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After years spent running and following a diet, Casey Johnston tripped on a Reddit article on the weightlifting that transformed his relationship with his body.
For Johnston, running was punishing and not particularly fun. But she had seen it as a way to reach the only objective that consumed it: not being big.
It had absorbed the cultural message that the purpose of the exercise was to make it as small as possible.
This is why, while scrolling a message of weightlifting late at night, Johnston was surprised by the way the people who raised talked about the exercise.
“I do not raise myself to be hot. I raise myself to be strong,” recalls Johnston a powerlifter devoted online. She found such a confusing, even fallacious affirmation.
“”Liar, “thought Johnston.
Some readers might think of the same thing about Johnston when they pick up his new book: Physical education: how I escaped the culture of the diet and I won the lifting power. After all, is the heat not the reason why most people train? Johnston readily admits that she was first attracted to weightlifting like another plan to lose weight.
But in his book – partly memory, partly scientific journalism – Johnston makes a captivating case to explain why force training can offer much more.
She writes with emotion how to learn to lift weights helped her strengthen emotional strength after leaving an abusive relationship and toxic work. This helped repair his food disorders and allowed him to enjoy food.
More importantly, this has changed his attitude towards his own body, that centered on the denial of pleasure in a relationship which now embraces movement, rest and consumption as well.
She discovered, she writes, that “my body could feel good to be, even powerful. My body could do things.”
Johnston spoke with NPR of his new book.
This interview has been modified for more clarity and length.
Casey Johnston, author of Physical education: how I escaped the culture of the diet and I won the lifting power
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Why was it so difficult for you to believe that the Reddit poster on which you write was motivated by a desire for force – not attractiveness?
The really short answer is probably an internalized misogyny. We cannot accept that a woman would like something, really, except to be hot.
I wanted to be honest that my motivation to get up was to be fixed on the preservation of attractiveness, heat and weight loss. It was not like: “I just want to try this thing because it seems fun.” No, what is honest is that I had tried everything (to lose weight), and I felt like nothing else worked. The momentum is so strong to continue trying to be as hot as possible, at all costs.
I think, I hope that the rest of the book unpack the transition from one to the other in the as honest way possible. I want to let people know: I’m here with you.
How did you start to consider exercise as something you do for your health and well-being, rather than making yourself smaller? And what have you learned about how the diet affects muscles?
I became overweight to the university and I wanted to quote-unquote “do something”. And I tried, at first, just a diet. I said to myself: “Great, I am too disinterested in the exercise to worry about it.” Then that did not bring me to the place where I thought I should be, the weight. So I started to exercise. I started running, hoping to burn calories.
I was running more and more and I was eating less and less, but in a way in the same place. I just had the impression that I should always lose weight. I was worried about what people would think of me.
And then I learned that what had happened through all this continuation of weight loss is that I had a diet and I exercised all my mass of the lean body. I thought my muscles were right there while waiting to be discovered if I lost enough weight. And it turned out that, in fact, if you do not actively protect your muscles, they can disappear. Your body will consume them over time.
I was not at all aware of that, so I was upset to learn that it was. But I discovered that weight lifting could run this process upside down.
As a primary care doctor, I encourage my patients to exercise as it can help health, mood and cardiovascular mobility. But I find that when I say the word “exercise” to my patients, they often hear “weight loss”. Why do you think so many people confuse these two terms?
For a long time, there was a huge pressure to think of these things like the same thing. Messaging is starting to change just in recent years. But even a few years ago, the default exercise mode was cardio. The cardio directive in popular culture has always burned calories, which concerns weight loss.
We only started to untangle them at a lot of levels. There are more scholarships on the fact that the preservation of lean muscle mass is so essential to preserve our lifestyles and our health, to make us move. Lean muscle mass is linked to metabolism; It is linked to our brain activity. The exercise may have immediate contributions on how you feel and also your cardiovascular health.
We learn much more concretely than the contribution of the exercise to health does not come from weight loss and that weight (gain) is in a way a downstream effect of many health problems.
Social pressure to lose weight is real. I find that positive activists for the body can be a little glibs on this subject sometimes: “Oh, if you like yourself enough, everything will be fine!” This advice can sound hollow.
I think that often we are talking about societal effects and individual experiences as if they were the same thing. The way we feel of our body is linked to capitalism, patriarchy and misogyny. But at an individual level, it seems disdainful to say: “Oh, you feel in this way because of capitalism.” It is not enough to help someone really take the root of what is significant for them. Why does their appearance seem so important and threatening for their livelihoods or their objectives?
I don’t want the appearance to be important. This is my least favorite thing to spend time. I just feel the obligation to talk about it rather than sweeping things under the carpet. I bring a lot of personal experience. I was obsessed with a diet because of my personal history. This does not need to mean that everyone comes from the same place.
I think your individual experience in your body counts. If you want to better understand what you feel, it’s not outside, but it’s also inside.
You write about how the gym culture can be intimidating, especially when you started to raise in 2014. Did things change?
I think that for a long time, it’s really a kind of macho and alpha thing. It was still when I started to lift. There was not much content that was accessible to people. If you wanted to learn to lift, pre-scartphone, you had to get a very dense manual.
The video is so extremely useful for learning to lift. … On the internet, I could see a lot of diversity of people who participated in lifting that would not necessarily be represented in the gymnasium where I go: the elderly, young people, women, non -binary people, people from all walks of life raising weight. All this could be present online. I could see that I don’t need to be a brother to raise.
He percolated in culture. Many people raise weights now. They are more aware that he does not need to be this intense personality you take to do it. It can be the same relationship as many people have with running, where it is like: “Oh, I am not a professional runner. I will not run marathons. I do it just because I enjoy certain aspects.”
I love this approach. I am a very relaxed jogger, which I do because it makes me feel good and it helps me to sleep, but I don’t really have a “runner identity”. Can the start of lifting also be so simple?
You don’t have to take the overwhelming thing to “oh my boy, I’m going to be completely different if I lift.” It can be super-increational. Start small. Let the natural feedback loop start. Your body is good for developing muscles. If you give him a chance, with these basic elements, I found that it could be transformer. … This work to look more closely and to listen to you is worth it.
You write beautifully how good you feel when you start to lift yourself up. Why does power training seem so stimulating for you, when diets and cardio have not done so?
It’s not just about being smaller. This is what you feel. It’s about protecting yourself. You deserve fundamental features of your body and good feelings to be in your body. Because you have to be in your body.
For me, it was always like, “Oh, your body, it sucks and it’s boring.” It is terrible that you had to face it. It’s horrible to train, and you should always minimize and hate each part of this.
The uprising has brought this angle of a) you don’t have to hate it and b) it can be a positive contribution and a good feeling. And not only in a way where you feel virtuous because you are deprived in this problematic way.
There is something to recognize how central our bodies are. We all deserve to give them time and attention. We are really encouraged from many angles to separate, disconnect, push them back in all these ways, rather than paying attention to what we feel. How do you feel to be in your body?
Mara Gordon is a family doctor in Camden, NJ, and contributor to NPR. She writes the substack newsletter Main complaint.
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