By Leslie Price
I’ve been following food writer and cookbook author Julia Turshen for years. There’s just something about her. She’s a total pro who – in addition to publishing multiple cookbooks (Small Victories, Feed the Resistance, Now & Again, Simply Julia) – and co-authoring more, also writes a friendly and useful newsletter, helms a podcast, and somehow finds the time to teach accessibly priced online cooking classes each week.
It’s not just that, though. She’s thoughtful and considerate. You feel that specialness in both her writing and recipes; she understands how people cook at home and does the work so other at-home cooks can learn her tricks and techniques. Her new book, What Goes With What (on shelves Tuesday), expresses that effort. It’s filled with recipes, but also shows you how to riff with what you have on hand.
I spoke with her ahead of the cookbook’s release to talk a little about food, but more about another passion of hers: powerlifting. She shared that side of herself recently, both in her writing and in the eighth season of her podcast, Keep Calm & Cook On.
Lifting super heavy weights is the opposite of the programming I got growing up in the eighties and nineties around what fitness for women was supposed to be. It’s a shame, as weight training can help us as we age, improving bone density and grip strength.
I wanted to know more, so I asked her all about how she got started, what beginners should know, and how lifting heavy weights has affected her physical and mental health.
You’re known for your cookbooks – your new book, What Goes With What, comes out Tuesday. So I took notice when, in addition to food, you spoke about powerlifting. Can you share how you got into it?
I’ve had a very challenging relationship with my body and weight my whole life. I’ve started to write more about it because even though I’ve spent my career being a cookbook author, I’ve still struggled with that. It’s been an interesting field of work because I’ve gotten to capitalize on my obsessive relationship with food.
I used to exercise a ton, and it was only ever in the pursuit of weight loss. When I started to heal my relationship with my body and food, I realized I had to also pay attention to how I treated movement. I noticed people on social media lifting weights, and I read Casey Johnston’s work on strength training. I saw a lot of myself in her writing.
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After my last cookbook, I spent a season working at a vegetable farm to shake things up a little. I loved being strong enough to lift big crates of vegetables. When the season came to a close, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do for exercise that would make me feel good about myself and that I’d enjoy. I reached out to a friend, and was like, can you tell me about this powerlifting stuff you do? Where do you do it? She introduced me to the gym. I go to Matt, who’s my coach. I didn’t start training with Matt to be a powerlifter. I told him I just wanted to remember that I was strong. It evolved into me getting into powerlifting, and it’s been an incredibly healing sport.
I made a decision a couple of years ago to limit my social media [posting] to my work. It was taking over my life too much. I made an exception to that self-imposed rule to occasionally share about lifting, even though it’s not my job, because of how profound it has been for my relationship with my body. So yeah, people are coming to me for easy dinner recipes, and they happen to learn about powerlifting.
It’s my understanding that powerlifting is three movements. Is that right? When you go to the gym, what does the workout look like?
If you’re training as a powerlifter, the goal is to lift the most amount of weight you can for a single repetition in each of the three movements. You’re looking for your ultimate strength. And the three movements – the squat, bench, and deadlift – are very different. Combined, they give you a good indication of your overall strength. They kind of hit all the muscle groups. When you’re training, your goal is to be as strong as possible. You “train the lift.”
I’ve never run a marathon, and I have no plans to, but it reminds me of all the writing there is about running where it’s like, don’t you just run? When you do one thing that’s simple and repetitive, you can really get into the nitty-gritty of it. You do a lot of accessory work and other things to help support those lifts.
For example, I love bench pressing. It’s my favorite of all three lifts. I do a lot of exercises to strengthen my back muscles to make my bench pressing more powerful, like lat pulldowns or rows. I also find it helpful to do things that are the opposite of those three lifts to balance things out.
How did you decide to do a competition?
I began competing because of my coach, Matt. When I started working with him, it sounds so cheesy, but I felt like he saw something in me that I wasn’t seeing quite yet. It clicked for me when I did my first competition. There were so many athletes who looked like me and I realized I had found a sport that my body is built for.
Every lifter who’s competing can have a handler. For some, it’s a friend or a relative. For others, it’s their coach. It almost feels like I’m a boxer and he’s the guy giving me the water in the corner. He makes sure I have room to warm up and makes sure I’m in the right place at the right time.
It’s a little intimidating because you’re lifting so much weight. How do you do it without getting hurt?
Yeah, I totally get that. To this day, the fact that I do this really terrifies my mom. She’s been to some of my competitions, and she’s always nervous. It’s actually a safe sport because you’re not going from zero to 300 pounds. What you see on social media is typically people who have been doing it for a while.
Casey Johnston, who wrote a short instructional book called Liftoff, recommends starting with a broomstick or a Swiffer to learn the form. Then you can start with dumbbells and add weight slowly. I work up in five-pound, or two-and-a-half-pound, increments. Being patient is important. I also refer people to Meg Gallagher, who has a program called Before the Barbell. She’s good at explaining, and it’s free.
Having a coach is amazing, but it’s also an investment. I highly recommend it – even if it’s just meeting with someone at the beginning to help you make sure your form is good. There’s nothing you could do to invest in your safety more than having someone knowledgeable watching you and giving you cues. If you look up strength-training gyms, specifically powerlifting gyms, some places have intro classes.
Wanting to work out to be strong is a great mindset shift. I started lifting weights a few years ago, mostly out of bone density concerns. But the other day I had to move a couch and I could pick it up, which felt cool. In terms of your own health, what have you noticed since you took up this sport? Not only physically, but mentally.
Powerlifting has definitely affected my physical body — it can do a lot of things that it couldn’t do before. But the impact on my mental health has been greater. It has quieted so much of the noise. When you’re lifting super heavy weights, you cannot think about anything else. It makes it impossible to not be present. Even though I’m an anxious person, I feel my least anxious when I’m doing this really intense thing because I have to be focused and aware of how my body feels. As someone who’s lived with a lot of anxiety, as someone who’s lived with an eating disorder, actually being in touch with how my body feels has been hard [in the past].
The effects outside of the gym have been profound. Being a physically strong person makes me feel confident, calm, and less validation-seeking. I feel good about myself and not in a hyped-up, ego way. It also requires a lot of trust in yourself. Each time you go up a little [in weight], it’s a little like, whoa, can I do this?
As a perfectionist, it’s been helpful to know that when I “fail” – which is just the word we use when you don’t complete a lift – it’s not a bad thing. It’s just like, okay, I need to sleep more or eat more before the next time, or do more accessory [work]. I know that there are things I can do to make it possible.
The other thing that can hold people back from pursuing weight training is the atmosphere inside of those gyms.
That’s another reason why starting with a coach or a class is helpful. Walking into any gym, but specifically a strength gym or a powerlifting gym, is intimidating. It’s a lot of equipment, it’s a lot of loud sounds; there are a lot of big, strong people listening to intense music on their headphones, being serious and grunting and stuff. I liken it to walking into a hardware store [for the first time]. Having a coach is like having a person who works at the hardware store show you around.
My first competition was such a fun experience. When you compete in powerlifting, you literally get on a platform and do your lift. It’s like stepping on stage and basically being like, look how strong I am. Everyone claps for you, whether or not you complete the lift. I found it – and continue to find it – a deeply empowering experience to command that kind of attention and to be unafraid of people looking at your body, seeing what it’s capable of, and seeing you try.
I had a little light-bulb moment then, because I wanted more people in my life to have access to that feeling. Especially for queer and trans people, which is the community I’m part of (I’m not trans, but my spouse is non-binary, and we have many trans friends). So I started Queer Barbell Club at my gym on Sunday mornings, which kind of morphed into gay gym hour. It’s not specifically powerlifting, people do whatever they want, but you know if you show up on Sunday morning, there’s a group there and you’re not going to be the only one.
Sometimes I’ll look around at the gym on Sunday morning and it’s full of queer people just doing something with their bodies and being rooted on by everyone else. And it’s really simple, but really beautiful.