The Heavy Lift: How Learning to Lift Weights Helped Me Build Every Kind of Strength

From the most visible woman writing about weightlifting today, a ＂profoundly engrossing＂ memoir and manifesto about how lifting helped dissolve her allegiance to diet culture; taught her to be at home in her body; and led her to grow every kind of strength (Elizabeth Greenwood).

In A Physical Education, Casey Johnston recounts how she ventured into the brave new world of weightlifting, leaving behind years of restrictive eating and endless cardio. Woven through the trajectory of how she rebuilt her strength and confidence is a staggering exposé of the damaging doctrine spread by diet and fitness culture.

Johnston’s story dives deep into her own past relationships with calorie restriction, exercise, and codependency. As she progresses on her weightlifting journey, she begins to eat to fuel her growing strength--and her food cravings vanish. Her physical progress fuels a growing understanding of how mainstream messaging she received about women’s bodies was about preserving the status quo. Previously convinced that physical improvement was a matter of suffering, she now knows it requires self-regard and patience. A little pushing at a time adds up to the reawakening of parts of herself she didn’t even know were there.

A Physical Education asks why so many of us spend our lives trying to get ＂healthy＂ by actively making our bodies weaker. Casey Johnston is a voice for those of us who feel underdeveloped and unfulfilled in our bodies and are looking to come home to ourselves.

Casey Johnston is an American writer, editor, and fitness influencer. She has written the fitness advice column ＂Ask a Swole Woman＂ since 2016 and a newsletter about weightlifting, She’s a Beast, since 2021.