She’s A Beast has moved!!
Go to shesabeast.co for our new home.
She’s A Beast… they make me so happy when they land in my inbox. [It’s] about seeing your body as something other than a thing you have to make skinny.
And while this may sound very serious, they are honestly joyful. These newsletters are undoing decades of programming that a lot of us have been through, and any time I open them, I feel a little bit happier.
—NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour
Hello; I’m Casey. I’m the author of LIFTOFF: Couch to Barbell.
For five years, I wrote the column Ask A Swole Woman for The Hairpin, SELF, and VICE.
(If you’re curious what it’s like, there are archives of columns here and here.)
But now it’s time, as we say in the lifting community, to diversify our programming. Welcome to the She’s A Beast newsletter.
A lot of health content is focused on blowing smoke up your ass about jade eggs and vitamins and “toxin-dispersing cellulite-curing silver-thread leggings”; this will be the opposite of that.
Learning:
to get strong
that working out doesn’t have to be complicated
that food is good for you, actually
that bodies are where you have to live, not just for being hot, so you should make it nice
are some of the best things that ever happened to me, and I want to help other people learn those things for themselves too. And that’s why I started a newsletter about it.
This will be the same old impassioned and realistic Swole Woman approach you know and love (though I’m always hoping to write shorter), along with links about and commentary on relevant health and fitness happenings, and writing about those subjects that any real publications I might pitch to “don’t see a fit” for.
Who is A Swole Woman/Casey/ the “Beast” of whom you speak?
Well, the Beast is in all of us. But I’m a writer and editor 14 years in the game who used to have a terrible relationship with my body; I ran too much, ate too little, ruminated about food constantly, and thought that was all just part of the beautiful experience of “being a woman.”
In 2014, I found a Reddit post that credibly revealed that actually, lifting weights did not make women bulky. My desire to be hot piqued, I looked into this lifting thing further: I could work out less, eat more, and look essentially the same? Why was no one talking about this???
As I got into lifting, it began to dissolve the thick connective tissue in my brain between “working out” and “being as attractive and tiny as possible.” I realized that my body was for so much more than “punishing it with salad scraps and ‘intensity intervals’”; it could grow and get strong much more easily and quickly that I ever could have imagined; and that lifting weights could be the most fun and validating form of exercise I’d ever tried, that it was easier to me than cardio (yes, it’s true; I would never tell a lie about the dreaded cardio).
I began yelling nonstop about the incredible experience I was having, how I finally was starting to understand what life and living were about, because I was crushing my squat PRs and perfecting my deadlift form. And now here I am.
Why subscribe with your dollars?
You get access to the Beasties Discord, a place for people who are ready for growth (physical, emotional) to help each other understand lifting programs, share the latest snacks, and more. This includes a form-check channel for workshopping your progress with lifting form!
You’ll receive a biweekly Sunday edition of the beloved advice column that started it all, Ask A Swole Woman, with in-depth, evidence-based, yet empathetic guidance on the rewarding process of growing stronger, as a lifter and as a human (see here for what I mean!)
You’ll get 20% off She’s A Beast/Couch to Barbell merch
You’ll also get access to the entire archive of paid posts
You will have the ability to comment on posts, and access to open discussion threads
Early access to top-secret/semi-secret/badly-kept-secret She’s A Beast ventures, such as LIFTOFF
And that reminds me: Until the end of April, subscribers get a code for a FREE copy of LIFTOFF: Couch to Barbell in their welcome email!
You will be supporting the free coverage of the health and fitness landscape that arrives in inboxes weekly on Fridays, and help keep this space from being taken over by ads and sponsors!
Also: even if you sign up for the free newsletter, you will get a free sample of LIFTOFF. Can’t lose!
Stay up-to-date
If I can be real for a moment, my Instagram is the perfect complementary follow to the newsletter. I also Tweet. Lord, do I tweet.
As far as the newsletter, you won’t have to worry about missing anything if you sign up. Every new edition goes directly to your inbox.
