"You don’t somehow activate lean-muscle-only gains by doing Pilates and chonky-muscle-only gains by lifting weights." made me laugh so much.
Such a great piece, as always - I love how you cut through the bullshit and just say it like it is, while always managing to keep the whole thing fun and hopeful and upbeat. I think sometimes people can equate honesty or "getting real" with not being "nice" or with taking away people's reason to hope. Like, someone reading might be like: oh no, this is terrible news, I thought if I did Pilates I might suddenly develop the exact body structure and lengthy limbs etc of Zendaya, what's the point now I've realised that'll never be me! Well .. that's the point. Acceptance of that, and figuring out out how to be happy with you rather than a version of you based on a person with a totally separate body, genetics etc etc, and then moving forward from there.
You always make it clear that by being totally honest about this realm of fitness, muscle, weight loss etc it's actually a reason for hope - because the honesty of this whole thing is that it actually is so much simpler to get on top of concerns like this than we let ourselves realise. We're conditioned from so young to think of what a slog fitness/food etc is but it really isn’t as complicated as we're led to believe, and your writing makes that abundantly clear.
Sorry for such a long message- I just often have this feeling of being glad at how refreshingly honest yet hopeful your writing is, and this particular piece compelled me to word it for some reason!
Thank you for this. I've often scratched my head at "long and lean" muscles when it seemed so impossible that one could, I don't know, change the actual structure of your body!
Awesome article. Bit of a chicken-egg situation when it comes to pilates ie does it just attract "hot" girls or does it make them. I've always stressed that Pilates might get you stronger, but it won't get you strong.
"You don’t somehow activate lean-muscle-only gains by doing Pilates and chonky-muscle-only gains by lifting weights." made me laugh so much.
Such a great piece, as always - I love how you cut through the bullshit and just say it like it is, while always managing to keep the whole thing fun and hopeful and upbeat. I think sometimes people can equate honesty or "getting real" with not being "nice" or with taking away people's reason to hope. Like, someone reading might be like: oh no, this is terrible news, I thought if I did Pilates I might suddenly develop the exact body structure and lengthy limbs etc of Zendaya, what's the point now I've realised that'll never be me! Well .. that's the point. Acceptance of that, and figuring out out how to be happy with you rather than a version of you based on a person with a totally separate body, genetics etc etc, and then moving forward from there.
You always make it clear that by being totally honest about this realm of fitness, muscle, weight loss etc it's actually a reason for hope - because the honesty of this whole thing is that it actually is so much simpler to get on top of concerns like this than we let ourselves realise. We're conditioned from so young to think of what a slog fitness/food etc is but it really isn’t as complicated as we're led to believe, and your writing makes that abundantly clear.
Sorry for such a long message- I just often have this feeling of being glad at how refreshingly honest yet hopeful your writing is, and this particular piece compelled me to word it for some reason!
Thank you for this. I've often scratched my head at "long and lean" muscles when it seemed so impossible that one could, I don't know, change the actual structure of your body!
Awesome article. Bit of a chicken-egg situation when it comes to pilates ie does it just attract "hot" girls or does it make them. I've always stressed that Pilates might get you stronger, but it won't get you strong.