As a longtime Casey Johnston reader, I expected this to be good—but I did not expect it to be as soulful, insightful, and wide-ranging as it is. Five stars!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC.

TLDR: a powerful but flawed memoir that explores a woman’s journey from the cardio bunny mentality projected onto her by diet culture to an empowered weightlifter.

Like many women, Johnston spent much of her adult life chasing an unrealistic body through distance running and restricted eating. Each pound was harder than the last to lose. Eating less and running more wasn’t helping but leaving her feeling exhausted and starved. A chance exposure to a Reddit progress post from a woman who had just started weightlifting inspired Johnston to do research and then oh-so-cautiously dip a toe into building muscle. The book is peppered with brief sections about the history of casual weightlifting in the US, Johnston’s experiences as a writer (including during Gamergate), and more.

As someone who had a not dissimilar journey– distance running to unexpectedly falling into weightlifting and loving it– a lot of this book resonated with me. In particular, Johnston’s experiences going to the gym for the first few times and feeling intimidated felt very familiar. I think this could be especially empowering for people who are weightlifting curious or just feeling like their current workouts aren’t supporting them.

But a lot of the rest of the book kind of missed the mark for me. There’s a couple of sections talking about the history of casual weightlifting in the United States and weightlifting as a social marker. This was pretty interesting, but it didn’t feel all that relevant here, especially since these were programs and places almost exclusively used by men– I wish Johnston had spent more time talking about the social pressures to be thin that women experience (there is some of this, though I wish she had gone in more detail, especially about atypical anorexia which is ironically far more prevalent than typical anorexia). When she brought up her journalism work, especially around the time of Gamergate, I was expecting a thoughtful analysis about how toxic social pressure can be for women, especially women who don’t conform. In one of Johnston’s recent Instagram posts, she connects the dots more directly for us, saying “hating my body is my coping mechanism for feeling bad in life, and not a result of failing to be a size two.”

A Physical Education was an incredible read !I loved the audio as well. Casey does a great job showing her history and how she got into weightlifting. I loved the writing about how lifting weights changed her self-regard and her confidence.
TW for disordered eating.

Full disclosure, I wanted to read this for motivation on weightlifting + I'm a junkie with books about diet culture. Big win on both accounts. I enjoyed reading her journey with reprogramming everything she thought was the right way to look at nutrtion and exercise. I'm right there waith you, Casey Johnson! The more I read and learn, the more I'm eager to get going. Plus, I came away with additional resources :)

Thanks to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for an early copy.

Synopsis:
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.

What I really loved:
- I LOVED Casey's transparency, honesty, and vulnerability. Starting out into lifting brings about a million different thoughts (skepticism - no way if I just "do this" I could look, feel, be "this" - fear of failure, fear of "what if it doesn't work and I just get fat," fear of getting to "bulky," fear of ... everything! She laid it all out there for you to follow along with, and I found myself saying so often "that was me - I had those same thoughts too!" I'm just fresh enough into lifting that this resonated so wildly with the path I've just started to take myself, and man, so motivating.
- I loved the science, the research, the straight-forward "this is how your body works" aspects. Anyone can sell a supplement or a workout program, but science at the end of the day is science, and how your body works is how it works, and strength training is fully backed by science and facts, and if you pair it with nutrition ... well, welcome to the Matrix, a whole world you never knew existed because you'd been lied to your whole life and discovered you've been living in the Upside Down the whole time instead.
- This book helped everything to officially "click" in my brain. I get it now, and I'm ready to GO!

What I didn’t love:
- Nothing. There was absolutely nothing I didn't love. The only thing I wish was that I could've had more to read - it felt like a conversation with Casey just nerding out on this revelationary change in her life and how we could have it, too. So, I guess I'm off to find her newsletter and sign up for it, because I want more of this positive body talk sponsored by science and a dash of hope!

Overall:
Where do I start to sum up how much I loved this book? I follow Meg Gallagher (Meg Squats) on socials and have started following her program decently closely in the last 10 months. I didn't pick up a barbell officially until 11 weeks ago (finally feeling more confident and ready to take the leap). A handful of days ago, Meg posted a story with the cover of the book and said she was excited to read it. So of course I ran to Netgalley to see if I could snag an early review copy, devour it, and review it. And here I am. Best book I've read of 2025, and a pivotal book in helping me see the world, food, my body, and strength/lifting in an ENTIRELY new light. It's as if the curtain has been pulled back and I can see everything for what it is. And Casey hit on ALL the same thoughts and feelings I've had as I've begun on this little journey - the hesitation and skepticism, the mind-blowing moment of understanding where strength and nutrition clicked, the immediate liberation, the empowerment ... the list goes on. I can't recommend this book enough, especially to women. If you're caught in the cycle of "diet" culture, signing up for the next fitness class or cardio-whatever hoping it might work this time ... do your future self a massive favor and just pick up the book - stay open-minded and willing to listen, and your life will change drastically for the better.

Thank you to both Grand Central Publishing and Netgalley for allowing me to read an early review copy! I will be buying a physical copy as well, because man, this was a good one.

This book is like having a super encouraging gym buddy who also happens to be wicked smart and funny. Casey, known for her “She’s A Beast” newsletter and no-nonsense fitness advice, delivers a book that’s part memoir, part workout guide, and part pep talk for anyone who’s ever felt intimidated by fitness culture.

Casey Johnston came of age in the post-feminist era of Beavis and Butthead, and Britney Spears’s baby girl aesthetic. Being a high-achiever in an alcoholic family system, she embraced academic and physical accomplishments (only valid if accomplished in a thin body, of course) over connection and community. She enters adulthood dissociated, depressed, and prone to abusive relationships. Fortunately, strength training brings her back to life. Equal parts memoir, training manual, and consciousness raising ‘zine, A Physical Culture is made for this cultural moment.

Johnston’s journey begins after a grueling half marathon on a frigid January day in Central Park. There’s no one to cheer her on or celebrate her at the finish line. Her only reward is a celebratory breakfast at a local restaurant, where a male patron appraises her double breakfast order before noticing the race bib pinned to her chest. His eyes light up, and he nods approvingly. After all, women must earn their food. For Johnston, it’s a wake up call. Starving and punishing her body have taken their toll, and she’s ready for something new.

A problem solver (she studied engineering at Columbia University), Johnston begins researching other ways to, well, lose weight. In the process, she enters the world of strength training, which gives her the confidence—and metabolism—to ditch diet food and running. Before long, she’s dumped an insecure, slightly unhinged boyfriend, left a bro-culture tech writing job where she’s overworked and underpaid, and joined a merry band of kind, blue-collar weight lifters at a storefront gym in Bushwick, Brooklyn. This is where the memoir’s magic begins. We’re treated with reflections on, among other things, class-based ideas around weight lifting and a fascinating account of the 1880s physical strength movement, which centered socialism and workers’ rights.

Today, Casey Johnston is a successful science, health, and fitness writer whose work has appeared in major publications; an Instagram star (40K+ followers); and the creator of the popular She’s A Beast strength training newsletter, which boasts 25K+ subscribers. For Johnston, weight lifting, unlike running and over-achieving, heals the crippling perfectionism and alienation that began in pre-adolescence. Hers is a rallying cry that inspires the reader to ditch soul-destroying toxic femininity and get lifting. I’m in.

I received an ARC of A Physical Education from NetGalley and want to thank both NetGalley and Hachette Publishing for the opportunity to review it via audiobook and eBook. I enjoyed it so much (there’s lots to explore and contemplate) that I’ll be purchasing a hard copy for my library.

There’s a point in Casey Johnston’s new book, A Physical Education, that’s clarifying for me. In chapter 26, after nearly 200 pages chronicling her journey into weightlifting and all the lessons she learned (or unlearned) along the way, Johnston recounts going home for Thanksgiving and trying to pitch strength training to her mom.

The effort doesn’t get very far: Johnston takes her mother to the gym and tries to teach her to squat. She complains and argues the whole time. When they’ve finished lifting, Johnston’s mom is not convinced it was enough of a workout so she steps away to do more of the kind of exercise she’s used to.

Later on, Johnston broaches the topic of calorie expenditure and how much her mom ought to eat, which leads to her mother saying she’ll gain weight if she eats more. Johnston asks why it would be so bad if she gained three pounds. Her mother’s response:

“No one likes fat old women.”

The whole interaction is stunningly familiar. The back-and-forth between a mother and daughter, where the daughter is trying to share newfound knowledge that she believes will help her mother be less miserable, only to have the mother take it as an insult to her own intelligence: “Well, I’m just stupid, I guess.”

How do we all have the same mom? I wondered, but it wasn’t just the mother-daughter aspect. The scene drew to mind conversations I’ve had with Gen X women worried about their waistlines and posts upon posts in women’s fitness groups on Facebook and Reddit where women are asking for advice on how to lose a measly six pounds and the same “calories in, calories out” garbage gets regurgitated in the comments, regardless of whether the person posting mentions brain fog and fatigue in workouts.

Attempts to challenge the previous generation’s long-held notions about bodies, exercise, and scales seem mostly futile.

Casey Johnston has been writing about lifting for years. She started her column, Ask a Swole Woman, in 2016, originally publishing through The Hairpin, then Self and Vice, before going independent with her newsletter She’s a Beast. Through Ask a Swole Woman and She’s a Beast, Johnston built a reputation for herself as a source of reliable, no-BS fitness advice that made gym bro topics accessible to people with no training background.

In many respects, A Physical Education, releasing May 6, is a culmination of Johnston’s fitness writing, but it’s not a manual or book of how-tos. Instead, the hybrid memoir tells Johnston’s own fitness story, taking tangents along the way to dive into fitness history and science and debunk common misconceptions about strength training, body recomposition, and food. Along with reading about Johnston’s first failed attempt at benching the empty barbell (what the kids call a canon event), you learn alongside her about the simple elegance of a strength program, that women being cold all the time may actually be due to not eating enough, how muscles rebuild themselves during rest, and that the difference between the sexes in terms of relative number of fast-twitch versus slow-twitch muscle fibers is overblown.

Many of the misconceptions are things Johnston had to unlearn in order to fully embrace her own strength. While lifting gave her permission to question what she’d always assumed about her body, questioning those assumptions allowed her to get more out of lifting.

As Johnston grows stronger, she marvels at her body’s ability to adapt. She flexes in the mirror and admires the previously invisible muscles on her back. She moves the giant bag of kitty litter with remarkable ease. She’s stunned that someone like her could get strong like this. Why doesn’t everyone lift?

This is why she starts telling people about it. Her friends. Her mom. (I assume this is also why she started writing her column.)

A Physical Education is basically a book-shaped show-and-tell about why Casey Johnston loves lifting. She’s not making an argument. She’s just showing us: This is how lifting changed me and this is everything I’ve learned about it. All benefits, basically no downsides. And did I mention that you get to eat a lot? Cause you do. You need to eat a lot if you want to get stronger.

It’s as if she stepped back from that conversation with her mom, evaluated all the things that might hold her mom back from trying to lift heavier, and decided to write what she wished her mom would know — about Johnston’s personal experience and the facts that support her pursuit of strength.

When you find something you love, you want other people to love it too. When you discover a new way of living that breathes more confidence and energy into your existence, you want the people you love to reap the same benefits. For those of us who love fitness, the challenge is to share that love without being obnoxious, without being pushy, without coming across as arrogant know-it-alls. Hopefully, without being challenged to an impromptu arm-wrestling match.

For women who love lifting, the waters can seem especially choppy. Our bodies are often in the limelight. Comparison is a commonly harbored disease. You never know what someone might take personally. Is it possible to be sensitive and honest and direct all at once?

One particular strength of A Physical Education is that Johnston is sharing her own story. Yes, it’s full of facts and figures that preach the benefits of lifting, but it’s grounded in her individual experience. She was worn out from years of endless cardio and dieting. She didn’t consider herself an athlete. She didn’t think she was strong. If an everyday, non-lifting, non-gym-going person is looking for someone to relate to, Casey Johnston is it. And if they dive into her journey, join her on the floor of Richie’s Gym in Bushwick, Brooklyn, they might just be on the way to their own re-education.

Published here: https://womensbarbellclub.substack.com/p/why-casey-johnston-loves-lifting

I have been waiting for a book like this. A story of unapologetically taking up space. A raw, authentic journey of leaving societal expectations in the rear view and embracing strength and size. Casey Johnston's story is so inspiring I started lifting heavier weights, and have felt my own personal goal shift from "strong and svelte" to "strong at whatever size I end up being, because that is where my body is meant to be." This book is also incredibly informative. I feel like I now know more about strength training than I ever did before, and I have been lifting for years. Casey's meticulous research, approachable writing style, engaging humor, and refreshing candor make this a must-read for any woman who is tired of feeling like she has to stay small.

This book covers important topics about physical activity and the woman’s body. The importance of strength training and the physiological differences between a woman’s body and a man’s. Along with the societal ideals placed on women and what their bodies should look like. However through the middle of the book it dragged on. There were stories interwoven that I did not really enjoy. It was giving a history of sorts, but it was unclear to me what I was supposed to do with some of the information. Thank you to NetGalley for this advanced copy.

This was a pretty good book about Casey’s self discovery in and around fitness,
I went into this thinking it was going to be more of a motivational read so I was let down in that aspect,

It was interesting to sit with the thoughts of women’s bodies and how the world looks at them. And finding life in the gym.

Really great. If you've read Casey Johnston's writing for years, as I have, I think a lot of this will be pretty familiar - not in a bad way, reading her writing is a pleasure - but if you've never crossed her path, it will be revelatory.

I LOVED this book. I feel like I read this book at the exact perfect time, and the way Johnston writes is beautiful and so engaging. I followed her already on her blog, but I never really got the background on how she started, and this book was a fantastic and in depth dive into how she started and how it shifted her mindset. I was also inspired to begin lifting/weight training from Johnston's blog, and this book only solidified my new goal to bench and squat my body-weight (eventually). This book is a true delight, I want to give this book to everyone in my life (women especially) and hope they too can find inspiration reading this book like I did.

I did not know who the author was before reading her memoir. I thought it would be interesting as I’ve been dabbling in lifting but still have a lot to learn. This was a quick, enjoyable memoir. The author beautifully wove her personal and family story into her fitness journey. I appreciated the science and the why behind lifting and muscles. It was easy enough to understand for a person without knowledge on the subject matter.

I'm a longtime fan of Casey's so I was always going to be the ideal target audience for this one and predictably I loved it, but I think the greatest value of the book is that it provides an even more widely accessible way for her to get her knowledge and message across to a much bigger group of readers. The book format, combined with her already strong and relatable writing, gives her the opportunity to go into more depth and tell her own story at more length in a way that will not only appeal to people who were already aware of her work, but also allows for more overall reach than an online column or podcast, no matter how popular, ever can. For my part, I'm very excited to have a book to recommend to people interested in fitness, weight training and overall health, instead of having to link to her website and newsletter and tell them to read around. This title will also have a lot to offer readers, especially but not limited to women, who are approaching their own fitness journey in the context of diet culture (which it's impossible for anyone not to be, of course, regardless of our experiences with either).

Before she took up weightlifting, Johnston was a runner. Not because she loved running, not because she even liked running, but because she thought she had to be to fit the mold of Thin Delicate Woman that she'd spent most of her life striving to be. She was sick of running, and she was sick of dieting.

"For a long time, "weight loss" formed my entire conception of my body. Either I was small enough (and always getting smaller), or I was a disappointment. [...] But it's hard to recognize how narrow your worldview is until you become receptive to having it challenged." (loc. 110*)

This is one of those books that is so far up my alley it's knocking on my door. I'd read a couple of chapters and then go to work and talk to one of my coworkers about the books (plural!) I was reading about weightlifting and similar exercise, and then later in the week I'd meet the same coworker for a weightlifting class and spend half the class thinking about my form and half the class spacing out a little and half the class thinking about how much of those books did and didn't apply in the moment. (You do the math.)

I come at weightlifting from a different place than Johnston, and I doubt I'll ever end up in the same place as her, but there are definite intersections. I genuinely love running and spin classes and just cardio generally (give me spin classes or give me death). If I go to the gym on my own I will look at the weights and tell myself I *should*, but then I *don't*, because...I could lift something heavy, or I could get on the elliptical and read, and I'd rather read. But I go to weightlifting partly because it's good for my bones and partly because it's very social (you haven't lived until you've heard one of the middle-aged women in the class lecturing an overconfident barrel-chested man in too-tight shorts for lifting too much weight with bad form and not protecting his back) and partly because I'd like my arms to someday not be noodles (wishful thinking) and partly because, yes, strength training requires actually thinking about things like consuming enough protein and eating all the meals (two things that I have not, historically, been great at). I'm not committed enough to build up my weights much, or to abandon my cardio-happy routine.

But Johnston went all in. Not right away: She tested the waters first, did her research, and gave her body a chance to tell her if it was going to rebel from the change in routine (or regime). And gradually, as she gained strength and improved her form and got comfortable being the only woman lifting weights in the gym, she started to find that her relationship with her body changed—she didn't want to be thin. She wanted to be strong. And because she was a writer already, she knew how to dig into the research and science to figure out why things worked the way they did, and why they *didn't* work the way she'd always been told they were supposed to.

This leaves me with a lot to unpack. I already devote more thought that I probably should to ambivalence about what lifting weight does to the body, but I'm so terribly curious about the shift in mindset that Johnston describes. This doesn't inspire me to throw out my cardio classes (I made my knuckles bleed at boxing! Probably a sign that I'm doing something wrong, but also I'm proud of myself), but it does make me think that it's maybe time to actually check out the weight rack at the gym outside of class hours. Maybe. And chocolate protein powder in porridge sounds oddly edible...

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

I have had a few stalled or failed starts at Casey's Couch to Barbell program, but always appreciated the plain-spokenness of her fitness journey in the smaller pieces I've seen on She's A Beast or Instagram. She's not some all-knowing guru, but she knows more than I do. This book is, honestly, truly revelatory. Knowing where Casey came from, seeing parallels in my life, and seeing her succeed in her fitness goals gives me so much hope. Not to mention, it's really well-written. Funny, biting, insightful. All without veering too schmaltzy or too cynical. When it comes out, I definitely plan on buying a couple copies for friends.

This book is so timely because I've seen more and more articles advising women to strength train as they get older rather than focus on cardio. I learned so much and Johnston is truly an inspiration. Highly recommend for women of all ages who want to get inspired and get stronger!

Thank you to the publisher & NetGalley for the advanced copy.

As a non never will be weight lifter this was fascinating for me.CaseyJohnson shares with us her past in the diet culture her issues and how she has been empowered by her power lifting,I will be subscribing to her newsletter she is very inspiring whether you are a gym goer or not.#netgalley

Fans of Ask a Swole Woman know what Casey Johnston's all about: releasing ourselves from the pressure to be thin at all costs via punishing amounts of exercise and eating the smallest possible meals, for years at a time, ad infinitum. Even those of us who never "succeeded" at such a thing rarely stopped the pursuit. Casey stopped, and discovered an entirely different path in the world of weight lifting.

She talks about her story, her progress and setbacks, and what science, medicine and her mom have to say. It's all interesting, and a lot of it is instructional. It's certainly inspirational -- whether you can join a fancy gym or a shabby one or get some weights of your own or rustle up some things that you can lift that aren't technically weights, this life-changing adventure is there for the taking.

ARC provided in exchange for an honest review.