About She's A Beast
Welcome to She’s A Beast, the thinking person’s health 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 is the opposite of that.
Our relationships with our real-life bodies, food, and movement are critical and fundamental to our existence. I wanted to make a place where I can break down the extremely confusing programming we are meant to blindly follow, and steer us back to ourselves and each other.
In the wider media world, it's exceptionally difficult to run a publication that reports on essential topics like disordered eating/workout behavior, body image, "unsavory" health topics, and wellness scams. You don't see publications covering them because advertisers don't want their ads next to them. They are considered "not brand-safe," not valuable, and a liability for the business (and the ads that do get placed next to this coverage are for scammy "therapy" startups, "green" powders, and worse). The current media ecosystem does not support covering these matters. You cannot post even a cartoon nipple on any Facebook-owned platform; that's where we are at, culturally.
If you believe that the world needs coverage like this, it can only happen with direct reader support. Our readers include students, teachers, nonprofit workers, and political volunteers, so your support benefits their readership, too.
Do I need to be a meathead to love this newsletter?
That's the thing--no! The vast majority of subscribers don't work out. (Most people don't work out.) They just enjoy a fun weekly read about health stuff and being a person/woman on earth, and then they go on their merry way. Whether you eventually find your way to lifting, or not, that's your business! Whether you have the time or energy or interest or not, I believe you, and that's all the conversation we ever need to have about that.
Here are the newsletter types:
Link Letters (every Friday, free)
The Friday newsletter, Link Letter, is for both free and paid subscribers. These have links, essays, and commentary on negotiating a (more) based and functional relationship with our selves while we are beset on all sides by people yelling at us to lose weight, stop sweating, burn calories, get abs, eat clean, and so forth. I do a little reporting, too (I’ve been a tech and science journalist for for almost two decades).
Ask A Swole Woman (every other Sunday, paid)
The biweekly Sunday column is for paid subscribers only. Can you do intuitive eating and strength training at the same time? What's the deal with "cutting body fat" vs. weight loss, "hormone-balancing" workouts, or eating more? Other times I take a look back at cultural moments to see what we can learn from them now. What's the deal with Kayla Itsines? What did Tim Ferriss do to the brains of redditors? What did Curves do to (or for) women? Or Adele’s weight lifting journey? I aim to find out.
Battleaxe (unpredictable)
This an opt-in supplement with no guarantees as to topic, frequency, or length. The first one was about John Malkovich. If you just want to read more of my (strong) opinions, that's what Battleaxe is for.
Who is Casey?
I’m the author of LIFTOFF: Couch to Barbell; my newest book, A Physical Education; the column Ask A Swole Woman for The Hairpin, SELF, and VICE; and a longtime writer and journalist in science and tech.
I 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.” (This is where A Physical Education begins.)
As I got into lifting weights, it began to dissolve the thick connective tissue in my brain between “being as attractive and tiny as possible” and “being a worthwhile person,” 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 crushing my squat PRs and perfecting my deadlift form turned out to 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 started to bring the ol' reporter's eye and shoe leather to the task of figuring out how and why I believed what I did about myself, my body, food, movement, work, and happiness. And now here we are.
Learn more about this author
Why subscribe with your dollars?
If you enjoy these writings and research, know that I not only cherish being able to do this work, but I cherish being able to serve you, the reader, exactly in the way I do now. It is my greatest hope and joy not to run ads; I don't want to have sponsors. In fact, I live to afflict those powerful forces. It brings me joy. Let me cook.
Subscribers receive a paid-subscriber-exclusive 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.
Want a taste? Try these unlocked Swole Woman columns on for size:
- How to eat like a big beautiful horse
- What it means when Lenny Kravitz does high reps with low weights
- Is it possible to do intuitive eating and strength training at the same time?
- Confessions of a former playground adrenaline junkie
You can check out the rest of the archive, which includes previews of many columns.
You also get a litany of other benefits, including:
- Access to the Beasties Discord (a.k.a the Liftcord), 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!
- A FREE copy of LIFTOFF: Couch to Barbell, the strength training program for total beginners
- 30% off She’s A Beast/Couch to Barbell merch
- An Ask A Swole Woman column in your inbox every other Sunday, plus access to the entire archive of paid posts
- Early access to top-secret/semi-secret/badly-kept-secret She’s A Beast ventures, such as LIFTOFF
- The satisfaction that comes with supporting the free coverage that arrives in inboxes weekly on Fridays. This publication is maybe the only health-related content operation on god's green earth that is completely free of sponsorships, partnerships, advertising, or product placement. And that is all thanks to reader support.
Also: even if you sign up for only the free newsletter, you will get a free sample of LIFTOFF. Can’t lose!
"We're dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go do something."
- Kurt Vonnegut
For questions about subscriptions and tech logistics, please refer to the FAQ.
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