ‘Body Neutrality’ Change the Way You Work Out? (Published 2022) (2024)

When I had a baby last summer — my first, a healthy boy — I knew that my body would be in rough shape afterward. Or, as my mother put it when I gingerly tried on a new pair of sweatpants one week post-birth: “Nothing is going to look good for a while. Try not to worry about it.”

I didn’t expect how easy it was to take her advice. Maybe it was hormones, or the immersion of parenting a newborn, or a new appreciation for what my body could do, but I felt surprisingly sanguine about my wobbly physical state.

At six weeks postpartum, I was cleared to start exercising, and a well-meaning nurse assured me that my “extra weight” would “fall off” once I resumed cardio. Instead of testing out her theory, I took slow, sunny walks with my baby napping in his stroller. I wasn’t exactly reveling in my loose skin, but I wasn’t bothered by it either. To my surprise, I didn’t care much about it at all.

There’s a name for this concept: body neutrality, or the ability to accept and respect your body even if it isn’t the way you’d prefer it to be. The term was popularized by Anne Poirier, a body-image coach and the author of “The Body Joyful,” who began using it in 2015 to help her clients build a healthier, more in-tune relationship to food and exercise. “Body neutrality prioritizes the body’s function, and what the body can do, rather than its appearance,” she explained. “You don’t have to love or hate it. You can feel neutral towards it.”

Ms. Poirier said that body neutrality resonates particularly with people who see the much-touted idea of body positivity — or the notion that we should love our bodies regardless of what they look like — as too big a leap. “For me, neutrality was a more accessible steppingstone away from body hatred,” she said. “I didn’t necessarily have to love my body, but I could see it with a different perspective.”

Body neutrality might also appeal to those who find the warts-and-all approach of body positivity to be a bit, well, contrived. Do we really need to embrace our cellulite and tendonitis? Why not just aim for a more peaceful coexistence?