Women sporting strong muscles and curvier figures are now becoming the new ‘cool’ girls. It seems the skeletal-look of some of our fashion models and film stars are no longer something to strive for. Although a lot of these people are ‘skinny’ they are also fat at the same time. Skinny-fat is the term as they have low muscle mass and higher body fat levels than are healthy. They also don’t look very good.
Starving yourself thin is a losing proposition because what you are doing is slowing your metabolism (your body’s engine) to a crawl and it will continue to slow down as muscle mass continues to decrease. You would have to eat less and less with each passing year.
Someone who is skinny-fat does not look good naked. They are soft and flabby and may look good in clothes but would rather die than expose upper arms or legs. Strong firm toned muscle is what gives a body its shape and firmness and also its leaner which means low body fat levels which is far healthier than being skinny-fat.
Addressing your body composition (muscle/fat ratio) and lowering body fat levels translates into dropping clothes sizes as fat is the big bulky bit. When you gain body fat you also gain size and become larger. So, by lowering body fat levels you become smaller, tighter and leaner.
But you cannot lose body fat by the old fashioned dieting methods. When you do this you are teaching your body to store fat. It won’t give it up when it thinks it is about to starve. The only way the new strong leaner look can only be achieved by working with your body and exercising and eating so that fat burning/fat storing hormones become more balanced and healthier.
There is only one way to tone up your muscles so become stronger and burn more fuel and that is with a proper strength training program. Forget the long duration low intensity activities that we used to believe were the way to lose body fat. They alone will not boost your metabolism and will make you even more skinny-fat.
Your exercise program needs to include big exercises that work your body as a whole unit – deadlifts, squats, bench press, military press, dips and pull ups. They also need to be progressive for the fastest and most effective metabolism boosters.
You need to get strong to get lean
Being progressive means you keep adding weight as you get stronger and you do not keep using the same weight (resistance) for the same exercises. Just 2-3 sessions of strength training exercise need to be done each week as a little goes a long way when done with purpose, the right mindset and intensity (degree of effort).
To be able to exercise and put some effort into it you need to eat right. Eating right means ditching the processed non-nutrient ‘so called’ foods that make and keep you fat with the nasty chemicals and additives that mess up your metabolism. Get your butt back into the kitchen and cooking natural whole foods from scratch if you are serious about losing that excess body fat.
You will love the new strong slim look
This new way of losing body fat in a healthy manner will make you feel so good (as opposed to the misery of dieting). As you get stronger you also become more energetic and can do more ‘stuff’ each day and pack your life full of enjoyable things. You will want to do this as you will want to show off your new strong, lean, firm, shapely body. That’s all you ever wanted anyway isn’t it?