126: Jessica Burke, CSCS, M.S.: Strength Training Beyond Diet Culture and Food Guilt
Strength Training Beyond Diet Culture: Why Training to Be Smaller Keeps You Small
Discover why "toning" is holding you back and how to break free from diet culture in the gym. Jessica Burke, CSCS, shares how to train for strength, not shrinking, on the Broads Podcast.
It started with a meatball sub.
What seemed like a simple, lighthearted moment on social media quickly exposed something much deeper lurking beneath the surface for so many women in fitness: the quiet food rules, the fear of taking up space, and the exhausting mental gymnastics around what we eat and how we train.
In the latest episode of the Broads Podcast, Tara sits down with Jessica Burke, a CSCS-certified strength coach with a Master's in Kinesiology and host of The Strength Chick Podcast, to unpack why so many women feel like they're doing everything "right" in the gym but still can't shake the feeling that training has become heavy, restrictive, and small.
This conversation cuts through the noise. It's about why diet culture makes strength training feel like punishment, what "bulking" fears really mean, and how taking up space, literally and figuratively, changes everything.
The Meatball Sub Moment: When Food Guilt Goes Viral
Sometimes the simplest things reveal the most complicated truths. For Jessica, that truth came wrapped in marinara sauce and provolone.
The viral meatball sub moment wasn't just about food, it was about the unspoken rules women carry around eating, guilt, and permission. Diet culture doesn't always show up as a strict meal plan or calorie tracker. More often, it's the quiet voice that questions whether you "earned" your lunch, whether you should feel bad about enjoying it, or whether you need to compensate for it later in the gym.
Here's what Jessica and Tara dig into: food guilt isn't about the food. It's about the stories we've been told about our bodies, our worth, and what it means to be "good" or "bad" based on what's on our plate. And when those stories seep into your training? That's when the gym stops feeling empowering and starts feeling like a never-ending cycle of earning, burning, and shrinking.
Training to Be Smaller vs. Training to Be Capable
Let's talk about goals for a second.
When the primary objective in the gym is to get smaller—whether that's smaller jeans, smaller measurements, or a smaller version of yourself—training starts to feel suffocating. Because here's the thing: your body doesn't care about your aesthetic goals. Your body cares about adaptation, capability, and getting stronger in response to stimulus.
Jessica points out something powerful in this conversation: when you train with the goal of shrinking, you're training against what your body is actually designed to do. Muscle wants to grow. Strength wants to build. Your nervous system wants to adapt. But diet culture tells you to fight all of that because taking up space is somehow wrong.
This is where the mental shift happens. Training to be capable, to lift heavier, move better, feel stronger, is fundamentally different than exercising to shrink. One builds you up. The other tears you down, even when it looks like "fitness" from the outside.
Why "Toning" Is Keeping You Stuck
If you've ever said you want to "tone up" without getting "too bulky," you're not alone. But here's what Jessica wants you to know: toning isn't a thing.
What people usually mean when they say "toning" is building muscle and losing fat. But the word itself? It's diet culture's way of making strength training palatable for women who've been conditioned to fear taking up space. It's a soft word for a powerful process, and it keeps women playing small.
The language we use around our goals matters. When you say you want to "tone," you're likely avoiding the word "muscle" because somewhere along the way, you learned that muscle is too much, too masculine, or too big. But muscle is what makes you strong. Muscle is what changes your physique. Muscle is what allows you to show up in your life with more power and less fear.
The real question isn't whether you want to tone or bulk, it's whether you're ready to stop letting diet culture dictate what your body is allowed to do.
The Fear of Bulking: What's Really Going On
Let's be honest, the fear of bulking isn't really about the weight on the bar.
It's about control. It's about fitting in. It's about avoiding the discomfort of change and the judgment that might come with taking up more space. As Jessica explains, the fear of bulking is often a convenient excuse to justify staying exactly where you are, not because you love where you are, but because change feels too risky.
Here's the truth: building muscle takes time, intention, and effort. You're not going to wake up one day accidentally jacked. But the fear keeps women lifting the same light weights, doing the same cardio, and wondering why nothing ever changes.
The fear of bulking is also tied to the male gaze and gym intimidation. Women are taught to be small, to not take up too much space, and to stay in the "acceptable" zones of the gym, usually the cardio equipment or the light dumbbell rack. But strength training in a way that actually creates change? That requires stepping into the weight room, taking up the squat rack, and challenging the idea that you need to stay small to be valued.
Exercising vs. Training: The Difference That Changes Everything
Not all movement is created equal.
Exercising feels productive. You're moving, you're sweating, you're burning calories. But training? Training is different. Training has a plan, a purpose, and a progression. Training is about building toward something, not just moving your body to check a box or earn your food.
Jessica breaks this down beautifully: exercising is something you do to your body. Training is something you do for your body. And when you shift from exercising (to shrink, to burn, to punish) to training (to build, to strengthen, to grow), everything changes.
Training with intention means showing up with a goal beyond aesthetics. It means tracking progress in weight lifted, reps completed, or skills mastered, not just in how you look. It means trusting the process even when the scale doesn't move the way you want it to. It means redefining what success looks like in your fitness journey.
Redefining Effort, Intensity, and What "Hard" Really Means
Here's where things get uncomfortable (in the best way).
A lot of women think they're training hard because they're sore, exhausted, or feeling destroyed after every workout. But soreness isn't the same as progress. Exhaustion isn't the same as effective training. And "hard" doesn't always mean better.
Jessica challenges the idea that more is always better. Real intensity isn't about leaving the gym on your hands and knees. It's about progressive overload, consistently adding weight, reps, or difficulty in a way that your body can adapt to and recover from. It's about understanding that rest and recovery are where the magic happens, not just in the grind.
This is another place where diet culture sneaks in. We've been taught that we need to punish ourselves in the gym, that we need to earn rest, and that taking it easy is lazy. But training smart means knowing when to push and when to pull back. It means respecting your body's signals instead of overriding them in the name of hustle culture.
Taking Up Space: An Identity Decision, Not a Confidence Trait
This might be the most important part of the conversation.
Taking up space isn't about waiting until you feel confident enough to step into the weight room or try something new. It's a decision. It's an identity shift. It's choosing to believe that you belong in that space, even when it feels uncomfortable, even when you're the only woman in the room, and even when you don't know what you're doing yet.
Jessica's work centers on helping women reclaim their right to take up space in the gym and in strength training. Because here's the truth: you're not going to feel ready. You're not going to feel confident first. You take up space, and then the confidence follows.
This isn't just about the gym. It's about how you show up in your career, your relationships, and your life. When you train yourself to take up space physically, to lift heavy, to try new things, to challenge yourself, you're also training yourself to take up space everywhere else.
Your Move
Strength training isn't about shrinking. It's not about earning your meals or burning off guilt. It's about building a body that feels powerful, capable, and fully yours.
So here's the real question: What would change if you stopped training to be smaller and started training to be stronger?
