Hey, I'm Tinby Dermius, and this is NPR's Book of the Day.

I love working out and have come to cherish my daily ritual of gym time, but it hasn't always been that way.

It took a long road to get over my discomfort in the gym, discomfort that started in the middle school locker room and led all the way into adulthood.

The truth is it hasn't always been easy for me to live in this body, in those spaces.

And that's exactly the tension at the heart of a new anthology called Deconstructing the Fitness Industrial Complex,

how to resist, disrupt, and reclaim what it means to be fit in American culture.

It's co-edited by Justice Roe Williams, a trainer who himself had to learn to love the gym

and his body in new ways.

In this conversation with NPR's Juana Summers, he talks about what that journey looked like

and what we can all do to make gym culture more inclusive.

In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.

Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, sources and methods.

NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people helping you

understand why distant events matter here at home. Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or

wherever you get your podcasts. Ever since he was young, Justice Roe Williams loved the gym,

but he didn't always feel like the gym loved him back.

I identify as a black man of trans experience, and I feel like being in gyms, I couldn't be whole in my body.

I couldn't experience my bodies in a way that felt connected to strength

and power that felt seen. That experience has inspired Williams, who is now a certified

personal trainer, to push the fitness industry to work for all bodies. And that involves

redefining what fitness actually means.

Spoiler alert, it is not about BMI or working to failure or that familiar phrase, no pain, no gain.

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