. The pit represents muscle, and the green flesh represents fat. When you restrict calories to lose weight, both pit and flesh get smaller. When you gain the weight back — inevitably — the pit stays smaller, a process that recurs every time you put yourself through this cycle. Lifting weights makes the pit bigger. A bigger pit, not less green stuff, should be the point of exercise, but we’ve been getting it twisted for years.
Oh, her body is looking conventionally hotter than it did before. And she’s doing it by working out way less than I am and eating way more than I am. And it’s unusual to read anything by a smart writer who’s so emphatically not neurotic. In part, she attributes her radiant sanity to — you will be stunned — lifting weights. The practice taught Johnston that consistent effort, rather than peak-intensity effort, is how change happens. As is true of a lot of her work, you don’t need to care about lifting weights to appreciate the insight.
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