Many women miss out on the incredible benefits that strength training has to offer because of myths and misconceptions regarding this component of fitness.

When we ask our female clients about their fitness goals, many mention objectives such as losing weight, decreasing body fat, toning muscles, feeling stronger and improving energy. Often, women try to achieve these goals by focusing exclusively on aerobic exercise because either they don’t understand what strength training can do for them or they fear that lifting weights will give them big bulky muscles. Let’s look at the facts and the fiction.

Don’t buy into those old perceptions about weight training making you big and bulky. Women generally have much lower levels of testosterone (the anabolic hormone that contributes to increased muscle mass) than men. Unless you have unusually large amounts of testosterone in your blood stream, your fears of getting really big are unfounded. Strength training actually promotes positive changes in body composition such as decreased fat and toned muscles.

Regular strength training will produce some gains in muscle size and strength. This is desirable, because often as you increase your lean mass, you are simultaneously losing body fat. The end result is a firmer, toned body.

If one of your goals is weight loss, strength training may be the key that unlocks your potential for the strong, healthy body you dream of. While you can burn calories during both aerobic exercise and strength training, the biggest impact on weight loss or weight maintenance is a revved up metabolism.

Strength training increases the amount of lean muscle mass in your body, and lean muscle mass requires more calories to be burned both during exercise and throughout the rest of your day. Muscle is like Pac-Man–it gobbles up lots of calories to maintain itself–unlike fat which requires almost no calories to exist.

Lean muscle mass cannot be maintained or increased with aerobic training alone. Without strength training, an adult will lose approximately 1% of their muscle mass per year after the age of 30. Here’s an example. If you’re 50 years old and you’ve lost 20% of your muscle mass, you might be expending 200 calories less per day. So even with aerobic exercise and a moderate diet, if you’re not strength training you will have gained weight and/or fat. The bottom line with muscles is "you’ve got to use them or lose them." Increase muscle and you’ll burn more calories naturally, 24 hours a day. This will help you lose fat and maintain your desired weight.

Increased strength and muscle tone go hand-in-hand. Imagine how great it will feel when you can lift that heavy box, rearrange the living room furniture without help, or carry your sleeping child and the groceries into the house at the same time. As those muscles get stronger you’ll probably notice a difference in how you look as well, with less body fat and firm, shapely muscles.

Your strength training will bring additional benefits such as increased bone mineral density. With osteoporosis a serious health threat to women, it makes sense to help prevent it by making your bones as strong and healthy as possible.

It’s been documented that any kind of exercise can improve your energy. So continue with some type of aerobic exercise to condition your cardiovascular system, but add in the component of strength training and watch the results.

If you’re not strength training already, get started today! Get ready to achieve your full potential as a strong, fit and healthy woman.

Read info on Benefits of Strength Training for women from Bio Force TNT System. Learn importance of strength training plays in weight loss, weight control, weight maintenance. Visit http://www.bioforcetnt.com

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Many of us think back fondly to times we cannot possibly remember - times and places when voluptuous, even hefty, women were glorified, when a few extra pounds was a sign of beauty rather than a problem to be dealt with . It is a fact that, even today, there are some societies that have quite a different idea about weight gain than we do - especially for women. And there are quite a few reasons why this sort of thinking might not actually be misguided. For a start, women with a few extra pounds - not obese, mind you, just with some meat on their bones - are more fertile than very thin women. Also, a very thin woman might not be able, in a traditional society, to feed her child adequately. Because human ideas of attractiveness follow necessity, it’s natural that very thin women would not have been considered the most desirable in traditional societies. In fact, it’s only in a society full of excess, such as ours, that thinness becomes the desired goal.

On the other hand, it’s also true that few if any traditional societies had the problem with weight that we do. That’s because the food we eat today - while less nutritious than the food our predecessors ate - is also far more plentiful. To put yourself back in the mindset - and the body type - that typified our ancestors, try following a traditional diet.

It takes a bit of willpower - more than just a bit, actually. But not because you are about to starve yourself or cut out whole food groups. On the contrary - the traditional meals that you will eat are hearty and satisfying. Where the will power comes in, though, is in ignoring most if not all of the food messages that are coming at you through advertising and from the packaged foods in your grocery store. The basic idea is to ignore anything that has a brand name on it. Of course, that’s easier said than done.

So what do you eat, then? Well, if you choose to follow the Medieval Peasant Diet, for example, what you do is to pick a staple food and stick to it, more or less day in and day out. On special occasions, you can vary from your staple diet - for example, you can enjoy a restaurant meal now and then, say once a month or so - but for the most part, you stick to your staple diet.

A medieval peasant in Europe would have lived, for the most part, on a type of stew or porridge whose main ingredient was beans or peas. A pot of this stew was kept on the back of the stove at all times, and added to as needed. The main ingredients of the stew never varied, but sometimes bits of meat of vegetables in season would be added.

And basically, that was it. The medieval peasant would typically eat just one main meal a day, and that would consist of ample helpings of the stew, along with some bread and ale. At other times of the day, people might eat a piece of bread and a mug of ale, or maybe some fruit when it was in season. And once in a while, like on a special feast day or holy day (which occurred rather frequently in Medieval Europe - once or twice a month at least) people would eat - and drink - more than that. There might be roasts of meat, for example, or cakes. But these things were not a part of the day-to-day diet.

On the one hand, the Medieval Peasant Diet would probably not pass muster with today’s nutritionists. It seems a bit low on certain nutrients, such as vitamins that come from fruits and vegetables. We should remember that today’s soil is very depleted compared to soil in the middle ages, so we probably need to eat more fruits and vegetables than they did. That’s something to keep in mind if you want to follow this diet for the long term.

On the other hand, keep in mind that this sort of diet - with local variations - sustained humankind for the vast majority of their history. With the exception of nobility (who, incidentally, were the only people susceptible to modern diseases such as obesity, heart disease, and tooth decay until very recently) this diet kept people healthy - and slim - for millennia.

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The quest to develop a stunningly fit, lean and attractive body is a long, slow journey. It’s not something you achieve overnight by popping a few pills or strapping an electric gizmo to your belly.

Which reminds me, did you know that by the time the FTC finally blew the whistle on the electronic ab belt scam, the makers of those “ab zappers” had swindled over $100 million dollars from unsuspecting consumers? Fortunately, some of those companies had to pay it back, and then some! The FTC charged three companies - Fast Abs, Ab Tronic and Ab Energizer - with false advertising and deceptive warranty practices for these “ABSurd” gimmcks.

But I digress back to what I was saying about the journey to a better body…

Last week I looked out my window, and where there was once nothing but a dirt-filled empty lot, there stood a sprawling six story brick condo complex. If someone looked at this massive completed structure for the first time, they might not be impressed. However, since I observed the entire construction process unfold from my living room window, I was impressed - amazed even - at what goes into erecting this kind of structure.

I remember watching the crew humming around diligently every day like busy bees, laying one brick after another. From one day to the next, it didn’t seem like much changed. But slowly, over a period of a year and a half, I watched the building gradually morph into the finished product.

When you look at someone with an incredible body as a finished product, you often tend to dismiss the long, arduous journey and hard work it took to build that body. Unless you were side by side with that person in the gym (and in the kitchen), observing the work involved, it’s easy to attribute such a chiseled physique to genetics or give credit to a supplement (they just took product XYZ and voila - overnight abs). What you don’t see or appreciate are all the months and years of sweat and hard work.

Getting in shape is a lot like a construction project. First, there must be a picture in the mind. Then the vision goes onto paper as a blueprint. It takes months just to lay the foundation. More months of work will follow. On a daily basis, it doesn’t seem like much is happening. You look in the mirror and appear, for the most part, the same as you did yesterday. But sure enough, the small improvements are slowly accumulating like compounding interest in the bank. One day, you look in the mirror and “suddenly,” your blueprint has become reality.

The body of a fitness model, figure competitor or bodybuilder is no more likely to be built overnight than a high rise is to be built overnight. It’s not physically possible. Accepting the idea that any type of pill, powder, drug, supplement or machine of any kind will make it happen sooner than nature intended (without negative consqeuences or side effects) is pure folly. You can’t force it.

Growth and development of any kind always requires a gestation period. For a baby, it’s nine months. For corn, I believe it’s about three months. If you were an expectant mother, would you want to hurry the process? Could any new development in nutrition or medical science speed up this wonderful miracle even one iota? If you were a farmer, would you try to harvest your crop before it was ripe? Would you dig up your seeds to see if anything was growing down there?

The answers are obvious. If only we would adopt the same patient, nurturing “mother’s” or “farmer’s mindset” towards getting in shape, then no one would waste their money on “fast abs” or “exercise in a bottle” or any such silliness ever again. We would understand that one must sow first, then reap the harvest, but that you can’t sow and reap in the same season.

If you ever get frustrated with the rate of progress in your fitness or weight loss program (and who doesn’t), just remember; success is always guaranteed to the persistent. Nothing in the world can stop someone who knows what they want and is willing to continue paying the price until they get it. It just takes time.

Become the architect and builder of your own dream body. You WILL build the body you want eventually if you’re patient enough and you refuse to quit. And set your goals HIGH! Create a fantastic blueprint. Michelangelo said, “the greatest danger is not that we set our goals too high and miss them, the greatest danger is that we set our goals too low and we reach them.” Envision a castle - a veritable Taj Mahal of a body! There’s nothing wrong with building castles in the sky, as long as you patiently work at putting the foundations underneath them. There are very few unrealistic goals; only goals with unrealistic deadlines.

So keep laying those “bricks” - every day - one at a time - and sure enough, eventually, you’ll build yourself a palace.

Copyright 2005 Tom Venuto

Tom Venuto is a certified personal trainer, natural bodybuilder and author of the #1 best selling diet e-book, “Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle. You can get info on Tom’s e-book at http://www.burnthefat.com. To get Tom’s free monthly e-zine, visit http://www.fitren.com

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