Welcome to How to Move!

What to expect, and why we're here.

Photo by VD Photography on Unsplash

Welcome to How to Move, an anti-diet newsletter about exercise. It’s focused on what to actually do if you want to engage in fitness, without engaging in diet culture.

I’m so glad you’re here. I’m glad to be here, too, although I’ll admit I feel a little sheepish: Here’s yet another writer, launching yet another newsletter. No, I don’t think I’m going to become a household name or make millions — yet so many reasons that other writers have done this resonate with me, too. I’m craving community. I’m looking for a creative outlet, a place to experiment.

And, with great optimism, I’d like to imagine that I have something helpful to share. 

It’s incredible that we’re living in an era where thoughtful content about diet culture and body liberation is so much easier to find. I know so many people whose lives have been changed by what they’ve read in Burnt Toast or in the work of Sabrina Strings, or heard on Maintenance Phase (or, a few years ago, by following The Anti-Diet Project, which, not to brag, I used to edit!). 

But let’s say you’re on, or considering boarding, the anti-diet train — you’re working on divesting from diet culture and trying to practice body neutrality, or some related approach that doesn’t involve hating and punishing your body — but you’d still like to exercise. Maybe you have questions about navigating the gym for the first time (or the first time in a long time), or structuring a workout when you’re busy or tired, or your knees hurt, or you hate cardio? Or maybe you’re ready to push your workouts to the next level, but aren’t sure how? And maybe you’ve looked for answers to those questions elsewhere, but have been overwhelmed, discouraged, or even triggered by messaging about intentional weight loss or working toward other visible body changes? (While I have certain reservations about using Substack, the vast majority of guidance-focused fitness newsletters I’ve been able to find around here are from the intermittent-fasting, bulletproof coffee, optimization-bro POV, and I think there’s a major void to fill here.)

As a longtime health journalist and certified personal trainer, I’d love to help. This newsletter will offer helpful, actionable, straightforward guidance on fitness-related topics like these and more. I will likely also be offering workout programming, possibly in a tiered subscription model. (Thoughts?) I’m keeping things loose (and free!) to begin with because I’d like to see what sparks your interest, and allow lots of room to experiment and let this project evolve over time.

Who am I?

I’m assuming you’re here because you know me or my work already, but if you don’t, hello! I’ve been writing and editing about health and fitness for my entire career, since my very first major magazine internship at Men’s Health 18 years ago (!). I became a certified personal trainer back in 2015, and have since earned specialty certifications in functional training, prenatal and postpartum exercise, and mat Pilates.

I’m currently working as a consultant and freelancer, doing a range of things from providing content strategy and script writing services to a digital musculoskeletal clinic, to writing articles for publications, to training clients and teaching Pilates, both on Zoom and IRL. I’m also the founder of Pilates for Abortion Funds, a monthly fundraiser class I launched after the Dobbs decision and which, as of this month, has raised more than $25,000 for abortion funds. One of my proudest recent projects was serving as fitness and editorial director for Nike (M)ove Like a Mother, the company’s first-ever comprehensive prenatal and postpartum guidance program. You can find it under “Programs” in the Nike Training Club app. It’s an excellent (if I do say so myself), free resource, providing workouts and guidance on perinatal exercise, without any of the garbage messaging about weight and “bouncing back.”

Of course, for the first chunk of my career, much of my work did center weight loss, and unfortunately I didn’t yet feel a need to interrogate that approach, aside from the fact that I found calorie content pretty boring, and that writing books and articles vilifying fast food generally accomplished little for me personally other than inspiring an intense desire for a Quarter Pounder. Much to my shame, I even used to unquestioningly edit a story called “Bye-Bye, Baby Weight!” that appeared in each issue of Fit Pregnancy. (Oh, man. It was such a great magazine otherwise, and I’m embarrassed for us all, and bummed for our readers at the time, that we didn’t know better. A few years later we would never, I assure you.)

I don’t remember my exact a-ha moment, but it was around the time I began working as director of the health and wellness section at Refinery29, in 2015. The publication had launched the aforementioned Anti-Diet Project, Kelsey Miller’s life-changing column, about two years prior, and was just wrapping its first year of Take Back the Beach, a massive summer-long body positivity package. Body positivity has, of course, been co-opted by major corporations and thin white influencers with barely-visible stretch marks (and we know that working on your individual relationship with your body, as helpful as it may be to you, doesn’t effect the systemic change we need to eliminate widespread size- and ability-based oppression and discrimination), but at the time the concept was just starting to gain mainstream popularity and was actually quite revolutionary in some ways. 

In any case, the scales (heh) fell from my eyes, and it was time to divest from the Weight Loss Media Industrial Complex. For nearly a decade now, I’ve done my best to take an anti-diet, weight-neutral approach in the content I work on, the training and coaching services I provide, and my own relationship to movement. My clients regularly tell me how strong they feel, how much less pain they experience, how much easier it is for them to lift their kids and other heavy things in their everyday lives. And while I, like probably everyone else in the world, certainly have occasional moments of wondering how movement, or lack thereof, may be affecting my appearance, my focus in my own movement practice is similarly on strength, stress reduction, better sleep, improved mood, and generally feeling safe and confident in my body.

If you’d like to learn more about my background, I invite you to listen to this episode of Burnt Toast. It also goes into depth about how I was a skinny, highly inactive kid who never played sports and basically only started exercising after I repeatedly threw my back out in my 20s. Pretty much a fitness icon.

Who am I not?

Here’s the thing: I am not someone who lives in a marginalized body (aside from being a woman, I suppose). I am genetically thin and white. I am cis, het, and non-disabled. While I am of course grateful for the many privileges this offers me, it does give me pause as someone whose eyes, again, are quite open to the many evils of the way fitness is performed, depicted, and written about in our culture — both in traditional media and on social. (This is part of why my social accounts are private and I have little interest in trying to become some sort of fitness influencer. There are enough people out there who look like me, performing “fitness.”)

So look: I’ll say right now that if getting exercise advice from a thin white lady doesn't sound like your jam, I completely get it and wish you all the best. But I also do think my background, expertise, and perspective are a helpful baseline for providing this kind of guidance. And it won’t all come from me: I have friends and colleagues from many walks of life, in many kinds of bodies, that I’ll be inviting in to share their advice and expertise.

Importantly, I am also not a body liberation journalist or scholar. While this space will be free from discussion of aesthetics, intentional weight loss, and dieting, it’s also not going to be a place to find thinkpieces about diet culture, fat liberation, and dismantling anti-fat bias. (There are, again, so many people out there doing that so much better than I ever could.) My goal with this newsletter is for it to be as useful and actionable as possible — I want you to come away from each installment feeling more confident and well equipped to move your body in ways that feel good. Frankly, you won’t even have to be on the anti-diet train to get something out of it. This throat-clearing launch issue is probably the most you’ll hear about all this stuff. 

Finally, I am not a salesperson or someone who basically ever spends money on fitness gear. You won’t find affiliate links here, or any pressure to buy a fancy workout outfit or gadget. If that stuff gets you jazzed to move, go for it, but I’m all about lowering the barrier to entry for movement. There are a few basic pieces of equipment that may be helpful for you (things like a yoga mat and a few dumbbells), but beyond that, this will not be a newsletter that gives you the shoppies.

What to expect

Soon, I’ll publish my first “real” issue, which will be focused on how to structure a short workout. I recently wrote an article for The New York Times about this very subject, and I’m excited to break it down and offer additional context and ideas.

I’m setting a goal to publish one newsletter each week, but we’ll see how it goes. Maybe it’ll be more, maybe less. All my content will be free to begin with, although if you’d like to pay to subscribe you’re more than welcome (comments are only enabled for paid subscribers). In the future, I will likely introduce a paid subscription model that will place some content behind a paywall, perhaps providing options like fitness programming or workout videos for those interested. You may absolutely unsubscribe at any time, though I’ll be sad to see you go.

I’d love to know what’s challenging you in the fitness realm these days, and the kind of guidance you’d like to see here.

Mostly, I’m looking forward to connecting with you and doing what I can to help you feel safer, more confident, and stronger in your body. 

Thank you for being here!

xo
Anna