You see it everywhere: A narrative of progress in two snapshots—before and after—that leaves the viewer to imagine what came in between. On the left, a body whose inhabitant is unhappy with it in some way. On the right, the same body but different, and—you’re meant to understand—better.
您到处都可以看到它：在两个快照中的进度叙事（在此之前和之后），这使观众想象一下介于两者之间。在左边，一个居民以某种方式对此感到不满意的身体。在右边，相同的身体但不同，您本来可以理解的 - better。
On diet culture’s greatest-hits album, the “before and after” is the lead single, an earworm that’s hard to get out of your mind. Even when it’s not being used explicitly to sell something (a meal regimen, a workout program), this diptych carries a promise that through the application of effort, you too can chisel yourself into a (supposedly) more appealing shape, which usually, but not always, means a smaller one.
在Diet Culture的最伟大的专辑中，“ The Fort and After”是主单曲，这是一个很难摆脱困境的ear虫。即使没有明确用于出售某些东西（餐食，锻炼计划），该二型人也承诺，通过应用努力，您也可以将自己凿成（据称）更具吸引力的形状，通常，但并不总是意味着一个较小的形状。
Casey Johnston’s new book, A Physical Education, tells a before-and-after story, too—one not of shrinkage but of growth, physical and otherwise. Johnston traces her journey from a life of joyless distance running, which she saw as “taking out bigger and bigger cardio loans to buy myself more calories,” to the revelation of weight lifting. Her book incorporates memoir, science writing, and cultural critique, offering a technical breakdown of the effects of Johnston’s time in the gym, as well as condemnations of diet culture’s scams and hucksters. The book is not a how-to, but more of a why-to: Strength training, in Johnston’s telling, reframes both body and mind. Before lifting, “I knew all the contours of treating myself like a deceitful degenerate, against whom I must maintain constant vigilance,” she writes. After lifting, “all of the parts of myself that had been fighting each other” had become “united in the holy cause of getting strong as hell.”
凯西·约翰斯顿（Casey Johnston）的新书《体育》也讲述了一个前后的故事 - 不是收缩，而是成长，身体和其他方式。约翰斯顿（Johnston）从无愉快的距离奔跑的生活中追溯了她的旅程，她认为这是“借出越来越大的有氧贷款，以购买更多的卡路里”，再到举重的启示。她的书结合了回忆录，科学写作和文化批评，对约翰斯顿时间在体育馆的影响以及对饮食文化的骗局和哈克斯特的谴责提供了技术细分。这本书不是一个方法，而是一个想法：约翰斯顿讲述的力量训练，重新构造身心。她写道：“我知道将自己当作欺骗性的堕落的所有轮廓，我必须保持警惕，”她写道。举起后，“我互相战斗的所有部分”已经“统一了成为地狱的圣洁事业”。
Johnston has been evangelizing and explaining weight lifting online for years, first with her “Ask a Swole Woman” online column and then with her independent newsletter, She’s a Beast, along with a beginner’s lifting-training guide, Liftoff: Couch to Barbell. Like any hobby, weight lifting generates plenty of online material, but much of it is aimed at an audience that already knows its way around a squat rack. Johnston stands out for her attunement to the needs and anxieties of true beginners—particularly those who are women, for whom pumping iron often requires a certain amount of unlearning.
约翰斯顿（Johnston）多年来一直在宣传和解释举重的举重，首先是与她的“问一个斯考妇女”在线专栏，然后与她的独立新闻通讯，她是野兽，以及初学者的提升培训指南，升降机：沙发到贝尔贝尔。像任何业余爱好一样，举重会产生大量的在线材料，但其中大部分针对的是已经在蹲式架子上知道自己的方式的受众。约翰斯顿（Johnston）脱颖而出，满足了真正初学者的需求和焦虑 - 尤其是那些是女性的人，他们倾斜铁通常需要一定程度的学习。
Even after the rise of body positivity, women are still frequently confronted with unsolicited promotion for crash diets, told that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” and sold what Johnston calls “busywork bullshit” exercises—“Target love handles with these 10 moves”; “20 minutes to tone your arms”; etc.—designed to spot-treat so-called problem areas. Social media has supercharged the delivery of these messages; though there are plenty of supportive communities online, for every body-positive influencer, there seems to be another pushing food restriction and punishing workouts. The TikTok trend of “girl dinner” suggests that eating nothing but a plate of cheese cubes and almonds is an adorably feminine quirk rather than a repackaged eating disorder.
即使在身体阳性的兴起之后，妇女仍然经常面临未经请求的狂欢饮食促销活动，并告诉“没有什么比瘦的感觉好”，并出售了约翰斯顿所说的“忙碌的胡说”练习，“目标爱情手柄的目标是用这10个动作进行目标”；“ 20分钟以调节您的手臂”；等等 - 设计到现场处理的所谓问题领域。社交媒体已经增强了这些信息的交付。尽管在线上有很多支持社区，但对于每个身体阳性影响者，似乎还有另一种推动食物限制和惩罚锻炼。Tiktok的“女孩晚餐”的趋势表明，除了一盘奶酪块和杏仁外，什么都不是女性化的怪癖，而不是重新包装的饮食失调症。
Read: The body-positivity movement is over
阅读：身体积极性运动已经结束
Johnston writes that since the age of 12, she’d been worrying about her weight, having internalized the message that “either I was small enough (and always getting smaller), or I was a disappointment.”
约翰斯顿写道，自12岁起，她就一直在担心自己的体重，并将其内在地说：“要么我足够小（而且总是变小），要么我很失望。”
This is the message that fueled my workouts for the longest time, too—that the point of exercise was weight loss or, at the very least, staving off weight gain. Working out was a chore or—even worse—torturous penance for failing to become the impossible ever-shrinking woman. It wasn’t supposed to feel good; it definitely wasn’t fun. After berating myself to go to the gym in the first place, I would pedal away on the elliptical for 30 to 40 minutes until I tasted blood in the back of my throat (seems fine and normal), and then perform a grab bag of whatever calisthenics might plausibly target my core, hating every second of it. None of this changed the fact that I would get winded walking up a flight of stairs, or nearly buckle under the weight of my carry-on while hoisting it into an airplane’s overhead bin.
这也是这样的信息，它也加剧了我的锻炼最长的时间，即运动的重点是减肥或至少避免体重增加。锻炼是一件琐事，或者（甚至更糟糕的是）因未能成为不可能骨折的女人而苦苦挣扎。它不应该感觉良好；绝对不好玩。首先要谴责自己去健身房后，我会在椭圆机上踩踏30至40分钟，直到我在喉咙后面品尝血液（看起来很好且正常），然后执行一个抓着的甘丽治尼斯可能会瞄准我的核心，任它的每一秒钟。这一切都没有改变我会沿着楼梯飞行的事实，或者几乎在我的随身携带的重量下将其吊在飞机的头顶垃圾箱中。
Eventually, seeking a less resentful relationship with exercise and my body, I dove into martial arts for several years, then decided to give weight lifting a try. Johnston’s writing was a guide for me; I loosely followed her Liftoff program when I was getting started, and have been a regular reader of her newsletter. It turned out that picking up something heavy for a few sets of five reps, sitting down half the workout, and then going home and eating a big sloppy burger did far more to make me feel comfortable in my body than gasping my way through endless burpees and rewarding myself with a salad ever did.
最终，我寻求与运动和身体不太怨恨的关系，我渴望从事武术多年，然后决定尝试举重。约翰斯顿的写作是我的指导。当我开始时，我宽松地遵循了她的升空计划，并且是她的新闻通讯的常规读者。事实证明，在锻炼的一半坐下，坐下一半的五次次数，然后回家，吃一个大马虎汉堡的事情使我在体内感到舒适，而不是通过无尽的burpees喘着粗气，让我感到舒适，这使我感到舒适。
Johnston’s assertion that lifting “completely changed how I think and feel about the world and myself and everything” sounds like another of the fitness industry’s wild overpromises. But I know what she means. I, too, have found that lifting can transform the way you relate to your body.
约翰斯顿的断言“完全改变了我对世界，我本人和一切的思维方式”的声明，这听起来像是健身行业的另一个疯狂的过度宣传。但是我知道她的意思。我也发现举重可以改变您与身体的联系。
First and foremost, Johnston explains, it inverts what women are still too-often told about the goal of exercise. It builds up instead of whittling away; it favors function over aesthetics. Weight lifting makes you better at more than just lifting weights. Johnston writes about struggling with a 40-pound bag of cat litter before she began lifting; now she simply picks it up and carries it into her apartment. As I added weight to the barbell, I felt my muscles stabilize; the neck and back pain from my butt-sitting job faded; I stopped needing help with my overstuffed suitcases; and I even started walking differently—no longer flinging my skeleton around, but smoothly engaging actual muscles. When I do cardio, running is easier too.
约翰斯顿（Johnston）解释说，首先，它颠倒了妇女对运动的目标。它积累而不是烦恼；它比美学方面的功能更喜欢。举重会使您在举重不仅仅是举重。约翰斯顿（Johnston）写了关于在开始举起之前用40磅重的猫垃圾挣扎的。现在，她只是把它捡起来，然后将其带入她的公寓。当我增加杠铃的体重时，我感到肌肉稳定了。我的屁股工作工作的脖子和背部疼痛消失了；我不再需要帮助我的手提箱过多的帮助；而且我什至开始行走不同 - 没有更长的时间挥舞着骨骼，但是平稳地吸引了实际的肌肉。当我做有氧运动时，跑步也很容易。
Read: The protein madness is just getting started
阅读：蛋白质疯狂刚刚开始
Here’s another thing: You gotta eat. It won’t work if you don’t. When Johnston crunched the numbers on how many calories her body would need to build muscle, she discovered that the 1,200-calorie diet she’d been living on for years was not going to cut it. For the lifting to do anything, she’d need to eat more. Like, a lot more. Protein, especially.
这是另一件事：你必须吃。如果您不这样做，它将行不通。当约翰斯顿（Johnston）对自己的身体锻炼肌肉需要多少卡路里的数字进行处理时，她发现她已经生活了多年的1200卡路里饮食不会减少。对于举重做任何事情，她需要吃更多。就像，更多。特别是蛋白质。
Going from a mindset of restriction to making sure that she was eating enough shifted how Johnston felt in her body. She had more energy; she was no longer constantly cold. She felt like “a big, beautiful horse.” As for me, before lifting, I had never so viscerally felt the obvious truth that food is fuel, that what and how much I eat shapes what my body can do and how it feels.
从限制的心态到确保她吃得足够多的人改变了约翰斯顿的体内。她有更多的精力；她不再经常冷。她感觉就像是“一匹大的美丽的马。”至于我，在举起之前，我从来没有如此内心地感觉到食物是燃料的明显事实，我吃的东西和多大的身体会做些什么，我的身体可以做什么以及感觉如何。
Yet even these discoveries cannot always overcome the influence of diet culture. When Johnston starts to allow herself more calories, at first she fears “the worst fate that could befall a woman who bravely ate more: gaining three, or even five, pounds.” The most heartbreaking scene in the book illustrates how difficult it can be to put your weapons down after a lifetime of treating your body like the enemy. Johnston tries to spread the good word of weight lifting to her mother, whom she describes as a perpetual dieter and a practiced commentator on any fluctuations in Johnston’s weight. It doesn’t go well. After they take a frustrating trip to the gym together, Johnston asks, “What is it you’re so afraid of?” Her mom replies that she doesn’t want to become “one of those fat old women” whom “no one likes.”
然而，即使这些发现也不能总是克服饮食培养的影响。当约翰斯顿开始允许自己更多的卡路里时，她最初担心“最勇敢地吃更多吃更多的女人的命运最糟糕的命运：获得了三磅甚至五磅。”书中最令人心碎的场景说明了一生将武器像敌人一样对待您的身体后，将武器放下多么困难。约翰斯顿（Johnston）试图向母亲传播好举重的好词，她将其描述为永久的节食者，以及对约翰斯顿（Johnston）体重的任何波动的实践评论员。进展不顺利。在他们一起去健身房的令人沮丧的旅行之后，约翰斯顿问：“你是怎么害怕的？”她的妈妈回答说，她不想成为“没人喜欢的那些胖老女人之一”。
“I can think of lots of fat old women that many people love,” Johnston tries.
约翰斯顿尝试：“我能想到很多很多人喜欢的胖老女人。”
“But they wouldn’t love me.”
“但是他们不会爱我。”
That’s the well I think so many of us are still trying to climb out of: the belief that a woman’s worth always lies in her desirability, that desirability takes only one shape, and that if she doesn’t live up to the impossible standard, she should at least be working apologetically toward correcting that.
我认为这是我们很多人仍在努力攀升的好：信念女人的价值总是在她的可取性，这种可取性只有一种形状，而且如果她不辜负不可能的标准，她至少应该在辩护地努力纠正这一点。
Even if you think you’ve made it out, the foot soldiers of diet culture are always looking to pull you back in. I’ve followed some lifting-related accounts on Instagram; the algorithm seems to have interpreted that as free rein to bombard me with reels of “weight-loss journeys,” “bodyweight exercises for hot girlies,” and the like. Every other celebrity seems to be on Ozempic now, and apparently, “thin is in” again. I admit I spiraled a little when I went up a size in all my clothes, even though I’d gotten bigger on purpose.
即使您认为自己已经做到了，饮食文化的步兵也一直在寻求将您拉回去。我在Instagram上遵循了一些与举重有关的帐户。该算法似乎已经解释为自由地用“减肥旅行”，“为辣妹进行体重练习”等自由轰炸我。现在，其他所有名人似乎现在都在奥齐姆（Ozempic）上，显然，“稀薄”再次出现。我承认，即使我故意变大，我的衣服都会大大升高时，我的尺寸也有些刺激。
Rebecca Johns: A diet writer’s regrets
丽贝卡·约翰斯（Rebecca Johns）：饮食作家的遗憾
Lifting culture, too, has its trapdoors back into disordered thinking. As Lauren Michele Jackson points out in her review of A Physical Education for The New Yorker, the idea that focusing on strength frees you from being preoccupied with looks is naive. Weight lifting can come with its own set of metrics and obsessions: Eating enough protein and hitting your macros can replace calorie restriction; instead of fixating on thinness, perhaps now you want a juicy ass or rippling biceps. The practice can be fraught in a different way for men, who are told that maximal swoleness is their optimal form. The same activity can be a key or a cage, depending on your point of view.
提升文化也将其陷入僵局恢复到混乱的思维中。正如劳伦·米歇尔·杰克逊（Lauren Michele Jackson）在对《纽约客》（New Yorker）进行体育教育的评论中指出的那样，专注于力量使您不受外表的全神贯注的想法很幼稚。举重可以带来自己的一组指标和痴迷：吃足够的蛋白质并击中宏可以取代卡路里的限制；也许现在您想要一个多汁的屁股或波纹二头肌。对于男人来说，这种做法可能会以不同的方式感到困扰，这些男人被告知最大厌恶是他们的最佳形式。相同的活动可以是钥匙或笼子，具体取决于您的观点。
But weight lifting has stuck, for me and I think for Johnston, because it can also change the way one thinks about achievement. It serves as a pretty good metaphor for a balanced approach to striving that eschews both the Lean In–girlboss hustle and its “I don’t dream of labor” anti-ambition backlash. Not running until your tank is empty and then running some more, but rather fueling yourself enough to push just a bit further than you have before. Letting the gains accumulate slowly, a little more weight at a time. And most important, learning that rest is part of the rhythm of progress. You punctuate your workouts with full days off. You do your reps, and then you just sit there for a couple of minutes. You work, and then you recover.
但是，对我和我认为约翰斯顿的举重一直困扰，因为它也可以改变人们对成就的看法。它是一种平衡的方法来努力避免倾斜的 - 吉尔巴斯喧嚣及其“我不梦想劳动”反掠夺反弹的方法，是一个很好的隐喻。直到坦克空着，然后运行更多，而是要运行，而是要加油，足以比以前更进一步。让收益缓慢地积累，一次重量更多。最重要的是，学习休息是进步节奏的一部分。您可以在整天休息一下锻炼。您进行代表，然后您坐在那里几分钟。您工作，然后恢复。
While I’m resting, I often eat sour candies out of a fanny pack. I saw some powerlifters on Instagram eating candy before tackling a big lift—the idea being that the quick-metabolizing sugary carbs give you a little boost of energy. I don’t care if this is scientifically sound. (I’m serious, don’t email me.) I’m more excited to work out when I know that it’s also my candy time. The gym has morphed from a torture chamber to a place of challenge, effort, rest, and pleasure, all of which, it turns out, can coexist.
休息时，我经常用腰包吃酸糖果。我在Instagram上看到了一些动力效应器，然后才能解决大型升降机 - 这个想法是，快速代谢的含糖碳水化合物会给您带来一些能量。我不在乎这是否是科学的。（我是认真的，不要给我发电子邮件。）当我知道这也是我的糖果时间时，我更加兴奋地锻炼身体。体育馆从酷刑室变成了一个挑战，努力，休息和愉悦的地方，事实证明，所有这些都可以共存。
And failure is part of the mix, too. As Johnston writes, “Building strength is about pressing steadily upward on one’s current limits”; if you’re doing it right, your attempts will sometimes exceed your ability. That’s how you know you’re challenging yourself enough.
失败也是混合的一部分。正如约翰斯顿（Johnston）所写的那样：“建立力量是要稳步向上施加到当前的限制上”；如果您做对了，您的尝试有时会超出您的能力。这就是您知道自己在挑战自己的方式。
Sometimes failure involves gassing out on an attempt to squat heavier than you have ever squatted, and sometimes it’s more like slipping on the banana peel of an old, unhealthy thought pattern. Both will knock you on your ass for a bit. But that’s part of it. “Progress could be about going backward, letting go,” Johnston writes. “Before and after” images are only snapshots. Outside the frame, the body, and the self, keep evolving.
有时，失败涉及在试图蹲下的尝试比您以前更重的尝试，有时更像是在旧的，不健康的思想模式的香蕉皮上滑倒。两者都会把你打倒一点。但这就是其中的一部分。约翰斯顿写道：“进步可能是向后走，放手。”“前后”图像只是快照。在框架，身体和自我之外，不断发展。
