Trying to understand my body

[soos_mite_ah]

I've been working out regularly for the last 3 ish  months. I will admit, I don't know what I'm doing and I'm figuring things out about as I go along about both my body and how fitness works in general. Feel free to call out any misconceptions I might be having or any gaps in my thinking. @Michael569 I'm tagging you hear because I would love your input if you don't mind . 

Why am I progressing in weights so quickly / why can I lift so much? 

I started out being able to do dumbell curls with 17.5 lbs weights on each arm and being able to leg press 220 lbs (these aren't the only exercises I'm doing but this is a good reference I want to use for this post). I've been told that this was pretty impressive for a woman who is just starting out with working out. I'm not sure to what extent that is the case but not to be cocky but I do notice myself lifting more than a lot of people despite not putting in that much work (by that I mean it isn't like I've been going to the gym for months or years to get to this point). 

WIthin a couple of months I managed to go up to 25 lbs on each arm for dumbell curls and being able to leg press 370 lbs. I haven't been taking any supplements, protein shakes, pre-workouts etc.  and I haven't changed up my diet all that much. I only work out about 3-4 times a week because of my schedule. I didn't go into the gym expecting much in terms of goals other than to build a consistent habit and to enjoy working out (both of which I would say that I have achieved). I don't know what I'm doing to cause this much progression in a short period of time and I don't know to what extent it is normal.

Part of me is hesitant to see this progression as real because I'm nervous that it's because I have bad form or something. Another part of me wants to write it off as genetics because I do have quite a bit of muscle mass starting out and in my mind, I guess the part of it has to do with I had the muscle already and now it was just a matter of tapping into the strength potential I already had. I don't know to what extent that makes sense or is valid. 

Why can I lift so much but I can't do a pull up, or do a full body push up in correct form? 

My guess is that those exercises target different muscles that I normally don't work out. My arm workout routine consists of dumbell curls, dumbell chest presses, latteral pulldowns, and seated cable rows. Idk, I just think it's weird that I can do multiple sets of each of these exercises at a good amount of weight but I can't do a couple of simple exercises. 

How necessary is cardio? 

I don't do cardio because I think it's boring and tbh I suck at it really badly (as in I can't do a 10 minute run without questioning my life). I haven't done any cardio other than walking 15 minutes to and from the gym and walking about 2 miles a day on campus (if you want to count that but I don't lol). I don't really intend to do so because again, I don't have any specific goals at the gym other than to have fun and do the exercises I enjoy. But I will admit, the fact that I can't get through more than 15 minutes on any cardio machine makes me feel pretty unfit. I get that different bodies are capable of different things and maybe I'm just not built for that but I do wonder if there is anything wrong with me not doing or not being able to do cardio. I feel like it hits even more as a woman since most of the time when I see other girls at the gym, they're usually doing cardio for 20-40 minutes and for as long as I can remember, I have been hearing things from the people around me on how cardio helps you lose weight and how women shouldn't be lifiting if they want that skinny lean physique. I know alot of that is bullshit but it still does affect my view of myself and how I compare to other women in general even if I have my own thing going on. 

Doing weights but not bulking up? 

So I have noticed that both my arms and legs have been getting more toned but also they have been getting bigger. I'm going to be perfectly honest, I'm not the biggest fan of that and a lot of it does have to do with my personal body image issues regarding my size. I have heard the whole thing about if you want to be toned but not bulk up, the key is to use lighter weights and more reps. I do 4 sets of 10-14 reps in each exercise. I'm not sure if that is a lot of reps or not enough. I just know that at that amount of reps, I can still lift a lot and lessening the amount of weights makes me feel like I'm not challenging my body and am basically doing nothing (i've tried to do 20 reps of leg pressing 220 lbs the other day and it literally felt like I wasn't doing anything since I didn't feel anything in my legs).

Even though I enjoy doing weights, part of me wants to quit because I hate the way that I look. I know that is pretty superficial and I do get a lot of fulfillment and enjoyment out of lifting weights. Also it goes without me saying that a lot of my desire to quit has more to do with conforming to a dumb beauty standard and being insecure so I know it isn't coming from an authentic place. I'm not going to quit doing weights but there is a part of me that wonders if I would be able to continue doing them and improving in weights without exasserbating my insecurities.

It also doesn't help that my mom is noticing these changes in my body and she greatly dissaproves of me doing any strength training because she thinks I look too big, I'm not losing weight, and because I look manly since I don't have a "thin and graceful physique" as she puts it. I've never had that body type in the first place and she has always had unrealistic standards on how small I should be since she doesn't differentiate between muscle and fat. 

Edited April 23, 2022 by soos_mite_ah

[soos_mite_ah]

Also another question: 

What's the deal with rest days and why can I lift more despite not working out for 3 weeks? 

I got sick earlier this month for 2 weeks and I has my period for another week. I didnt work out for those 3 weeks. When I returned to the gym, I noticed I can do heavier weights and more reps. How did that happen lol? 

[Federico del pueblo]

@soos_mite_ah Are you bragging a little bit? ?? 

4 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

Why am I progressing in weights so quickly / why can I lift so much?

Probably a variety of factors.

Everyone who starts lifting makes the most muscle and strength gains in the first 6-12 months. Those are the "noob gains" and after this episode gaining strength and muscles becomes harder and harder until you reach your genetic limits.

4 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

I started out being able to do dumbell curls with 17.5 lbs weights on each arm and being able to leg press 220 lbs (these aren't the only exercises I'm doing but this is a good reference I want to use for this post). I've been told that this was pretty impressive for a woman who is just starting out with working out.

Yeah, this is simply how it is. Some people are stronger than others. You must have had some luck with your genes. The weights seem like a lot for a starter, especially for a woman.

Only you know whether you are doing good clean reps, without using momentum or bouncing the weight back up. I'm not "accusing" you of this, but I often saw people (especially guys) using big weights in isolation exercises like lateral raises, doing terrible form just so they could tell themselves they are lifting heavy. I hope you're not doing this, it's just higher risk of injury with no other benefit, except the ego boost.

4 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

Why can I lift so much but I can't do a pull up, or do a full body push up in correct form?

Hard to say. Consider that a pull up is actually a really hard movement, you're moving 100% of your body weight. Can you pull your own body weight on the lat pulldown?

Even a really clean, deep push up is hard. I tested it with a scale, by pushing myself up from the scale (slowly) and the maximum weight was like 55 kg which is 70% of my body weight.

How many reps can you do with 70 % of your body weight in a chest press?

Now add to that, that in a machine there is zero instability you have to control, whereas in a push up you must stay balanced and your body would move to the front or side or anywhere if you didn't stabilize yourself.

4 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

How necessary is cardio? 

If you don't like it don't do it. Unless you need a lot of stamina for other activities I don't think you have to care a lot about cardio.

(But I know some people will say if you want to be perfectly healthy and "fit" you should do cardio too).

Maybe the only other area where some good stamina is advantageous is the bedroom (not for sleeping), if you want to be crazy wild ??

You could do some high rep exercises like just body weight squats, doing 30-50 reps to complete failure, that's a real challenge which will give you a crazy burn with shaking legs and it leads to good conditioning.

4 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

Doing weights but not bulking up?

4 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

I have heard the whole thing about if you want to be toned but not bulk up, the key is to use lighter weights and more reps.

"Toned" is a tricky term, because it's not entirely clear what exactly that's supposed to mean and that thing about lighter weights sounds a bit like bro science, but it kinda does work I guess, but you have to understand the reason.

Let's use biceps curls as an example.

If you can do say 12 reps with 20 lbs dumbbells until failure then of course you can do many many more reps if you use just 6 lbs dumbbells. Maybe you can do a 100 reps with these light weights.

What is critical about whether or not you bulk up (= build muscle) is reaching or getting close to muscle failure.

And if you take light weights you'd have to do a ridiculous amount of reps to reach failure (which would add up to a ridiculous training volume) and it's just unlikely that you'll do that.

You actually could build considerable quad muscles just by doing bodyweight squats. But after a few months it might take you 60-100 reps to reach muscle failure which is extremely taxing so typically people don't build muscle like that, they'll reach some kind of stamina or motivational failure before muscle failure and thus the muscles don't receive a strong enough stimulus for growth.

But then what is toning? I think you've gotten toned if you've built some muscle mass but also lost some body fat. Or you've only lost body fat but already had good muscle mass.

You cannot selectively burn fat in some specific area, like the abs, you can only reduce your overall body fat percentage and thus your muscles show more (= looking more toned).

And this boils down to burning more calories than you ingest.

If you want to look more toned but already have good muscle mass then all you need is to lose fat.

You could do cardio for that, but you can also lift weights, each activity burns calories.

When you lift weights but don't want to get bigger then you simply have to avoid progressive overload. 

So you'd basically just not increase weights, nor reps. What makes muscles grow is that they are challenged beyond what they are currently capable of doing.

And as you need many more reps to reach failure with light weights it's probably easier to avoid progressive overload this way, so the bro science makes some sense.

Edited April 24, 2022 by Federico del pueblo

[aurum]

3 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

Why am I progressing in weights so quickly / why can I lift so much? 

You definitely might have some good genetics. But you’re also getting your “beginner gains” right now. Eventually you’ll start hitting diminishing returns and it will get harder and harder to progress.

3 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

Why can I lift so much but I can't do a pull up, or do a full body push up in correct form? 

You’ll get there if you keep working on it. Try a push up progression, like doing push ups on your knees at first. Then eventually go to full.

4 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

How necessary is cardio? 

 

If you just want to be normal healthy then you don’t need hours and hours of cardio. In fact I wouldn’t recommend it anyway.

You definitely want to be doing some cardio though. Look into HIIT (high intensity interval training). It’s basically cardio but much shorter and less boring.

You can also mix up your steady-state cardio, e.g 10 min jog, 10min bike, 10min row. Getting outside can help too.

4 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

I do 4 sets of 10-14 reps in each exercise. I'm not sure if that is a lot of reps or not enough.

I would not do that if your goal is to stay small. Whoever gave you that advice I’d say gave you poor direction.

1-5 reps is where you build strength, but not so much endurance or muscle. Building muscle is where the size comes in and you start to look bigger. Powerlifters tend to stay in this rep range because they want to maximize strength.

10-20 reps you’re really getting into hypertrophy, which is where you’ll build more muscle and endurance, but less strength. Bodybuilders tend to stick somewhere in this range since their goal is to look big.

2 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

What's the deal with rest days and why can I lift more despite not working out for 3 weeks? 

 

Could be more mental than anything else.

Weightlifting is not purely physical. How you feel that day matters to a degree.

4 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

I've never had that body type in the first place and she has always had unrealistic standards on how small I should be since she doesn't differentiate between muscle and fat. 

That sounds frustrating to me. I’d have a lot of anger / resentment towards my mom for something like that.

[Jacob Morres]

you can try r/fitness, they were very helpful in my early lifting days. responses here are good too 

[soos_mite_ah]

6 hours ago, Federico del pueblo said:

Hard to say. Consider that a pull up is actually a really hard movement, you're moving 100% of your body weight. Can you pull your own body weight on the lat pulldown?

Even a really clean, deep push up is hard. I tested it with a scale, by pushing myself up from the scale (slowly) and the maximum weight was like 55 kg which is 70% of my body weight.

How many reps can you do with 70 % of your body weight in a chest press?

Huh interesting. Idk I feel like I always see everyone doing pull ups and push ups as if it's easy and that's the first thing that you start off with. I remember growing up I would fail certain sections of fitness exams just because I can't do either one of those. It's one of the reasons (along with sucking at cardio) that convinced me that I was super unfit growing up lmao. Let's just say I've been having second thoughts lately lol. 

I can do about 70 lbs on lateral pulldowns and I weigh somewhere around 140 lbs. So yeah.... I got a bit to go. Can increasing weights for lateral pull downs help with doing pull ups? Do both of those exercises work similar muscles? 

As for chest press, I do dumbell chest presses with 25lbs on each hand (so 50lbs total but I'm not sure if you count it like that). And yeah, again, have quite a bit to go. Again, can increasing weights for chest presses help with the push ups? I can do push ups on my knees really well. I can do a few full body ones but form wise.... it isn't the best. 

6 hours ago, Federico del pueblo said:

"Toned" is a tricky term, because it's not entirely clear what exactly that's supposed to mean

It's basically being faily thin with just a little bit of muscle tone without looking bulky. So basically: 

6 hours ago, Federico del pueblo said:

When you lift weights but don't want to get bigger then you simply have to avoid progressive overload. 

So you'd basically just not increase weights, nor reps. What makes muscles grow is that they are challenged beyond what they are currently capable of doing.

Would you still lose calories this way or be challenged? Because part of the reason why I like lifting weights is seeing improvement in the form of being able to do more reps or more weights.  Also, this is probably going to be a REALLY dumb question but would it be possible to lose muscle mass while still maintaining your strength? 

5 hours ago, aurum said:

I would not do that if your goal is to stay small. Whoever gave you that advice I’d say gave you poor direction.

1-5 reps is where you build strength, but not so much endurance or muscle. Building muscle is where the size comes in and you start to look bigger. Powerlifters tend to stay in this rep range because they want to maximize strength.

10-20 reps you’re really getting into hypertrophy, which is where you’ll build more muscle and endurance, but less strength. Bodybuilders tend to stick somewhere in this range since their goal is to look big.

I always heard the opposite. I thought focussing on building more endurance as opposed to maximizing strength was the thing that made people more lean but not as big. Kind of how pilates focuses on muscle endurance and reps as opposed to adding more weights as you would do with weight lifting. 

5 hours ago, aurum said:

That sounds frustrating to me. I’d have a lot of anger / resentment towards my mom for something like that.

Yeah.... I'm dealing with my own issues regarding focusing on and appreciating what my body is able to do rather than basing my worth on what it looks like and her comments really don't help. Like the other day I was talking to her about how I'm excited about how I finally managed to stay consistent with working out and I found things I enjoyed and she basically said it doesn't count unless I'm losing weight. She then went on to tell me that my arms and legs look and feel gross because of how hard they feel and because some of the muscles poke out a little and how I need to stop because I'm ruining my already big body. 

Again... I know what she's saying is absolute bs, but it does get to me a lot tbh since my weight/size is something she's been scolding me on since I was a child becase of her own insecurities.

59 minutes ago, Jacob Morres said:

you can try r/fitness, they were very helpful in my early lifting days. responses here are good too 

Thanks, I'll check that out. 

Edited April 24, 2022 by soos_mite_ah

[Michael569]

@soos_mite_ah thanks for the tag. 

I see really good responses and great value already provided by guys above. 

I sense the core question of the thread is: 

1. Why am I bulking up rather than toning down? 
2. How can I get more leaner & muscular figure without necessarily becoming too big? 

Is that about right? 

19 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

Also it goes without me saying that a lot of my desire to quit has more to do with conforming to a dumb beauty standard and being insecure so I know it isn't coming from an authentic place

Let me start here and also comment on this 

10 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

You already know this but I'll say it anyway. It is absolutely essential (for your mental health, for your spiritual wellbeing and for your body image) to stop consuming this sort of content. Fitness magazines, Instagram posts, fitness influencers. I'd highly suggest unfollowing every single one of these people and throwing away all these magazines and any similar content. It harms our brains to such a significant proportion that many young women have actually committed suicide due to body image disorders. Same way young men get harmed by porn and cannot even achieve erection when in the bedroom with a woman who has normal un-enhanced body. 

Now let's talk about these two pictures anyway 

Picture 1 - there is a strong genetic makeup in the way how thin she is. She is probably also a bit fasted or in her top shape on the ohoto. This sort of figure is completely unachievable figure by women with more rounded body composition. She may even be competing

Picture 2 - breast enlargement surgery and potential butt implant. She does have to work extremely hard in the gym, that's for sure judging by the legs and her arm development, she has been a regular gym-goer for a decade easily. But there is again a strong genetic component towards having large density musculature of the lower body but I can't imagine how hard she has to work and diet to keep her waist that thin. Again, I'd be curious how she looks without photo editing, pump and unfasted. Also the side posture while flexing the belly can hide a lot. Still, this lady is a fitness freak with extreme commitment to her body image. 

 

I'd try a new approach with working out simply for the pleasure of it and for the benefits of longevity and mental health rather than for a particular goal. Put some music on and Zone out. A gym time can easily be turned into a meditative experience. 

 

19 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

So I have noticed that both my arms and legs have been getting more toned but also they have been getting bigger.

The reason for this would be that if there was already present some subcutaneous fat and now the muscle is growing, it is pushing the fat layer up, giving the limb appearance of being bulkier even tho you are getting more toned. 

I think the only way about it is to identify a strategy that works for you to start targeting that fat disposition. A combination of some cardio (which you mentioned) with dietary optimisation may do that for you. 

Some easy diet tips would be to make sure you are not skipping breakfast (and making sure that breakfast is made of mostly wholefoods) and to try to cram your food in a 12-hour eating window. If you can tolerate the discomfort you can reduce the size of your dinners, fast overnight and then have a huge breakfast. That may start accelerating that metabolism already. Of course caution with processed carbs (bakery products, toasts, white pasta and white rice) will help. 

Obtaining a pressure cooker and trying batch cooking in which you'll be using an abundance of vegetables, legumes and whole grains is another effective strategy to eat more but fewer calories. I've made a few videos on my YT channel on how to start batch cooking. Try looking at this and scroll to 6:50 for easy example. 

Now for that cardio, what worked well for me was finding a form of cardio I enjoyed. I really liked doing the sort of MMA -a type of cardio which is a combination of high-intensity bodyweight training with some weights. I like to combine that with callisthenics training these days.  Now this may not be suited for women as much but you could experiment with some form of interval training, perhaps the gym offers classes. Some other great forms are swimming, cycling, rope skipping, rollerskating, hiking (brilliant for burning fat btw) or even finding a trainer for some light box padding. basically a good PT will be able to help a lot. 

Some products with some minor effects that may be useful are regular consumption of green tea, some people seem to benefit from MCT and theoretically even acetyl-L-carnitine but I believe the studies on that are kinda mixed so it may not help. Also, carnitine ha a few medicinal interactions (https://www.drugs.com/drug-interactions/levocarnitine,l-carnitine.html) so something to be mindful of. But on their own, these products won't do anything unless accompanied by a good diet, lifestyle and regular activity. 

Also, in my (how I lost 20kg video) I mentioned that the major profound effect for me to lose weight was changing my environment. Perhaps that would be an option as well? I recall we spoke about your mom before and I feel that maybe living with your parents is putting a lot of restrictions on you. Any chance you could maybe try some shared apartment with a friend (or student dormitory or somethign like that?) 

Anyway, hope anything in there is helpful Good luck and don't be so hard on yourself. remember, this is a life-long process not a sprint. 

[Federico del pueblo]

8 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

Huh interesting. Idk I feel like I always see everyone doing pull ups and push ups as if it's easy and that's the first thing that you start off with. I remember growing up I would fail certain sections of fitness exams just because I can't do either one of those. It's one of the reasons (along with sucking at cardio) that convinced me that I was super unfit growing up lmao. Let's just say I've been having second thoughts lately lol. 

It's interesting how our perception can trick us.

I also see many guys that are huge, but that's due to my selective focus.

There are a lot of people in the gym who don't do pull ups or push ups, but you don't see them NOT doing pull ups or push ups because there's nothing to see.

Yes, a good percentage of people can do pull ups from the very beginning, but they have good preconditions, like they're not too heavy and have a decent amount of muscle mass from the start.

8 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

I can do about 70 lbs on lateral pulldowns and I weigh somewhere around 140 lbs. So yeah.... I got a bit to go

Great. I think you mean lat pulldowns. "Lat" comes from "Latissimus Dorsi" which is the big back muscle.

 

8 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

Can increasing weights for lateral pull downs help with doing pull ups?

Absolutely.

8 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

Do both of those exercises work similar muscles? 

Exactly.

8 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

It's basically being faily thin with just a little bit of muscle tone without looking bulky. So basically: 

 

The girl on the left simply has a low body fat percentage. She is lean. If you get to a body fat percentage of maybe 12% you'll look very similar to her, maybe you look even more 'toned' because you have more muscle mass.

Her abs are showing because there is no fat that covers them.

The girl on the right is 'jacked'. She's definitely built a lot of muscles (especially on the legs and ass, a classic girls' thing ?) but also has very low body fat percentage.

Typically this is achieved by first bulking (hypertrophy training+eating a lot) and then "cutting", which means that you keep working out (maybe with different weights and reps/sets) but change the diet to create a caloric deficit, so you lean down without losing muscle.

9 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

Would you still lose calories this way or be challenged?

You always burn calories when you work out.

Calories is an energy unit. 1 Kilokalorie = 4184 joules.

Energy = work. Work = force X way [N X metres].

If you do a bench press with 50 kg, 4 sets of 10 reps you'll always have done the same amount of work = burnt the same amount of energy (= calories), even after having done this for 1000 times.

Now the only other relevant question is "are you ingesting less, more or equally many calories compared to what you are burning?

That's what determines whether you maintain, increase or decrease your body fat percentage.

After doing this for some time the 50 kg bench press won't feel as challenging anymore. You'll feel like you could do more reps or sets or use more weight.

And if you do that you'll bring your muscles closer to their limits again so that you'll more likely provide a hypertrophic stimulus, so you'll build some muscle and increase strength.

9 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

Also, this is probably going to be a REALLY dumb question but would it be possible to lose muscle mass while still maintaining your strength? 

No it's not dumb, but I have never contemplated this.

I think it's very unlikely that this could be achieved.

The best you can get is to only increase muscle mass by not so much, while becoming considerablly stronger.

This is what happens when you use high weights you can only lift 1-5 times. Then you maximize strength.

Maybe if you do high weight/low reps training (but going to failure) while staying in a caloric deficit you might increase strength without building muscle, but I don't know that for sure and I also don't know if this unproblematic health wise.

9 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

I always heard the opposite. I thought focussing on building more endurance as opposed to maximizing strength was the thing that made people more lean but not as big. Kind of how pilates focuses on muscle endurance and reps as opposed to adding more weights as you would do with weight lifting. 

Here we can easily get confused and have to be very careful with the terminology.

10 - 20 reps builds muscular endurance and provokes hypertrophy.

If you compare that with some other activities like Pilates or zumba etc there's still a difference.

The latter increase your cardiovascular endurance. Sure you also work your muscles, but in a different fashion.

If you do a set of 15 squats and take it to muscular failure that will provoke muscle growth because your body is receiving the signal "muscles were not strong enough to keep doing the movement, we need more muscle and strength".

In Pilates you probably don't go to muscular failure. You use your muscles to move, which requires energy, which burns calories, but you're probably not moving until your muscles really can't take it any longer.

It's just like running. Running is a super high reps activity (1000s of steps) without ever really reaching muscular failure. It's not like doing 20 squats until you can't get up any more. But you burn a lot of energy and if you don't eat enormous amounts of food, you'll have burnt more calories than you've ingested, so you'll lean down (lose fat), whilst only provoking very little muscular growth.

1000s of steps is still MUCH higher reps than 20 squats, so running will be more of a cardiovascular challenge (your heart and your respiratory system, the conversion of food + oxygen into energy) whereas training in the 10-20 rep range is still more of a muscular challenge, even if you already increase your MUSCULAR endurance considerably more than you'd do with the 1-5 rep range (which increases strength much more than it increases muscular endurance).

[Federico del pueblo]

@soos_mite_ah

Also, regarding the pull ups, you can do assisted pull ups, either with a specific machine, that some gyms have, or by looping a rubber band around the the pull up bar and then placing one knee/leg in the loop, so the resistance of the band will help you to move up.

And if you really want to avoid becoming bigger, then...yeah, high endurance activities like running or cycling might be the better choice for you, even though even these activities will still likely grow your leg muscles at least a little bit.

You just have really good genes (or bad genes from your perspective) to build muscle and get bigger, the kind of genes that guys would like to have

Edited April 24, 2022 by Federico del pueblo

[soos_mite_ah]

13 hours ago, Michael569 said:

You already know this but I'll say it anyway. It is absolutely essential (for your mental health, for your spiritual wellbeing and for your body image) to stop consuming this sort of content. Fitness magazines, Instagram posts, fitness influencers. I'd highly suggest unfollowing every single one of these people and throwing away all these magazines and any similar content.

I try to stay off of social media for these reasons especially since there is a lot of misinformation out there regarding diet and fitness that can potentially be harmful physically and mentally. Also, influencers pushing supplements just plain annoy me lol.  I just wanted to include a couple of pictures to illustrate what I mean by toned vs. muscular. 

It's just that I am self conscious about getting bigger. I know the right picture looks unrealistic, but I feel that my lower body and my arms kind of look like that granted I continue with my current routine and then cut some fat out (also my chest and stomach are much squishier so there is that). What I'm trying to say is that I feel like I'm closer to the right picture than the left (even though I always wanted to look more like the left).  And while I do love the capabilities of my body, I feel like I look so big and bulky rather than that skinny toned look.

And it doesn't help that a lot of my clothes don't fit me anymore (or at the very least don't fit the same way) and I've always associated needing a larger size with *oh no you're gaining fat, you need to start restricting again*. Thankfully I have been resisting the urge to do that but a lot of my insecurities do feel like it's at the forefront because I feel like I look like a worse version of myself. I know that weight gain is inevitable when it comes to what I'm doing which is weightlifting + eating more and that this is necessary given my physical and emotional health, but at the same time I haven't made peace with my changing body yet (and that's ok because it's a work in progress). 

I know that I shouldn't focus on aesthetics as it can get really neurotic really quickly but I have been told my whole life that I'm too big and that I need to lose weight. It's only fairly recently that I started realizing that I'm not necessarily fat but that a lot of my weight does come from muscle mass and that my body, though it isn't thin, is pretty fit and capable of doing amazing things. Not only that, but I've been fed a lot of ideas around what beauty and femininity looks like so while I know that I'm not going to get completely jacked unless I do steriods, there is that fear that has been socially conditioned in me of getting big and looking masculine. And of course there is also the socially conditioned notion that smallness correllates with femininity and desireablity which is a can of worms of it's own. I know logically that the social conditioning isn't healthy and it something that really fucks with a lot of women but it's something that I'm still grappling with emotionally. And working out along with some of the comments I have received about my body (both recently and just in general) brought a lot of those insecurities to the surface. 

The insecurites are something that I try to be mindful of both when it comes to my relationship with food and fitness. Some of the things that I try to do include working out in the morning so I don't encounter a lot of the people I compare myself to, and workout out where there aren't any mirrors so I don't pick myself apart and so I can focus on what I'm doing. 

13 hours ago, Michael569 said:

Some easy diet tips would be to make sure you are not skipping breakfast (and making sure that breakfast is made of mostly wholefoods) and to try to cram your food in a 12-hour eating window. If you can tolerate the discomfort you can reduce the size of your dinners, fast overnight and then have a huge breakfast. That may start accelerating that metabolism already. Of course caution with processed carbs (bakery products, toasts, white pasta and white rice) will help. 

Obtaining a pressure cooker and trying batch cooking in which you'll be using an abundance of vegetables, legumes and whole grains is another effective strategy to eat more but fewer calories. I've made a few videos on my YT channel on how to start batch cooking. Try looking at this and scroll to 6:50 for easy example. 

Now for that cardio, what worked well for me was finding a form of cardio I enjoyed. I really liked doing the sort of MMA -a type of cardio which is a combination of high-intensity bodyweight training with some weights. I like to combine that with callisthenics training these days.  Now this may not be suited for women as much but you could experiment with some form of interval training, perhaps the gym offers classes. Some other great forms are swimming, cycling, rope skipping, rollerskating, hiking (brilliant for burning fat btw) or even finding a trainer for some light box padding. basically a good PT will be able to help a lot. 

Some products with some minor effects that may be useful are regular consumption of green tea, some people seem to benefit from MCT and theoretically even acetyl-L-carnitine but I believe the studies on that are kinda mixed so it may not help. Also, carnitine ha a few medicinal interactions (https://www.drugs.com/drug-interactions/levocarnitine,l-carnitine.html) so something to be mindful of. But on their own, these products won't do anything unless accompanied by a good diet, lifestyle and regular activity. 

Will keep that in mind. The other day I did try to do some cardio at the gym and I found out that I can tolerate cycling. And this is a little embarrassing but I find that dancing around like and idiot in my room for an hour or two is an effective way to get my heart rate up and start sweating without me hating my life lmaooo. 

[aurum]

On 4/23/2022 at 11:10 PM, soos_mite_ah said:

I always heard the opposite. I thought focussing on building more endurance as opposed to maximizing strength was the thing that made people more lean but not as big. Kind of how pilates focuses on muscle endurance and reps as opposed to adding more weights as you would do with weight lifting. 

Yes that’s right, but only once you get to a certain rep range. 10-20 reps until close to failure is not enough to purely focus on endurance. Pilates definitely crosses into that range though, since you might be doing a single movement for a long time.

On 4/23/2022 at 11:10 PM, soos_mite_ah said:

Like the other day I was talking to her about how I'm excited about how I finally managed to stay consistent with working out and I found things I enjoyed and she basically said it doesn't count unless I'm losing weight. She then went on to tell me that my arms and legs look and feel gross because of how hard they feel and because some of the muscles poke out a little and how I need to stop because I'm ruining my already big body. 

I can feel how much you appreciated that from here