“Beauty lies within.” “You need to love yourself more.” “Don’t compare yourself to others.” “You are more than a number on a scale.” Any of these messages sound familiar?
For women who experience body image issues, these phrases are all too common. Teaching women to see their own beauty and love themselves for who they are is noble, but like clockwork, women seem to always come back to square one of hating what they see in the mirror and battling the number on the scale, while trying to convince themselves they are happy with their bodies.
Attempting to instill self-confidence in women by means of inspirational messages is great, but it will only get the average woman so far.
Unhappy with your body? Then do something about it. It’s time to step out of the comfort zone of sympathy and pity and into the weight room. Yes, the weight room.
The benefits of weight lifting are nearly countless, especially for women. From increased bone density, self-esteem and metabolic rate, to decreased body fat and heart disease risks, strength training does more than build muscle.
With all these benefits, why do so few women take the weight room by storm? Lack of education, or maybe intimidation.
Women may see how male weightlifters look and fear getting massive or beastly looking themselves. The truth of the matter, however, is that the majority of women have too much estrogen and not enough testosterone in their bodies to become bulky, according to the American College of Sports Medicine.
Ask a typical woman about her exercise routine, and you may only hear terms like: running, treadmill, elliptical, cardio, and so forth. How many women tell you they do deadlifts or can bench-press 100 pounds? How many women say they spend an hour at the squat rack and have calloused hands? Unfortunately, these women are seemingly few and far between, as only 17.5 percent of American women met the strength training and aerobic recommendations set forth by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2012. Instead, most females flock to the cardio room for 60 minutes on that stationary bike.
Sure, cardiovascular exercise has some great health benefits and will burn calories, but that’s about all it will do. Dieters in a Penn State University study lost 21 pounds whether they performed cardio or lifted weights. However, for the dieters that only performed cardio, six of those pounds came from muscle, but the weightlifting group lost pure fat. Why did the weightlifting group lose fat? Unlike cardio, strength training builds muscle. For every three pounds of muscle gained, the average person can burn an additional 120 calories per day without moving a single muscle, according to personal trainer Mike Donavanik in a 2013 article in Women’s Health magazine.
These results can’t be accomplished with a few bicep curls using a three-pound dumbbell though. Significant muscle can’t be built with single digit weights. While every body responds to exercise in a different way, if you want to see a total body transformation, it’s important to create a challenging workout routine that allows you to work all of the major muscle groups, not just your biceps or quads.
It’s time to push the limit and enter the discomfort zone—that’s where women will see results. Increasing the weight and varying the types of exercises performed is key to building muscle and consequently burning fat.
Losing fat and keeping up with the boys in the gym must do wonders for a woman’s self esteem, right? Absolutely.
Just 12 weeks of strength training in a group of previously sedentary women resulted in improved strength, reduced body fat, and increased body image in every participant, according to a study by McMaster University.
An article in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine also found that individuals experienced increased self-esteem as a result of weightlifting, in addition to reduced anxiety and depression.
By no means am I suggesting that every woman needs to drop 20 pounds or be a size 4 to be happy, or spend hours in the gym just to feel good about who she is. I’m also not suggesting that women have to fit a certain body mold to have confidence or be a competitive body builder. What I am suggesting though, is a new approach to eliminating body image issues. If you are unhappy with your body, then you need to take action and try something new, and one proven way to transform your body and improve your body image is to lift weights. If you’ve tried every trick in the book to increase your self-confidence, and nothing seems to work, then give this a shot. You’ve got nothing to lose. You are are in total control of how you feel about yourself, so if you’re not happy, then YOU are the one that has to do something about it.
As a college student who has consistently struggled to make peace with my body, I didn’t feel truly confident or pleased about what I saw in the mirror until I found my way into the weight room. The interesting thing about lifting weights is that as I’ve built muscle, I’ve gained some weight because muscle weighs more than fat. I’ve come to learn that lifting weights means stepping away from the scale and loving my muscles and what I am capable of doing. I certainly do not have a perfect body and I am a constant work in progress, but I’ve grown to love the body I have. Losing fat and fitting into those skinny jeans is a great feeling, but nothing compares to the pride in lifting more weight than the guy across from me in the gym. And that is precisely what women need—strength, figuratively and literally.
If we, as a society, want to combat body image issues, we must stop treating women like these sensitive victims who need to be consoled, and empower and educate them on healthy ways to make effective life changes with enduring results. Give women the right tools, or weights, and they’ll see just how strong and capable they really are. “Beauty lies within?” No, I think strength lies within.