Living a healthy, active lifestyle provides you with a ton more energy, the ability to sculpt your body to fit your idea of a desirable physique and truly gives you a better mentality.
However, there are a few "down-sides" to being a strong, fit woman, of which I'm sure most of you will agree...
#1) Clothes/boots not fitting
The struggle is real getting jeans and boots with zips to fit. Going up a size in jeans is not necessarily a solution, because then they just fit baggy elsewhere.
Thankfully jeggings, leggings and trainers are in fashion as a lot of non-gym clothing is not designed with the fit lady in mind. I literally live in gym clothes!
#2)...Sitting on the toilet after leg day
Guys have it easy; they don’t need to sit on the toilet to pee after leg day. Girls have to try get back up off the toilet again every time. You also need to pee a lot with all the water you try to drink to keep hydrated. Talk about those 3-litre bottles...
It’s also really uncomfortable to train with a full bladder, especially with exercises such as glute bridges where the bar puts extra pressure on you. Pee before you leave for the gym and again when you get there to avoid any little inconveniences during training. I bet most still end up running to the loo mid-set... or maybe that's just me.
#3) Constant hunger
Even when bulking, I feel hungry a lot. It’s not that I don’t eat enough, and I do eat when I get hungry, but I do experience a lot more hunger than I used to in my non lifting days. I wouldn’t change a thing about my lifestyle for the world, but I really do notice that it takes a lot of food to fill me up.
Add to that the buying of extra food and the prepping and you have a day’s work right there...I try to keep things as simple as possible so I have to spend less time organising myself and have more time for the fun stuff. It's actually hilarious how much food we can eat!
#4) Weight-lifting hand calluses
It’s so hard to keep your hands looking well when you weight train... Us ladies need to to keep our hands looking lady-like, even if we do secretly love seeing our hard graft in the form of callused hands. However, nail polish chips and chalk can also dry your hands out no end.
The best solution I have found to this is gel manicures if you have a big event coming up or are conscious of keeping your nails well groomed for work. A pumice stone can also work really well on your hands!
#5) Pressure to stay in shape all the time
Once you get in shape, there can be quite a bit of pressure to stay in shape all the time. Although this is especially true for ladies coming out of competition prep, it is also true for everyone across the board.
Going from super lean and toned to not so lean can make you super conscious, as can falling off the wagon, especially when you feel there is an expectation on you to be perfect all the time, which nobody is. I truly love training and how much strength it is providing as a by product of the hard graft - bask in your effort ladies!
#6) Losing your lovely lady lumps
This is probably the most relatable issue with getting fit and losing weight as a lady. A ladies chest is mainly composed of fat, so once the fat goes; they tend to disappear too! This is why implants are so popular in the fitness industry.
That said, there are loads of great alternatives to give you a boost in that department if you want it without having to resort to drastic measures such as surgery. You also now have the advantage of being able to pull off many clothing options you may not have been able to before, especially in the bikini and bra department making this a potential blessing in disguise!
eat off plan constantly[/su_heading]
We all love a treat, and that’s fine when we actually want it. Sometimes though, our choices to train and eat healthy more often than not can make other people feel guilty about their own choices. This can result in friendly advice to skip gym sessions since ‘you are fit anyway’ or offering cake because you are ‘too thin’.
While we can refuse these sometimes well intentioned offers, sometimes not, it can make you feel guilty for not accepting them or cause you to miss out on sessions you were perfectly happy to do in the first place. It's all part of the package!
We're sculpting womanly curves![/su_heading]
It seems like everyone has an opinion on how you should train and what you should eat when you start lifting weights as a lady. Random strangers share their concerns that you will resemble a bodybuilding bloke...
The funny thing is, this could not be farther from the truth, and it tends to be the very same strangers and even family or friends that ask you for advice on how you got so toned and lean!
Let’s all support each other in reaching our fitness goals together. No one way is the right way and what works for one person may not work for another.
Getting fit and staying healthy can be a lot of hard work and we all face struggles in reaching our goals which can be made a lot easier to overcome if we build each other up whether we are runners, weight lifters or just enjoy going to the gym to stay healthy!
