The whole bulky woman thing page 8

[Owly]

Knifegill, I can tell you that I definitely prefer men with solid legs over the skinny jeans boys.

[Leida]

Leida, this sentence makes me want to cry. I am appalled that a mother would say that to her daughter. That would be incredibly destructive to her self-esteem and ability to love her body.

Heh, times have changed. Where and when I was growing up, that sort of attitude towards getting 'the best' out of the kids was normal. Mom was not doing anything cruel or unusual.

[Owly]

Leida, you are not *that* much older than me. Perhaps it's cultural, but certainly that would have been seen as cruel when I was growing up. One might talk to one's daughter about concerns over weight and appearance, but to grade her body like that would not be considered okay.

[Goldie]

I don't know if it's a cultural thing or a generational thing or just a "bad parent" thing... I'm 55 and the whole time I was growing up, my (original) father made nasty comments to me about how I was too heavy, or how I should lose weight, or maybe I shouldn't eat that cookie. At the same time, family dinners were served up by HIM and we had to eat every bite he put on our plates before we were allowed to leave the table. (Eternally grateful that Mom divorced him! Then I only had to suffer through visitation weekends!)

When I look back at childhood pictures of myself, I was not at all overweight. It took me a while to accept my body, though.

[sbhikes]

Leida, so what your mother said all those mean things to you. Why do you say such mean things and worse to yourself? How's that working for you?

[Caveman_Sam]

You are not alone. Most women I talk to think simply doing weights = you get big. It's VERY common. The logic goes like this:

I see bulky muscular men.

These men go to the Gym.

Therefore, the Gym makes you bulky.


But they forget about the most important thing. DIET. If you don't have s consistent surplus, you CANNOT bulk. But you wait until you get a woman pumping iron in the gym, her body becomes totally hot within weeks if she continues to eat at maintenance.

[AmyMac703]

As a guy, I was also once enthralled with dreams of being rail-thin. Girls usually like that look! But my legs are as thick as my head! I have no chance! So I guess I'll settle for that Spartan/gladiator/Danzig look. I guess having thick abs and being able to hurl a rock hard enough to kill an animal beats being able to crawl under a low fence...most of the time.

Seriously? Guys who are rail-thin are not attractive at all. I know some girls like that, but I have no idea where it comes from. Any guy who I can physically overpower or out-bench/deadlift is weak and puny and not someone I want to breed with. My future offspring deserves better than that.

[Leida]

But they forget about the most important thing. DIET. If you don't have s consistent surplus, you CANNOT bulk. But you wait until you get a woman pumping iron in the gym, her body becomes totally hot within weeks if she continues to eat at maintenance.

Another fallacy. Plenty of women lift eating at surplus or maintenance or under maintenance without getting 'hot' results. I go to recreation center with thousands people attending. I go at different time, so I see a lot of folks. Plenty of women lift, very few are awe-strikingly hot-looking. The same is true for men.

Leida, so what your mother said all those mean things to you. Why do you say such mean things and worse to yourself? How's that working for you?

It's not mean, it's only true. I know my strong points, and athleticism is not one of them. I mean, a couch would come to roust my mom from the house, is she dared to miss a training session. Me, I was refused entry to every sport my mom tried to place me, until they took me into swimming (and only because the diving coach felt so bad about saying she'd take me, but rejecting me after seeing my pathetic ab hold), only to kick me out after a good lecture in the front of the whole group about what a loser I am and how I did not justify the efforts of the coaches and yada, yada, yada. I could not meet most of the jumping, running, etc norms throughout the school and the Uni. I barely passed PE in the Uni, was my happiest day when it was over in the third year. That's quite an objective judgment. I mean, if I could accept being fat rather than average, I wouldn't even know what the gym was.... My body just seem to resist athletics even as I try very hard. I've never felt so stack, ever since I dropped Japanese in the 3rd grade.

[AmyMac703]

@ Leida and everyone else jumping all over the allegation that anyone can have any body -- I'm not denying that different body types exist ... and I wasn't really referring to the extremes (i.e. the concentration camp physique or she-hulks who bench 200lbs). I guess if you want to literally starve yourself or take 'roids you could get that though. I'd guess that quite a few of the women in the female bodybuilder link probably take supplement cocktails (creatine, etc).
But my experience in just the last year (about the amount of the amount of time I've been *fully* paleo) has shown me that the unattainable is attainable. That said, I'm 24. I don't know anything about your medical history, or how old you are (but from other posts I'm guessing you're somewhat older than me), and I'm certainly not qualified to offer you or anyone else nutritional or fitness advice.
Oh, and in case you're wondering where I'm coming from ... I can post pics later if you want, but I'm 5'5"/137lbs/24%BF ... I'd like to get down to 20% and I know I can, though that isn't my current training goal (and before you try and call me out on this, I'm NOT making an excuse -- I'm training to climb Aconcagua this winter so I'm pretty much exclusively focused on gaining muscle and strength in my legs). I'm sure that age plays a factor -- I'm in my physical prime, so yeah, I feel limitless. Is that so bad?

[sbhikes]

So what, Leida. I can't catch a ball for shit. I scored one whole point in my whole career on track in high school and that's only because I came in third out of three. But you know what? I'm an athlete and I'm awesome.

I'm actually a pillar of athletic prowess in a large community of other people, and I'm talking about the little me in the "before" picture. She was an athlete as much as the one in the "after" picture.

The reason why I'm a pillar of athleticism is I told all those mean coaches and parents and kids from school living in my head to go fuck themselves. I defined athlete my own way. I can still remember the day I realized I was a real athlete and that I was awesome. I actually printed out something and put it on my refrigerator so I would see it every day. This was about 15 years ago. I had been hiking and riding my bike, getting stronger and less scared every day. It hit me one day: you don't have to throw balls to be an athlete.

Since then my feet have walked every step of the way from the Mexican border to the Canadian border. Lots of people have done it and they were faster than me, carried more weight (or less, as that's a contest in itself), hiked more miles in a day than me, were older or skinnier or prettier or younger or whatever. Good for them! They are awesome! I have a freakin' strong body and this body carried me and my stuff all the way from the Mexican border to Canada all alone out in the wilderness doing scary shit I didn't even know I could do. I'm strong and I'm awesome, too. An A+, if you ask me.

What else makes me an athlete? I ride a bicycle, can run for hours and hours, I hiked all the local trails with a pedometer and built a website for the community to use. The entire community thinks I'm an athlete and you know what, I am!

I can't win at anything. I never will be the best. I'm not even the top expert about all the trails on my website. But I built the site, I hiked all the trails, I gave it away and people all over the world thank me for what I've done. I am the best I can be and I'm awesome.

You are, too. You just have to tell those mean coaches and parents living in your head to go fuck themselves. They flunked the college of real life. Their curriculum missed a huge category of sports and they failed to produce whole swaths of athletes who succeed at setting goals and achieving them, pushing themselves more each time, trying new things, inventing and learning, giving back to their communities and living rich, full lives. They fucked up. They are the failures. Not you.

Athletes don't just throw balls at each other or prance around in beauty pageants. Real athletes go out and live life to the fullest. That's what makes someone an A+.