Anyone who has spent more than like a week with me has probably heard me announce to the world that I am physically strong.

About fifteen years ago I revised the statement to “I am strong for a girl” because I had been outperformed by too many men over the course of my lifetime and finally had to admit that my lack of testosterone was putting me at a disadvantage despite my many years of strength training on a not-very-ambitious schedule.

But still: I am strong for a girl.

So there I was the other day doing a strength training routine with Coach Kyle on Apple Fitness, flinging fifteen-pound weights around and sweating and grunting and feeling all smug when it occurred to me: am I strong, even for a girl?

And once I got to thinking about it, I realized that I only had one real datapoint in support of the thesis, and that datapoint is simply that often other females don’t even try to lift heavy things.

I’m sure a lot of this comes from the fact that I was raised by a single mother. I do not hesitate to attempt to lift heavy items because… well why would I not? Who else is going to do it? But in my experience, most females just assume that they can’t. They hang back, they wait, they walk away.

I’ve been telling myself for years that I’m strong, and in fact a major reason I recommitted to my strength training this year is because I had noticed myself getting weaker due to two full years of only doing cardio. There is a direct line to be drawn from me struggling to move a kayak in August 2025 to me in October 2026 dripping sweat on the den floor while doing renegade rows with Coach Kyle.

But those kayaks were significantly lighter this summer!

So, I’m not weak, but am I strong? Am I even strong for a girl? I really don’t know, but the story I’ve been telling myself about my strength has lead directly to a reality of basic strength in my life that I maybe would not have had if I was raised in a household where it was either implied or outright stated that girls weren’t really strong and shouldn’t be expected to lift those cases of cat litter out of the back of the Subaru.

And then there was an article in the New York Times that referenced this study in which some participants were given fitness trackers that undercounted their exercise time and others were given accurate or inflated counts. The group that experienced the deflated counts also “perceived their activity as more inadequate; ate more unhealthily; and experienced more negative affect, reduced self-esteem and mental health, and increased blood pressure and heart rate.”

I know that the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves have a huge impact on us. Often, those stories become true. I’m starting to see the actual evidence for this phenomenon all around me, and it frankly enrages me. Because so often the stories that we are told about ourselves–and that we then repeat to ourselves–are false and lead to harm.

I’ve been telling myself good stories and bad stories about myself all these years and I think it’s time to weed out the bad ones and replace them with better ones. Even if I can’t believe them yet.