Strong, not skinny.

Fitness blogger Rebecca Catherine Smith is on a mission to encourage other women to embrace weightlifting, after sharing her experience of switching from a cardio routine to one involving weights. Rebecca says that this change taught her three things, which she shares in the below Instagram post: building strength & muscle, losing body fat and building up a "healthy relationship with food and body image". The last point is so important because as Rebecca points out when doing cardio, it's easy to become obsessed with counting calories and burning them off whereas weight training helps to enforce the mindset that "food is fuel".

LIFTING MAKES YOU MANLY?! - It infuriates me how still so many girls think the second you pick up a dumbbell or protein shake you'll suddenly become the hulk?? changing my training from cardio to weights changed me completely inside & out and each to their own but I personally don't think I've made my body look at all manly in my past year and a bit of weight training! Here are my 3 main reasons for girls to start lifting ? - 1. Building strength & muscles: Lifting builds on a woman's natural curves and helps your body be the strongest it can. Ripped abs, sexy strong back, shoulder boulders & a curvy behind alll come from lifting ? #strongnotskinny - 2. Loosing that extra body fat: my body fat % saw a MASSIVE fall when I began lifting because as your muscle mass INCREASES your metabolism INCREASES. Before I would spend hours on cardio machines thinking that will get rid of fat but never saw any results and just made me HATE going to the gym, and if you feel like your in that boat now then change it up now! - 3. Healthy relationship with food & body image: when your doing cardio in order to burn 'calories' it's so easy to look at food as numbers and end up feeling guilty for eating too much and feeling like you HAVE to restrict yourself to see results, well that's just not the case at all. Starting weight training made me realise food is fuel and I need LOTS of it to get the best out of my training ? the amount I eat has honestly trebled since I picked up lifting and I absolutely love it ? there's no restricting and there's no guilt in indulging in treats once in a while because what better way to fuel a sesh ?? - Rant over if this convinces one girl to try out weight training mission complete but I wanna see MORE GIRLS in the weights section and get rid of the association that it's just for boys because it's not #gainingweightiscool #StrengthFeed #transformationthursday??

A post shared by Rebecca Catherine Smith (@rebeccafitness_eats) on Sep 14, 2017 at 11:55am PDT

Rebecca has received some backlash with people suggesting that this process is a lot more complicated than simply concentrating on a 'picture of cardio vs weights'. Of course, both exercise options have different benefits and the advantages of cardio including endurance, heart and lung strength and weight loss cannot be underestimated. Rebecca acknowledged this and says that she's not trying to portray cardio negatively but instead draw attention to how much she's enjoyed the experience of weightlifting.

COMPOUND SUPERSETS ?? - Few snippets of todays workout with @adamcapel of some of my favourite supersets to include when training glutes and wooowz do I feel it already ? - I always do at least one or two compound exercises each leg sesh (squat, deadlift, hip thrust etc) and feel so much more of a burn especially in glutes when I superset them with light weight high rep exercises like these and feel like I really am getting the most out of my workout and breaking a serious sweat ? - First one: • Sumo deadlift 4 x 5-7 reps • Single leg dumbbell deadlift 4 x 10-12 reps each leg Second one: • Squats 4 x 5-7 reps • Goblet pulse squat 4 x 12-15 reps - Followed these by hip thrusts (hit 100kg pb yay lol), walking lunges & leg extension! Try out these supersets to feel a serious burn ?

A post shared by Rebecca Catherine Smith (@rebeccafitness_eats) on Sep 9, 2017 at 10:45am PDT