Why I’m Eating Candy with My Kettlebells on Valentine’s Day
I don’t want to be thin, I want to be strong!
Readers please note: this story discusses eating disorders, which can be life threatening. If you need help, contact the National Eating Disorders Helpline.
On Valentine’s Day my junior year of high schoo,l my boyfriend told me he was gay. This was actually fine with me because I thought I was fat, I hated everything about myself, and I knew that no one would ever love me anyway. For me, dating was just tricking someone into falling in love with me and I knew I would never be that convincing.
On Valentine’s Day my first year of college, my boyfriend took me out to a fancy dinner and I got a TERRIBLE case of food poisoning. I spent the rest of the night violently barfing up expensive and tainted scallops. I actually considered this a blessing because I was anorexic and bulimic so puking was kinda my thing.
On Valentine’s Day after I moved to Pittsburgh to be with my boyfriend (now husband) I pressured him to propose. I was at my heaviest weight and felt completely insecure about my body and our relationship. He wasn’t ready and I went ringless. He proposed a few years later but I still remember that stinging feeling of thinking I was too fat to be loved.
But this Valentine’s Day I’m skipping the self-loathing, the shame, and the scallops. Instead, I’m going to bench press 80 pounds.
Growing up, I struggled with various forms of disordered eating. In middle school I started restricting, in high school and college I started starving and purging, and up through my late 20s I started binging. I had an awful relationship with food and an even worse relationship with my body.
When an eating disorder is your best friend it’s hard to like yourself — let alone love yourself — which makes it impossible to fall in love with somebody else and let someone else love you. I grew up thinking that my body made me worthless and utterly unlovable, and celebrations of love, like Valentine’s Day, felt like torture. I was surrounded by sentimental messages of love and self-love but all I felt was disgust and anger at a body that I had been taught to consider my enemy.
That is, until I started weightlifting.
Ok, ok, weightlifting clearly isn’t a cure all for bad self-esteem, it isn’t for everyone, and I never thought it would be for me. So when my husband started working out with a virtual trainer and suggested I give it a try I was hesitant, skeptical, and doubtful that I’d find any pay off in grunting and swinging a kettlebell around our makeshift gym in the attic.
Spoiler alert: I found out I REALLY love grunting.
What won me over was not actually my husband’s enthusiasm for bicep curls, but the fact that the pandemic had left me feeling numb and bored, and I was ready to be adventurous. So two months ago I pulled on some leggings, wrestled myself into a sports bra, and suddenly fell in love.
I had no idea that my beautiful fat body had the potential to be powerful! I always distrusted my body, chastised my body, wished more than anything I’d be someone else. But when I lift weights I feel… I feel liberated. All of a sudden a body that I grew up hating is doing something spectacular. I can lift heavy things, make loud growling noises, beat personal records, and now I look forward to swinging that kettlebell every other evening.
I’ve finally realized that I don’t want to be thin, I want to be strong! Thinness is not the prerequisite for being loved, love comes in all shapes and sizes whether you do Bulgarian split squats or not.
Love requires trust and I never trusted my body before. No matter what size I was, my body was the reason no one would love me and the reason I should definitely not love myself. But weightlifting has made me realize that my fabulous fat body can do impressive things. Through weightlifting I’m learning to trust every pound of me when it comes to tackling my goals and celebrating my body.
This Valentine’s Day won’t be about telling myself I’m not good enough to be loved. It won’t be about self-punishment and self-loathing. It won’t be about insecurity. It won’t be about equating fatness with worthlessness.
This Valentine’s Day will be dedicated to feeling strong in a body that I’ve learned to love because it does amazing things. On February 14th some people might be eating fancy take out (mind the scallops!), others might be swooning over 1–800-FLOWERS.com bouquets, but you’ll find me swearing, sweating, and smiling as I do Romanian deadlifts with my husband.
