Fitness Advocate Lita Lewis On How Getting Fit Helped Her Beat Depression And Her Beef With Waist Trainers

What’s The Deal With Water Weight?

Water weight, we all carry it. Women tend to carry more water weight than men just hormonally in the way that we’re built, and we carry it in our favorite places: the stomach area, the thighs, the arms, and all those fun places. But it’s something that’s also essential too. So when people talk about wanting to shed water weight, it can be done as naturally as getting a crazy body conditioning workout in, be it cardio or a high intensity workout to where you literally sweat, sweat, sweat. Another natural thing people do is drink diuretic tea. Dandelion tea tends to make you pee a lot so that’s also getting rid of water. Asparagus makes you pee so that’s another natural diuretic. And then there’s the water pills, which when taken orally, makes them flesh out water over a period of time, and they come in all types of strengths. You see that mostly in the body building world. But water weight is not a bad thing. Hydrating your body is essential. I consider it lubing the muscles and the joints so the body can work sufficiently. But I also know that when women are trying to fit in that dress and can’t understand why they fit it last week and now they can’t, it can be a problem. But it’s essential. More water in, more water out. People think they should go thirsty because they don’t want to carry excess water, but truth be told, especially if you’re active, you should drink a lot more water. The more water you drink, a lot more you can sweat out or pee out.

The Problem With Waist Trainers

I’m not for it. I don’t promote them. I don’t agree with them when it comes to weight loss. I’ve had the opportunity to make a good enough amount of money to promote those things, and I would rather shoot myself in the thigh. The waist trainer has no business living within the health and fitness space, period. There are so many misconceptions about these things, and I just think they’re ridiculous. If anybody did their own research they would find that there are some really severe health risks associated with binding yourself and restricting your core from that place. I speak to it being used as a device aimed at losing weight. Again, I think women are sold a false sense of security when they’re training with it. If I’m going through an ab routine or a core conditioning workout, I don’t want you to be wearing the waist trainer because I want your core to be fully activated and fired up to do so. You’re not giving me the maximum effort.

But I know we like fast results. We like that quick fix. We like how we look when that waist trainer is tucking us in and now we have hips and an hourglass figure. I get that, I really do. But personally, I stand for and promote a healthier lifestyle for longevity. Therefore, I could never be associated with something like that because it is a quick fix, and it does play on misconceptions of weight loss. And really, all it’s doing is distributing body fat in different places.

Tips For Making Your Butt Perky

Squatting works out the entire lower body and your core. That’s good for the glutes, as well as lunges: walking lunges holding dumbells, stationary lunges with dumbells that are reserved, or frontal lunges. But there’s a whole lot of other things good for lifting and building the booty. You can get a little more technical and start isolating the gluteus maximus and all three areas of the glute to really maximize your strength training. One of my favorite glute exercises is hip thrusts. I lay back on a flat bench, make sure my shoulder blades are on the bench with a barbell on my hips and what I do is I thrust my hips upwards and hold for a count of two and then lower them back down again. Hip thrusts are great for the booty. Another one of my favorites is an exercise done like donkey kicks, but they’re not donkey kicks. I put a dumbell behind my kneecap and you basically move laterally with a bent knee. You squeeze that dumbell with the back of your knee and really target your inner and outer glutes. But I also do a lot of deadlifts–this targets the hamstrings and the glutes. Weighted deadlifts with a barbell. And deadlifts with a dumbell. I also love to do a lot of plyometrics. I combine strength, which is weight training, with movement and plyometrics, which is a lot of jumping and squatting, jumping lunges, body squats, all sorts of things that require my muscle fibers to be fast twitching because I’m jumping. They really target lower body and the glute. Strength plus plyo is my favorite way to train to really build a strong butt.

Dealing With A Plateau In Weight Loss

Plateaus are going to happen. They happen to me all the time. To get past it, you have to understand that the body is a very, very intelligent vessel. The body knows–like, when you get a shock from a new workout you might be sore the next day. Your body will eventually, if you do it for a consistent period of time, your body is going to adapt. This is where your gains are achieved but it’s also your body’s response to the hard work. If you do it for a decent amount of time, the body is going to be like, “Oh no, I’ve got this. I know exactly what you’re going to do and I’m no longer going to have that delayed onset soreness because I’m used to this, therefore, I’m going to plateau you out. I’m going to need something new and different in order to change again.” Once the body adapts, you have to change. So you have to continuously change up your training regimen on a consistent basis. Some people need change as often as every seven days. Personally, I like to definitely change up my schedule every 21 days. But every three weeks, I want to do something completely different. Those differences don’t have to be dramatic. It could be a matter of changing the amount of weight or how I manipulate them. Instead of doing my spin class twice a week, I switch it out for yoga and Pilates on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Anything that requires change and really starts having the body in shock, you want to do that. That’s where you find your gains when you continuously give your body something different to adapt to.

What To Eat After Training

I would suggest protein post strength training. Essentially, when you’re working out the muscles and you’re doing all the strength training, you have to consider the muscles and what it’s doing is breaking down the fibers. You’re tearing the muscle up when you’re doing strength training. So what you want to do, and this is recommended 20 to 30 minutes after your workout, you want to feed those muscles protein so the muscles have something to feed off of. That will help with your strength and it also helps build lean muscle, but it also helps with repair and recovery of the muscle. So it’s important to get protein immediately after any strength session. Protein can be anything from animal protein if you want to eat some chicken breast or get some steak in you. Some people like a protein shake. Some people can eat a protein bar. But protein is imperative after heavy lifting, or any lifting in general.

If you’ve just done a whole bunch of cardio and not really torn up the muscle fibers like I explained, personally, I would go out and get a green juice. Spinach, kale, apple, celery. Something that’s nice and healthy that might replenish all the electrolytes I just lost. Something with natural sugars. Maybe I’d choose an all berry shake. You definitely want to replenish your body regardless so the metabolism has something to feed off of. I consider the metabolism a fire: The more you throw on the fire, the faster and more efficiently it burns. So because after exercise you really exerted yourself, throw something on that fire so it’s burning and stronger and faster. Studies show that when you do that post-training, you’ll actually burn calories faster and more efficiently for the rest of the day.