By Before you dive full speed ahead into your quest to be #fitthick there are a few things to take into consideration. There are key factors to your success in your quest to be #fitthick.
Diet
The main reason most women haven’t been able to achieve the curves they desire is because they’re underweight. This does not mean eat everything you can get your hands on, but you do need a slight calorie increase to gain weight. Women with an “active lifestyle” should eat between 2,200 and 2,400 calories per day to maintain weight, according to United States Department of Agriculture guidelines, so start with a slightly higher amount than this for steady and lean weight gain.
Workouts
General guidelines state that to keep healthy you need 75 to 150 of aerobic exercise each week (time depends on level of intensity), along with two strength-training sessions. To increase curves, you need to focus more on strength training. Start with three total-body sessions every week. Full-body workouts burn more calories and hit more muscle groups. It is important to still do cardio, but not steady state, it needs to be high intensity — meaning not incline treadmill walking or steady jogs. Go for three HIIT cardio sessions each week. No more than 20-30minutes per session is needed.
Target Area Training
When you think of curves, what comes to mind? The hips, glutes, stomach and arms all need to be on point — meaning tight, toned and defined. You can either add in extra exercises for these body parts to your full-body session, or perform one dedicated curves session per week.
Some exercises could include:
- Glutes/Hips: do glute bridges, hip thrusts, leg curls and reverse lunges.
- Core: do planks, side planks, cable woodchops and Swiss ball crunches
- Arms: do pushups, biceps curls, cable pressdowns and chinups
Considerations
To ensure that you stay on the right track, it is important to keep a log of everything. Food, weight, measurements, progress pictures etc. So you can see what things are and are not working for your body. Additionally consistency in these areas is key, to give you the most accurate assessment of your progress.
We Are #TeamFitThick 