Fitness Friday: Strong is the New Skinny

So I think everyone knows what a huge fan I am of girls like Jennifer Nicole Lee and Jaime Eason. They have those amazing, sculpted bodies that I aspire to imitate. These gals are figure models, and their training regimes tend to be pretty intense and specific to achieve that kind of look. I do like lifting heavy, but I find that if I can't keep my diet under very strict control, that heavy lifting does not do much in terms of weight loss for me. A lot of women I talk to claim that heavy lifting made them "bigger" and therefor they blow it off as a key to weight loss. So why do so many fitness professionals claim heavy lifting is the key to weight loss? Well, it turns out that they're not entirely wrong. Many female fitness professionals state that heavy lifting is not only desirable but necessary to achieve a great physique. This article by by the founder of Girls Gone Strong really clears up that concept.

Another great resource for understanding this phenomenon is Jaime Eason, who has a great program called Live Fit, which holds some explanation for us in its design. As Jaime explains, it's really important to have that lean muscle on your body to burn more fat and add those lines we're looking for. But, in order to have that muscle show through, you have to combine it with enough cardio and the right eating regimen to keep that extra layer of fat off. Therein lies the problem for many of us (me included!). I'm not a very big girl. Just barely clearing 5'1" means I don't have a huge calorie allowance to play with. In order to keep that "extra fat" layer off, I've got to keep my daily caloric intake around 1200 calories...I think anyone who's ever watched me eat can attest to the fact that I eat about 1200 calories before lunchtime :)

I also really enjoy cardio. I like the endorphin rush I get, and I like the feeling that I can jump higher, further, and complete more reps than anyone else in the room. So tend to end up doing either cardio-based programs or interval training where the weights are lighter in nature than a true weightlifting plan. This is exactly what JNL's Fusion program is all about. I actually ended up doing my JNL Fusion rotation for a couple of extra weeks, I was enjoying it so much. And, while I am still loving the set, I am definitely getting to the point of workout fatigue.*

There's just a couple more months until marathon time, so I'm not going to tweak my routine too much at this point. For the time being the cardio component will have to stay strong, and, in fact, I'm starting to add in speed work and an additional day of HIIT training to increase my cardio capacity. Once the marathon is over, I'd like to give Jaime's program a try again and see if I can't get the eating portion under control enough to see the results I'm looking for.


*Meaning that I'm tired of doing the same workouts not that the workouts make me tired, lol!