Food and Fitness Goals

Hey y’all,

I’ve been doing a tremendous amount of research over the past few days about meal plans and fitness goals. I was under the assumption that different fitness goals would need different meal plans, but I’ve learned that, no, not really.

Yes, different fitness goals require different amounts of calories, but that’s pretty much it. What really seems to make the difference is how you train and which muscles are targeted. Aside from some meal plans (like for huge bodybuilders) being 5,000 calories a day and some (like for female models) being 1,500 a day, the diets consist of the exact same foods! All the professional body-conscious people focus on eating clean foods, so little or no processed foods, and they tend to eat slow-release carbs, like rice and potatoes, a fair amount of protein, and produce.

In previous blogs, I mentioned that I liked looking at what bodybuilders ate because they focused on clean foods (and they’re still interesting to watch), but I’ve since discovered that all professional fitness people eat nearly the same way. I personally feel my best when I eat tons of rice and beans like a bulking bodybuilder, but I don’t want the physic of a bodybuilder. So, I began looking at different eating styles of different professionals. They were saying the same things!

Well, that didn’t help… but it actually did. I learned that it doesn’t matter what you eat (as far as body-type goes – it totally matters for health). I can eat just like a bodybuilder if I want. As long as I eat the right amount of calories for my body (I’m not a 400-lb strongman, so I don’t need 5,000 calories a day) and target the muscle groups that I want to refine, I’ll meet my fitness goals just fine.

On a more personal note, I’d like a really curvy female physic – you know, that hourglass Jessica-Rabbit-like look. To achieve that, a bodybuilding diet is actually quite perfect, because you have to workout certain muscles quite a lot (unless you just won the natural-body-type-lottery). For the hourglass look, you need to build up the muscles in the chest, hips, and glutes, you need to sculpt the back, and you need to thin the waist. What I’ve tried in the past was to simply lose weight to get my waist to be smaller, but doing that made my chest shrivel up to nothing. That was definitely not what I wanted. Instead, I now know that I should do more stomach-vacuuming exercises to strengthen my body’s natural corset, and I need to build up my chest muscles. (real talk – the boobs can stay small if they want, but the pecs can make them look huge) I’m pregnant currently and am required to sit a lot, so no working on stomach vacuums or my lower-body muscles for now, but I can do all the upper-body training I want while sitting, so that’s what I’m doing. It’s going to be so exciting once I give birth! Not only will I have a new bundle of joy to learn about, but I’ll also get to return to exercising. A few months ago, I began taking a 30-minute walk every day. I really enjoyed it, and now I can’t do that. Sigh.