Review: "Beyond the Barbell" by Natasha Kostalas

Beyond the Barbell by Natasha Kostalas
Published September 2025
★★★

Kostalas thought she'd found her calling as a teacher, but when the workload burned her out she sought refuge in something else: weightlifting, followed by bodybuilding. And for a while, bodybuilding was not just a refuge but a calling, an identity—until it too burned her out, albeit in a different way.

I picked this up because doing some (very low-key) weightlifting myself has made me curious about memoirs on the subject, and there aren't that many memoirs on the subject, especially not by women. Kostalas's story is more about bodybuilding than it is about weightlifting, which is an important distinction—to oversimplify it, let's say that weightlifting is about getting stronger and hitting new personal records, while bodybuilding is about the aesthetics of a ripped body. Weightlifting competitions come down to objective numbers; bodybuilding competitions come down to subjective opinions.

So this is about the latter, and all the grim stuff that comes with it: bulking up to gain muscle, cutting to lose body fat, diving headfirst into behaviors that under other circumstances would be diagnostic support for an eating disorder. And it's that that took Kostalas back out of it: strict, months-long diets to prepare for bodybuilding competitions just aren't sustainable, especially if you want to retain your physical and mental health.

I found the material here interesting, though in places I think Kostalas was still too emotionally close to a given situation to be able to write objectively about people or events. The writing a bit of a struggle. I'm rating on a curve because I believe this is self-published (which typically means that the resources that go into publishing are significantly reduced compared to, e.g., what an established publisher can do), but an extensive round of line editing would have been helpful; among other things, there's way too much passive voice (I would still be the receiver of negative comments (loc. 1012)) and extensive use of the modal "would" (A few times I would meet up with Anton (loc. 2349)) where a simpler past tense would suffice. (I also would have liked to see less recounting of Instagram posts—I understand the purpose that they serve, and maybe it's just me, but if I want to see what someone wrote on social media, I'll check social media.)

Late in the book, Kostalas talks about a shift to powerlifting (which I am sort of using interchangeably with "weightlifting", even though they appear to be two different things, but I am confused, so let's just go with "switched to aiming for personal bests rather than aesthetics"), and I can only hope that that's been a healthier and more rewarding place to be.

Thanks to the author for providing a review copy through NetGalley.