two years postpartum

on the language of the body and fitness in the 2020s

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Two years since I last birthed a baby, and only now have I felt a modicum of myself return. To be postpartum is to be a blur, a scribble trying to morph itself back into a solid or known shape. It is also a blur temporally , with most clinical postpartum phases ending at the 6 to 8 week post-delivery check up. These appointments are brief: if you’re not really sad, and you’re not really bleeding, then you are cleared to go back to your life. The internet argues for different timelines, posing reminders that it took nine months to grow a baby, and so it takes at least nine months to feel back to ‘normal’ again. Researchers in 2010 defined three distinct and continuous phases of postpartum, with the final one ending around the six month mark. Despite these variations of endpoints, it has taken much longer than six months to come back to myself after having my second child.

Photo by Alora Griffiths on Unsplash

The expectations of what a postpartum body should look like, and the various milestones associated with it, are intense, and largely arbitrary in social landscapes. If ‘normal’ is even an option after having a baby, it feels like dodging quicksand: the group that’s against bounce back culture, the group that’s for bounce forward stronger culture, the group that is determined to wear their pre-baby skinny jeans again no matter what it takes. There are strong and heated positions, and all the while I wished simply to have enough core strength to get out of bed without struggling.

Apart from potent reminders from Ilona Maher about strong bodies, most of the body positivity (and body neutrality) content of a decade ago has dissipated, with influencers swiftly pivoting toward more lucrative income streams. Now, there is renewed focus on mothers becoming stronger, eating more protein, going into caloric deficits or ‘recomping’ their bodies, and quietly, quietly (because it is not “diet culture” of course), snapping back into their pre-baby bodies. (I say mothers here, because much of the content focuses on the pool of hetero, cis white women fitness influencers).

The language of the body in 2026 is concerning. It is not one merely curving toward unrealistic and dangerous body ideals, but a language embedded in algorithms and social unrest. Digital mediums, like TikTok, demand shorter attention spans, quicker stories, and heightened reactions. When I wonder why this postpartum has been such a great struggle to feel at home in my own body, I think about how much the online world has made the physical one a manifestation of its own algorithmic goals.

the body as recession indicator

Psychologist Kimberly Wilson has put forward a theory about the relationship between these shifting bodily values and the recessions that have finally come to fruition. Wilson argues that when people, particularly young adults, feel that their intrinsic worth has been limited or made uncertain, the body becomes a place where their worth can be projected anew. As young people in Western countries grapple with the economic shifts of recession, war, genocide, and AI, they have seen further restrictions placed on building their financial futures. Wilson sees the relationship between inflation, employment challenges, and the outsourcing of knowledge-based work to AI tools as a stark message that young people face, with society reminding them that their minds are of little value. While I agree this is the sentiment, I do not see AI actively playing a role in corporate downsizing in my own line of work–there have been enough legal battles and critical backlash around the use of AI in environmental consulting. Reduced hiring trends point more toward tighter client budgets, economic and political uncertainties, and shifting government policies on protecting the environment.

But still: in this uncontrollable political and environmental setting, there may be a turn toward the body as a place of value. Wilson argues that the body becomes a measurable way to control an outcome. This aligns with decades of anthropological discussions of the “body proper” and the use of body merit as a way to re-inforce identities as fitting within nation-state values. In Fat Talk Nation, anthropologist Susan Greenhalgh investigates how biocitizenship became part of young immigrant experiences while making sense of their body’s shape and size in America.

Of course within this negotiation of bodily and social values, there are shifts in body ideals enforced by celebrity and newly accessible drugs that can manipulate and ‘hack’ body limitations in new ways. Regardless of the myriad ways that GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy may be used by the general public, the extreme use of it amidst celebrities as beauty practices holds a challenging mirror up to society. Liz Plank speaks to this in an essay about Ariana Grande, arguing that collective millennial discomfort with body changes says more about the public than the celebrity:

What makes this conversation so painful is that it forces women to confront a possibility many of us would rather not think about: understanding beauty standards is not the same thing as transcending them. You can know exactly how the machine works and still find yourself caught inside it. You can spend years unpacking diet culture, years in therapy, years building a healthier relationship with your body, and still feel something shift when the culture starts rewarding thinness again.

It is challenging to not instill more worth and value in the body and its form than the mind when we are subject to image-based mediums, or videos propelling this ideology across algorithms.

the language of fitness

Frankly, it has been a bitch to be postpartum in the years where appetite-suppressing drugs have become accessible and popular. In raw, early postpartum, I viewed an endless stream of images where women elected to take this drug (both celebrity and regular), and I wondered if that was now the expectation. My body required pants larger than before pregnancy, and all the clothes I’ve kept since high school (that worked after my first postpartum) were no longer an option. I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror, and there was nothing I could do quickly to get my old self back.

The softened language of bouncing back (being stronger, toned and lean) becomes a cacophony on my algorithm as more time passes. I am shown endless videos of fitness trainers touting egg white “snacks,” tucking disordered eating into new forms. It’s not “skinny food,” because it’s going to make you “lean and lethal.” And yet, there’s still ingrained shame in the messages of the videos, the way caloric deficits are deeply encouraged so as to drop pounds quickly.

There’s an interesting contrast in the advanced scientific awareness of a healing postpartum body with the poor advice shilled by content creators. The fitness and health industry’s approach to postpartum (and more broadly, women’s fitness) is one that imbues a version of therapy-speak to maintain its power. Terms and practices are used to signal secret in-group behaviours. There are overnight oats, Alani Nu, protein waffles, taking ‘pre’ (pre-workout), cottage cheeses and Greek yogurts, and ‘smart’ snack choices for the sake of meeting nutritional targets. The language of fitness also simultaneously boasts of not tracking food intake while delivering strategic What I Ate in a Day clips that highlight contained, restrained, sophisticated snacks. There are needs to meet your daily step counts, to ensure you started your Apple watch at every workout, that you’ve worn your weighted vest to go for a walk around the block in $150 leggings. There’s active recovery days, which must be optimized for extra time: morning sheds, slugging, debloating the face with peptides and small metal vibrating machines.

Optimization, as Olivia Stren wrote in an printed op-ed special to The Toronto Star, is one area of body care that has become all-consuming in efforts to be well and pursue cultural ideas.

return to exercise

I find myself in constant tension with the fitness and wellness industry discourses. I exercise often, for fun. I wake up around 5:15 to lift weights, or take part in spin or hybrid cardio-strength fitness classes. I enjoy when a vacation comes with a good hotel gym, I love the feeling of sweating and moving my body in the early hours. I know that inherently feels offputting for many.

But the point, here, is that I took postpartum this time as an opportunity to learn more about how the body heals from childbirth. I had pelvic floor physiotherapy, relearning how to properly breathe and engage with core muscles while exercising to avoid coning my abdominals, and to avoid peeing my pants every time I jumped or sneezed. Sluggish and weak on the floor, I breathed in and out, squeezing a Pilates ball with my arm while I found ways to engage with my back, my ribs, my core. Later, I’d hold a weight on my hip and wobble on one leg while I brought my glute strength back from the dead. All elements I was told, repeatedly, would support my return to regular exercise routines.

Part of the problem with the wealth of postpartum resources at our Western disposal now is that you want to move through them all much faster than your body may necessarily be ready for. While I’d finished a six week set of core and breathing exercises, I wasn’t necessarily strong enough or stable enough to return to HIIT classes and functional weight-lifting at four months postpartum. I was barely able to lay my back on the wooden floor of a yoga class without it writhing in discomfort. The tightness around my ribs and hips, a sticky pain that echoed and tensed throughout my limbs. These were all new, limiting my mobility and my confidence.

The physiotherapy led to a return to running plan, complete with a mathematical calculation that saved me from over-exerting my training routines each week (shout out to Justine, my pelvic floor saviour!). From there, I moved to a group class taught by a CrossFitter who specialized in postpartum returns to weights and cardio (great exercises, but too much Taylor Swift and anti-vaccine chatter among my classmates to make any solid friendships). From there, I reluctantly and fearfully went back to F45 classes, knowing my previous capabilities were absolutely shattered upon return. Within the year, I managed to lift heavier for arm and leg exercises than I could even before I had my son. I attribute most of this to taking a slow, steady pace (and to knowing how to properly breathe while safely engaging my core ). I’m seeing my body move and lift in ways I recognize from before—even if it doesn’t look quite the same.

If I rely on any metrics, it is those that emphasize long-term health practices to support aging, such as VO2 max. My cardiologist recommended I monitor my heart rate using a smart watch (to reduce exercise-related post-concussion symptoms). Here, the smartwatch is a tool not used for the pursuit of wellness, but for the maintenance of exercise without further brain injury. With it, I can also track my VO2 max, which measures the maximum amount of oxygen the body absorbs and uses during exercise. As a measure of aerobic fitness, it’s been found that VO2 max levels are a key predictor of longevity. It has thrilled me to see that my VO2 max has crept back up to 40 during the last few months, and fascinating to see its longer curves away and toward the normal rates throughout pregnancy and postpartum. It becomes easier to be gentle with myself when seeing those graphs charting the recovery in datasets such as that, rather than weight or visual milestones.

It’s hard to find social media content that promotes slow, nonlinear, and realistic approaches to fitness and exercise. It is blatantly apparent why: it is not sexy or profitable to promote moderation and consistency when comparing it with the false urgencies crafted to get people to buy fitness programs or meal plans. What feels most different on the balanced, science-backed side of fitness social media is that their language isn’t so coded and specific, either. When you don’t have to convince your audience of your authority through panic, there is also not a need to create wording that maintains that urgency.

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AnthroDish News

• Mysteries of Ancient Medicine in Canada and America! The new series I appear in as a health expert is out in full on National Geographic TV, AppleTV, Fubo, and Disney in the US, and airing Fridays at 9pm EST on SuperChannel for Canadians! I am not sure where that streaming extends to, but they have their own app as well.

• For Best Food Blog, I have a piece out investigating how parents are turning to ChatGPT to help them cook dinner (and how it doesn’t really work out in anyone’s favour, be it due to domestic gender divides or racial bias of algorithms).

• The recent publication DIGEST by Filler Zine editor Holly Eliza Temple, is available to order in the UK through Antenne Books! I have a piece in there about all the meals I dreamed about eating when I was heavily pregnant and frustrated.

• Catch up on AnthroDish podcast, with the most recent episodes on my YouTube channel if you like video, or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or my podcast website. I’m really excited about this season, it’s been some of my all-time favourite conversations and directions.