When is Big Too Big?

Bite This: The First US Women's National Physique Championship was held in 1978 and was the first women's bodybuilding competition. This may or may not relate to the following post, but we'll soon find out.

When I was younger, I was always a bit more muscular than other girls my age. More than likely it was because I had to defend myself against my two older brothers, which meant that my punches had to have some power behind them. My athleticism/muscularity was discovered in sixth grade when I excelled at the flex arm hang, broke the school's mile-run record, made the top ten for the amount of sit-ups I can do in a minute, and beat every boy at arm- wrestling during our elementary school holiday parties. Yes, I was like the bearded woman at the Carnival. It did not help my image any that I dressed like a boy. Growing up my mom always said she thought I would have been a good competitive swimmer because of my broad shoulders. I don't know about you, but when I was 12, "broad shoulders" was not something I was particularly fond of. Especially because I was not a swimmer and I had no use for larger than life shoulders.
So, by the time high school came around, I tried to be more feminine which meant that I did not do any strength training and no longer wore jams (if you're not from the 80's, you wouldn't understand).  Flash forward about 9 years later and I finally learned to embrace the fact that I had a little more muscle, and began lifting weights to gain back some of that strength I had lost. I started going to kick-boxing classes at Title Boxing Club, doing P90X DVDs at home and other stupid manly things. They say that when females add strength training to their exercise regimen, they tone the muscles versus adding bulk because they lack the amount testosterone that men have which allow men to bulk up. Well, apparently they're wrong. I have the normal amount of testosterone for a woman and after all 12 weeks of the P90X program, my t-shirt looked like it was ripped off like the Incredible Hulk.

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Shortly after I finished the P90X program, GMOE and I went to party in which I wore a strapless dress. That evening I was hit on by a woman, and someone else looked at my arms and stated, "I didn't realize I also bought tickets to the gun show" and was being serious. That's when I realized that there has to be a balance.
Strength training is important for a number of reasons. The obvious one being that it builds muscle strength and size, but it also increases strength in connective tissue around the muscles, and increases bone density and strength reducing the risk for osteoporosis. Strength training may also possibly increase metabolism - muscle is more metabolically active than fat and therefore, burns more calories than fat even at rest. In addition, when losing weight, not only is fat lost, but muscle is too. So, by adding strength training when losing weight, it reduces the loss of lean muscle mass.
Adding strength training two to three times per week will help build and tone muscles, and one time per week will help maintain that muscle mass. While some people are able to do more than this, adding more strength training than that may make a woman look like a dude and a dude look like a douche. My point is as with everything else, there must be balance. If you do more strength training than cardio, you do not necessarily lose fat. If you do more cardio than strength training, you do not necessarily gain muscle. If you do more exercise than focusing on your diet, you do not necessarily lose weight. If you diet more than exercise, you do not gain all of the health benefits from doing both. Balance. It's my favorite word.
Without balance, you could end up looking like this:                                Or this:

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