"I Didn't Hate It."

How Mikala Jamison built a joyful relationship with strength—and a career telling the truth about it.

Mikala was 13 the first time she picked up a weight.

It wasn’t exactly voluntary—her mom had dragged her to the gym. At the time, she hated PE, hated sports, hated the feeling of not meeting the narrow ideals that those spaces seemed to revere. But that day at the gym surprised her.

“I remember not hating it,” she told me. “It wasn’t sprinting. It was learning. And I was actually kind of strong.”

That moment planted a seed. Years later, after enduring the endless loop of binge-and-restricting, Mikala would return to the weight room— and this time, she’d stay. What started as a personal lifeline turned into a creative engine: she now writes Body Type, a widely read Substack newsletter about our complex relationships with our bodies. Her voice is funny, razor-sharp, and deeply real.

We spoke recently about body shame, binge eating, what the gym gave her, and how she’s turned her story into something bigger than herself.

Where did your story with strength begin?
I grew up in Delaware—Hockessin, just outside Wilmington. I was a bigger girl, and I had a tough time with exercise as a kid. Gym class was humiliating. I didn’t know how to move my body, and no one ever really showed me how.

But there was this one time—around eighth grade—when my mom brought me to the gym with her. I didn’t want to go, but I went. I remember lifting weights and thinking, this isn’t so bad. I didn’t hate it. It wasn’t about running or being picked last. I was learning something new. And seeing my mom be strong… that was cool.

Your relationship with food was complicated even then. What was going on?
There was a lot of tension. My mom was always trying to lose weight, and she wanted me to lose too. We’d go on diets together. I remember once I was eating cherries and she said, “Be careful, those have a lot of carbs.” It felt like I couldn’t win.

Food was love in our family— I’m Italian on my mom’s side, so everything was pasta and pastries. But it was also rife with tension, with judgment. I was growing, I was hungry, and I started binge eating as a way to cope. Food was a soother.

Was there a turning point?
At the end of college. I moved back home and started doing workout DVDs in my bedroom. It was the first time I thought, I want to change my life. When I saved up enough to move to Philadelphia, I made it a point to be active: I walked everywhere, biked, bought my own groceries. I didn’t want to be fat anymore. People had been mean to me my whole life about my body.

That’s when I started lifting again. I remembered that moment with my mom and weights. I joined Planet Fitness across the street. Ten bucks a month. My boyfriend (now husband) was lifting too and we’d go to the gym together.

You also started therapy. How did those two things work together?
Therapy helped me unpack the binge eating. I realized how when I binged, it was very dissociative—like I was doing something to my body, not in it. Lifting helped bring me back; it connected me to myself.

Once I started lifting, I ate differently. It helped me get out of the restrict-binge cycle. I wasn’t afraid to eat anymore. Even if my mindset was disordered at first—I worked out, so I can eat now—it still nudged me toward more regular nourishment.

How did fitness go from personal practice to professional identity?
I moved to DC in 2016. In 2017, I became a certified group fitness instructor. I started teaching cycling at a gym across from my apartment. It was fun. People came every week. I had regulars, people who told me about their kids. One guy brought me homemade ice cream.

It was joyful. That’s the word I keep coming back to. Group fitness helped me rewrite what the gym could mean for me. It used to be this place of shame. Now it was community, movement, connection. Not punishment, but pleasure.

When did writing about all this come into play?
I was freelancing, working full-time in communications, and felt like I didn’t have a niche. But I kept coming back to my relationship with my body. I couldn’t sell the stories I wanted to tell. So in November 2021, I started a Substack.

The first post was about gaining weight during COVID and sliding back into bingeing. It was honest. Probably too long. But it was the first time I really told the truth.

Ronald Young [creator and host of the podcast Weight for It] reposted it and said it made him cry. I remember thinking, if even one person is connecting with this, I’ll keep going.

And now you’ve built something. What has Body Type become to you?
It’s a community. It’s a project. It’s a practice.

I’ve written about bingeing, body image, fitness culture, all of it. And I try to write honestly, even if it’s ugly. Because when we sugarcoat this stuff—when we wrap it in faux-positivity—we’re not helping each other. We’re just making it harder to tell the truth.

For so long, for me, gaining weight felt like the end of the world. But it’s not. It’s a body—and the more I live in mine, the less power that shame has over me.

What’s next?
I signed a book deal in 2024 with New Harbinger. My agent found me through Substack. And I’ve been building slowly—guest posts, podcast appearances, freelance pieces.

It’s not quit-my-job money, but it’s growing. Over 11,000 free subscribers, nearly 200 paid. I’m hopeful. I want to do this full time one day. Not tomorrow, but maybe in five years.

For now, the title is The Forever Project. This relationship with my body isn’t a before-and-after. It’s ongoing.