Billy Blanks, I Love You: Help Me Get the Body of My Dreams

My love affair with Tae Bo workout videos

In her twenties, Anna Rollins became obsessed with exercising to Billy Blanks Tao Bo workout videos like these; image via Amazon listing

“We’d love it if you joined our spousal support group,” the wife of an attending physician said, handing me an advertisement. I was 23, and my soon-to-be husband was about to begin his medical residency. I’d been warned repeatedly that I couldn’t expect to see much of him anymore.

I glanced at my fiancé across the room, shoulders hunched and smile wide as he laughed at colleagues’ jokes between sips of champagne. His sharp blue eyes didn’t yet have dark circles beneath them. Soon, he would be more than exhausted, clocking thirty-hour shifts, working one-hundred-hour weeks.

“It’s challenging adjusting to all the hours they work. So many late evenings—and so many weekends,” the physician’s wife continued. I smiled politely as I folded the flier and tucked it in the back pocket of my jeans.

Even though I loved my future husband, part of his appeal was that he wasn’t always around. His extended absences allowed me to continue a kind of side affair.

I met Billy Blanks the same time I began studying the calorie counts on the backs of cereal boxes. It was the year 2000. I was 12, and I’d hit puberty hard. Each day, the straight lines of my girlish body seemed to be erupting. I feared the power of my womanhood. I sought a solution to tame it.

Billy’s workouts offered a solution. In the lunchroom at school one day, a friend told me about Tae Bo. “It’s like kickboxing and martial arts combined,” she said as she hesitantly picked at her sandwich. She pulled up her shirt to show off flexed, near-visible abs. “It’s a great workout. You know, in an hour, it burns over 800 calories. Plus it teaches you self-defense. Get good enough at it, and you won't have to rely on some man to protect you.”

Intrigued, I used my allowance money to buy a Tae Bo VHS at the Walmart on the hill by our house. Billy’s bulging muscles appeared in black and white on the cardboard jacket, a contrast to the bright blue background of the box.

I had a quiet affair with his videos through the rest of my adolescence. But it wasn’t his body I was attracted to. It was everything he promised. His most powerful seduction was the assurance that I would burn more calories with him than I would with anyone else.

He was just the kind of guy I’d been looking for.

Our “dates” were short initially: a half hour before dinner, a nightcap after dessert. To meet him on the screen, I descended into my parents’ unfinished basement. The room was dark, illuminated only by the glow of the television set. His video began with rhythmic clapping, music meant to manipulate your mood. My heart raced at the sound of it. A camera zoomed in on Billy mid-jab, muscles shining with oil and sweat, bright white smile gleaming in a crowded room of tightly toned middle-aged women and men with dad bods.

“I want you to be a conqueror,” Billy called out to the group of forgettable looking people. “Visualize. Vi-vi-visualize.” Everyone in the room responded with an animal scream. Then the workout began. For an hour, the crowd punched, kicked, and jabbed the empty air.

At the beginning of our relationship, I lost a few pounds.

“You look great! Have you lost weight?” one of my classmates asked. And even though I knew I had—I thought more about my weight than I did anything else—I knew the correct answer was to say, “No, I don’t think so.” It meant that I seemed carefree.

I tingled with exhilaration. This was my first time experiencing the high of weight loss.

To keep that high, I began to need Billy more and more. I snuck away with his videos after my parents were tucked into bed. I set my alarm early to spend sleepy, sweaty mornings in his care.

One evening, there was a thunderstorm. A tree struck a line, and our power went out; I couldn’t complete my workout video. I sat in my bedroom hugging my legs to my chest, rocking back and forth, back and forth. What would I do? I began to cry as I considered the consequences.

Then I heard it: the soundtrack to the video, Billy’s repetitive counting to eight. I’d recorded it in my mind. I could hear Billy’s voice as if it were my own, he a part of me. He and I were one. Wearing only an oversized grey t-shirt and a pair of ratty cotton underwear, I began to perform the memorized motions of the workout in the dark.

At the height of our relationship when I was 15, I was doing Billy four, five, six times a day. I punched and kicked and jabbed for hours. After the climax of each workout, breath heavy and sweat glistening, I raced to the bathroom. I stepped on the scale. Then I stumbled back to the basement for more.

But eventually, I grew tired of him. It felt like he made so many demands. I missed parties. I skipped sporting events. I said no to dates. I even quit basketball, an extracurricular I loved—all because I believed more time with him would lead to less of me.

Years passed. In college, I ventured out a bit. I didn’t want my roommates to see how abusive this relationship had become, so I mixed it up. Some time at the gym. Many runs outdoors. But also, of course, the videos; I would always have a particular affair with those videos.

Eventually, I met the man I would marry. Our relationship began after we danced together for hours at a mutual friend’s wedding. I’m sure this time together burned many calories—but with him, I wasn’t counting.

I loved his body, his sense of humor, his smile. He was a med student. He had to study long hours—and you know? I loved that, too. I loved that he left me alone, that his absence allowed for my long-standing side affair. I never would have fallen for a man who needed all of me full-time.

On Valentine’s Day that year, he was scheduled to work a long shift. When I returned from work in the evening, I was tired from my long day, too. I saw he’d left a card, a box of candy, a bunch of roses on the kitchen table.

“I love you,” I texted him as I sniffed the petals of a red rose, turning to our bedroom to change into a sports bra and running shorts. I noticed my legs, not how they looked, but how they felt—achy and sore.

And for a minute, I heard it, his voice in my head as if it were my own. The words of the one I truly loved, the one who loved me in return. And for a moment, I believed him. I believed I could let myself go.

Anna Rollins's forthcoming memoir, Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing Up as a Good Girl, (Eerdmans, December 9, 2025) examines the rhyming scripts of evangelical purity culture and diet culture. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Salon, Electric Literature, Joyland Magazine, NBCNews THINK, HuffPost Personal, Newsweek, and other outlets. She is a 2025 Tamarack Foundation for the Arts Literary Arts Fellow. Follow her on Instagram and Substack @annajrollins or at annajrollins.com