I enjoyed Casey Johnston's discussion of how weight training has changed her relationship with her body. She does a good job of balancing memoir with scientific discussions regarding the impact of strength training. She does a good job of relating how her view of her body was a result of how she grew up and her self image. Casey Johnston also did a great job narrating the audiobook. She told her story in a way that felt relatable and personal, and supported it well with scientific research. I appreciated learning more about the history of strength training and the specific way it has been viewed when it comes to women. I definitely recommend this to anyone interested in a new perspective on how women's bodies and health are treated in our society.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hachette Audio for providing me with an eALC in return for my honest thoughts.

I expected to enjoy this but it surpassed my already high expectations. Brava, Casey! This was a book done right by an accomplished newsletter author.

Interesting. A personal narrative of a changing body and a look at the ways that society influences our view of healthy bodies.

3.75 stars

[TBA: I received a free copy of the audiobook via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]

When I spotted this book, I had an inkling that I needed to read it — and I’m glad to say I was right.

In this memoir, Casey Johnston chronicles her journey from disordered eating-fuelled exercise to finding peace in her body through weightlifting. And was I here for it!

As a fellow runner with body imagine issues turned strength-training gym girlie, I could see myself in Casey’s experience. It’s incredibly validating and empowering to read about her journey, which she shares candidly. Also kudos to her for doing it all by herself!

Throughout the book, Casey also covers the more scientific aspects of weight training - how muscles work, why cardio-only exercise isn’t actually as healthy as we might think, and how to “bulk up” with the right nutrition. We all need a big sister figure like her to dispel diet and exercise myths for us.

If you’re easily triggered by talk about calorie restriction or overeating, approach with caution. I usually avoid such content, but noticed that it didn’t affect me too much here. Might be because Casey is broaching the subject with the power of hindsight. You can tell that she’s moved past this and has found an approach to eating and exercising that really works for her.

I have been a long time reader and appreciator of Casey Johnston's work on lifting and it was huge inspiration for me to start my own lifting journey. However, I wasn't sure what to expect with her memoir. I wasn't worried about it feeling too preaching or judgy or people who are still caught in the diet culture merry go round and I also wasn't worried about it acting as an add for her program or her newletter. I knew it would be a third things, but I couldn't wrap my head around what shape that would take. What I found was incredible vulnerability about what was happening in her life as she was learning to lift, science around lifting that helped guide her decisions making, and plenty of space for the reader to find themselves and what they might need in the places in between. I already lift and I was still inspired to find ways for my journey to evolve. It's also narrated by the author which I love. Thank you Casey.

Book 18 of 2025 - ☑️! Thank you to NetGalley, Hachette Audio, Grand Central Publishing and Casey Johnston for an ALC of A Physical Education: How I Escaped Diet Culture and Gained the Power of Lifting by Casey Johnston, narrated by Casey Johnston, in exchange for my honest review.

I grew up dancing - that was my primary form or movement for a long time. I would (reluctantly) go to the gym throughout my college years, but I didn’t really fall in love with working out until I started attending group fitness classes in the early 2010s, as a way to keep active, after having run the Disneyland Half Marathon in 2014. I also grew up watching my Mom workout, and do strength workouts long before it was popular for women to do any sort of workouts with heavy weights. (The Firm or The Steels Series, anyone?)

Casey Johnston’s A Physical Education was an interesting glimpse into one woman’s personal journey with learning to love lifting for the sake of lifting’s sake. Known as Swolewoman on Instagram, Johnston chronicles her relationship with food, her body and working out. It appears that we’re a similar age, so many of things she said really resonated with me. It can be very difficult to get to the mental place that Johnston is, but she’s a testament to being able to break out of the toxic diet & body talk to that so many of us (especially Millennial women) grew up with.

This was a solid read, and I’d give it 3/5 ⭐️. I look forward to continuing to follow Johnston on social media. #NetGalley #APhysicalEducation 🏋🏻‍♀️ 🍲 😅

I wish I had this book when I was a teenager. So I did the next best thing and recommended it to my 18 year old coworker. And then gently, ok maybe strongly, recommended she lift heavier weights.

Listened to the audiobook while lifting and found it inspirational. Johnson does an excellent job narrating her book.

Recommended for all women and for people who happen to know women.

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.

This is an inspiring memoir of a woman finding her own strength from weightlifting. As a person who has gone through the whole insecurity with my body, countless times of dieting in the past, I was worried that this could be triggering, but it's actually a rather empowering read, particularly as I'm feeling all motivated about working out recently.

In this audiobook, Casey Johnston writes about how she struggled with the diet culture and spent years on not only restrictive eating, but also endless cardio - it's not a surprise that you won't burn much from running alone. She started weightlifting and eating to fuel her body, and she found herself learning about the strength that she didn't know was there to begin with. The book goes into how she entered the gym to lift weights for the first time in 2014 and how she was feeling nervous in front of all the “gym bros”. Then there’s quite a bit about how her diet also went from with constant restriction and tracking to one that helps her to achieve her goals.

As much as it is a memoir, it is also a manifesto to encourage women to look at our bodies and how strength isn’t something we achieve overnight.

“…Creating strength is actually a process of rupture, rest, and repair: within our cells, as well as metaphorically, within our psyche. It involves becoming attuned inward, getting to know and being generous to ourselves, learning where we are and what we need. I’d always been taught that progress was a matter of raw bravery and grit and willingness to suffer, when, in fact, it requires understanding, self-regard, and patience. It requires respect for our bodies’ elegant, interconnected, inextricable systems of muscle, bone, blood, reflex, and memory.”

There are also quite a bit of writings about what she has learnt from lifting itself and I enjoyed reading the detailed description. I thought it was a very readable yet informative book.

A Physical Education is a must read for all women. We are told so many lies that lead us down the path to yo yo dieting and feeling inadequate. Five stars is not enough.

This book was part memoir and part informational about weightlifting, how-to and the benefits. It was a surprisingly practical guide and less of a memoir, but she used her personal anecdotes to drive her points home. She did highlight how she had somewhat disordered eating and showed how weight-lifting culture brought her out of this disordered eating and encouraged eating enough to fuel for the task.

I enjoyed the book, was somewhat disappointed at the how-to focus of it, wanted to hear more about her personal growth, but overall learned a lot and enjoyed the read!

I loved this audiobook so much. Literally give me an audiobook about anything I'm remotely interested in read by the author and I will EAT IT UP. This was no exception. I loved getting to hear about how Casey was able to heal her relationship with food and her body with weightlifting. It was really motivating in a way that didn't feel aggressive, and it felt like a great book for me to listen to in my journey of healing my own relationship with my body. It has me motivated to get back to lifting weights!

Casey Johnston has been writing about weightlifting for years but in the most refreshing way. This book details her experience of healing her relationship with her body through lifting weights.

I thought this was the perfect mix of informative & personal. Talking about the gym or weights or workouts can be boring! But it’s not coming from Johnston!

Would 100% recommend if this is something you’re interested in. Or think you might be interested in! It’s well written & matter of fact. I got a lot out of it. Really well narrated by the author too.

A Physical Education takes you through Johnstons journey from diet culture and counting calories to stay small to lifting and using those same calories to gain muscle. Johnston regularly talks about her struggles in the gym and the community that she found there. As someone who struggles with the idea of building muscle and fueling your body while simultaneously hearing the numbers add up, it was nice to see it all play out at the same time. The author took a lot of care when discussing topics such as eating disorders and most of this book felt like an honest conversation amongst friends. I did not know or follow the author prior to receiving an early ARC of this book but will definitely be taking a look through their socials.

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 began 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.

A Physical Education is a deep dive into diet culture, weight-lifting and body positivity. Casey Johnston expounds on her journey towards body liberation and cultivating a healthy relationship with food. I appreciated the focus on exposing the harmful diet and fitness culture and believe many people would benefit from reading A Physical Education.

Wow, this book is simply a wonderful blend between the reality of lifting, the science of it all and the emotional connection lifting has. It's empowering, incredibly informative and will most likely open your eyes to a kinder way of approaching health/fitness.

This book is like a big hug and a push to be informed of what creating a harmonious relationship with fitness, your body and your goals can look like. Not even with a step by step guide or workbook but simply from her story, her knowledge and her whole philosophy.

Truly one of a kind. And the audio was phenomenally done. Her voice is clear, it was easy to feel the emotions in the stories and easy to listen to.

I'd highly recommend this. Exactly what the world needs!!!

None of the information was all that new, in that I’ve known for years about macros, NEAT, fueling my body, and that the physical aesthetic I want weighs a lot more than I’d think. But taking in all this information again via memoir is different. While some parts likely read as a textbook if it’s new info, I so appreciated the sociology and psychological nuggets and the history of lifting she threw in throughout. Sadly, I think some of this will be triggering to those of us coming to terms with the fact that what Cosmo and Shape taught us back in the day about exercise for women is off. I’m incredibly thankful that as research is showing different means to be healthy, there are books like this to go to for advice and authors like Casey willing to share their stories. When we know better we do better right?

Written and narrated by Casey Johnston (aka @swolewoman on Instagram), the memoir follows her journey from diet culture and yo-yo dieting to becoming a weightlifter. The author first describes her learned dissatisfaction with her body and how she turned to severe caloric restriction and intensive cardiovascular training thinking it would make her thinner. She begins to question the mainstream notions of both diet culture and the hypermasculinity ideal that suffering is growth (“no pain, no gain”), and begins to redefine what strength looks like.

Part memoir, part physiology discussion, and part rejection of diet culture, I was impressed with how the author spoke with authenticity and took such care in discussing sensitive topics like eating disorders. Even if she never was formally diagnosed, she recognizes how the field has shifted and calls out her own disordered eating behaviors. It was such an intimate listening, almost like I was reading the diary of the author as she comes into her own, growing in both strength and confidence.

I wish I could share this book with so many in the thralls of self-doubt and body dysmorphia - I think we could all learn from it!

Fans of the following may like this book: What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body,

Reviewed as part of #ARC from #NetGalley. Many thanks to Hachette Audio/Grand Central Pub for the opportunity to read and review..

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This review will be posted to Instagram @AutobiographiCole on or around the release date!

Hi Casey Johnston, were you trying to rip me open emotionally? Or are we pretending this is just informative nonfiction...?

As someone already engaging a lot with health science/eating disorder content (books, podcasts, etc), I felt very prepared for this one and nothing really shocked me. What made a difference for me in this book, as compared to that other content, was her perspective and the balance she struck between gym stories, personal struggles, and science. I felt so connected with her in the human moments before and between the gym journey- like crying in the best buy bathroom or trying to stay safe as a woman on dating apps- that by the end of the book I was thinking "okay how is this going to translate for her in the gym?" (yes correct, I do now hate myself lol)

Her chapters and descriptions of her eating, especially in the bulking and cutting chapters, could absolutely be sensitive to anyone who has struggled with eating. However I don't necessarily fault her for that. This is, above all, her story ABOUT struggling with eating and exercise. The small moments describing her mindset while eating or her disentangling her emotional responses from food were both stressful and kind of comforting (for someone experiencing the same journey), and if anything I wanted more of these moments and less of the handbook-style calorie numbers and protein descriptions. While the science throughout the book was very informative, it was her emotions and like personhood that kept me engaged.

And I just want to give it up for the chapters involving her mom. If it hurt as much to experience and write about as it did to read (probably more), Casey my dear I'm sending you flowers. And let's include the dad chapters in there too because what the hell man. Those were beautiful and DEEPLY sad chapters. Starting the book with avoiding your dad's calls in college and not knowing why your consciously doing it and having us find out slowly, over the course of your lifting journey, the completely understandable reasons for avoiding that relationship?? stab me in the CHEST. It read almost like a real therapy journey- with lifting being the therapy- where at the start, all you know is the feelings and physical response and by the end, your brain has processed and delivered all of the details and reasons in HD clarity. I have read some reviews of this book saying they disliked the jumping around and disorganization of the content, but honestly that was the best thing about this book!

All in all, I really loved this story! It is definitely not for everyone, but it was (unfortunately) for me. If I start lifting in 2025, mind your business <3
thank you netgalley and grand central publishing for the audio arc!