Cutting Fitness

Ill-advised (Pascal,December 2010)

Aerobics, dancing, running, and much more. Women really can do it all. They need to keep fit now they’re more active outside the home. No matter how fantastically fit they become, there is one exercise they’re still not allowed to do. The one, the only, strength training. Women can climb every mountain, conquer every continent, and swim every sea, but they are forbidden from lifting more than a two-pound dumbbell. Here are five reasons why.

1. Metabolism Booster

It’s a myth that a pound of muscle burns 50 calories a day. However, muscle does burn more than fat, three times more. Just 10 pounds of extra muscle a year would burn off almost twenty-two thousand calories. Muscle also burns extra calories during exercise, so you’ll get another boost! This is a disaster because women should not burn extra calories. The more calories you burn, the more you can eat. Women aren’t supposed to eat too much.

2. Sexy Definition

Some people don’t like women with defined bodies. Muscular biceps, triceps, thighs, and calves are avoided by not doing strength training. Women can easily avoid celebrity abs, toned arms, and firm thighs by avoiding strength training. Normal women should stick with the saggy, flabby, jiggly look.

3. Time-Saver

Another myth is that exercise should take hours a day. It’s the perfect excuse for people not to bother exercising at all. For once, an excuse is a good thing! Intense strength training boosts your metabolism for up to 24 hours after your session ends. This means you could do as little as 15 minutes today and keep burning calories until tomorrow. Cardio calorie burn only lasts up to an hour after you finish. Ladies, keep doing those three-hour exercise marathons. Let the men do quick sessions and get on with their busy lives.

4. Aerobic

Yes, strength training is also aerobic. Just watch an intense strength training to see the buckets of sweat, pink puffy cheeks, and out-of-breath men struggling to lift that dumbbell. Lifting weights, even very slowly, works the body hard. Your muscles, joints, bones, and fat are working harder than ever, so it’s natural that you get out of breath. Of course women shouldn’t do this. They should stick with hours of cardio aerobics instead of brief, effective workouts with weights.

5. Strong Bones

Speaking of joints and bones, strength training works them too. This might not seem like a big deal when you’re young, but it will during your twilight years. For women, menstrual cycles drain our bodies of iron, which weakens our bones and joints. When we hit menopause, old age sets in, so our bones and joints don’t get a chance to recover. Good. Women should have weak bones and joints because then we’re at risk of anaemia, osteoporosis, and general aches and pains. You’ll enjoy doing hours of cardio with bad knees and exhaustion (anaemia does that…). Oh well.

A higher metabolism, a celebrity body, more spare time, better fitness, and strong bones for life are five reasons why women shouldn’t strength train. The life improvement lifting weights causes should be for men only. Women can stick with cardio and tiny dumbbells a baby could lift while men will get the fantastic benefits of weight lifting.
Sounds fair to me.

Ill-advised: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pasukaru76/5268559005 (Pascal,December 2010)

Easier said than done…but doable all the same.

January arrives to the UK in 45 mins (approx). Wherever you are – 2011 or 2012 or 2045 – your fitness goals are at the top of your list. You want to lose weight, gain weight, lose muscle, gain muscle, etcetera…Just like last year.

Just like last year. And the year before. And the decade before. And, if you’re OLD, decades before…

I admit it. I was in the same place last year….No, I wasn’t. I was close to my goal weight, but I fell WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaAAAAY back since January this year (2011).

You did the same thing, didn’t you?

NOTE: If you met your goals (fitness, love, knitting, etc) this year then congrats! Stop looking so damn smug. I could’ve met my goals too if I hadn’t gone on a 12 month binge spree, lost my job, lost my dog (*sob sob*). RANT, I mean, NOTE OVER.

For the so-called failures, what happens now?

It’s up to us.

They, whoever they are, say 2012 is the end. The world’s end, end of an era before the new world order tries to enslave our people, but they WILL lose because we won’t roll over like poodles and be held back from our true potential, our inner chi, our happiness.

Anyway, the world is ending and we’re all screwed…or we thought.

When one fridge door closes, another opens…but not for too long or your food will go off.

This positive mantra also applies to your life.

When one year ends, another starts. If you dwell over the past, you dwell over the past, and dwell over the past, and…go nowhere. When one goal is achieved, another is set. When you screw up one goal, set another, and keep setting them. You don’t have to meet them, but every achievement takes you closer to success. Yes, even when success seems far – too friggin’ far – away.

The end.