‘if Dieting Works, Where’s The Evidence?’ How Weightlifting Helped Casey Johnston Love Her Body Again

The American writer spent year after miserable year trying to be smaller. Then she stepped into a gym, picked up a barbell – and never looked back. She talks about self-confidence, her new book and the joy of eating like a ‘big beautiful horse’

Before Casey Johnston started weightlifting, she had assumed it was the preserve of “people who already had some sort of talent or need for it – like you’re a football player, a firefighter or in the military, and you need to be physically capable in that specific way”. Getting started seemed intimidating: the technique, the gym environment.

Cardio, however, had always felt intuitive. “You go out the door and you run until you can’t run any more, and that’s it,” she says. As was the idea that it should be punishing. As a younger woman always obsessively trying to lose weight, she ran half-marathons in sub-zero temperatures and feared eating even the calories burned by any run in case it “undid” her hard work – never mind how cold her extremities and faint her head.