The pear shape - How to change this look?

Hi again,

since some people asked me about how to get rid of their pear shape, I’m happy to tell more about it in detail.

First of all> What is a pear shape?

Girls with a pear shape tend to have fat storage on their hips and legs but close to none at their chest, arm and stomach area. Do not mix them up with the hour glass shape…as those lucky ones have fat storage around their hips AND chest/arm area.

So what happens is that the more body fat a girl with a pear shape has the more the hips and legs expand. The upper body normally stays nearly the same. 

The other thing is that women with a pear shape not only have most of their fat storage around their hips and legs BUT even their bone structure is normally slightly more wider around the hip area then average. So even when girls with a pear shape loose a lot of weight they will still have a round looking hip.

The other interesting thing to mention is that even the muscles around the hip and leg area tend to hypertrophy (growing bigger muscles from exercising) more then on any other part of the body.

So this looks like we really can’t win here :( Just getting skinny and making lots of starvation diets doesn’t help as all of your muscles would disappear around your upper body (as the muscles at the upper body of pear shaped girls tend to hypotrophy…means they tend to get small easy and it’s hard to train them on volume) to make your hips even more prominent and the wide hip bones and thick muscles around the legs would still be around the lower body.

SO the more we actually starve the more we come out of balance with our look and even more pear shaped. And if we put on weight again> Guess where it will be all going to;)…but now it would be even worse as the upper body is even smaller after all of this starving and the hips bigger then ever.

But what can we actually do?

Well…there is something :) Hooray!

It is called “body shaping”.

What does this mean?

Well, I train my clients after their body shapes. Means: When a girl comes into our studio with bigger hips and legs then I decide to NEVER EVER do ANY leg exercise with ANY WEIGHT at all. NEVER! Not even 3kg! And if she has to do 200 lunges and squats> I don’t care but NEVER do them with weights as your muscles around your legs tend to hypertrophy quite a lot if you are a pear shape… means> The legs will definitely getting bigger from exercising. 

To still get the legs strong, lean and toned we have to do body fat reduction (lots of cardio), leg exercises without weight (any), leg exercises in a stretched position (pilates/ callanetics) and good stretching after each session to not get the muscles to big and bulky looking.

Even if this sounds weird but I noticed that pear shaped women tend to have most of their strength in their legs and it is like an absolute power house down there. Muscles there grow fast!

But the most important thing a pear shaped girl needs to do is strength training for her upper body. And no: Here we have to go up! Train like a guy, train with big weights, as hard as you can and don’t be afraid of any challenge. ANY weight is welcome, any chin up, any press up and preferably anything involved in strengthening the shoulders from any direction since muscles are the only source we have up there to get some volume. We have no bones, no fat, no natural muscles there as a pear shaped person, so we need to get some “selfmade” muscles up there. We gotta train our upper body like a man!!!

And of course: We need to lose fat! A woman with a pear shaped body who doesn’t want this to be seen needs to go low in body fat to avoid any dis balance in her looks.

Body fat reduction works well with cardio (best interval) training and a low (GI) carb diet. 

The only thing to be aware of>

Since even your bone structure around the hips is wider then average you must know that you will have a gap between your legs once you are down to low body fat. Women with more narrow hips will not have this since their legs aren’t as far apart from each other. To show you what I mean …here is a pic of me>

Down to my bone structure (typical pear shape) I will always have round and wider hips. Because of this I will always look feminine even without any body fat at all down to my wide hip bones.

The only negative thing about having wide hip bones is once you finally are low in body fat, your legs will stand apart a bit. But of course> As soon as I would go up with my body fat my hips wouldn’t only grow to the inside but to the outside as well so it’s not really an option for me;)

About my shoulders:

As you can see on this pic I have worked out my deltoids and chest muscles to more volume so I have a little bit more of an balanced look. Since I’m a pear shape and NEVER have any breasts at all (if fat or skinny, there just never is anything) I had no choice but getting my chest line with my pec’s rather then my breasts :(

As you can see: Although there is absolutely nothing left on me anymore, I still have a small waist compared to my hips and shoulders down to the fact that my wide hip bone structure lets it look this way. Because of this a pear shaped women can work out as much as she likes but will never get this bulky midsection or straight look like (for example) Madonna has.

As those pics are about 4years old and I was even less active at this time I …again…post some more recent pics to make it more understandable what I mean with muscly upper body and wide hips:

You can easily see on my big calves the tendency on my hypertrophy around my legs as well. If I would train my already muscular calves on volume and strength they would be as big as the ones of a wrestler ;).

I must say that I do not feel comfortable with showing all of those pics around but I have noticed that for some ever reason it helps a lot to explain where I’m coming from. It helps my clients very much as well…and since I cannot post a pic of anyone else here, I have to use mine for this. I hate it…as the truth sometimes hurts (who wants to admit of being not perfect) but I’m happy to share my experience with you.

Fact is> We are all not born perfect and it is okay to be pear, apple or hourglass shaped but if you do not like it then there is a way to change it.

If you like I will post other blog entries about other body shapes. Might be interesting for some of you with different shapes :)

Question is? Are you willing to go this way?

Take care, enjoy your body and stay toned,

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)

Zone Diet! Any Good? YES!!!

Hi Guys,

before I recommend anything to my clients I ALWAYS test everything myself. So every single exercise and diet I recommend and will ever recommend to my clients I have tried myself and have found effective.

The diets I have tested in my life I cannot even count anymore but there was one specific diet which stood out by far with it’s results and has proven to be the most effective for any kind of toning or fat loss program.

It’s called “The Zone Diet”.

I always tried to live after it somehow but had my odd pizza, chocolate and cake now and then. 

This time I meant it for real just because I wanted to see how effective it can be if you really eat after it day by day.

Don’t be fooled: You gotta eat a lot of food in the Zone Diet because nothing you eat within this diet is very dense in calories. The portions I have to eat five to six times a day are enormous and I actually love that :) Due to exercising a lot I feel hungry after sessions and it’s nice to be able to always eat when I need it without feeling guilty…but no> With knowing the more I eat of this healthy food the thinner, trimmer and tighter I get :)

I started to live strictly after the Zone about two month ago…and I have lost an incredible amount of body fat percentage. When I started I had 16% bodyfat which is already quite low for a woman. Now I have 7% of body fat…

For a woman this is incredible low…and always remember: I do not take any supplements, no drugs or any kind of harmful hormones or pills. I achieved this naturally with following the Zone Diet strictly.

I must say that it might not be everybody’s taste to be this toned but as I said earlier this self testing was more for my clients then for me. I played their guinea pig to prove how much of an importance the right diet plays with every sort of weight loss and fitness program.

Have a look yourself:

I might consider to eventually put on some little fat again to not look so much like a man (< but for some reason I actually quite like this “athletic body” a lot and might keep it for another while ;))…but I was happy to prove my point that the right diet combined with a good workout program can make WONDERS for you.

I have never felt better, healthier and more energetic in my entire life…

Do you want start the Zone Diet and get toned?

Take care and enjoy life,

Anne

Le freak, c’est chic!

Hi guys,

yesterday I let my biggest judge look at my new website. My toughest and meanest judge is, was and ever will be > my very own partner!

He had a look at it and said: “It’s okay. So far I found nothing to complain about…I think it’s just because I haven’t read all jet!”

But then he said: “I wouldn’t put one specific picture on your side. On this one you look like a freak. I can see all your bones on this one and people will think that you starve yourself to this figure!”

I was curious which one he meant…and after I’ve seen what he meant I was very angry! 

I must say to his defense that my partner is very little into sports and not interested in any sort of fitness. He has never thought about visible muscles and any form of tone jet. He doesn’t know that visible abs are not just those six/eight squares of muscles you see in the belly area. He doesn’t know that there is much more to see on a defined and toned core rather then just the six pack in the front.

What he saw on this picture was actually not even close to what he thought it is. He mixed up my hard earned OBLIQUES with my RIBS.

Here is the photo of concern:

 

What you see on this picture is not ribs but my core muscles called obliques. As you can see they sit underneath my rib cage.

I was very angry with him of being called a freak just because of the fact people can see every single of my core muscles.

It is my job to be fit so I can’t really prevent my muscles from popping out…and actually> I’m proud of it!

Le freak, c’est chic!!! ;)

Take care and love yourself the way you are!

Stay toned!

Anne Caroline 

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