[00:00:00] What is up? I'm so glad you're here today, and I am so glad we are out of January. I don't know about you, but January was insane for me. So I'm so glad we're in February and we are moving on with the rest of 2024. I'm also really excited and glad that I'm going to be discussing this topic that I've chosen today because like most of my topics, normally I pick things that have been questions or statements made in DMs.
Conversations with clients or just topics in general that I feel like have been overcomplicated or they just need simplified or broken down to help you with your fitness journey and your goals and in general improving your overall lifestyle when it comes to health.
So today I'm going to break down the nonsense and the facts around toning, bulking with weights and even tightening of the muscles.
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So first I want to start with a really common statement that I hear. As I mentioned, I hear it on social media, I hear it from clients, and this week I was going back and forth with a client and we were talking about her [00:03:00] goals and what I wanted to do to shift her workouts and her nutritional intake to focus on her goals and get her where she wanted to go.
And I was explaining to her how I wanted to add some muscle. And her response to me was, Oh, I don't want to add muscle. I just want a tone. And I like to pretend that was the first time I heard that, but as I mentioned, I've heard it a lot and my jaw drops and I'm like, okay, keep it together. How do I explain this in a better way?
So I realized I'm going to do an entire podcast on it and explain what's happening. Toning is simply a feminine way that advertising and marketing have picked up and are using to say adding muscle. Think about it. If you picked up a men's health magazine and they were showing a workout for the bicep, they wouldn't say do this workout to get toned.
Yet right next to it is a female magazine, maybe women's health, and sometimes they will say The best bicep exercise is to get toned. It's the [00:04:00] same thing. It's just a way to market it. To get toned, you have to build muscle. Muscle is what gives your arms, body, muscles shape. It makes them firm and it gives them definition.
It's the same thing.
Now, I don't think the word toned is bad by any means. I don't think it's wrong. I just think you need to understand that what is being said is add muscle. And also, just being aware that there are different factors that affect how our muscle looks and even if we are growing muscle to get that shape or that definition that we are looking for.
So that's also what I want to talk about today.
Typically, when someone starts to feel like they're getting toned, quote unquote, or they're starting to see that definition, what's happening is most of the time they are gaining muscle and creating that shape through working out. And then often at the same time, they are losing [00:05:00] fat from a shift in their diet.
And that is changing their body composition. Now, I do totally recognize that there are different scenarios where it is not always an issue of increasing muscle and losing fat. For example, sometimes we have clients who are very petite and they will put on their applications when we're coaching them, they'll say, Oh, I want to lose fat and I want to tone up.
And then I will explain back to them that they are actually already very petite. They don't actually have fat to lose and they're assuming that if they lost fat, that would make them have more definition.
But really they're needing to add muscle, which is going to shape the muscle and that is going to create the definition. So that is how that works for people who are already pretty lean. It's not about losing fat. It's about just gaining muscle. But typically for most people, I would say it. is a mix of adding muscle and losing fat to change that body composition to really see that definition [00:06:00] or feel more toned by adding that muscle.
So in most circumstances, exercise alone is not going to create that toned look, but exercise will build the muscle and then solid nutrition where you're eating enough protein to support that muscle growth to create that shape and then a slight calorie deficit for fat loss. That's going to adjust your body composition.
I always have to give a caveat when I talk about a calorie deficit because this is another piece and I'm not trying to go into a tangent, but this is another piece that's commonly misunderstood. So when I say calorie deficit. I need you to also understand that based on my experience in nutrition coaching, this is not always the answer for every single person.
You can't just say, Oh, I want to add muscle and I want to lose fat. So I'm going to cut my calories. You do have to make sure that you are starting from a high enough calorie intake to do an effective calorie deficit. If you are not eating [00:07:00] on a regular above your total daily energy intake. So on a regular day, you are not eating more than that amount.
You will not have an effective cut. It will not get you the results you want. In fact, it will slow your metabolism down. I would say about 40 percent of people I work with are not Eating at their total daily energy intake. They are already eating in a calorie deficit, like bouncing between under eating and over eating or just under eating for a couple of days and then over eating or just being super busy and under eating in general.
So you do have to have a high enough calorie intake. If you do not, then. You do have to reverse diet, which means you increase your food intake to where you would be maintaining not in a deficit. And then you would do a short term. Let me put that in capital letters. I know we don't have writing on the podcast, but.
Imagine short term, in capital letters, cut. [00:08:00] You do not live your life in a calorie deficit. That is not going to be effective. So please know, I'm not telling everyone to go into a calorie deficit, and I'm not telling everyone that they need to live in a calorie deficit. I'm just saying, if you are trying to See a more toned look by adding muscle.
For most people, you do want to increase your muscle mass, eat enough protein and do that slight calorie deficit with the caveat of starting from enough calories to make that deficit effective so it doesn't hurt your metabolism in the long run and that is going to help change your body composition.
And if you're feeling lost on that reverse diet, or that felt like, wow, I'm not sure what she meant by that, or that was a little bit overwhelming with that information, I'm going to highly suggest that you go back to episodes
10. When a calorie deficit backfires. Episode 11. Reverse dieting.
Episode 42. The diet trap.
Episode 72. The food, exercise and body image cycle. And I'm [00:09:00] going to list a bunch of other ones in the show notes. I will put all of those episodes on reverse dieting and understanding the nutrition cycle in the show notes, but those are just a handful of them. They're going to make that topic a little bit easier.
but in general, I'm trying to explain that toned look is simply adding muscle and a balanced nutritional intake based on your needs and where you're at, including enough protein to help support that muscle growth.
Now, when it comes to bulking, I think sometimes marketers will use the words of like, this exercise tones you instead of makes you bulky. You don't want bulky muscle. There is no such thing as bulky muscle. When you add muscle, you're adding muscle. And when you're seeing someone or you're feeling yourself like you're bulking up.
Typically, that means that you are adding muscle and you are not adjusting your diet. So the amount of fat on your body isn't changing, but the amount of muscle you are adding is because it is typically a combination of both. So [00:10:00] that might make you feel a little bit more bulky Because you're not changing your body composition of adding the muscle and then also decreasing fat.
The other thing to think about is sometimes we think about muscle and you will hear the statements of you want long, lean muscle. Here's the deal. My bicep and your bicep, everyone's biceps. They attach at the elbow and they attach at the shoulder, basically. The muscle length Is always the same, no workout is going to lengthen that muscle more.
It is a set length based on your body, based on you. So saying long lean muscle for one doesn't make sense because we don't change the length of our muscle. Second of all, saying lean muscle doesn't make sense at all. All muscle is lean. That's why it is different. It is the lean muscle tissue, hence why we don't call it fat.
So saying this workout is going to give you long, lean muscles is a myth. You [00:11:00] can't lengthen your muscles. Lean is just adding muscle, so it's not about, you know, the type of workout. You're just adding muscle. Not lean muscle, muscle. You're just not adding fat. So it is, again, a marketing gimmick to sell you a product.
Now, if someone says this workout is going to work your biceps and help you build muscle, great. It's the exact same thing. They're just using normal, non salesy words to help you build muscle in your bicep, which is a great thing. It's going to make your upper body stronger, it's going to help you lift more weights, and it is going to help you make some definition in your arms.
Now, as I mentioned, if you're feeling like you're adding muscle and you're looking more bulky, typically we can affect the way the muscle looks, and that is based on The amount of fat that is either on the muscle or less fat that is on the muscle. So, if you are adding that muscle and you have more fat there, the muscle is going to look differently.
The shape of that muscle is going to look differently compared to if you have less fat on [00:12:00] that muscle, on top of it. Because they're two different tissues, remember, if you have less fat on top of that muscle tissue, it's going to look different.
That does not mean that lifting weights is what's making you bulky. It means that you might need to slightly adjust your diet. Now, please know, I, I say that with all the love in my heart, that it's not about starving. Remember, you could just need a slight variation in your proteins, fats, and carbs, and that's okay.
The second piece to that is, it may simply be that you are trying to develop a shape that may not be your thing. Body style. For example, I am about, no exaggeration, 65 to 70, probably 70 percent of my body is my legs. My husband is 6 foot. I am 5'8 My hips sit probably 3 to 4 inches higher. than his hips because he's very proportionate.
His legs are proportionate to his torso, proportionate to his arms. My legs are not proportionate to my [00:13:00] torso. My torso is very small and my legs are very long. Everybody in my family is built that way. So when I work on my leg muscles, that muscle is going to look longer on me. Not because I'm doing some special workout when I'm adding muscle and I'm toning, but because my legs are literally longer.
Then most people, the space between my hip and my knee is insanely long. And so it makes me even look taller than I am. And that muscle is going to be different because literally that length of muscle is different because of my body mechanisms. So someone who is shorter, who has much shorter legs, their leg muscles are going to look different no matter what.
It doesn't matter if they are, Doing a Pilates style workout or a heavy lifting workout, like that leg muscle is going to not develop exactly the same as my leg muscle. So as you are picking workouts, don't, pick [00:14:00] them based only on the style of the person who is doing them. If you are looking at a model who is, I don't know, five, nine, six foot, and she's saying, if you get, if you do this exact workout, you'll get toned.
Don't expect to look exactly like her. Her body mechanisms, literally the length of her muscles are very different than yours. And also knowing that having different body shapes, different body types, all of those things are okay. And you can look amazing in your body type. And every body type can look strong and have definition and have Like just in general strength and functionality without having to like assume that one certain type of Exercise is gonna promise to tone you but just recognizing no when I lift weights and when I focus on overloading the muscle That is when I'm going to see definition in That muscle.
So let's now talk about what that means that overload in the muscle to build the muscle now that [00:15:00] we know that there's no such thing as a workout that's only going to bulk you or only going to tone you because it's all the same and a lot of it is affected by the fat we already have on our body and the length of our muscles and the length of our limbs and just our body types and in general our diet.
So as you see, there's multiple factors that are affecting it, but What we can do is be aware of muscle overload, which means we are challenging the muscle enough to build it. So typically, and I did talk about this last week a little bit in the burning episode. You're going to want to stay between 6 and 20 reps if you're wanting to focus on hypertrophy and muscle endurance.
Hypertrophy is normally 6 to 12 reps and then muscle endurance is anywhere from 12 to 20 reps and I feel like a decent mix of those can both be effective. Both of them can progressively overload and challenge the muscle. And you do want to make sure you're getting a decent amount in the rep range for hypertrophy.
And then obviously you can supplement in for finishers [00:16:00] or for other things, the muscle endurance rep range, which is a little bit higher. So in general, I say 6 to 20, ranging in that for different activities. You don't want to be doing all of 20. You can technically do all like 6 to 8 reps if you want.
That's just on the heavier end, but that variety is okay right in there.
to create challenge for your muscles and progressively overload them, which is going to help them build. If all of your workouts are very, very high rep, so let's say all your workouts are 30 to 40 arm pulses or anything like that, you probably aren't going to be building muscle. You're probably going to be more in strength endurance, so you're not necessarily going to see that definition that you're looking for when they are promoting it as an exercise that tones your body, quote unquote, tones it.
Because remember toning is adding muscle. We do have to take into account the different body types of an endomorph, an ectomorph, and a mesomorph. And a mesomorph is someone who is kind of a chameleon and [00:17:00] any style of workout is going to help them build muscle because they respond really quickly. But in general, if you're always having a high rep range, You're just not going to be building as much muscle, which is going to not create that definition and that toned Which really just means adding muscle look because remember with tone you're building muscle inside muscle tissue is firm It's basically a little bit tighter, which is making that look that you're looking for but in general More than just tone, there's so many benefits to adding muscle.
Some other factors that are going to affect your workout and your ability to build muscle is your sleep, good sleep. Obviously, we recover when we sleep. That's when we rebuild muscle and make our muscles stronger. Food. You do want to have a balanced food intake. I always promote having enough protein.
Protein is the building block of muscle. The more protein with [00:18:00] lifting weights is going to make more muscle. It's going to make you stronger, more functional. It's going to protect your bones when you go through osteoporosis. It's going to make your metabolism faster. It's going to help you have the ability to lift, run, jump, pick up.
Do all the things with your kids or for yourself that you want to as you age. Stress also affects our ability to repair. Remember, when we're stressed, obviously, we go into fight or flight, and our body stops doing basic other needs to try to, like, hurry and help us not be stressed, basically. So, you don't prepare muscle as well when you are overly stressed, because your body is putting its focus elsewhere.
And also overtraining. If you are overtraining, no matter what style of workout you're doing, if you are doing too much of it, you're not allowing your body to recover. And so you're not going to also see that change in your body composition because it isn't able to build muscle because it's stressed out [00:19:00] overtraining schedule.
So you do want to allow days for rest. You want to allow. Space between lifting different muscle groups. You should allow anywhere from, I prefer 48 to 72 hours between lifting different muscle groups. If you've really, really knocked out those muscle groups and just having a variety of exercise.
Now, peddling back to your goals of picking workouts based on the promises of toning your muscles or not bulking your muscles or tightening them up. I understand that we care what we aesthetically look like and I, and I'm not going to pretend that we don't. People care about that. But I will say having that be your main focus alone is going to be very discouraging.
If you are picking your workouts simply because you are getting promises of it toning your muscle and not bulking them. It's Not going to be a fun fitness journey. I'm going to highly encourage you to do some [00:20:00] research and to scientifically see what studies are saying about muscle and about what's really happening and that they're really the same thing.
When people say toning, they're simply adding muscle and that most workouts when it comes to strength training are for adding muscle and how that happens and understanding that research that there's really no such thing as only tones and makes long lean muscle and there aren't really workouts that bulk you up and make you look Manly as a female.
First of all, it is really hard to build muscle and there are a lot of factors, as I've mentioned, just a couple of them in this episode that affect the way your muscle looks. And it's not just about the workout. There are a lot of variables there. If you really want to have a positive experience with fitness and Enjoy it.
I would stop focusing on only searching for workouts that help you tone and I would focus on finding a workout you enjoy and that you can [00:21:00] maintain and that makes you feel challenged with the muscle and isn't focused on that burning sensation that I talked about last week, but is really overloading the muscle and challenging it.
And to be clear, this can be done with more than just super heavy weights. It's really just about loading that muscle. Your body doesn't know the size of the weight. So you could be having a workout with great resistance that may have some body weight movements in it. For example, if you kneel and lean back that.
Resistance on your quads is legit. I often, experience more soreness in my quads doing that than some other movements.
There are even some movements that might have lighter weight, but depending on the angle and the mechanism and your experience with lifting, it can really challenge you and still overload the muscle. So having that variety is okay, but just focus on that rep range of really being challenged in that 6 to 12 for hypertrophy or.
mixing in a little bit into that hypertrophy range, [00:22:00] that 12 to 20, depending on the movement and all of them can help with muscle endurance and muscle growth.
Plus on top of this, recognizing that different styles of workouts have different benefits. It's not always just about, overloading the muscle to create a more toned quote unquote look. I love kickboxing. I do kickboxing probably two times a week. I've done it more.
I've done it less, but I've done it since I was 19. I don't do it because it makes my body look toned. I don't do it because it actually adds muscle. I do it because mentally it makes me happy. It helps with anxiety and stress, and it works my cardiovascular system. And I just love it. End of story. I love it.
And I think it's okay to have workouts that you do because you love, not because they're necessarily always going to be in that perfect rep range, or they're perfectly gonna help you get muscle, or any of those things. I think it's okay to love your workout, and just love it! And be happy doing it and recognize the other benefits.
If [00:23:00] you feel like it helps you feel calm so that you can get through your days, don't quit that workout just because it's not labeled as a workout that makes you build muscle. Just make sure you're getting a variety in. I love kickboxing. I make sure to do it a couple times a week because I love it. And then I make sure to mix in weights and to mix in things that challenge my muscles because it's going to make me stronger.
And that mix and variety of workouts is going to be best for your overall function.
So, If you learn anything in this episode, if you walk away with anything, know that toning simply means adding muscle. That no workout alone, just the workout by itself is going to make you bulky. There are other factors involved and simply focusing on only workouts that are going to make you toned is going to make your fitness experience not as enjoyable.
Focus on. Things you enjoy, the mental benefits, overloading the muscles, making sure your food is nutritionally balanced and that you're eating enough protein to support that muscle, working through a range of motion to [00:24:00] even improve your mobility, and seeing the beauty in overall function and not just thinking, is this workout going to get me toned?
I promise there's so much more to it than that.
And you can get the results you want in a much more positive, well rounded way.
in remembering that muscle is your friend. All right, that's it for today. As always, you are doing so much better than you think you are. We'll chat next week.