Life As A Soft Girl 🦋

For those of us trying to lose weight, seeing results is a top priority and if we can see them even faster, then all the better. As someone who has lost 70 pounds and am now working on my last 10, I can tell you the workouts that proved to be the most effective. This may shock you, but it’s not what everyone has been talking about online. I want to help you avoid wasting time like I did, and get to your dream body as soon as possible.

If you look online, you will see a majority of people promoting strength training for women. They tell you to lift heavy and to not worry about cardio. You can just throw in a little bit of walking here and there, but heavy lifting is where it’s at. I’m sorry but I would have to respectfully disagree. When I myself took this advice, I found that not only was I not seeing any physical improvements, but the scale pretty much stayed the same, and I was looking more bulky, thick, and wide as time went on. This is the same workout advice that I had spent years listening to. Even back when I was a teen trying to lose weight, my own mother gave me the same advice: lift heavy and don’t worry about cardio. Many people talk about cardio as if it were the devil himself! ‘It will ruin your gains and your progress’, they say. ‘Don’t do anymore than 20 minutes. You’ll just end up looking skinny fat if you focus on cardio.’ Because this seemed to be the general consensus across the board, I listened.

But by following this advice, I was not getting the results I wanted. I felt more bulky and not at all feminine as I had hoped. Strength training my arms made them look jacked like a man. I was after more of a slim, petite, elongated body but all I got was a stocky, muscular one. That is why I think it’s so important that you first identify what kind of body you are after. For some people, they want to have a look of a “muscle mommy” but I for one did not. I realized that the training I was doing was in exact opposition to who I wanted to be. Many people promise that lifting heavy will not make a women look bulky, but I strongly disagree. If you want thick muscular thighs and calves, bulky arms, and wide lats, then heavy weight lifting is for you.

I think we steer so many women wrong when we make false claims, stating that you will get a bikini body by lifting big weights. If you want to look long, lean and slender (which I think most feminine women do), then stay away from the bulky lifts. To slim down fast, cardio is where it’s at.

I finally realized after years of doing the same workouts and not getting the results I wanted, that maybe I should try the exact opposite. So I put a pause on weight lifting and simply focused on hour long cardio sessions. That is when I finally saw my body starting to slim down. I finally was achieving the slender, longer look that I had always wanted. To be honest, I’ve never really seen much results just doing 30 minute sessions. You can try that; but it might take a little longer to see results. For me, cardio proved to be most effective when I would do longer, 60 minute sessions.

I believe all forms of cardio is good cardio. Whether that be walking, the elliptical, swimming, running, biking, or anything else. I will say though, when walking was my only cardio, again, it took longer to see results. I would lose about 1.5 pounds a week but would have to eat much less (around 1300 calories) to see those results. At the moment, I enjoy doing more strenuous cardio like an hour on the elliptical with an elevated heart rate. I love how it feels to challenge my cardiovascular system and it just releases a different level of endorphins than I ever got with walking alone.

I challenge you to just try it for a month. If, like me, your focus has always been strength training, try switching to cardio for a month and see if you like your results better. You don’t have to do a full hour to start if that sounds like too much. Try even just 30 or 45 minutes. For me, that’s when I finally saw my body slimming down and releasing water weight that kept me feeling puffy and unattractive.

Now, just to be clear, I am not against strength training altogether. But I believe to achieve a smaller, toned, body, that we need to utilize lighter weights. Especially once we have lost the fat that we wanted to and would like to see a little more definition, I do think it’s necessary to include strength training at that phase. But that definition can’t even really be seen until you have just a small amount of body fat left on you. So I would recommend doing that in phase two while you focus on cardio first to quickly slim down. Once you are ready to tone, use your body weight, light dumbbells, and high reps to achieve the look you want. We can discuss that topic further in a future post.

I hope this article was one that you found helpful and did not discourage you in anyway. I am not trying to talk down to women who have a more muscular build or prefer to look that way. My advice is simply for women who are stuck in that place right now and don’t want to be. I wasted so much time doing the wrong workouts for years and was confused as to why I wasn’t looking the way I had envisioned. Once I realized I was doing the wrong workouts, it all made so much sense and I finally started seeing the results I wanted. I just want to help other women to avoid that same frustration.

Whatever your goals, stay the course, never give up, and soon you will be the person you’ve always wanted to be. I send my love and warm hugs to you all.

XOXO, Peaches