Factually! with Adam Conover - Why Strength Training Kicks Dieting’s Ass with Casey Johnston

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

Being in “good shape” doesn’t just mean changing your diet in pursuit of unrealistic standards of thinness; it means challenging your body to be more capable today than it was yesterday. In recent years, weight lifting has been catching on as a primary exercise focus for both men and women who are trying to live healthier lifestyles. This week, Adam sits with Casey Johnston, author of A Physical Education: How I Escaped Diet Culture and Gained the Power of Lifting, to talk about the gains that can be made by breaking out of diet culture and lifting instead. Find Casey’s book at factuallypod.com/books--SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Hey, welcome to Factually. Adam Conover, thanks for joining me on the show again. You know, for most of my life, one word has dominated American fitness, diet, and physical culture. And that word is thinness. To ward off being labeled as fat, you literally had to be on the run, running countless miles, doing tons of cardio,

and controlling and limiting what you ate as much as possible, avoiding fat, avoiding carbs, avoiding anything that would make your body unthin. And this obsession with thinness, that has lasted almost a century in American culture has caused untold misery. It has wrecked American self-esteem. It creates eating disorders.

And it also just pushes us to miss out on a lot of really good food that we might enjoy eating. And worst of all, none of it fucking works because the U.S. obesity rate has tripled in the last 60 years. And look, whether or not you like that stat and a lot of people don't for good reason,

it at least indicates that diet and fitness culture has not worked to make us thinner and that might indicate that maybe thinness isn't the best fucking goal because the worst thing about this fixation on body size is that it has made us loose track of what it actually means

to be healthy and fit in the real sense, the sense of fitness for purpose. Can our bodies do the things that we want our bodies to do that actually make our lives better? Well, look, if any of that resonates for you, I think you're really going to love today's episode,

because today on the show, I have a woman who changed her way of thinking about her body, her entire approach to diet and exercise when she stopped running and dieting and started eating and weightlifting. Weightlifting is having a moment in American culture. More and more people are doing it, specifically more women are doing it after decades of being discouraged from doing so. And my guest today is one of them and one of the ones leading the way. Her name is Casey Johnston. She's written an amazing new book called A Physical Education about her own personal transformation and how you can do the same. And she has a wonderful newsletter that has inspired countless people to do the same

thing. I'm a huge fan of hers. I know you're going to be a fan, too, after you hear this conversation. And I just want to remind you that if you want to support the show and all the conversations we bring you every single week, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Over five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show ad free. And of course, if you want to come see me to do stand up comedy on the road and hug me with your big mussely arms at the meet and greet after every single show, head to

Adam Conover.net for all my tickets and tour dates. Coming up soon, I'm headed to Braya, California, Tacoma, and Spokane, Washington. I'm going to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, D.C., Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Oklahoma, bunch of other great cities as well. I'd love to see you out there. Once again, Adamconover.comnet for all my tickets and tour dates. And now, let's get to this conversation. Once again, my guest is named Casey Johnston.

She's the author of the new book of Physical Education. She has a Wonderful newsletter called She's a Beast. I know you're going to love this conversation. please welcome Casey Johnson. Casey, thank you for being on the show. Thank you for having me. I've been reading your wonderful newsletter for many years. I know your story.

The story is in your book, but what's the short version for your audience? The short version of this book is it's my story of getting into lifting weights as someone who is very reluctant and suspicious about it and not really interested in it at all, except that I saw a post online of somebody's experience getting into it. And I was like, this seems like it's none of the bad things that I've been told and only the good things, only good stuff, all of the stuff that I want. So it's that story plus suffused with like science, the science of like how muscles work, how protein works, some cultural stuff, a lot kind of mixed in there. What were you doing before you saw this post and started lifting weights? I was running.

That was my main activity and I was dieting a lot and I was just like not on some like wildly ambitious weight loss journey, but I just had a sense that I should be losing weight, losing weight all the time because if you're not losing weight, you're gaining weight. And yeah, that was it. And I was just sort of never getting to the point of feeling like I was at an equilibrium. I was running more and more and eating less and less. and it just all never sort of gelled, you know. And your only fitness goal was to lose weight? Yeah, yeah. We didn't have fitness like we have now.

This was only 15 years ago or so, right? How long ago was it? Right. It was like, it was 2008 when I first got into running. So it was like, that's almost 20 years ago. I mean, we did not. I started running around the same time. Okay.

I, around that year, I quit smoking. smoking and I started running the same year. Okay. And then I ran in, what was it, the 2011 New York Marathon. Okay. And so I was running, running, running for a long time. And I liked running. Running changed my life in a lot of ways.

I found it very, I did find it beneficial. Okay. But you're kind of anti-running. Yeah, I was anti-running like from a young age. I was like, I don't like running for running sick. That's the thing. Like a marathon would be kind of my nightmare. But I don't know.

I played sports and stuff. So it was like that running was fine. But yeah, just running with nothing else happening is like a form of torture. You listen to a podcast. Yes. Well, now you do this is the thing. Podcast has just been invented when I started running. I had an iPod, a spinning disc iPod, and I loaded it up with this American Life episodes that I had downloaded in like a big archive of MP3s.

I used to listen to Science Friday. and, or my other ones. I think there was a World of Warcraft podcast. It was just, I mean, you need something, you need something high volume when you run. Like, you need a lot of minutes. Radio Lab, WTF with Mark Merrin, OG podcast.

Never Not Funny with Jimmy Pardo, another early podcast. Yeah, I mean, that made it bearable. But I sort of would think of running as like a general activity. I think a lot of people tried to just run nonstop. And I was a run walker. I would, like, take it easy. Okay. Well, you were, like, early to that.

Like, now that's the thing. It's, like, slow running. Have you heard of this? I picked up a book by a guy named Jeff Galloway, who's a running guy who, his whole approach is you run and then you walk and then you run and then you walk. And, like, just walk if you need to walk. But I understand why a lot of people hate it. But I feel like I'm getting a little far afield.

Like, it seemed like to you, it was part of, like, an unhealthy. suite of fitness behaviors. Yeah, I mean, it did get to that point where I got into running just for sort of specifically for the torture aspect of it where I was like, I didn't want to do it for fitness or to like do anything achievement oriented. Really, I wanted to lose weight. That was like the sort of extent of it. And then I backed into eventually doing half marathons because I was like, I need something to sort of give this structure because it sucks. And I mean, eventually got to a point where I was running a lot. And I used to hear people say, like, oh, just running is like, you know, it's the worst part

of your day. But then it's over. And I was like, okay, that kind of makes sense to me, I guess. Like, you know. If that's how you feel about it, definitely don't run. Well, I mean, how many people are out there with that exact mentality. Punishing themselves. Right.

So, yeah, that was my relationship with it. It was like, I don't like it. But I feel like I have to do it. And, you know. I will say also, I do like running. I still run. But, you know, it's classified. I think you'd call it endurance exercise, distance running.

Okay. And endurance, it's in the word, you're enduring it. Exactly. Exactly. And I felt like one of the things that gave me was the ability to, like, I was running a lot. And I would, like, keep track of how much I ran and how far. And then when I started doing stand-up comedy, I started doing open mics, I used some of the same approach where I kept like a log. Yeah.

And I was like, I have to go do this much. You need your reps. Even though it's uncomfortable. and that eventually when I started making a TV show and I was on set. I was like, okay, it's a 12-hour day, but I'm just going to push through. So I felt like a lot of my life was about endurance, like literally enduring stuff. But that's not necessarily a good way to go through life. Well, I think there's something to be said for that.

It's like it should life be composed of only like the pleasurable parts, like, or can it be? It probably shouldn't be. But like, I think I get on a bit of a tangent in the book where it's like, there was all of this language, especially at that time around exercise where it was very like, it was about transcending pain. It was like necessarily working out will be awful and painful and your job is to like push that aside. Right. So that did not, that spoke to my mentality that I had developed in life, I think, where it was like I'm just pushing aside or like pushing down a lot of my feelings. a lot of like my experiences and just distrusting them, distrusting myself. And that was, so it's sort of resonated with my outlook, but that's not, that's like not ultimately a good way of going through life. And then the contrast that lifting brought to it was like, you're supposed to pay attention

to the pain and like the feedback from your body. Like that's information that you need in order to structure. how you work out or how you feed yourself or how much rest you need it's like you need you need to pay attention you need to be able to read those signals rather than pushing them aside so what's the like once you started lifting what was the like sea change for you right from from fasting and running and trying to be smaller what what's the the the big difference with lifting as an approach to thinking about your body yeah well i mean when i read about this woman's program online she was like not working out that much. I work out three days a week for like half an hour. I do three

lifts, which like I had never known of strength training as something that like was sort of could be like compact and like a limited time investment. Like I only knew of it from the backs of magazines where they would have these like lengthy workouts. That was like three sets of 12 reps of like, you know, 10 different movements. And it was like this is overwhelming. So I really appreciated that it was like small time investment and it this post explained kind of like how you're supposed to move through lifting. I'd only ever thought about it. Like you go up to the weights and the weights, you pick out the weights that you can use and you use them. And then that's it, I guess. But it turned out that like you can just as a normal person without having any particular

talent for getting strong can add a little bit of weight every time you go to the gym, at least when you're new to it. So you can get strong, like very strong, very quickly. Like at the time that I, before I started lifting, it's like, uh, there's an anecdote in the book about how one of my great nemesies is this box of cat litter, this like particular type of box of cat litter that I have to buy because it's like economical 40 pounds of cat litter. But that's so much cat litter to live. And I would struggle with it, like just struggle to get it into my apartment. And like when you live in Brooklyn, you don't have a car, so you have to carry everything everywhere. So I was like lugging home this box of cat litter from the store trying to get into my apartment. But when

you start lifting weights, you learn and experience that you can get to lifting 40 pounds in like a matter of weeks. Wow. So that was mind blowing to me. So I forgot what your original question was. What drew me into it? Yeah, I mean, this was a big part of it. Those are some big components. As opposed to punishing yourself over a long period of time. Yeah, it's kind of like building a skill. Yeah. Why do you think that like this was a revelation to you?

I mean, weight lifting is not something that's often promoted to women in American fitness culture. Why is that and what are the barriers? Oh, well, I think, I mean, things have changed a lot in the last like 10 years. So I got into it in 2014. But, I mean, at that time, it was like, there was a lot of. emphasis on long lean muscles, on weight loss. And it was sort of like, lifting is hard, lifting is intense. It's going to make you bulky. You don't need to bother with that stuff. You can just do cardio or like a little yoga. And that's enough. Like, don't worry about learning

this super complex thing of lifting weights. So it was sort of, it was a bit of an aesthetic thing, But then it's also like if you think more deeply about it, it's like when you want to subdue somebody, you want to keep them as separate from their body, like sort of as displaced and dissociated from their body is an insane as possible. So like that's like that serves, that serves a purpose for all of us. But as much as we, you know, I think a lot of that kind of cultural program. is sort of doubly programmed for women. So it's like all the more, the more the better for us. Trying to keep you tired and hungry so you can't fight back. Oh, yeah.

I mean, I think later I realized like I literally would expend so much brain power. Not like deliberately thinking about food, but just like I couldn't stop thinking about food because when you diet, you, it does literally rev up your, like, focus on food. and you become sort of like rigid, emotionally labile, like all of these things that are not only often ascribed to like being a woman, but like are symptomatic of dieting, basically. And when I looked back, I was like, wow, I really did like my experience, my mental experience really reflected those symptoms. Like by engaging in diet culture, you focus yourself more on food. Like you become, it consumes more your day.

It's like a vicious cycle, yeah. It's a little bit like why when I quit smoking, the advice that helped for me was don't try to cut back. Because when you cut back, it'll make you obsessed with the one cigarette that you allow yourself. Oh, okay. Interesting. Yeah. No, the philosophy, this is from a book by Alan Carr called The Easy Way to Quit Smoking that I swear by. He says, basically you need to convince yourself that you don't need to smoke to be happy.

And then you throw away the pack of cigarettes, you never touch it again. Is this the guy where he's like, you can smoke as much as you want to. while you're reading the book. Okay. Interesting. I think I've heard of this one. It's a lot of people, people who have read this book will tell you that it works. I am one of them. It does in fact work. It was written in the 80s by an old British guy. There's a lot of stuff that's dated. He says that cigarettes are not physically addictive. I disagree with this, but I do agree the physical addiction doesn't last as long as you think it does. You kick it in a week or two. It's a psychological addiction. It's the belief that you need the cigarettes. And the entire book is

an attempt to brainwash you. I'm sorry, we're discussing a different book. But the entire book is an attempt to brainwash you and believing that you don't need the cigarettes that you, which is true. You don't need them. Yes. The, the, to finish the summary, uh, he basically says the way that you, the reason you can't quit is because you think that if you never have another cigarette, you'll want a cigarette again for the rest of your life. And you'll never have that just had a cigarette feeling again. But the reality is, everyone who doesn't smoke, that's how they feel all the time. They always feel like they just had a cigarette. All the cigarette gives you is the lack. So if you can actually believe that and understand that, then you can throw away the pack of cigarettes and say, I'm a happy non-smoker.

I don't need it anymore. But if you cut back, you're reinforcing the belief that the cigarette is what makes you happy. That makes sense. And you're depriving yourself. And therefore, every cigarette you smoke becomes even more important to you. And you can't ever quit. Sorry that I fell into that. No, no.

I remember this from reading about it, that it was sort of like the cigarette creates a continuous vacuum that can only sort of. be filled or met by another cigarette. Yeah. And that's, I was like that. And that is the only thing it gives you is it gives you the craving. And cravings can be fun to fulfill, you know? It's, there's a satisfying roller coaster up and down, you know, that is chemical dependency.

But like, if you actually want to quit, you have to understand that you don't need this. And so I, I, just the psychology clocked for me as being similar of like diet culture, if you are restricting, then you are, like, deforming your relationship. with it, but you are making it also more important to yourself in a way that maybe it doesn't need to be. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's definitely a, like a sublimation or like an abstraction of your, like, I don't know. It definitely comes. I mean, like, part of the reason I tried to thread through my personal story and then like all of these cultural forces is that there's like a feedback loop between them where it's like, it's so common to you have an eating disorder because you like feel

out of control in your regular life. And that's very common for children who don't have, like, supportive parents, like a solid family structure. And that becomes the way that they express a need for control, a type of control that they can have. It's like you can always sort of control. It's like for kids, you can't even control access to food, but you can control how much you eat.

Like, I wasn't like, some, sometimes this happens when kids are really young, but it becomes a reflex or like a way of even just punishing yourself, but also just controlling some aspect of your life without having to really think about what else is going on, I guess. Like, that's the dynamic. How did your relationship with food change once you started lifting? Oh, a lot. I so I was definitely like concerned about eating more in my in my like disordered way but I was willing to try it for this purpose of like let's just see if this works because I feel like I've tried everything else in the opposite direction didn't work so speaking of the poster that I stumbled on this woman described eating like twice as much as I was eating on a regular day. day, even on the days that she wasn't working out. And that was, you know, mind-blowing to me also. So I figured I'd tried. It's like, in a way, didn't really need an excuse to, it was like, oh, something is finally going to let me eat more, like, and not just for the purpose of eating

more, because you should eat more. Because, like, I don't know. I, I had a lot of resentment for these, for media that centered around, like, oh, just like, love yourself and, you. And, eat more. I was like, that doesn't make any sense to me at that time. I mean, well, I was like, that's not, I felt that those types of messages didn't understand the stakes of what was going on with me and food and like what the pressures that are on me. It's not, it felt like, I mean, it is ultimately about loving yourself. I'm like, I know that now. But like, what states are between me and loving myself is not my ability to love myself. It's like everyone else kind of shouting at you that like you shouldn't love yourself in that way. And you're saying,

oh, love yourself. It's like, oh, okay. You're just saying you're one voice. That's the opposite. Yeah. So, but I was just willing, I was willing to try this experiment and it was sort of immediate how the physical effects of it. Like I, when I lifted at first, I was, was like, this is not, I'm so worried this is not doing anything. I'm not sweating. This doesn't feel difficult. And maybe this will all be a huge mistake. And then I got out of the gym and I was like, I am incredibly hungry in a way that I've never felt before. Like I felt I've been hungry. Like I've been hungry and been like, you can't eat, you can't eat. But this was like, my body was like, I needed, needed food. Yeah. I started, I started weight lifting a couple years ago. I remember that feeling.

I should have said that earlier in the interview. I know. I thought we were going to be arguing the whole time where you're a runner and I'm listening. No, no, no. This was, I, it's just funny because I also started exercising as a runner, but I like it more than most people. And I find that interesting. Okay. But no, when I started weight lifting a couple of years ago, I remember I was, I'd be so incredibly hungry.

Yes. The day that I worked out. And different in a way than like you run nine miles or whatever and like you're hungry after that. But it's different. Yeah, it was different. And it would feel. so good to eat. I remember there was one time early in the first couple months where we had lifted pretty heavy and then a bunch of my friends, we all went out for Korean barbecue. And I ate so much Korean barbecue. You can eat. You can eat so much after you lift. Your body is just like ready and it's like bring it on. It's incredible. That has since stabilized and like now I feel like my appetite is more normal. But yes, the idea of like, oh, wait, I need to fuel. I need to rebuild. Like it felt very palpable. Yeah. And that was like an improvement for you in terms of your relationship with food.

Yes. Yeah. I mean, it was, I wasn't like eating. That didn't like then feed into eating endlessly. But it was like to be eating so much more. And then like every single day, it was like, that's actually a lot. It was kind of like logistically challenging to meet that threshold of food. And you're also like the focus became on.

or the focus became eating enough of like all of these things. And I had previously been oriented around trying to eat as little as possible less and less and less. So the idea of like you have to eat at least this much of, you know, 140 grams of protein a day, that's a lot. Or like, I think it was like 200 some grams of carbs. And that became its own like, I mean, I'm. I don't think it was problematic. But it was like to have this constructive approach to eating was what made such a difference. There's a difference between saying like eat less or something bad might happen to you versus eat more or eat this amount so that you can do something good.

Yes. It's like positive rather than negative. Am I enunciating it well? Yes. No, no. That's exactly it. Yeah. psychologically there's a huge difference yeah and no one ever talked about food in that way

yeah i felt like i've it's i think i felt i was like am i really going to put this in the book and like right like i wrote it and left it in there but it was like am i really going to say this where it's like no one ever talked about food is like something that you need to like live your life you know they only ever talked about it as like um and i say they media you know i think like probably doctors would say you need food, but also doctors are more fixated on weight loss still than like a lot of cohorts of people. But yeah, I felt like just no one ever, the focus was always on eating less and just the assumption that food, I mean like obviously our culture different than many other cultures, but like just the programming that I had was you don't

to think about food is something that adds anything to your life. You only need to think about taking it away. And then once I flipped it, I was like, oh, I did actually sort of need this other way of thinking about food. You know, I'm not proud to say so, but I need constant stimulation or I get bored. Something to look at, a podcast to listen to, a little tasty treat here or there. I have a million ways to jangle the shiny keys of life in front of my face and to stay entertained and stimulated.

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Yes, lots of vitamins, electrolytes, like. Yeah, vegetables as being a generally good thing, but not, or, you know, the sort of health halo stuff. Yeah. But not, like, fuel. Like, you need actual calories. Right, right. Well, now we have a little more of that. Yes.

But at that time, 10 years ago, all. almost 20 years ago, that was not the conversation at all. Yeah, all the food was advertised by what it didn't have in it, right? There's no fat in it. There's no sugar in it or whatever as opposed to what it does. Well, unless it was only like sugar and then it was like, this has vitamins, like cereal. Yeah. And no fat.

Yes, no fat. Low fat, no fat, non-fat cereal. Yeah. I mean, growing up in the low-fat era, what a horrible time to be alive. I know. The food tasted so bad. It never filled you up. Nope.

And it was bad for you. Yes. Oh, yeah. I mean, it was like, and it really, that was a off ramp from everything that we're talking about where I don't know. In a way, we sort of never come back from that era, I feel like. And it became, I mean, where are we now? Now we're like no carbs. Fat is bad.

Carbs are bad, but vegan food is good. but vegan food is often... There's a lot of people who think vegan food's very bad. They're really into eating lots of meat. I mean, oh, well, that's a whole other cohort. I mean, we're everyone's... We're all just trying her best as maybe I should say. But being able to, like...

Well, let me ask you this. When you started lifting, did you have to change your conception of what you are trying to accomplish in terms of changing your body or affecting your body or did doing it change it for you? Like when you first said,

okay, I'm going to embark upon doing this. Were you changing your goals or from being smaller and being thinner and being da-da-da? Or did that come from the exercise itself?

I think I did not start off being interested necessarily in getting stronger. I think I was kind of that's interesting, but not what I'm going to orient this around. I, like, wanted to, I was focused on, like, losing the last five pounds. And then I saw this post, this woman's like before and after photos where I was like, oh, she looks like in the conventional definition of she lost weight, but she actually hadn't lost any weight. And I had, I was completely unaware of this at the time also,

that like you can have aesthetic body changes but without the scale number going down and that's how I learned that but there's different kinds of body mass and it's not good to lose muscle but it can like dieting a lot over a long period of time can lose cause you to lose a lot of muscle yeah and I think I realized pretty early that that was part of what had happened to me and part of why it got harder and harder to diet with like no quote unquote results was that I had dieted away a lot of the tissue that helps your metabolism stay high and helps, like, moving feel okay. Right.

And, like, keeps a lot of your equilibrium. So I was like, okay, seems like I do need to rebuild some muscle. Like, building muscle would not actually be, it would not bulk me up because I have lost all of, not all of what I had, but a lot of what I had. So I was interested in that. I was interested in the aesthetic changes. that it seemed like building a little more muscle and losing body fat would bring. And the fact that I didn't have to lose weight to do it was very compelling to me at the time.

So that was kind of, I think, where I was what was on my mind the most when I started lifting. And yeah, I think once I got into it, it became this. Lots of other stuff came into it at that point that I sort of backed into all of these other things that I liked about it. But, oh, just what we've been saying, the exciting to eat food, felt really good to eat food, felt really good to get stronger. The workouts were easy. And like at a slower pace, which like speaking of running, I hated where you run, you're just like, I mean, you're saying you'd slow down and walk. I was like, I have to, I don't know, I felt like I had to get faster and faster. I was like, what are we doing here if I'm not trying to?

I did that to a point, but I'm naturally a very slow runner. Okay. Like, I was, when I ran the New York Marathon, I ran it in over six hours, which is, like, slow. Like, I was beaten by multiple 80-year-olds, you know, but I have no ability. Like, I, for a little while, I was, like, training for speed, and then I just kind of stopped. And I was like, I'm just trying to see the city and zone out for a little bit and, like, get my heart rate moving, like, that kind of. That's, like, more enjoyable recreational running. Oh, absolutely.

There are tons of people who kill themselves trying to improve on speed, and I think it's, a lot of them are sick in the head, unfortunately. No, complimentary or derogatory, however you want to take it. Or have a bit of competitiveness that causes them to overtrain and hurt themselves is very endemic and running. A lot of people are forcing themselves to do it, but, you know, it can be, I guess like anything, it can be an enjoyable activity if you're able to do it in a psychologically. healthy way, which maybe the majority of people aren't. I mean, it was like the only thing worse than the sort of realities of training for running and having to, like, log the miles was the different, like, styles of training runs that you would have to do that were designed to improve your speed.

And it felt like every running workout that I found at that time was oriented around that. It was like, oh, you do your speed work and you do your long runs and you do your short, like, sort of shakeout runs, and it was always just programmed in there. So I think I just assumed, I don't know, I never really, I never thought to question that, I guess. Yeah. But anyway. But what, I guess, why is running faster, like a goal for anyone, like, what, it's

not a, not a thing you actually ever need to. I don't know. It's like what you do in running, you're in a race. Like you're, you're, you know. But people run a race to complete, they said a time goal. I'm not. I am not at all. I'm not saying that this is what somebody should do.

And if I were to go back, I mean, I would do many things differently. But I don't know. Growing up, it's like you're timing everything and I'm not going to defend this. And it's hard to say what I was thinking, except that just like it felt like this is what people do. And I felt pressure. And I felt like you're not running if you're walking. Maybe was part of the logic of it. I don't know. Yeah. So you felt that you had to be on the run at everything. Yeah. So, but what am I trying to say? I hated that you start a run and you're just like going for however much time or distance that you're going. Whereas in lifting, you're doing like five reps and then you rest for a minute. And I was like, this is my thing. This is what I like want to do for the rest of my life. Like I cannot believe nobody told me that you can work out in this way where you like do a little.

bit. Right. And then you sit down and do nothing. Right. And you just do that like periodically for the rest of the workout. And it, you actually spend so little time active that it was, that was a revelation. The intense effort for a moment. Yes. And then take a break. Yep. And then do that, what, a dozen times on different, do different movements. Right. Across like three or four different movements. Don, you do that a couple times a week. And it's, it's like efficient in terms of your time. Right. Right. Right. You go in the gym. You leave the gym 40 minutes later, but of that 40 minutes, how much were you actually doing your workout? 15 minutes?

Yeah. And the thing that you're increasing is the weight itself. You're not increasing the length of the exercise, whereas running and many other exercises, the only way to add difficulty is to add time and add distance. And again, I'm a sicko. I like, I have enjoyed being like, today I'm going to. to go run for four hours. Wow. And I have to like plan my route and I have to bring some water and I got to like pick a podcast or whatever and I'm going to see a bunch of the city. And that's an afternoon, you know, but like if you're running for fitness and you're like, okay, I need to,

I want to lose more weight. I want to be in better shape. All you can do is like devote more of your precious life on earth to it. Right. As opposed to saying, oh, put a little extra weight on the side of the thing and do the same movement again. five minutes. I wonder if anything of what I was thinking was like, just trying to shorten the workout. Because once you start running far, that's a lot of time. Four hours is a long time. Oh, yeah. Running. Yeah. I mean, an hour. It's like if I can make this run take 45 minutes versus an hour and I don't have, I can run for less time. Yes. And still get as much done. That's, I think that had to be a part of what I was thinking too. Yeah. I mean, but even in weightlifting, there,

There's also schools have thought that, like, oh, you should do lots of reps of, like, lower weights, et cetera. A friend told me this recently. Oh, boy. Yeah. Ed Zittron, past guest on the show, told me a little bit of weight and do a lot of reps. And I was like, I do the opposite. And he's like, that's for I might. He's British.

That's a bad version of his accent. When did he say this? Like, he said, this was being a couple months ago. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, you haven't been reading Casey Johnson's newsletter. No, no. So what does?

That's why I'm like, where did this come from? I might be misquoting him, but he, more or less what he said. There's been more research recently that people have construed to mean like, oh, it doesn't matter how much weight you lift. You can lift a little bit of weight or a lot of weight and it does the same thing. And it's like, that's not really what the research is saying and that's not true. It's like you, the way that works is if you want to get into it. It's like the way that works is if you are using a relatively lower amount of weight, you're still, in order to get the same results, you have to reach the same amount of like, I don't want to say effort.

Like you have to get close to your failure point no matter how much weight you're lifting. So like if you lift 100 pounds, that might only take you eight reps to get within a couple reps of failure. of not being able to do another rep. If you lift 20 pounds, it might take you 50 reps in order to, so the thing that people are saying is like, it doesn't matter how much weight you lift. And it's like, that's sort of true, but you have to get to that failure point. You have to do 50 reps with those 20 pounds. Yeah, until you can't do it anymore.

So it's like, do you want to do 50 reps instead of doing eight? Like, I don't want to live my life. I hate doing a lot of reps. So, yes, theoretically it's possible, but there's some amount of, like, misinterpretation. And then the reality of it, to me, is, like, not that much more palatable. What's important about getting to the failure point? That is, I mean, I think there's been a little bit more questioning of the concept of, like, muscle damage. But theoretically, it's where your body's limits in terms of how it uses energy and the tissues are being challenged.

enough that they are going to create an adaptation and you will get stronger and or maintain where you're at depending on what your goals are. This is your body's oh shit moment or, oh, fuck, we got to fill in some gaps here. We've got to rebuild. You're making little micro-tares or something is what people say sometimes. Yeah, there's been questioning of the micro-terror model lately, but like that's been like the sort of at least analogy that's- I'm very dubious of any explanation of the human body that is too easily visualized, where it's like, there's little micro-tares, and then later your

body goes and fills them in with protein. I'm like, that's a little bit too clear of a visual metaphor. Reminds me of, you know, if I can picture an explanation as easily as I can picture, like, somebody drinking peptobismol in a commercial and the cooling pink goes into their stomach and, like, soothes an angry red, right? Like, if the visual is that easy. Yeah, I know. And that's why visual metaphors can be so.

seductive in how your body works. Yeah. I mean, man, I think I have a more dense textbook, lifting textbook at home that is for a certification that I think I will never get now because it's too difficult. But there's not like I could do it, but it's would take a lot of time. But I think I've revisited the more in-depth explanation of how that all works. And it's like I can't even retain it. It's a lot. So. But something. Something happens when you get close to failure that causes your body to be. We can agree. We have established that something happens.

Yeah. That's significant to the, this is how lifting works. This is how you can add weight every week. This is, I think one way of phrasing it is stress recovery adaptation. So the stress is the lifting of the weights, the damage is caused. The recovery is like, this is the really important part. You have to eat. You have to rest in order for your time to have muscles to recover.

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relationship with food naturally, just by virtue of what you need to do to continue to do it, and is better in every way. Why is this not been our culture's main mode of exercise up until now? Well, I think it has more to do with like, where am I getting my information? Where do all of us get our information about what we should be doing? And it's like those resources are inherently compromised and like oriented against us versus like they're trying to give us the best. possible information and I've discovered something good that nobody knows about. It's like people know about it and I found out that lots of people know about it once I got into it and found the

sort of right vein to tap. And I wrote a little too about the fact that it's sort of, there was like a little bit of like a blossoming of like a powerlifting culture on Instagram that was more accessible at at that time in like 2014 or so. And there were all these like really normal people who are lifting. And I was like, I don't even think I knew normal people could lift weights that you wouldn't, that you would lift weights if you were not like a linebacker or like an Olympic athlete that you might just have like a normal person's relationship with it the way that I had with running. And that sort of collapsed when we, we, the algorithms came in and like all of these, all of these like things that were focused on, um, leveraging that. attention for more money. And that's true. Like if I'm listening to a Pilate studio, tell me what, how I should look or like, I don't know, a movie star, like a doctor who's talking about a movie star is physique

and a magazine. It's like all of that is, of course, oriented around fomenting insecurity versus like what is good for us and like minimizes our time involvement and makes us feel good. you know does that yeah but it also has to come out of our culture somehow right like i mean yes there's a lot of profit motives but there's also just a lot of cultural beliefs that we have about ourselves and our bodies and what weightlifting is yeah and what what goals are but like that's you know the the thing about uh oh it'll make you bulky or whatever that that sort of idea is anybody particularly profiting from that or is that just like a distorted idea that'll

make you bulky. I mean, yeah. I mean, if you have Gwyneth Paltrow saying, don't lift weights, it'll make you bulky. But why is Gwyneth Paltrow saying it? Because it causes insecurity and she can then sell her vitamins. Right. I was somehow thinking before she was selling her vitamins. Yeah. I forgot that she is a, uh, a mogul. Yes. Right. Right. Yes. I mean, I think you would not get somebody saying that stuff who couldn't make money off of it. That's not what I'm trying to say. But they're perhaps caught up in, I think, somebody like that who doesn't have a complex of, what would you call Goop, a business, doesn't have a business around it, could be caught up in the sort of overall insecurity cycle and what do I want to say, not promoting, forwarding the agenda, I guess, but not with any, like, malintent just like they're in it i'm just fascinated by you know you mentioned the media a couple times and a lot of the time we're talking about like the media in the 90s right uh which uh you know

gwyneth paltrow wasn't doing this stuff then it was it was magazines and it was television and it was movies and et cetera um but you know why were they promoting thinness and why were they promoting you know cardio and like lack of eating and stuff like that and like when you get down to it it's like well is it in anyone's particular profit motive to promote that or Is it a sort of, you know, metastasizing of some false beliefs that we have culturally that are being repeated back to us, you know? So often the media is, you know, we blame the media for telling us something that's distorted. But people in the media are like, we're just telling people what they want to hear. Like, this is what people already believe and that's why we're saying it, you know.

I mean, we do have very ingrained, like in America, very ingrained orientations toward, like, working hard. depriving the body. So, like, and a lot of this comes from Protestantism, really, like, our religious, our religious orientation. So things that speak, I think, any, any, any trend that speaks to that gets bubbled up, any trend that doesn't speak to that, they, like, sort of try and isolate a part of it that speaks to that. And that's what gets bubbled up, like, because it resonates with our conception of, like, how

things should work what what should entitle us to success and you should not have success if you're in full possession of your body and are not ashamed of it regardless of what it looks like and you should not have success if what was the other thing I said possession of your body religious oh if you don't work hard you know but there is a certain amount of working hard that you're doing though like yes well I think I think I would draw a line between the working hard that I was doing running, where it was kind of like, it's never enough. I'm always trying to like do more and more better and better, whereas lifting at least existed in an equilibrium for me where it didn't, I mean, you can,

I've had a lot of people ask me, like, how do you know that you don't just have another problematic relationship in a different shape? Right. with lifting weights versus what you were doing with running. And my answer is, like, you can have a problematic relationship with anything where it, like, subsumes you. Obviously, some things are more given to that than others. Smoking, very difficult to have a healthy relationship with smoking. Just as an example, but you can have, I mean, there are many people who have difficult problematic relationships with lifting weights with how they look. and like the interplay between those two things where they, you know, they just never feel like

they are doing quite enough of the right things. And it doesn't matter that you're like, oh, you're supposed to rest or whatever. You're supposed to eat. It's like they find a way to extend it into a problematic area. And not even like, I'm not trying to ascribe bad intentions, but you can distort a lot of things in that direction. I just found in my, experience that it encouraged the really like atomic benefit of it was that it encouraged this like rhythm of self-inquiry of like you're doing you're doing a rep or you're doing your set and then you're saying how did that feel and I had not had any force in my life previously that had like encouraged that practice of perceiving my own experience.

Like everything was about pushing my own experience down and away. So the fact that I needed not only like to pay attention to that to just achieve the lifting part of it, but like I couldn't, I couldn't make anything else work. I would not rest enough or eat enough and it would all sort of like fall apart if I wasn't paying attention to like, did that rep feel too easy? Did it feel too hard? was I, did my form feel off? And the fact that my experience was important to it, I think built up that relationship

with myself and my ability to even tune into how I was feeling. And that is a pretty self-contained thing. And maybe for other people, it never like builds outward. But for me, it did. And I feel like it's, you could have that and lots of, I mean, you could do that with running. You could, if you put the emphasis in running was like on how do you feel. versus like, deny your pain, no pain, no gain. Or like, no pain, no gain is more of a lifting thing.

But if it were not sort of like this pain transcending thing versus how does it feel, you could bring that to a lot of stuff. But it just like really jumped out at me when I came into lifting. And that was what made it not problematic. Yeah. To me, I noticed a shift when I started weightlifting where when I was, was running, I would often have guilt about not doing it enough, right? Oh, I should go out today, but I don't really feel like it, etc. When I started weightlifting, I work with a trainer. It's like one of

the things I, it's a luxury that I, that I pay for, right? I'm happy to be lucky to be able to do it. So those are the best money that I spend on myself. Oh, I bet. But I do it twice a week. I have my appointment. I go. I do it. And then after I've done it, the main feeling I had was I have worked out enough. I have done enough. I'm going twice a week. And then sometimes I go to jog on the weekends. And then that's purely a pleasure jog, right? That's like I run in the park or whatever. Right. And I'm like, that's

enough. That's plenty. If I have more goal, I could do more. But I'm not like constantly caught in this thing of like, ah, if I did a little bit more, ah, if I did a little bit more. Because like, yes, I need to rest in between. There's no point to doing more. There wouldn't be no point to spending another hour in the gym. It did really speak to me that there

was an interplay between like you have you work out, but then you have to not work out the next day. Yes. That's part of it. Yes. And that was not really part of it in the dialogue around running. Like, there were rest days, but a lot of the programs were, I forget if I put this in the book or not, but it's definitely something I've thought where it's like the running programs would be like, you can have a rest day or run two or three easy miles. And it's like, well, what am I going to do?

If I feel like already guilty about like I might not be running enough. Yeah. you know yeah uh tell me about you're you're a big fan of like these compound lifts of like large movements rather than you know the weight lifting that I grew up around which was my high school's like Nautilus machine circuit right what is the difference there yeah um well there's big difference between machines and free weights um machines are doing a lot of the work for you when the weight is like on a gliding track it's like a lot of functional strength, like the strength that will carry into the rest of your life and

allow you to lift a big box of cat litter is the work that your body is doing to stabilize weights and free space versus just like moving them up and down. So it's important to use free weights for this purpose. And then compound lifts in a similar vein are that refers to lifts that you use. a lot of muscles oftentimes or I think almost always multiple joints at once like your hips and your knees shoulders and elbows and when you do that it's teaching those joints and those muscles to move like in concert with each other when we talk about building a skill um some of what you're doing is not necessarily building muscle and strength you're building like neurological um you're

you're building like your body's ability to fire all of these neurons in concert with each other. So speaking of strength, the sort of most strong you can be, the most functional you can be is when those you can have a sort of maximum of neurons able to fire at the same time and make your muscles work together in like a, you know, with as much weight as possible in as many positions as possible and in your strongest positions. So it's like we've kind of winnowed at this point the strength landscape into like these are the lifts that use as much of your body as possible at once in order to like lift the most weight. Squat bench deadlift. Overhead press sort of, but not really. It's like overhead press kind of just a bench press, but oriented it a little

differently. Pull-ups, you know. So does that answer your question? Yeah, it does. Very quickly, I think after you started doing this, you began like proselytizing it, right? Like you have a newsletter that eventually resulted in the book. Why is that? I just could not, once I got into this and I saw that it all worked together and it like seemingly cured me of so many of my challenges or at least made these pieces fit together that had never fit together before. I just, like, needed to tell everybody about it. And with, like, little awareness of that not everyone's problems are my problems. But, like, I don't know, I think, but I think it did, there was, I don't think I was entirely off that this sort of system spoke to a lot of what was broken about what I was being.

told about food and exercise and I don't think I was alone in that. So yeah, I just started talking to everyone about it. And then eventually an editor at the hairpin, rest in peace, was like, we need a advice column. The website, not the editor. The editor is still alive. The editor is not the hairpin. The editor's still alive. Yeah. Hairpin is dead. Yeah. But. Um, wonderful website. Yes. She was like, we need an advice column. Would you write about lifting weights? And I said, yes. I don't think anyone will read it. From a woman, from a woman where I, like, I only had a couple years of experience, but I was just so excited about it. I think the enthusiasm won people over. Yeah. And I would get people at that time saying to me, I read every one of your columns,

love them, never miss them. I'm never going to lift weights ever, ever, ever in my life. But I love reading you write about them because you're so excited. But then I heard after having done it for a long enough time. I've now heard from a number of people where they're like, you know, I started reading your column five, seven. Now it's been almost 10 years ago. And finally tried lifting weights and you were right. It has changed everything that I think about how exercise works. So I've worn some people down over the years. I mean, you have like a community of people who are doing this together now. Yeah. I mean, yeah, they don't necessarily like lift together per se. But yeah, they They have come into it through, I did end up writing a sort of beginner lifting program because people would keep asking me, how do I get started lifting?

And I didn't have a good answer for that. So I made one up and put it online. And now people like it. And that's good. I'm happy about that. And so that's like the closest thing of, I don't know, community that's come out of this. But yeah, people who read the newsletter are, I don't actually don't know, how. many of them lift weights. That would be a good question to ask them. Like, what proportion of you now are here just for the vibes versus are actively lifting? I don't know. Presumably more than were before they started reading the newsletter. Presumably, maybe. I would be, I would love to run the numbers on this. I bet less people lift than you would think of like, I bet it's less than half. People are just reading it and getting the general vibe. Yeah. They like the approach of, like, being mean to most other forms of exercise. And they're like, if you have to show some appreciation for lifting in order to do that,

then I will tolerate that. Let's be mean to some other forms of exercise. Yeah. What, what, let's, how about, how about high intensity training? Oh, okay. I, I find it so uncomfortable. Yeah. Like, really, really uncomfortable to do.

I think it's, like, good, it's like a good type of fitness to have. But, like, a lot of people overuse it. Like, there is a famous workout program back when I was getting into this. Kayla, it's seen us, I think is how you say your name, bikini body guide, where there were these 28-minute hit workouts, which is like, hit, you're not supposed to do for more than like 10 minutes, five minutes. This is like you're doing, you're doing burpees and you're doing push-ups. You're doing mountain climbers is a famous one for her. and you're doing these cycles for like half an hour. And it's like that is so much exercise just in general, half an hour is a lot already.

But to do it in high intensity is like that's crazy. So yeah, people overuse it. I mean, me and my ex used to have a trainer come by our apartment and do high intensity workouts. And I guess they were good workouts. But then afterwards, both of us, especially her, would be like wiped for the rest of the day. Wow. Like, I would be wiped out. She would sometimes feel physically sick, like, after the, like, gastro, you know, like,

ah, I can't, you know, like, I'm off for the rest of the day after doing burpees and, like, medicine bowl slams and, you know, that sort of thing. I mean, speak of forms of exercise where it's like people just take it way too far. And, like, a lot of personal trainer type of stuff like that, I feel like is too oriented around the personal trainer making you feel like. you need them to, like, sort of steer you through these, like, complex workouts versus, like, teaching you to fish, which is what I want. I'm like, I don't want to be anyone's personal trainer forever.

I would like to teach you. I'm like, take, take the book, learn the thing. I, like, so I don't, I also don't like anything that's sort of oriented around not helping you help yourself. Yeah. I don't know. I specifically was like, I don't want to make this a hobby for myself. Like, I don't, I want to learn the basics.

Like, I want to be okay in a hotel gym. Yeah. But I don't want to keep a spreadsheet. Right. I'm already baking sourdough bread. I'm already taking a photography class. You have complex hobbies, yeah. I just, I actually don't want to make it a new hobby because also hobbies, you don't do for that long.

Yeah. In my own experience. Yeah. I sourdough baked for a couple years and then I stopped. I can't go back to it if I want, but I'm not literally making a loaf of bread every day. Right. And I felt like it was up to me to do the hobby pieces. of it and read a subreddit and, you know, follow a training program and like, okay, now I'm

going to add weight on all the time. This is why I like working with someone else, because I show up and they tell me what to do. Yeah. Oh, that's a totally fine. Like, obviously not everyone needs to become an expert who can write their own lifting program. You can have whatever relationship you want with it. I just think related to a lot of what we're talking about, people are discouraged from having like a skill-based relationship with working out in general a lot of the time of like knowing their way around a gym or knowing sort of like how do you know you get a gym how do you like accomplish a basic strength workout like there's some people who work to separate people from that knowledge and it's like I think it's neither that complicated

nor beyond most people's ability it's like we just don't have we don't have built into our how we learn to exercise. It's like, I mean, think about how we're talking about running. It's like we have an understanding from like being little kids and gyms. Time is important and pace is important like managing your breath and all of these things. It's like there's sort of basics about lifting like that that we don't, or at least to us as kids were not taught to us like reps, sets, how you add weight, that kind of thing. So it's like we had more of a, what would you call it? Foundation, educational foundation in it. I don't think that they would be that complicated and then everyone could just be good with it, you know.

What do you think of these, what I think of as a New York Times workout? It's like the high intensity workout that you're supposed to do at your own pace or, you know, or whatever you like, there's an app and you go between, there's the wall sit and then like step up onto chair. They do have literally something like this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A few, a lot of them, I think, now. There's like a strength one. There's hit ones of eight, nine, 10, 11 minutes. Yes. Stretching. Yes.

Do an eight-minute workout, like the New York Times, as though. It was eight-minute workout to change your body. It only takes eight minutes. You know, it's something funny I realized is that that's been around so long. I believe I got some inside intel that there's that, that, like, page has, that article's been read so many times. Millions, millions, millions, tens of millions. Do you know anyone who's ever, like, done that workout? I mean, I try, I have tried to do it in the past.

Plenty of people have tried. The most miserable I've ever been doing a workout for. for some reason is stepping up onto chair. Yep. Do you, like, do you know or have you ever heard of anyone where it's like, this is the workout that I did and like I got into shape? No. No.

Yeah. It's fake. It's like you could like, could it do stuff? Yes. But like because of the way that it is, no one wants to do it. It's like trying to do the workout from like the beginning of the movie Old Boy or something where you're like trapped in a hotel room. You're going to punch a wall 10,000 times.

It's like got these weird constraints on it of like, here's a workout you can do if all you have is a chair. Yeah. And you don't know anybody and all you have is eight minutes. Yes. You could do this. Well, why are those the constraints of your life? Yes. It's almost like engagement bait, this workout.

Yeah. Where it's like, oh, this is like, you sort of read it. And it's like, it feels so achievable. And it's like, I feel like I already accomplished something just reading about it. And then that's all that it does, I think. Yeah. But there's something very comforting about. finding your approach where it is it is both easier in ways that really matter because it takes

less time overall but it still requires dedication and thoughtfulness in a way that feels wholesome and real and it actually gets results in a way that are meaningful like there's there's something about it that it feels trustworthy to me and I don't know exactly what it is. It's a little bit similar to like when I read, this is such a weird example, but have you ever read like actually good investment advice where they're like, don't just put your money in like an index fund, whatever you have. Like Bogleheads. Do you, are you a Boglehead? Yes, the Bogleheads. Yes, exactly. When I read the Bogleheads version of investment advice, put your money in an index fund. Make sure the fees are low. Put it in there. Don't touch it. The logic

of capitalism is that the stock market will go up on average over time. So unless capitalism crumbles, your money's going to be safe there. Yeah. and the end and then stop thinking about it and don't talk don't like pay anybody a crazy fee and stop stressing out right and like once you understand the fundamentals of it it's like okay this actually does work it actually is easier there is an underlying logic yeah and once i've learned it i can sort of put you know set it and forget it in a way yeah um and it your approach is reminds me of like it's like bogelheads for fitness in a way yes thank you that's the best compliment that i've ever received wow No, that's the Adam Conover promise. Okay, yeah. You come on to my show, you get the best compliment you've ever received. Thank you. Thank you for saying that.

But what are those things, what is the thing that they have in common that we're detecting, right? The bogel heads approach to investing or, you know, in this form of working out. I don't know. I mean, I think it's like, again, so much of like investment advice is, or investment, like, the, the, the, the, business surrounding the meta business of investment is meant to feel like make you feel like you don't know what you're doing need somebody's input right somebody's constant management that you don't I mean there are people where they're like I don't want to know anything about this even that sort of basic amount of information they're like that doesn't make sense to me I'm not interested

I would rather pay somebody boom kind of like you and your personal trainer and it's just that like something in between should exist between not doing anything and keeping your money under a mattress and paying a financial advisor. Like there's a middle ground that some of us want, which is like having a modest amount of involvement, feeling like we have a relationship with it without it overtaking our lives. And that's a fine relationship to have with it also that you don't have to go between extremes. Is that maybe? Is that it? I would love to just also say that like I'm maybe like I'm a trustworthy person with like not a lot of interest in making anyone feel bad about this. I mean like I feel like I suffered so much from people making me feel bad about various

aspects of this that I'm very sensitive to making somebody feel bad. And I don't. I feel like I thought about this that it's like the instant somebody comes out of the woodwork and is like your program. made me feel bad. I'm going to like disappear like the Lorax into the sky. I'm just going to be gone. That's not what I want.

Wait, sorry, you're on the internet and no one's ever come to you and said, you made me feel bad. That's the main thing people say. Knock on wood. Wow. Not yet. Not yet. This is actually wood.

Wow. I never believed that this was wood back here. It is. It's nice. Hey, it's a great. Hey, headgum's got a great studio. Yeah. Wow. I mean, so people actually have a positive

relationship with I think they do although it's like I can only assume there's people who have like bought my program my beginner lifting program and hated it and just didn't have the will to tell me yeah you know or like it didn't speak to them or I don't know I don't know but the book is not you're not just talking about like a lifting program it's like your your personal experience of having traveled through this where have you ended up on the other side. Like, you know, we talked about where you began, you know, what's your relationship with fitness in your body now? Well, I had a baby eight months ago, almost eight months ago. Congratulations. So that has colored a lot of the last couple years of how I've been approaching

this stuff. It was hard for me initially to let go of like being able to do whatever I wanted with lifting. But then I was also like, I was getting to a point where there wasn't a lot more that I wanted to accomplish. I was like, I'm pretty strong. I don't really, I don't have the discipline or interest to become like a really elite lifter going crazy, like, strength pursuit. And I don't know. So I was kind of ready to take a step back in a way. It was just like hard for me to relinquish control in a spiritual way.

But then I had time to like. get used to that. So now I lift a couple times a week. It's really minimal lately. It's like I have a squat rack and a barbell and a bench in my like carport. And I go out there. It's like extremely hot right now. So it's not the best, not the best time. And I and I lift a lot of times just like in flip flops. And that's it. And that's, that is the more important piece. It's not like what the program is. It's like the mindset shift. Like it's not about just being physically healthier.

It's about having a healthier relationship to all this. That's what I'm hearing from you. Yeah. Yeah. It's like now it's all sort of almost oriented around like rehab, prehab of like your body after you have a baby really more so than and trying to sort of like stay balanced in the way that carrying a baby or feeding a baby can sort of like throw you off. I mean, literally my, I went to a physical therapist and she was telling me, like, you should do, you need to do, um, bench press and like overhead press. And she was like, do this. I don't know what it's called. And I was like, okay. Um, so some of it's oriented around that, but it just kind of comes sort of comes back to like, you know, strength building is, um, I mean, maybe this is another reason this works. It's like, it's meant to enable my life rather than. whatever the opposite of that would be right rather than something that is a goal someone else gave you or trying to live up to someone else's standard or the purpose in and of itself it's like i'm lifting

to kind of like make not the rest of my life make the rest of my life not uncomfortable and bad you're trying to make the rest of your life more comfortable more comfortable yeah yeah and so your actual life is what is driving your exercise choices not the other way around not some sort of like third party standard right that I need to look a certain way or I need to be able to like physically do a certain like lift a certain amount of weight in order to have value or whatever yeah it's like I'm here just to keep the body functionality ball rolling yeah I guess you're just trying to improve your own literal fitness like your ability to do the things that you want to do in your life, accomplish your own, like live your own life a little bit better.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's nice to like I went and I got my desk chair like seat cushion replaced and to be able to just like put the desk chair in the back of the car and then take it out. No one needs to help me. It's like an awkward object. But you know, just to be able to do that. Or like my baby is getting large now. I think he's he's got to be close 20 pounds. That's not nothing to be. even picking him up I think like picking babies up becomes a huge thing so it's just nice to have like that

physical skill not interrupt the flow of things I guess yeah there's a lot of just being able to do basic movements feels really good before I started weight lifting I had I would get a lot of back pain when I was like walking with a backpack for some reason I'm like I'm not sure where it came from it's mostly gone now

really yeah I would have like a little spasm in my like I guess they're called spine erectors on either side, right? And I had never done a pull-up before in my life. I'd never done a full pull-up. And now I can do like five pull-ups. Wow. And just the fact, I'm like, oh, if I were dangling, if I was in a situation where I was dangling, I would maybe be able to get out of my dangled track. That's important. That's very important.

I've thought a lot about that. If I was in a cliphanger situation. When you see like a video game character, like a, what's that guy? Nathan Drake Or like a Tomb Raider Larra Croft Like just pull

They're doing it very casually But that's very difficult But you know what they do Every video game character does That none of us do in real life They jump Nobody in real life Ever jumps

Apart from basketball players Nobody jumps Nobody jumps And not really anyone runs either In just like a sort of like Context of not exercise But just like I need to You know

But you might run to catch a bus or something like that. But I'm talking literally like a standing. Yes. Like standing jump across a, across a gap. Across a gap. There's no gaps in real life, really. Yeah. Maybe if there are more gaps, we would be more, we would be doing more jumping.

We need more gaps in the built environment. We need more. To get, but jumping is, it's so easy in a video game and is so hard in real life. That's true. It's like sort of the operative mechanic of a video game. Right. It's the main thing you do. If there's one button, it's...

Yeah. As an adult, it's the last thing I would ever do. Yeah. I can't really think of the last time that I jumped. That I jumped like functionally, you know, instead of just like kind of dancing around, you know? Right. Like where you tried to literally jump from one object onto another.

No, I've never jumped up to a platform. I don't think. Or, I mean, I probably have. But like, not, yeah, it's not as much. of my life as it is video game characters. Yeah. I'll see that. Well, maybe you should consider it as a next part of your program.

Maybe the next, maybe that'll be the next 10 years. What do you, for people who are listening and want to like adopt your approach, apart from buying your book, like, how do you, how do you suggest they change their mindset and get started, you know? Yeah. It's tough. I mean, it depends kind of where you're coming from and how ready you are. That's the nice thing about being on the internet is like you, I can kind of appear when

people are ready to hear what I have to say. And I don't have to like do a lot of the convincing. I think that's a kind of big part of it. But yeah, I, I've written a couple articles about like how to get started going to the gym if you're, if you feel totally intimidated by it. And one thing that people seem to enjoy about it is this idea that like, like, you can go to the gym and just sort of do nothing, which maybe it sounds like a nightmare to somebody who's like, I don't want to have to go to a gym unless I am accomplishing something. But some of what you are probably afraid of and don't realize is like you don't know what goes on there. And it's kind of like starting a new job or school or whatever. It's like you need just some familiarity of what's going on. So it's okay to go in and just like

walk on a treadmill and just like watch everybody and see what they do. Yeah. So that's like one way to get your feet wet. I mean, the program that I wrote starts at home. I mean, you could do it in a gym if you wanted to, but it's like a lot of it at the beginning is accomplishable at home. So there, and there's like an aspect of trying to build the habit and I don't know. All of that's very difficult and you have to be sort of ready in a way that it's hard to force. I don't know. I don't, I'm not here to force anybody. I'm like, you know if you're ready.

See, this is exactly the same approach as the Alan Carr quit smoking book. Really? He's like, yeah, keep smoking while you read the book. And like, when you're ready, you're not going to quit unless you want to quit. Yeah. No, literally, he's like, you're not going to quit unless you want to. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, and I've talked to plenty of people who want to quit and they're like, or sorry, they're like, I should quit, but I don't want to. Right. I'm like, well, then you won't. So stop trying. Yeah. Like, whatever. Do what you want. Like, ultimately, it is up to you.

It's your life. Yeah. And it. I think that's very important. It's your life. You know, I'm not here to shout anybody down about how they're. how they should live you know i've i've had people come up to me and be like um i feel guilty that i don't lift but like i you know i live in new york and i walk a lot like is that okay and i'm

like yes they're asking you is that okay like you're the judge you're going to hand them a ticket i mean but there are fitness people who would be like well here's all the problems with like only walking and it's like you know i don't know it's like do you want something out of lifting then do it if you don't then I mean you started you you went through the transition and change that you did because you were unhappy with what you had been doing right with your relationship with food and exercise etc you had some goal you wanted to or you had some something that wasn't working um I think that's that's the important place to start right like is what you're doing working for you are you happy

doing what you're doing me now no no the person the person listening yes exactly I mean yeah I'm very honest in this in this new book in a physical education that like I had to be in a place to be ready to hear this kind of stuff from lifting it helped that it had like certain content but I definitely had you know heard of lifting weights before and I was like I just don't think I want any of that yeah um so you have to be in a and it I do have a habit in life of like sticking with things to the bitter end until like they're like really really not working like I have to I have to find out to that degree before I will try something else I guess so it's like that's part of it so if you're like me and you're still finding the rock bottom of not eating carbs

then that's fine you know I don't know everything's difficult yeah well where can people find your newsletter. Okay, my newsletter is called She's a Beast. It's at she's abeast. It's at she's abeast.co. C.O. And my book is for sale wherever you get books. It's called A Physical Education. And my beginner lifting program is called Lift Off Couch to Barbell. And that you can find at Couch to Barbell.com. Thank you so much for being here, Casey. It was a wonderful talking to you. Thank you for having me. Well, thank you once again, Casey, for coming on the show. If you want to pick up a copy of her book, you can, of course, get a copy at our special bookshop, factuallypod.com slash books.

When you buy a book there, you'll be supporting not just this show, but your local bookstore as well. If you want to support the show directly, once again, patreon.com slash Adam Con. Over five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show, ad free. For 15 bucks a month, I will read your name in the credits of the show. This week, I want to thank Jake, Callan, hey, look at distraction, Uber Elder, Avaro Eggburger, Tracy, Nicholas Jose Saurra. Tell you what, let me just go to the middle of our Patreon list.

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