My Body Has Two Personal Trainers
One is estrogen. The other is a video game with absolutely no sympathy for my thighs.
When I was nineteen and twenty, I was a dancer. Not a particularly shy one, either. I loved hip-hop, and I went to clubs every night I could. I wore colorful, flowing clothes that moved with me, and I danced for hours. I looked good, I knew I looked good, and I wasn’t afraid to show off a little. I even entered dance competitions a few times. There was something wonderful about stepping onto a dance floor, hearing the music, and letting my body do whatever it wanted.
And then I got married.
Somewhere between marriage, raising children, serving in the Navy, building a career, and all the other responsibilities that come with adulthood, that dancer disappeared. I didn’t stop loving music. I didn’t suddenly forget how to move. But dancing stopped being part of my life. The colorful clothes went away, the club nights ended, and the young person who could spend hours moving to a beat gradually became someone who spent most of her time sitting at a desk, working, and taking care of everyone else’s needs.
For more than thirty years, that part of me was mostly quiet.
And now, at fifty-four, she’s making one hell of a comeback.
For the last six months, my body has been undergoing some rather interesting renovations. Some of them are the result of hormone replacement therapy. Others are the result of spending an arguably ridiculous amount of time waving imaginary lightsabers at brightly colored blocks.
Welcome to my current fitness program: estrogen and Beat Saber. Or, as I’ve come to call my increasingly enthusiastic version of the game, Dance Saber.
One of these programs involves a weekly injection and a great deal of patience. The other involves strapping a computer to my face, turning up the music, and attempting to convince my fifty-four-year-old legs that they are actually twenty.
Both seem determined to change my body. Neither has bothered to consult me about the schedule.
When I started hormone replacement therapy in April, I knew there would be physical changes. I’d read about breast development, fat redistribution, softer skin, and the gradual changes that come with lowering testosterone and introducing estrogen. I understood the biology, at least in the academic sense. But understanding something intellectually and experiencing it in your own body are two very different things.
At first, the changes were subtle. A little tenderness here, a slightly different feeling there. Then came the unmistakable realization that my chest was no longer merely a theoretical project. Breasts, it turns out, are quite capable of announcing their presence without consulting their owner. Especially when you roll over in bed.
And they haven’t stopped.
My hips and backside have started changing, too. Some of that may be fat redistribution, some may be weight changes, and some may simply be the result of paying attention to parts of my body that I spent decades ignoring. Whatever the combination, my silhouette is becoming increasingly feminine. My clothes fit differently. My jeans fit differently. And I’ve discovered that walking past a mirror can occasionally result in an unexpected double take.
Meanwhile, my other personal trainer has been considerably less subtle.
I’ve been playing Beat Saber for quite a while, but recently I started treating it less like a game and more like dance training. I call it Dance Saber because I don’t just stand there swinging my arms. I move my feet, bounce with the rhythm, shift my weight, lift my legs, and generally behave as though the living room is a nightclub with a particularly aggressive lighting designer.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been deliberately increasing the footwork. More leg lifts, more thigh movement, more bouncing, and more attempts to coordinate my entire body instead of just my arms. The goal is no longer to get a better score. I want to become a better dancer.
Because somewhere along the way, I remembered just how much I love dancing.
Not politely swaying in place. Not standing at the edge of the floor waiting for someone to ask me to join them. I mean really dancing. Moving my hips, swinging my arms, following the rhythm, and occasionally forgetting that I’m supposed to be a responsible adult with a mortgage-sized rent payment and laundry waiting at home.
And Dance Saber is helping.
My endurance has improved dramatically. I can spend an hour or two moving to music, sometimes followed by a walk with my dog, and still find myself thinking about getting in another twenty minutes before bed. My legs are stronger. My balance is improving. My movements are becoming more natural. I’m starting to develop the kind of coordination that lets me think less about where my feet are supposed to go and more about what the music makes me want to do.
Of course, there are consequences.
My thighs have opinions. My calves have opinions. Occasionally, my entire lower body submits a strongly worded complaint to management.
Management generally responds by playing another song.
What’s particularly fascinating is how differently these two processes are changing me.
Hormones are gradually altering my body’s appearance. My chest is fuller, my skin feels different, and the distribution of softness around my body is changing. These are slow developments, measured in weeks and months. Sometimes I don’t notice anything for days, and then suddenly a shirt fits differently or I catch my reflection and realize something has shifted.
Dance Saber, on the other hand, is changing how I use that body. It’s building endurance, coordination, and strength. The changes are more immediate and measurable. A routine that exhausted me a month ago becomes easier. A movement that felt awkward starts feeling natural. I can dance longer without needing to sit down.
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And the two processes aren’t entirely separate.
Exercise has helped me lose weight, which changes how my body looks. Hormones are influencing where I carry softness and how my body develops. As my weight changes and my muscles become more conditioned, the combined effect can be difficult to separate. I can’t look at my backside and confidently assign percentages to estrogen and dancing.
Although I admit that would make for a fascinating spreadsheet.
Glute Development: 40% Estrogen, 35% Dance Saber, 25% Pure Determination.
Unfortunately, biology refuses to provide that level of accounting.
There are trade-offs, too. Lower testosterone can affect muscle mass and strength over time, even while exercise helps maintain and develop the muscles I’m using. I’m not necessarily becoming stronger in every possible way. I’m becoming better conditioned for the things I actually want to do.
And that’s a distinction I’ve come to appreciate.
For most of my life, exercise was something I was supposed to do. Stay healthy. Lose weight. Keep the doctor happy. Avoid becoming a cautionary tale in a medical textbook. All perfectly reasonable motivations, but none of them particularly exciting.
Now I exercise because I want to dance.
I want to be able to go out on a Friday night, hear a song I love, and move without worrying whether I’ll be exhausted after twenty minutes. I want to learn more complicated footwork. I want my hips and legs to cooperate when the music gets interesting. I want to spend an evening on the dance floor and still have enough energy to walk back to my car afterward.
And yes, I want to look cute doing it.
That last part is important, too.
There was a time when I barely wanted to look at my body. It was functional. It carried me through the Navy, through raising children, through years of teaching, and through all the ordinary demands of life. I maintained it because I needed it, but I rarely felt particularly connected to it.
Now I’m paying attention.
I notice the shape of my legs. I notice the way my hips move. I notice how my clothes settle against my body. I notice the little bounce in my step, the softness developing in places that used to feel unfamiliar, and the increasing ease with which I move to music.
For the first time in my life, I’m not simply trying to make my body healthier. I’m enjoying having one.
That doesn’t mean everything is perfect. I’m fifty-four. Things ache. Recovery takes longer than my enthusiasm would prefer. My weight doesn’t always move in the direction I want, and estrogen operates on a schedule known only to estrogen.
Some days I feel wonderful. Other days I look in the mirror and wonder whether anything has changed at all. Then I put on a pair of jeans that didn’t fit quite the same way a month ago, or I finish a particularly demanding Dance Saber session, and I’m reminded that progress doesn’t always announce itself.
Sometimes it just quietly accumulates.
I started hormone therapy because I wanted my body to feel more like mine. I started exercising because I wanted to improve my health. Somewhere along the way, those two goals became intertwined with something I hadn’t entirely expected.
Joy.
Not the abstract promise of happiness someday. Actual, physical joy. The pleasure of movement. The excitement of seeing changes in the mirror. The ridiculous satisfaction of surviving a difficult song while my legs threaten to resign.
And perhaps most importantly, the freedom to stop treating my body as something I merely have to live with.
I’m learning to live in it.
I think about that nineteen-year-old dancer sometimes. The colorful clothes, the music, the confidence, the sheer pleasure of moving without worrying about what anyone thought. I spent more than thirty years away from that part of myself, and for a long time I assumed those days were simply gone.
But maybe she wasn’t gone. Maybe she was waiting for me to come back.
I don’t know exactly what I’ll look like six months from now. Hormones will keep doing their work, and I’ll keep discovering what exercise can accomplish. There will be more changes, more surprises, and probably more mornings when my thighs remind me that I am not, in fact, twenty.
But I know what I want to do with this changing body. I want to dance. And this time, I don’t intend to stop.
Happy. Moving. Consistent.
And if estrogen and Dance Saber could coordinate their renovation schedules, my thighs would really appreciate it.
