Chasing Wonder Woman

Once I stopped trying to be skinny, I became strong.

In the weeks after I’d given birth in late 2014, the Troubles began. My father, who lived next door, died suddenly from a heart attack. A few weeks later, it became clear my marriage was over. A half-glass of wine in the evening took the edge off, but eventually those half-glasses turned into much more. I started to crave booze. Food became an afterthought as I went from morning coffee—and whatever scraps came off my toddler’s plate—to wine in the evening.

I looked at myself in the mirror one day and hated what I saw. I looked swollen and sad. A baby didn’t leave much opportunity for sleep. My mother, newly widowed and now living a few doors down, encouraged me to take better care of myself. I didn’t know what that even meant.

I had been an athlete growing up, but those days were long gone. Sports had once been my sanctuary. There was figure skating, where twirling in spandex skirts inside cold ice rinks served as a cocoon from the hard knocks of puberty and teenage angst. Then, in college, I rowed crew, which introduced me to weightlifting and the intensity of before-dawn workouts.

But any respite that sports provided me in my youth ended with the adult world of subways, pantyhose and student loans. I was focused on building my career—not my physique—and none of the existing classes or clubs centered around fitness floated my boat.

All this came to a head one weekend when I took my oldest daughter to her first ‘away’ tournament. She was into ice hockey at the time, and we were staying at a motel in Maryland. I was a newly single mom, and I brought my mother along for the ride. The idea was Mom would watch the little one while I coached my older daughter’s team. After we checked in and dropped off our gear, I noticed a small fitness room.

I’m not sure what possessed me to poke my head in, since I hadn’t worked out in a very long time. But there she was: A hockey mom lifting barbells and dumbbells and approaching her workout with an intensity I had not seen in a long time. Sweaty and red-faced, she logged her lifts into an app on her cell phone. She pulled bands that she looped around posts. I couldn’t imagine ever thinking of caring enough to pack exercise bands. But I admired it.

I envied her physique, but it wasn’t because she was thin. It looked like a hard-earned body borne of food, exercise, knowledge and good habits. Her muscles rippled as she worked. Whatever this woman was doing, I wanted it.

I introduced myself (it turned out her daughter was one of the players on my team). Her name was Sara and she said that she did bikini competitions. I suppressed a laugh. She explained that it was the sport of bodybuilding. She had an online coach, was assigned gym workouts and tracked the “macronutrients” in what she ate every day. It sounded like a lot of work, but at the same time I was pretty lost when it came to all things food and exercise. I was intrigued. And I needed some direction.

I asked Sara for the name of her coach. I figured I could use some assistance with an exercise and nutrition plan. When I arrived home, the woman’s name was already in my inbox.

I spoke with Tina Peratino and her partner, Brandi Adams, about my goals. I was drinking too much. Eating crap. And I hadn’t entered a gym in a very long time.

So Brandi and Tina put me on a plan: I was to start tracking what I ate, without judgment, and begin looking at food in terms of macronutrients—logging protein, carbohydrate and fats using an app. The exercise helped me view food more objectively. There were no ‘good’ foods or ‘bad’ foods. Foods were just choices that came with a set of macronutrients.

I aimed to hit a certain goal of ‘macros’ each day, and protein was the focus. Carbs were good, and fat was there too, in moderation—and also seen as necessary.

Focusing on whole foods (rather than processed ones) helped me meet my macros more easily. Food became about eating more rather than less to achieve body composition goals. And after a while, I felt better—and performed better.

Pretty soon, I was given a series of exercises to perform each day. No classes or concepts that required special socks, disco lights, or an instructor with a microphone. This was no-frills weightlifting in the form of deadlifts, squats, and bench presses. There were sets, supersets, and repetitions of about a half dozen weightlifting exercises to be done each day, four or five times a week. Each gym visit shouldn’t take more than an hour, the coach said. No cardio necessary. In fact, lay off of any cardio.

I found that I loved going to the gym and began to make time for it. I started to meet new people and enjoyed fist-bumping my friends when we saw one another. Having a set hour in the day (usually around 11 a.m. or 2 p.m.) where I could forget about work or anything else and just focus on my breath and my body moving felt empowering and peaceful at the same time. I started to feel tougher, more badass. I found my groove.

In the months that followed I watched my body transform. The attention to nutrition and daily weightlifting sessions became apparent. Muscles grew, love handles melted. My children were proud of me. Once, at preschool pickup, I overheard my daughter tell a friend that her mommy looked like Wonder Woman. I wore a bikini for the first time in my life.

After about a year of this, my coach said I should consider entering a bodybuilding competition. I quickly demurred. What would everyone think? But then, after a while, I thought, who cares? Maybe it’s an excuse to feel like an athlete again and try my hand at a new sport. Maybe it’s a midlife crisis, and heck, everyone’s entitled to one of those. And maybe I could even write about it for The Wall Street Journal.

That winter, I made the decision to compete and amped up the intensity of my training. Everything I consumed was measured to the gram. I mixed protein shakes, drank egg whites raw, jogged to the gym in inclement weather and pushed or pulled with every inch of force that I could conjure into each rep of every exercise.

In the months that followed, my physique started to morph more substantially into something that looked like what an actual bodybuilder might look like. I leaned out, and the various muscles and ridges across my body became more visible.

But then the pandemic happened. My competition got canceled. The neighborhood gym closed and eventually went out of business. I didn’t want to get derailed, so I bought a barbell, a bench and a bunch of dumbbells on Craigslist and transformed the basement into a Mom Gym.

But things got harder. My workouts started to seem pretty pointless. The kids were around all the time, needing me. And it was lonely in the basement: I missed the camaraderie of my gym buddies. On more than one occasion, I caved into the temptation of the chips and Drake’s cakes that I was packing for lunches the night before.

Then, in late June, my coach emailed me to let me know that a competition had opened up in August. Would I be interested?

I didn’t think twice. I pulled out my practice bikini and clear three-inch heels and began practicing the requisite poses once again in a full-length mirror at home.

On August 8, I drove the three hours to Kenilworth, N.J., to compete in a bodybuilding competition. And to my surprise, I won in nearly all of the categories I entered and earned my coveted “pro card,” which would allow me to enter professional competitions.

I wrote about the experience for the Journal. That story landed me a book deal. Today, I continue to train as a bodybuilder and enter competitions. But I have also become fascinated with the story of skinny and how it has powerfully sucked us all in. There is such unheralded power in building muscle, and I wonder why I once strived for an ideal that was really never meant to be. 

Women are inherently strong: We live longer than men. Our bodies bring life into the world. Research out of Cambridge shows that prehistoric bones of women were the size of Olympic rowers today. It’s only in recent generations that society has pressured women to diminish themselves.

Let’s change that paradigm.

In LIFT, each week I will post a reflection on some aspect of female strength and how to build more of it. It might be a look at the science and power of muscle. I might take apart a health claim, or contemplate an aspect of the way beauty is being marketed. I might reflect on some aspect of my training, my mental health or my life as a mother.

Mostly, LIFT is a conversation that honors the work it takes to prioritize oneself and build strength. Let us take this first step together, support one another and join in the journey of strength and possibilities ahead.

Let’s LIFT one another.