The Bulk of My Issues

There are a lot of keywords in health and fitness that drive me crazy because they mean absolutely nothing yet are used as though they have authority.

“Natural” is one of them (in terms of describing food products). “Fat-burning zone” is another (without knowing your own personal VO2Max this is difficult to actually quantify).  Even “healthy” gets me, as what is healthy for someone with Type 2 diabetes and obesity looks very different from what might be healthy for an Olympic athlete with tons of skeletal muscle and a high training load.

But the worst offender of all, in my opinion, is “toning.”

Toning is a fake fitness word that savvy marketing execs invented to sell weirdly-wedged sneakers, tiny little hand weights, and complicated thigh-squeezing contraptions specifically to women. The gentle and highly feminized concept of “toning” gives women the (misguided) idea that they can firm up / tighten / reduce the size of their body parts without having to – dare I say it – bulk up.

I get it – when  you’re knee-deep in diet culture, it’s hard to see your way out without a big dose of clinical reality – which, as it so happens, is kind of my specialty.  Know this:

• if you are a woman under 35, you need to lift weights and build lean mass to protect your bone density, anchor your core strength (especially if you plan on having healthy pregnancies/postpartum recoveries), and boost your metabolism while you still can
• if you are a woman over 35, you need to lift even heavier weights (!) to maintain your lean mass (as it starts to decrease with every passing year no matter what you do, sigh), regulate your hormones and blood sugar, and hey, if you want it, ensure that certain body parts (most often: tush & tum) don’t fall victim to the ongoing threat of….gravity.

And don’t be fooled, folks – pretty much ANY exercise (and in many cases, none at all) will “tone up” a genetically stick-skinny twentysomething subsisting on a steady diet of gluten-free oxygen puffs and armed with an endless set of Photoshop and Insta-filter tricks.

But the main point of what is now turning into a rant is this: lifting heavy weights (often heavier than you think, often meaning weights attached to bars, and yes, even bars that weigh more than your actual body) will not make you bulky.  They, in fact, are how you get the “tone” (cough) you so desperately desire.

Lifting weights in excess of 4KG / 8 pounds will not make you masculine, or hulk-ish, or broad. Very few women (and I’ve trained nearly a thousand of them – of all ages, races, backgrounds and sizes for over 19 years) start a serious weight-training regimen and get bigger – unless gaining mass/size is our goal of working together.

To be even clearer:

Lots of women carry around excess body fat precisely because they don’t lift weights, and therefore do not build or maintain adequate lean mass to better utilise the calories they eat. These women also tend to chronically undereat protein and overeat carbohydrates and fat (a common and significant issue), resulting in a less-than-optimal body composition.

The women who swear up and down that they are (somehow) the genetic anomalies; that they “bulk up” too much when lifting heavier weights, are one of two things: (1) misled, because it’s extremely difficult for women to develop unwanted hypertrophy without exogenous hormones, lifting to failure, or caloric surplus, or (2) confusing excess-calorie-related fat gain with muscular gain, which can quickly and easily be disproved with the use of a proper scale that measures body body fat and muscle mass (useful if you are one of these women telling yourself the false story of the “muscle bulk”).

So what exactly should you be doing in the gym (and kitchen) to achieve the “toned” look (sigh, but for the sake of the post, humour me – and know that the “toned” look can of course mean different things to different people, just like the term “bulky” can mean different things to different people)?

Allow me to give you my top 5 tried-and-tested tips:

• #1, get a coach. Shameless self-promotion? Maybe a tiny bit. But before you start picking up heavy things, you should make sure you have at least one session with a certified professional who can show you how to pick up the heavy things correctly, then put you on a program to continue lifting those things in a way that makes sense for you.
• #2, streamline your goals. Do you want killer arms (hello bench presses and pull-ups)? An overall lean bod (try power movements like thrusters). Legs to kill (meet your two new best friends, squats and deadlifts)? Six pack abs (spoiler alert: these are actually made mostly from protein and veg; less from crunches)? No matter what your preferred aesthetic and physique might be, weight training is actually the best shot you have at actually getting it.
• #3, get a program. Whether the pros at LIFT Clinic design it for you or you get it from another reliable source, make sure you have a specific, measurable, progressive strength training program to keep yourself accountable to – and don’t forget to keep records of sets/reps/etc. to ensure you’re making progress (see #4 below)
• #4, progress yourself. A lot of my clients have sailed through steps 1-3 but then hit a wall, thinking that once they know “which weight they use for different exercises” they’re good to go forever. Not the case for getting lean n’ mean. You’ve gotta keep upping the ante and building your body stronger (and yes – leaner in the process) within a reasonable program of progressing the weights you used for different exercises. Again, a coach and program really help with this specificity.
• #5, eat your damn protein. Even the best-toned of intentions fall flabby when they’re not coupled with a protein-focused diet. If you’re looking to build and maintain lean muscle, consider at least 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight (about 2 grams per KG). Animal protein sources are the highest quality here, so think about meat, fish, eggs, and dairy as top contenders.

My lovely people over at Girls Gone Strong sum it up best: “Lifting heavy” doesn’t give you one particular body type. Lifting heavy will give you a strong, sexy, fit, kick-ass version of the body you were given.”

And isn’t that truly what we all want?