My guess is that you would love to look like this for swimsuit season. If you're tryna give me that "No I love my curves!" bullshit that's fine, but it's no excuse. Why? Because if you're fat and you don't work out - you're ploppy and fat. Unattractive. Lumpy, not curvy. Skinny and no muscle? That's scrawny, not sexy. Fat and workout? You are curvy, shapely, and yummy as fuck. Lean and muscly? No way to get around it, you are sexy as hell. See the pattern? Muscle is sexy. Building more muscle will make you more sexy no matter your size. Fat is not sexy. Scrawny and bony is not sexy. Muscle is sexy. If you want to cover your muscle with fat for a more "curvy" look be my guest. You can just eat more calories, but still workout.
Alright. Your body can be everything you want it to be this summer. Two steps. In order of importance. Really simple.
- Workout
- Diet
Now let me elaborate.
Workout
With weights. Workout with weights to build the shape you want. At least 4x/wk. I naturally have a tiny butt, so I do mainly weighted butt ('cause I wanna build size and muscle) and abs. Lots of elevated bridges, side-lying leg raises, squats, lunges, crunches, bicycles, dead bugs, etc. I also love pushups, and working out my back is important to even out my focus on abs.
You can't spot-reduce fat. But you CAN spot-increase muscle. Figure out what you want your body to look like. Google exercises for building up those muscles in the areas you want to focus on. Just make sure you workout the antagonist muscle/s as well when applicable!
Diet
Lose the fat to give yourself a blank canvas to work with. Calories DO matter, whether you are trying to lose, gain or stay the same. Type of calorie does matter too. Type being: Protien, Carbohydrate, or Fat. These are called "macronutrients" - you need significant quantities of them. Macronutrients matter. So do micronutrients. Micronutrients are vitamins and minerals. They do not provide energy for your body the way macronutrients do, but they are necessary to keep your body and mind healthy and functioning the way it should. I can tell you from personal experience that if you are not getting adequate micronutrients in your diet, it will be nearly impossible to stick to any diet. If you are getting plenty of micronutrients you'll find you're able to eat significantly less with significantly less hunger and cravings. While it's obviously best to get these micronutrients from your diet, if you need to take a supplement to make sure you're getting enough it's worth it. A successful diet for building the body you want is planned out and controlled, but it also needs to be unrestrictive and doable or you will fall off the wagon. Again, personal experience. If you are trying to lose weight, eat around 10x-12x your body weight in calories. If you weigh 100lb you would eat 1000-1200cal/day to lose weight. To maintain, find an online calculator and figure out how many calories you burn in a day. Eat around that many. To gain try to eat around/up to +300 calories from that amount. Your macronutrient ratio matters, too. Make sure you get enough protein - especially if you are trying to lose weight, because eating plenty of protein makes the difference between your body breaking down muscle for energy vs your body breaking down fat for energy! Shoot for anywhere between .5g-1g protein for every lb of bodyweight.
Now I'm going to tell you exactly what works for me. You can give it a shot - since it has worked for me it will probably work for you, too. But if not, take what you know and come up with something that will work for you.
You can't spot-reduce fat. But you CAN spot-increase muscle. Figure out what you want your body to look like. Google exercises for building up those muscles in the areas you want to focus on. Just make sure you workout the antagonist muscle/s as well when applicable!
Diet
Lose the fat to give yourself a blank canvas to work with. Calories DO matter, whether you are trying to lose, gain or stay the same. Type of calorie does matter too. Type being: Protien, Carbohydrate, or Fat. These are called "macronutrients" - you need significant quantities of them. Macronutrients matter. So do micronutrients. Micronutrients are vitamins and minerals. They do not provide energy for your body the way macronutrients do, but they are necessary to keep your body and mind healthy and functioning the way it should. I can tell you from personal experience that if you are not getting adequate micronutrients in your diet, it will be nearly impossible to stick to any diet. If you are getting plenty of micronutrients you'll find you're able to eat significantly less with significantly less hunger and cravings. While it's obviously best to get these micronutrients from your diet, if you need to take a supplement to make sure you're getting enough it's worth it. A successful diet for building the body you want is planned out and controlled, but it also needs to be unrestrictive and doable or you will fall off the wagon. Again, personal experience. If you are trying to lose weight, eat around 10x-12x your body weight in calories. If you weigh 100lb you would eat 1000-1200cal/day to lose weight. To maintain, find an online calculator and figure out how many calories you burn in a day. Eat around that many. To gain try to eat around/up to +300 calories from that amount. Your macronutrient ratio matters, too. Make sure you get enough protein - especially if you are trying to lose weight, because eating plenty of protein makes the difference between your body breaking down muscle for energy vs your body breaking down fat for energy! Shoot for anywhere between .5g-1g protein for every lb of bodyweight.
Now I'm going to tell you exactly what works for me. You can give it a shot - since it has worked for me it will probably work for you, too. But if not, take what you know and come up with something that will work for you.
Caffeine my friend. I have a baby. I don't sleep enough. Caffeine....it gives me more energy than food soo it is my choice for the morning. I almost always drink sugar free because it keeps calories low and allows me to eat more food later. Again I can say from personal experience - artificial sweeteners do not make you fatter than sugar. I guess we'll see down the road whether they give me cancer. But sugar free in my experience, is a delightful way to enjoy a sweet flavor without the sweet flavor going to your hips.- I normally don't eat until the PM. I unconventionally hate the 8,000 small meals/day model. Not gonna lie, I eat very little throughout the day and prefer to enjoy one BIG relatively unrestricted meal at night. As a side note, also I feel better (better mood, more energy) throughout the day when I do not eat, and fall asleep better when I save one giant meal for at night.
Complete protein & nutrition meal powder is my best friend! Tastes delicious mixed with skim or almond milk (I do prefer the latter), supplies a huge hit of micronutrients, and you won't find such a high ratio of protien to fat and carbs in nearly any other food! This comes into play later. I drink 1-2 of these daily after working out, and if I feel hungry before it's time to eat. I also love that its soo easy to make and eat. I can take it to work with me and eat while I work, too.
Real food is important too. Fruits and veggies supply carbs, but more importantly they supply plenty of fiber and micronutrients, including trace micronutrients that would be less likely to be found in my protein powder. Basically eat these unlimitedly.
Plenty of junk food! Thats right...at the end of the day. After I've eaten my protein shakes (met my protein requirement for the day) and my fruits and veggies (plenty of fiber, vitamin c, etc for the day), I've probably only eaten 700cal max. The fun part is filling in the rest of your calories with, well - whatever the fuck you want! Nourish the body and mind with all the healthy shit throughout the day to meet your nutritional requirements, then nourish your soul and moral with well, whatever strikes you as worth the calories! Only thing is that junk food is pretty high caloric density food and its easy to eat a lot of calories really fast so sort of keep an eye on that and make sure you're not going far over your calorie goal.
That's that, folks. How I lost 30lb after having a baby, regained 10lb as muscle, and am looking better than ever and feeling better than ever - after my morning coffee that is. Hope to see y'all looking fabulous in your swim suits this summer!! You deserve to look good naked. (;
Here's the first, where we're growing zucchini, spaghetti squash, pumpkins, and a whole lot of canaloupe. Behind it you can see our blueberry and yellow raspberry patch.
Here's garden #1. This guy's the main garden, the star of the show....in it we've got zucchini, cucumber, watermelon, cantaloupe, corn (which the raccoons keep getting to before us), red & yellow potatoes, sweet potatoes, and a million different kinds of peppers and tomatoes. Plus herbs like parsley, basil, and cilantro.
This is garden #2, where we grow most of our green veggies and such, that don't take up quite as much space - lettuce mix, kale, chard, chinese cabbage, cabbage, broccoli, kohlrabi, onions, carrots, beets, dill, and cilantro. Behind, you can see our cute little apple orchard.
And finally, here's our asparagus, rhubarb, grape vines (they took a pretty serious hit last year,, there was a bad storm, which knocked them over, combined with last years drought - we're lucky we've still got grapes), and our red & black raspberry patch!
Oh, and just for good measure, here's our awesome compost pile that keeps everything in our garden so healthy!