Rejecting Toxic Fitness Culture with Casey Johnston

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2025

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Casey Johnston is not your typical health and fitness influencer. She joins host Rachel Feltman to discuss how finding joy in strength training changed her relationship to fitness, food and body image. Johnston’s new book, A Physical Education, reflects on engaging with exercise in a balanced way. Recommended reading: You can get Johnston’s book A Physical Education here You can also get Johnston’s training program book LIFTOFF: Couch to Barbell here Read her newsletter She’s a Beast Or follow her on Bluesky Tell us what you think! Take our survey for the chance to win some SciAm swag! http://sciencequickly.com/survey E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Alex Sugiura with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:27.8	slash UK slash AI for people.
0:42.1	For Scientific American Science quickly, I'm Rachel Seltman. Just to give you a quick answer, we'll be talking about physical fitness today.
0:58.7	We'll touch on topics such as disordered eating and intentional weight loss.
1:03.4	Social media is full of fitness influencers promising bikini bodies and hawking fat-burning cardio routines,
1:10.2	especially for women and femme-presenting
1:12.3	people. But if you know where to look, you can find folks who are doing things differently,
1:18.0	exercising slowly, lifting heavy, and getting strong, a process that often involves fewer
1:24.4	workouts and a lot more calories.
1:32.0	One of the most popular figures in the femme lifting space is writer Casey Johnston.
1:37.1	Her book, A Physical Education, How I Escapeed Diet Culture and Gain the Power of Lifting,
1:38.1	just came out.
1:43.2	And she's here to tell us more about how strength training can change our relationship with fitness, body image, and even our
1:45.0	own minds. Hey, thanks so much for coming on to chat. Hi, thanks for having me. So I would love to
1:50.9	start by asking, what misconceptions did you have about lifting and strength training before you
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