There was a post on Facebook yesterday about a training method, designed by a dancer, that would help women to be long and lean and slender and ‘teeny tiny’ and…? What?
According to the post, women shouldn’t lift more than 3 lbs or eat more than 800 calories/day. Ok. I don’t know this woman’s life or her financial situation but her ideas about the capabilities and capacities and demands on women are just a skosh off the mark. My purse weighs more than 3 lbs! And the focus on being a particular body type (lean dancer body) is off the mark. I understand the desire to look a certain way, I do, but you can only do what you can with the frame, genetics and basic structure that you were born with. Your height is what it is. Shoulder width, too. Where you easily put on fat or muscle (these are different cells and not interchangeable!) as well. For all those tall, naturally slender women this is a maybe goal…looking tall, slender and like a dancer. For the rest of the population, you are a chance to make some excellent money trying to morph your body into something it is incapable of. WHAT!? I know…I know…in this everyone gets a participation trophy world we think that there are no limitations to our desires and dreams but that’s wrong. Get over it. Instead of trying to be the next Gweneth Paltrow, how about trying to be the healthiest, most fit you?
Btw, healthy and fit are not accomplished by eating just 800 calories per day. That kind of “dieting” will only set you up for failure as that is no where near a survivable amount of calories. Maybe if you just sit all day and don’t move…one…little…bit. Eat clean and only enough to support lean muscle but eat! The blanket prescription for a person to eat no more than such and such calories with no accounting for types or quality of foods much less ratios of fats, protein or carbs is ignorant at best. The quality of what you eat is more important than the quantity. If you wanted to waste your daily 800 caloric allotment on potato chips you would lose weight and be woefully worse off for it health-wise. I’ll give the diet the benefit of the doubt and say that it probably is very controlled in its sources of those calories. Still. 800 calories. Really.
Speaking of Gweneth Paltrow and this particular diet and exercise program, her name was dropped as a previous or current follower. I can tell you that the girl lifts more than 3 lbs daily. She has kids. Little ones. There is NO WAY she isn’t picking them up when they extend those little arms and ask to be held. Forget it! And there’s the funniest thing of this whole thought process. Anyone who has ever walked into a traditional big box gym has seen this before. Women hovering around the end of the light weights on the dumbbell racks. 5 lb, please. No, I don’t lift 15s. They make your muscles too bulky. Same for the light barbells if they use them at all. Worse still are the ones who never venture into the free weights but stay on the machines that mimic human movement poorly and on one plane only at one time only and with light weight only. Whew! No heavy weights for me. I want to stay looking feminine. (We’ll leave out the female body’s lack of testosterone for the sake of confused logic here) Once they’ve finished up that last movement they head to the nursery where they pick up their 35 lb. kid with their delicate arms and sling that 10 lb. diaper bag over their shoulder and head out to their car. Thank goodness they didn’t lift heavy and risk getting bulky. If anyone needs to be strong and lift heavy its women. Every day.
3 lbs and 800 calories. Craziness!
