I am all for body positivity.

I really am.

I think people should love their bodies where they are. Bodies change. Bodies go through seasons. Bodies have babies, gain weight, lose weight, get older, get stronger, get injured, get sick, recover, change again.

That’s just being human.

And I think there is something incredibly freeing about being able to look at yourself and say, “This is my body. This is where I am right now. And I’m okay with that. Sometimes I wonder if we’ve taken the whole “love yourself exactly as you are” thing so far that we’ve accidentally turned it into “never ask anything of yourself.”

Because those aren’t the same thing.

Is sitting on the couch eating an entire pizza sometimes self-love?

Absolutely.

Obviously.

I am not a monster. Sometimes the pizza is the answer. Sometimes you need to put on sweatpants, watch something stupid on television, eat the damn pizza and call it a night.

That’s life.

But if we’re honest, that’s probably not self-love if that’s what we’re doing every single night.

At some point, we have to ask ourselves:

What does my body actually need from me?

Maybe it needs vegetables.

Maybe it needs sleep.

Maybe it needs water.

Maybe it needs a doctor.

Maybe it needs us to stop treating every ache and pain like an inconvenience and actually pay attention. And maybe, sometimes, it needs us to get off the couch and move.

Not because our bodies are bad.

Not because we’re too fat.

Not because we need to earn our food.

Not because some number on a scale has decided whether we’re worthy of feeling good about ourselves.

But because we only get one body.

And I don’t want to spend my life at war with mine (even though that’s what it feels like most days with an autoimmune condition).

I also don’t want to neglect it in the name of accepting it.

Those things can exist at the same time.

I can love my body and still want to take better care of it.

I can accept where I am without deciding that I have to stay there.

Taking care of your body doesn’t have to look like going to the gym seven days a week. It doesn’t have to mean lifting weights every day. It doesn’t have to mean an hour of intense exercise followed by a protein shake and a carefully measured dinner.

Sometimes taking care of your body means realizing that the thing you’ve been doing isn’t working for the body you have right now.

That’s something I’ve had to learn recently.

I actually stopped going to the gym.

And before anyone panics—no, I didn’t give up.

I changed direction.

The traditional progressive-overload weightlifting I had been doing was getting to be too much for my joints and for where my body is in this particular season, especially while I’m working through all the fun that comes with autoimmune stuff. So instead of deciding, “Well, I guess I’m done exercising,” I decided to listen to my body and change what exercise looked like.

Now I work out at home.

I’ve found workouts on YouTube that work better for me right now. One of the people I follow is Grow with Jo, and she has everything from beginner workouts to more intermediate ones, including workouts with weights.

And here’s the part I really love:

I recently went back to the doctor, and my body composition is actually changing. I’m not just losing weight. I’m losing fat mass and gaining muscle mass.

While working out at home. Which is a pretty good reminder that there isn’t one magical way to take care of your body.

You don’t have to punish yourself.

You don’t have to spend seven days a week in a gym.

You don’t even have to own a gym membership.

Maybe your version of taking care of yourself right now is lifting weights.

Maybe it’s yoga.

Maybe it’s swimming.

Maybe it’s walking around the block.

Maybe it’s a 20-minute workout in your living room while your dog stares at you like you’ve finally lost your mind.

Maybe it’s stretching because everything hurts.

Maybe it’s simply getting up from your desk every hour and moving around.

It all counts!

The goal isn’t to become some fitness-influencer version of yourself. The goal is to keep your body moving in whatever way makes sense for the body you have today.

Because there will be seasons when you can do more. There will be seasons when you need to do less. And doing less doesn’t mean you’ve failed. Changing the way you move doesn’t mean you’ve given up.

Sometimes taking care of yourself means changing the direction. And sometimes it means pulling on your big-girl panties.Or big-boy panties.

Whatever your particular underwear situation may be.

😂

But here’s the thing:

The hard things don’t always have to be so damn hard.

We have somehow gotten very good at believing that if something is worth doing, it has to hurt. That exercise doesn’t count unless you’re drenched in sweat. That healthy eating doesn’t count unless you’re miserable. That if you’re not pushing yourself to the absolute limit, you’re somehow not trying hard enough.

I’m calling bullshit on that.

There is value in doing hard things.But there is also value in doing things sustainably.

There is value in meeting yourself where you are instead of constantly demanding that you be somewhere else.

Maybe the strongest thing you can do today isn’t running five miles.

Maybe it’s taking a walk.

Maybe it’s doing ten squats.

Maybe it’s twenty minutes of gentle strength training.

Maybe it’s getting out of bed when you’re exhausted and taking your body outside for some fresh air.

Maybe it’s resting because your body genuinely needs rest.

Knowing the difference between “I need rest” and “I’m avoiding taking care of myself” is probably something we all have to figure out for ourselves. And that balance changes. That’s the whole point.

We go through seasons.

I keep thinking about my 70-year-old self. I don’t know exactly what she’s going to look like. I don’t know what size she’s going to be.

I don’t know if she’s going to have gray hair, wrinkles, a bad knee, or arms that still look pretty damn good in a tank top.

And honestly?

If she wants to work out so she can rock the hell out of a swimsuit at 70, good for her. That’s a perfectly valid goal too. We don’t have to pretend that wanting to look good isn’t allowed.

But for me, I keep coming back to something even simpler:

I want her to move.

I want to be 70 and still getting out of a chair without thinking about it.

I want to walk trails.

I want to travel.

I want to carry my own bags.

I want to get down on the floor and be able to get back up.

I want to be independent.

I want to be capable.

I want to still have places to go and things to do.

And I want to have spent the previous decades taking care of this body—not because I hated it, but because I loved it enough to give it a fighting chance.

Maybe that’s the part of body positivity we sometimes forget.

Loving your body doesn’t mean never changing it.

It doesn’t mean never challenging it.

It doesn’t mean never wanting to lose weight, gain muscle, get stronger, improve your health, or look damn good in a swimsuit.

And it certainly doesn’t mean ignoring what your body needs because you’ve decided that accepting yourself means never asking yourself to do anything uncomfortable.

But it also doesn’t mean beating yourself up.

It doesn’t mean starving yourself.

It doesn’t mean exercising through injury.

It doesn’t mean spending hours in a gym because you hate what you see in the mirror.

There is a middle ground. A really beautiful middle ground.

I can love myself exactly where I am and still want more for myself.

I can accept this body and still work on it.

I can rest when I need to.

I can push myself when I need to.

I can change my approach when the old one isn’t working anymore.

I can eat the pizza.

I can eat the salad.

I can go to the gym.

I can work out in my living room.

I can take a walk around the block.

And I can look at this body—this wonderfully imperfect, aging, changing, sometimes painful, sometimes ridiculously strong body—and decide that it’s worth taking care of.

Because maybe self-love isn’t always a bubble bath and a slice of cake.

Maybe sometimes self-love is putting on your damn sneakers, and saying:

“Come on, body. We’ve got places to go.”