Let the myth-busting continue.
Last post I talked about carbs and the common misconceptions people have about them in the fitness industry.
Similar to the poor reputation carbs get, weightlifting (typically among women) also gets a bad rep. Women fear that weightlifting will make them “bulky,” “too muscly,” or “look manly.”
The irony in this is that women also say things like, “I just want to be toned.”
Well here’s an earth-shatterer for you: being toned…means having muscles.
Let me evaluate further.
The same way in which you can only lose weight by being in a caloric deficit, you can only gain weight by being in a caloric surplus. Therefore, you can only gain more muscle mass by being in a caloric surplus – eating more calories than you expend daily and effectively weight training.
Here’s where knowledge yet again plays a huge role in reaching body composition goals. When you first start out weightlifting, you get the benefits of being a beginner. You’ve never lifted before, so you may have some fat to lose (and if you are in a caloric deficit, you will lose fat). However, you also have a higher chance of making initial strength gains in the gym at a quicker pace. In this way, you will most likely burn fat and gain some muscle mass while first starting out. The same can be true for individuals eating at maintenance calories, where their energy consumed equals their energy expended and their bodyweight will stay the same.
These beginner benefits are awesome, but they don’t last long. The longer you continue your deficit and get more experienced in the gym, the more advanced you become. Therefore, your only chance of gaining any more muscle mass is through progressive overload, or making sure each time you lift is progressively harder than the last. This can be through adding more weight to your lifts, adding more reps, adding more sets, or adding overall more intensity.
Eventually though, while in a deficit, progressive overload burns out. You will stop gaining muscle and you will stop gaining strength. The muscle you do gain from this beginner period is a small amount, often times making you look more toned or just slimmer in general.
Wait, I’m going to say that again, in case you missed it.
Weightlifting will make you look more toned or just slimmer in general.
The only way you can gain more muscle mass, enough to appear “bulky” or “manly” (depending on your own definition of what those terms look like), is if you eat a lot and train with the intention of building muscle.
If your goal is weight loss, that can be achieved through diet alone. But if your goal is to “get toned,” which nine times out of ten involves body recomposition, you have to start lifting weights, heavy ones. Weightlifting makes you strong, uncovering muscles you never knew you had. Weightlifting empowers you, unveiling strength and grit you never knew you had. Weightlifting makes you sexy, uncovering a lean athletic body that you never knew you had.
In fact, once women do start seeing the positive effects of weightlifting, strength and muscle gains become addicting. The want to gain more muscle mass increases, in which case so does food intake. Of course, no one wants to gain an unnecessary amount of fat, so there are ways in which you can effectively increase your calories slowly by reverse dieting or eat at your maintenance level to minimize fat gain.
But the coolest thing is, a little bit of extra fat gain that can be cut down during a later process becomes worth it. It’s worth it to be able to hit a new personal best weight on your deadlift. It’s worth it to be able to lift your body weight in squats. It’s worth it to out-lift your boyfriend or your brother in the gym. And it’s worth it to see some awesome muscles on your body.
Building muscle takes time. In fact, if you told a professional body-builder you’re afraid of lifting weights because you’re afraid of gaining muscle, she’ll probably get offended. It’s taken her years of effort to gain that muscle mass through training hard and a consistent diet. You won’t become The Hulk by lifting to look “toned.”
Paired with this fear of lifting, women also tend to overemphasize cardio. I call these women “cardio bunnies.” Again, they tend to not know about the benefits of weight lifting and think getting “a good sweat in” makes the most effective workout and burns the most calories.
I interviewed my twin sister, Lacey Yahnke, who is a Division I cross country / track and field athlete at Santa Clara University. She is someone who has been doing cardio competitively for the past eight years of her life. She runs around sixty miles a week, and that’s not even a tough week.
Guess what else she does three to four times a week for optimal performance, technique, and strength? Weightlifting.
The epitome of someone whose main priority in life so far is to do cardio…also weight trains. That tells you a little something about how beneficial weightlifting can be.
Below is our interview together. Press play to hear her take on weightlifting and how it’s affected her body composition over the years.
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The most important takeaway from our interview is what she has to say about weightlifting and its relation to improving her body composition, which has directly improved her body image and self-confidence. She says, ” ” Below are some pictures, showing her physique throughout the years from weightlifting.
Shifting gears,
If It Were Easy... 