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Like most women, I don’t have a ton of free time. Even if I do have a full hour-plus of discretionary time every day, I’m not going to spend it putting on workout clothes, doing a full workout, stretching, and washing my hair — it’s not how I want to spend my limited free time, and at this point in my life, I’m okay with finally admitting that sometimes, that’s the only excuse I need.
Women are held to impossible standards, and our time is viewed as infinite — which is why people often invalidate women when they say they "don’t have time" to exercise. We need to stop telling them to just "prioritize fitness," because often doing so comes at the expense of hobbies and rest.
But the fact remains: Moving our bodies is important. It’s healthy, it’ll pay off in the long run, and sometimes that line between honoring your wants and pushing through minor resistance is razor fine. But here’s a thought: What if instead of pushing ourselves to go hard every time, we embraced a softer, more enjoyable, more time-effective approach to exercise? Cozy cardio might be exactly the refreshing approach to exercise that can change how we view moving our bodies.
What is cozy cardio?
Cozy cardio is a viral concept originated by TikTok creator Hope Zuckerbrow, who explains what cozy cardio is and why she was inspired to creae it.
“I want cozy cardio to be a movement for women to reclaim their relationships with exercise,” she says in a TikTok video. “Society puts so much pressure on women to look a certain way, and because of that, a lot of them have turned exercise into a punishment, or a means of solely working off the calories from their last delicious meal they ate…or didn’t. Cozy cardio rewrites all of that.”
Zuckerbrow goes on to explain that “cozy” can mean something different to different people. For her, it’s about creating an ambiance: That can mean lighting a candle or walking on a walking pad with a comforting show playing in the background.
Why is cozy cardio so game-changing?
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As Zuckerbrow says, exercise has been viewed as something that needs to be punishing in order to be “effective." We’ve all heard people say that you should work out for an hour, or that you need to be sweaty in order for it to “count," or that you should push your body beyond its limits in order to get the “best results."
Cozy cardio rewrites those rules: It tells us that our workouts (cardio or otherwise) can feel good. They don’t need to leave us breathless and drenched in sweat in order to be good for our overall health.
What cozy cardio means to me
For me, embracing cozy cardio means accepting that walking is good exercise because it’s great for my mental health and something I truly enjoy doing. It means squeezing in a 15-minute arm workout between work assignments. It means doing a fun dance workout that doesn’t necessarily leave me sweating, but gets my body moving and is a good way to blow off some stress.
It means not doing workouts that require changing out of my “work” clothes (I work from home, so it’s leggings and a sweatshirt all day everyday) and into “gym: clothes." I often do 10-minute arm workouts in my comfy slippers, and I almost never do anything that causes me to break a sweat, because it’s so much easier to carve out time for exercise if you don’t need to shower and change afterwards. In my mind, taking the pressure of how long and how intensely I’ll exercise allows me to exercise more regularly. Instead of pushing myself to spend my free time doing something I dislike doing, I would much prefer to squeeze in opportunities for movement when I can.
What does cozy cardio mean to you?
It can mean any number of things, as Zuckerbrow says. It can mean doing some type of movement while watching TV. It can mean meeting up with a friend for a long walk. It can mean having a dance party with your kids. It can mean finding a seated workout you can do while chatting on the phone. It can mean creating a spa-like setup and doing a gentle yoga routine.
Here’s why we love it
As Zuckerbrow says, so many women have had unpleasant, maybe even disordered, relationships to exercise. But it doesn’t have to be something we do to “counteract” a heavy meal, or in order to “get a six pack”, or because we “need to hit our goals." It can just be something we do in the name of overall health — physical and mental.
Some people love goals and love challenging their bodies, and way really respond well to a more rigorous approach to fitness. And that’s great! But for me, and many other women, that’s just not the case. And of course, there's nuance to be found: Maybe you generally like to lift heavy, ran fast, or take a very tough group fitness class...but once in a while, you choose to embrace cozy cardio instead. That's great too. We all have days when we just don't feel like pushing our bodies.
There’s also the time factor, especially for women. The New York Times recently published a piece about how even exercise has a gender gap. Women have less time to work out, so a lot of are naturally embracing this approach to exercise (which may involve forgoing the gym clothes, fitting in a quick burst of movement in the middle of the day as opposed to having a whole gym session) for purely logistical reasons.
But cozy cardio brings the mental reframe: Even if we’ve already been defaulting to a less-is-more take on fitness, branding it cozy cardio gives us permission to just accept that. It’s okay if we only exercised for 15 minutes, or did something that would allow us to move from workout to meeting without requiring a change of clothes. It’s not “cheating” or “doing it halfway," it’s cozy cardio. And it’s enough.
Zara Hanawalt is a freelance journalist and mom of twins. She's written for outlets like Parents, MarieClaire, Elle, Cosmopolitan, Motherly, and many others. In her (admittedly limited!) free time, she enjoys cooking, reading, trying new restaurants, and traveling with her family.