I am 30 years old, stand at 5'4", and weigh 140 pounds. I'm the heaviest weight I've ever been, and I'm finally OK with it — because I'm also the strongest and healthiest I've ever been.
Throughout adulthood, I've weighed anywhere between 115 and 135 pounds. While battling bulimia for 10 years, my weight was a roller coaster. Periods of binging and purging left me swollen and puffy, and the weeks of restriction and punishing cardio that followed made me look frail. After recovering from my eating disorder in 2015, I hovered consistently around 125 pounds. This became my "comfortable" weight, a personal indicator I was doing fine.
Then I fell in love with weightlifting.
After gyms began to reopen in Colorado last year, I decided to write myself a weight-training program focused on building muscle and losing fat. Though I've favored weights over cardio ever since I became an NASM-certified fitness trainer a few years ago, I hadn't stuck to my own consistent routine due to several moves and COVID gym closures. Once I was back in the gym, I quickly discovered that weightlifting was my escape from the seemingly constant bad news, loneliness, and uncertainty that plagued 2020.