“Tone” Your Body

Happy Friday loves!!!  Glad you all enjoyed my WIAW eats of pizza and that marvelous Oreo pie! I told my boyfriend’s sister that her dessert became very popular and pleaded simply asked her for the recipe 😉 Needless to say it is in my possession! Click for the recipe

I had a fabulous breakfast today which consisted of another Fitnessista Cookie

I seriously cannot get enough of this cookie!

I wanted to share my opinion today on “toning” up your body. The reason I despise the word tone is because women use it in a very misconstrued way. You don’t tone, you build muscle. The reason we lift weights is to change the appearance of our bodies and become stronger. No one likes to be weak, well at least that’s what I thought until my friend told me that she wanted to lose her love handles but not build abs or look like me. Apparently I’m too muscular. Now that’s a first.

What’s the point of lifting heavy?

• You’ll build muscle, which helps with fat loss in the long-term. A pound of muscle can burn about 20-30 calories a day. A pound of fat burns about 5 calories a day. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn all day.
• You’ll strengthen muscles and connective tissues which helps you perform better (whether in daily activities or physical activities) and reduces risk of injury.
• You’ll preserve muscle mass as you age. We naturally lose muscle over time, unless we lift weights.
• You’ll build stronger bones.
• You’ll improve your flexibility, stability and balance.
• You’ll feel better about yourself.

Source

Why wouldn’t you want to preserve muscle and and improve your health? Seems mind boggling to me. It’s very very very difficult (notice the 3 very’s) to looks like this:

Source

No average woman lifting weights will ever get like that.

• Women who lifts weights become bulky and masculine [FALSE]

We do not produce as much testosterone as men and therefore cannot gain a huge amount of muscle by just lifting weights. Most professional bodybuilders like in the picture above take steroids in order to look like this.

• Weight training will make you stiff [FALSE]

Weight lifting will actually make you become more flexible with a wider range of motion

• There are certain exercises (crunches, sit ups, etc) that can reduce fat around a specific area (abs) [FALSE]

Wah wah wahhhh no you can’t spot train your body, sorry. I didn’t get the stomach I have by doing sit ups. To be honest, I hate sit ups. You need to have a well balanced diet and do compound exercises. For women, the stomach area is the last place fat will go away so you gotta really work for it.

• In order to lose fat I only need to do cardio [FALSE]

Cardio is important but the truth is muscle is more active than fat. The more muscle you have the more fat you can burn.

• Weigh training turns fat into muscle [FALSE]

That’s like saying I can turn a quarter into a dollar You can’t convert one into the other. You gain muscle and lose fat simultaneously.

• Women should lift light [FALSE!!!!!!]

The body has no reason to change if you’re not putting enough resistance on your muscles. Lift heavy and go hard!!!

Being FIT is where it’s at!

This is me around 1 year after training with the workout routine my boyfriend made for me.

IMO I still have a long way to go but apparently I have too much muscle mass

Oh well to each his own 😉

• Do you weight train?