What Hilary Duff Said: “Stronger, Not Smaller”
In May, Hilary Duff went viral for explaining in an interview that her response to Hollywood pressures and beauty standards was to get “stronger, not smaller.” This perspective felt refreshing and quickly became a rallying cry for women.
I have never paid much attention to Hilary Duff because Lizzy MacGuire was a little after my time, and since her phrase “stronger, not smaller” was also paired with her advertisement for the Ladder fitness app, it would have been my inclination to shrug the hype off as just another fitness fad. But this new mantra came just a few months after I had started my own strength training journey, so instead, it really spoke to me. “Stronger, not smaller,” validated the work I was doing for myself and started to heal the young girl who was so profoundly influenced by the unhealthy beauty standards of the 90s and early 2000s.
Still, the power of the phrase has not been lost on fitness influencers, and like vultures, they have quickly turned it into opportunities to grab likes and follows, often promising extreme change in a short time, but that is not realistic. Body recomposition takes time, and no one is going to look like a totally different person in just 4 months, despite what apps and influencers promise.
My own fitness journey started last year. After an incredibly stressful fall semester, I spent Christmas break of 2024 trying to catch up on grading and planning, alleviating my stress with all of my favorite holiday sweets. As I hunched over essays, I developed a pinched nerve in my left shoulder blade that no amount of stretching, massaging, or Icy Hot could alleviate. By mid-January the pinched nerve was causing numbness that would work its way down into my hand. My doctor prescribed muscle relaxers and suggested that physical therapy would be the next step. By February, I was in physical therapy, but I was also very aware that the pinched nerve, and the extra few pounds, were ultimately the result of stress and not taking care of myself. As a teacher-mom, it’s far too easy for me to put myself last, and I did so habitually.
I decided that, no matter how little time I thought I had, I needed to start taking better care of myself, so my husband and I signed up for a Bootcamp challenge at our gym. Over an 8-week period, we completed HIIT-style workouts twice a week. It was challenging, and exhausting, and I didn’t lose any weight during that time, but I felt better, and I knew that mattered. Unfortunately, we went out of town for most of the summer, and the following fall semester was even more stressful than the previous year, so I fell into my old habits of putting myself last. By Christmas break 2025, the pinched nerve was back, and I knew I needed to get back into the gym.
This time, I signed up for a small group session, which consists of a personal trainer working with a small group of people rather than one-on-one. This trainer focused on strength training, mostly kept us on the floor with the machines and weights, and consistently pushed me to lift heavier. Admittedly, like many women, I was a little concerned that if I did such workouts for too long I’d get “too” muscular, and I didn’t want that, but at the time I thought: it’s only an 8-week session, if I don’t like it, I’ll do something else.
But I did like it, and after 8-weeks, I felt great. Yes, I felt physically stronger, but I also felt better mentally. There has always been evidence that exercise is good for mental health, but all of my previous experiences with exercise had been about working myself to exhaustion. I believed that it wasn’t a good workout if I didn’t feel terrible afterward, and therefore, improving my physical health meant making myself miserable. I didn’t feel that way with strength training. Sure, I sweat a lot and, especially in the beginning, my muscles were very sore, but I didn’t feel holistically terrible after my workouts, and that was a game changer for me. It kept me going back to the gym, even on days when I wasn’t feeling great, because I knew I wasn’t going to make myself feel worse.
I’ve now been consistently strength training 2-3 times a week for 4 months, the “magic” number all the apps seem to promise will “completely transform” your body. If that’s the measure of success, then I’ve failed. I don’t have before and after pictures that suddenly show a slimmer, more toned me. According to the scale, I’ve only dropped 2 pounds since February, and while I could argue that I’m replacing the fat with muscle, the smart scales I have both at home and the gym suggest that the fat percentage change has been minimal. Those data points can be discouraging, but I know differently. I might not look like a completely different person, but I do feel different. I am lifting much heavier than I was in February; I have more stamina when I do cardio, something that has always been a huge struggle for me; and while my stomach and bat wings are still areas that make me self-conscious because you can’t target fat-loss, I’m starting to see some definition in my arms, my thighs feel solid, not jiggly, and a my butt looks fantastic.
I am less worried about losing 10-15 pounds and being able to buy smaller clothes. Instead, I’m eager to have toned arms, to feel confident sitting down in shorts, and to pick up a heavier dumbbell for a difficult exercise that’s starting to feel easy. My goal has in fact become “stronger, not smaller,” Hilary just gave me the mantra I needed.
