Growing up there was always a stigma attached to women doing weightlifting.
You're told running is the best way to burn calories and lose weight.
But today all around the world, women are challenging the stereotype.
Women, for example, make 60% of CrossFitters which contains much weightlifting and are proving ladies can CrossFit (as if there were any doubt we couldn’t do something).
Women are STRONG.
We can lift and we can look amazing doing it.
We now don’t have to worry about getting too bulky because we know that’s a myth. We see now that training weights will not make us huge.
Go to any gym that promotes strength training and you will see a myriad of body types that all have one thing in common: confidence.
Women train strength are all confident in their body. They respect their figure, they fuel their body with nutritional food and take care of it.
It is of value to them.
If you are someone who keeps starving yourself to loose weight, goes on crazy exercise regimes only to find yourself done in 3 weeks or pollutes yourself with diet pills and weight loss shakes, it may be time to stop doing yourself and body harm.
Real confidence and body love cannot be found in these methods because these methods don’t provide real results. You are not achieving anything real.
Take for example the woman who trains. Her main aim is to lift more, run faster or do more pull ups. As she trains she gets stronger and fitter.
Her results are tangible.
She can put more weight on the bar. The more she can do the more confident she becomes.
There are not only mental changes but physical too.
She starts to shed fat, build lean, athletic muscle and tone up. She looks healthy, happy and vibrant.
Have you ever seen a happy, healthy, vibrant person who is starving themselves?
Truth of the matter is, lifting weights is empowering.
When you’re dedicated and put in time and effort working out, you feel strong and are proud of the results you can see and the way your body looks.
I know this is against everything I have been told growing up. I should want to loose weight on the scales, not gain it.
That in order to beautiful, I need to be thinner, always skinnier than I already am to conform to societies ideals. Instead, I started lifting weights and I couldn’t stop.
I am a woman, 25 years of age, and I can honestly say getting ‘muscly’ was the best decision I ever made.
It is the best decision I ever made on numerous levels, so good in fact, I now run my own gym which encourages women to ‘get muscly’.
People will tell you ‘not to get too bulky’ but this is more of their fear of you coming out of societies norms.
Why do they think they can define what you look like?
Did you ask them if they minded if you got ‘too bulky’?
No so why are they telling you? People fear what they don’t know. Women that lift look athletic and fit, not bulky anyway. See this blog's photo? We are all women that lift and lift HEAVY...
If you think the women in that photo are bulky then I don't really know what to tell you!
So you may have been told to run, but I guarantee you when you do try lifting, it will be a change in your life you will love.