Here’s a sample:

Q: I’m a 42 year old woman with two children. I do aerobics every day, alternating between the treadmill, step classes and calinetics. I’ve lost weight, and I look OK in clothing, but I’ve still got flab in the back of my arms and around my hips and thighs. How do I tighten it up? 

A: You can’t. Wait….don’t get discouraged. You can reshape your entire body, and get both the back of the arms and the hips and thighs lean and sexy. You just can’t tighten up flab. Flab doesn’t tighten! 

Women often cringe when I use the word “muscle.” They have visions of their heads on Arnold Schwarznegger’s body. You should first understand that women, because of their high proportion of estrogen to testosterone, can not develop manly muscle without chemical enhancement. If you’ve seen those masculine female bodybuilders on ESPN, and been led to believe that lifting weights creates such monsters, you’ve been misled. Although it’s not commonly presented to the general public, female bodybuilders often depend on anabolic steroids to obtain huge muscle. Muscle is valuable to you, especially if you want to reshape your body, and a slight accumulation of lean body mass will not only keep you feminine, it will likely enhance your femininity! 

Women appear to be more comfortable using the word “toned” than “muscular. “Toned” simply means, reducing fat and either adding or maintaining muscle in a given area. 

Many women make the mistake of undereating and over-aerobicizing! If you exercise aerobically, beyond your body’s ability to provide regular fuel, the body reaches into muscle tissue and as you lose weight, you lose muscle! 

 

People who get started on my program begin by performing only 12 minutes of aerobic exercise per day….and they lose fat! The reason is twofold. Firstly, they develop a nutritional concern for supplying the material for muscle maintenance, and secondly, their aerobic exercise is customized so it keeps them within their fat burning limits. 

By losing muscle through aerobic exercise, you then become dependent on that exercise just to maintain the condition you’re in. Take a break from the aerobics and your body will rapidly accumulate new fat stores. 

In addition to keeping aerobic exercise moderate, and providing adequate nutrition for optimal fat reduction and muscle maintenance, it is also important to provide some resistance training to stimulate muscle development. End result…..a lean, toned body! 

Those “trouble areas” you mentioned will develop as you concern yourself with the body as a whole. Spot reduction can not take place since the body loses fat proportionately from all over. Develop muscle, however, and you can soon begin to “shape” your body much as a sculptor shapes clay. As you improve, customization of your program will allow you to specialize on any areas you choose.

 

For more fitness truth article from Phil Kaplan go here