selfaware soup

Esther Weidauer

Week of Truth

Memories for fun and profit, assault, and how powerlifting is fixing my brain

2025-06-22

One side of a deadlift barbell sitting on the ground

Powerlifting vs bad eating habits

I want to write this up as its own post. I haven’t had the time for it yet but wanted to get some of it out.

I’ve long had some unhealthy eating habits and when it got bad maybe “disordered eating” would have been the right term too. Whatever to call it, it wasn’t a healthy relationship with food. I would go an entire day without eating and then slip into bursts of binge eating that left me feeling awful.

For a long time I also constantly believed I was too heavy, had too much body fat. This dates back to long before my transition even but got much more present in my mind after that. When the world constantly demands that you “prove” you womanhood, it becomes particularly hard to escape the unrealistic ideas around thinness that are expected of women.

When I started working out about 8 months ago, I had set myself two specific goals: before turning 40 I wanted to be able to run 5km and do at least one pull-up. Neither of those has anything directly to do with body fat or losing weight, but looking back on it now it wasn’t a coincidence that I chose a running goal there since high-intensity cardio is a popular way to try and loose weight. I told people about the two performance goals I had set in order to be accountable for them which is fine, but I didn’t tell anyone about how I also really wanted to get my weight down to 80kg, from the 87kg I started at.

That would have been about 8% of my total body weight, and for someone who objectively already didn’t have a lot of body fat, that’s a lot, possibly an unhealthy amount. In order to reach it I also went on a pretty strict diet which I didn’t even really admit to myself.

A lot has changed in the meantime. I stopped running because it was just not something I enjoyed and I has to admit to myself that I only did it for my “secret” weight-loss goal. But I also found out that I really enjoy powerlifting. Unlike in bodybuilding where the focus is on aesthetics and a muscular physique, which necessarily involves a lot of weight control to make and keep all that muscle definition visible, powerlifting has one goal: get stronger, specifically at powerlifting. Nutrition is seen much more through the lens that a body needs resources in order to preform well. When I’m on r/powerlifting, the discussions are almost never about appearance or body fat percentages, but some variation of “How do I get stronger?” and the responses usually include “Are you eating enough?”.

In January I changed my training focus towards powerlifting and over time I have come to internalize this mindset without even noticing. I’m less restrictive in what and how much I eat while still keeping an eye on things and avoiding super-calorie-dense food. But the main focus is that I want to lift more weight next week than I did today. And if that means that I put on some more mass, that’s OK. I now look at the number on my scale not as a way of checking on myself but more out of curiosity and to observe a general trend. I’m back to the 87kg I started on, but I’m a lot stronger.

Damning a child with praise

Recently I posted on Bluesky about a “compliment” I often received as a kid: that I was so self sufficient, and how that can do a lot of harm to a child. That led to a short exchange including this post:

And because you’re so “skilled”, “capable”, “independent”, “low maintenance”, and let’s face it, terrible at setting boundaries….most people in your life will instinctively lean on you, strengthening the belief that your only worth in life is to be useful to others.
Incredibly damaging self-talk.

That comment hit pretty hard. I hadn’t thought about how this “praise” could have led to difficulties setting boundaries and the compulsion to make myself useful, something that I struggle with a lot. I am constantly worried that people will abandon me when I stop providing something they want or need.

Obviously that’s not a very healthy dynamic and it’s something I’m working on. Maybe this new connection to my past will actually help with that.

Assaulted

I got assaulted by a guy earlier this week, receiving a cut on my left leg and several large bruises. I won’t go more into detail here about what happened exactly.

But I was surprised and a little concerned about how quickly I went on with my week afterwards. Not long ago, an incident like this would have thrown me off for several days but now, I was pretty much back on my feet the next day.

On one side I’m glad that I can stabilize that quickly, but I’m also cautious that I’m not just burying any feelings about it. I’m definitely more vigilant now when I’m outside and I’ll observe how that develops. I don’t want to become someone who doesn’t face her emotions after such an event.

Physicially I am recovering well. The bruises are healing, my whole body no longer hurts, and the cut will just leave a small scar probably. It’s a shame though that it’s right on one of my tattoos though.

Hydrogen explosions against child abuse

I remembered an event from 8th grade in school: It was the first year in which we had a chemistry class and our chemistry teacher was largely responsible for sparking my fascination for the subject. She mostly did that through interesting explanations, all the things you’d expect from a good teacher.

But she also did a demonstration of how powerful oxyhydrogen (a gas mixture of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen) is. She filled a 1 liter plastic bottle with the gas, mounted it at a 45 degree angle and ignited the gas with a very long piece of wood that was glowing at the tip.

The loud bang reverberated through the entire school and the bottle was launched across the room, almost hitting the guy who was my worst abuser in the head.

I was sold on chemistry from that moment.

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