Fit vs Skinny …I let my own pics speak!

Hi guys,

since I have been through a lot in my own life and struggled I thought it might be helpful that I let my very own private pics speak to let people understand how much of a benefit a fit body vs a skinny body is.

My before and after pictures are very different towards the ones of others as most of the people show pics of them being bigger to them getting smaller.

I will do it the OTHER WAY AROUND!

Not only this> I will show what it actually means to put on a lot of ACTIVE muscle mass and lose body fat. 

To not make anyone confused:

I will show the difference in between me as a starving anorectic person and me as an incredibly fit and healthy person. In between those pics are 14 years of difference…

Okay, let me start:

Be aware that I’m 180cm (5’11) and my past weight of the old pics is 47kg (103 lbs) and my weight now is 59kg (130 lbs)…so in between those pics are 12kg (26lbs) of weight difference.

This is me 18 years old with 47kg (upper body tiny and bony, legs look healthy…down to the pear shape which was even visible at only 47kg!!!)>

This is me 31 years old with 59kg (bulked up 12kg of muscle mass at the right places)>

Those are my shoulders when I was 18 years old with 47kg>

Those are my shoulders now>

….but the best part yet to come:

This was my bum when I was 18 and had 47kg…flat, straight through the leg, flabby, saggy and I had a reason why I only showed it from the side ;)>

…and this is my bum now …31 years old, 59kg>

So…have you noticed anything?

You are asking yourself how the world I can possible have 12kg more on my new pics?

Yes…well…it’s all muscles! I have gained a lot of muscles and since they are much more dense then fat I just got more and more toned, fitter and shaped. If I would have put on 12kg of fat I would look different…this is for sure!

My measurements are very different now…when I was starving I had a very tiny upper body compared to my lower body and now it’s much more balanced. 

When I was young I tried to starve myself to skinny legs but as you can see: I lost all of my muscles around my upper body. So starving made my situation WORSE!

I can tell you: I had such a horrible life when I was at this starving mode. I was tired, exhausted, depressive, weak, was constantly thinking of food, was constantly thinking of killing myself…I was so so sad!

I wanted to come out of this situation so I forced myself to eat and train. I tell you as an anorectic person it was AWFUL to see that my weight went up and up. I constantly had to tell myself that it is not fat but muscles. I wanted to give up so much since gaining weight was so horrible for me. 

So I decided to not weigh myself anymore and just train and eat…and I haven’t given up on this since.

To the skinny girls and training girls out there> You must accept that you might not lose weight but gain weight. You must not give up because of this!!! DO NOT GIVE UP! Do not get dictated by the scale. The scale might hinder you to train and eat. The scale might trigger your feelings of being fat.

Just train and eat healthy and have this as a lifestyle. There will be a point when your fit body is your constant body. I haven’t put on or lost any weight for many years now. This fit look is my constant look and I neither want to go up nor down.

Since training and eating clean has become a lifestyle for me I’m not obsessed with losing any weigh or changing anything. 

I can say> This is me! This is who I am…living my healthy lifestyle. This is my set point weight. I have finally found myself and don’t need to change a thing.

This feeling is one of the most relaxing and rewarding feelings a woman can have. I have no weight goal when I train…I train for the fitness itself. My goal is not to change anything look wise but to be fitter and  better.

Don’t be obsessed by the scale…just don’t look at it…just train and eat clean! Be fit and your new self will come eventually. 

I am 12kg heavier now!!! And I don’t regret a thing! Thanks god I have forced myself to ignore the weight gain. 

I love being 12kg heavier. I love to be strong and powerful. I love my 12kg!

Take care, train hard and love your new lifestyle,

Anne

Thigh Gap Explanation, Part 2

Hi,

since it must be hard to picture the wide hips bones, the bones higher attached, the bones lower attached and the different shapes of the bones…I looked for some example pics so you can understand better how and why this thigh gap occures.

You see> I’m rubbish at painting that’s why I chose those two pics below my “artwork” to explain it a little bit more.

You can easily see on the hip bone pic on top that the leg is attached higher and rather on the outside of the hip.

On the second pic you can see that the leg is attached lower and rather more below the hip then on the outside.

As you can see on the pic I “painted” above> Two people can have identical thick legs but just because one person has them further apart from each other this gap occurs …the person with the more narrow hips will not have this gap!

I hope that this took out some funny ideas in some peoples head and made it more clear why some people have a gap and some just don’t.

It is not an indication for being skinny or not skinny!

Take care,

Anne

The Thigh Gap…How Can You Like This?

Hi guys,

since I have noticed that a very strange thing is going on here, I must say something about it.

I have noticed that it is sort of “perfect” for a lot of girls when they are developing a thigh gap. Some even name they own blog after it and praise it to heaven.

Some are really obsessed with it and measure the gap between their legs…

And now some words of me about this gap. 

This is my thigh gap (I made this pic just 5min ago):

I HATE it! I wished that it wouldn’t be there at all. But I cannot do anything about it since it is naturally for me to have one.

So why is this?

As I have already explained in some posts earlier: I’m a pear shape. This means that I have very wide hip bones and the top of my legs are connected slightly more on the outside of my hip. 

Girls with a more average bone structure have the leg bones more connected at the inside of their hipbones. So their legs stand closer together.

The other thing is that I’m 5’11 means 180cm tall. So I’m not only pear shaped with very wide bones… my legs stand even more apart from each other just down to the fact that I’m very tall and have wide hip bones not only for an average height but for a very tall person, too.

So my legs have no choice but standing even more apart from each other.

As you can see> My knees and feet are completely together but I still have this huge nearly straight gap between my legs which I hate!

But what does this mean>

The thigh gap does NOT indicate how skinny you are but only how wide your hip bones are and how the legs are attached to the hip.

So girls with an average height are very little likely to have such an extreme thigh gap and should be VERY HAPPY about it.

The other thing is that girls with narrower hips are less likely to have this gap as well. 

So this thigh gap should be no indication of how skinny you are and it’s rather pointless to take this as a skinny “must have”.

You must also remember that the people you probably have as an idol (the skinny bony models) are all very tall and much more likely to have this gap naturally.

Since most of the girls are not this tall it is pointless and rather less logical to aim for it. 

I would LOVE to not have it. I feel ashamed for it and all of my trousers look on me like camel-toe deluxe. This is not pretty at all. I cannot believe that some people out there take this as their inspiration. 

Girls, be healthy! Stop being so excessive with your goals and body images. Either you have this silly gap naturally or you just don’t have it…but don’t try to aim for having it. As this is bone related. This would be like you would even start to aim for who has the smallest rib cage or finger bones. That’s just insane!

How are you going to change this? Replacing your bones? Cutting some off? 

Sorry, I’m just sad and shocked at the same time! I hope I could open some eyes maybe.

Take care,

Anne

Q:Hi Anne, I hope you feel better now:) Thank you so much for the pear shape posts... You have no idea how much that helped me... it's like *this* is what I've been waiting for like... ever :) One question though, recently I fell in love with spinning classes, do you think it's a "bad" kind of workout for the legs or not? Thanks again, have a great rest of the night, xoxo Zuzana

a-cup-of-joy-please

Pear shape and spinning

Hi Zuzana,

I’m glad you liked it :) You know, I went through so much struggle in my life to find out how to change my pear shape destiny with so much hardship and hate towards my body that I thought it might be helpful to share my experiences and knowledge with others so they don’t have to go through all of this themselves. I think this is one of the reasons why I became a personal trainer. There are so many women out there asking for this specific help and most of the time they end up with the super cool and sportive male personal trainer who gives them the average advice and typical machine workout having no idea what the girls are talking about or…even worse: Having no idea how bad you are feeling about your body and how important it actually is for you to change it.

Once I was talking to another personal trainer and asked what he does when people have specific body shape requests and he said “Well, you know, they don’t know what they are talking about and don’t know that it’s unrealistic to do anything about it. You can’t go somewhere and expect people to change the way you were born. So I just listen, pretend that I made a plan just for their issue and train them like anyone else as the most important thing is to get them fit anyway. After a while they forget about the hole body shape thing any way.”

I was so TERRIFIED and SHOCKED when I heard this! I didn’t say anything to him, just nodded while he was talking as he was supposed to be far more experienced then me (he is a personal trainer for a long long time and I just wanted to get an advice). But after what he said I knew that maybe I don’t need any advice from him at all as he believed in something completely different. 

Since he is a man and was ALWAYS sportive, toned and low in body fat (you know those guys;)), he didn’t have to go through those hardships himself. He never had an dis balanced body. He never made the experience that one part of your body reacts more to exercise then another…maybe to a little degree but not THIS MUCH. How can he know what kind of struggle it is to get everything right.

To come back to your question> Spinning! Although my books would say that high reps will never let our muscles grow (Reps above 25+) and that hypertrophy best occurs at 8-12 reps, those books haven’t thought about the different abilities of hypertrophy of certain muscles. Every person has some muscles which they can train in the perfect 8-12rep range and the grow is very little while other body parts they can train 100+ reps and they will still grow. 

As for us pear shaped girls for some ever reason we have a good muscle grow around our leg area. Some pear shaped girls more and some less. So all I can advice to you is that you gotta test this out. 

If your muscles get even big from spinning then you have the tendency for a lot hypertrophy in your legs…an I mean A LOT. To avoid this and to still enjoy all of the spinning you might go lower with the level you are spinning in. Like this you still have your cardio but are less likely to grow super big muscles around your legs. But maybe you are lucky and your muscles don’t react as much with a grow on spinning. It is less likely down to the very high reps but I have seen girls who even got bigger muscles from only spinning (and I mean the bulky version every guy would dream for when he works out his legs and calves;)…I tell you: I would love to give my calves to any guy who struggles to get some volume into them.

So> Try it out for a while and tell me what you experience. 

Since your question might be helpful for others as well I’ll publish your message. If you don’t really like it then I’ll delete it as soon as you wish.

Take care and enjoy your day,

Anne

edit: (I edited the title so it’s easier to figure out for others what this post is about)

The effect of body shaping!

Hi guys,

to make it clear> I’m a pear shape through and through. If I wouldn’t train I would have an unsexy wide and flat bum and NO and I mean NO CHEST/BREAST/SHOULDERS at all.

Before I ever started training my measurements were>

Chest> 81cm

Waist> 6ocm

Hips>   93cm

Now…with the SAME height and WEIGHT but different body fat and training status I have:

Chest> 89cm

Waist> 58cm

Hips>   88cm

…and that although my bum isn’t flat at all anymore ;)

The magic of body shaping! We might be born a certain way….but we can CHANGE this!!!!

That’s what I do with 99% if my clients as well…body shaping….I get a little balance in their looks.

Wanna know more about it?

I’ll go into detail later…now I gotta dash off.

Take care,

Anne

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