Lita Lewis On Waist Trainers, Water Weight And Being ThickFit
Fitness Advocate Lita Lewis On How Getting Fit Helped Her Beat Depression And Her Beef With Waist Trainers
Share the post
Share this link via
Or copy link
https://instagram.com/p/1RgQHdPaj-/?taken-by=followthelita
At the insistence of one of my friends, I checked out the Body Blast Bootcamp of fitness advocate Lita Lewis. The Los Angeles-born, Australia-raised fitness juggernaut, who currently resides in Brooklyn but travels across the country to share her camps with hundreds of people, instructed everyone to meet at Fort Greene Park. After seeing her kick-a** body on her popular Instagram page, I knew I had to go and get my fitness on and be taught by Lewis and her killer thighs. But it wasn’t just your ordinary ol’ boot camp. I spent an hour doing froggy star jumps, jumping lunges, sprinting up and down stairs, doing high knees and squatting for my life. It was an excruciating 60 minutes, but damn if I didn’t feel amazing afterward!
Feeling motivated and uber impressed with my workout, I was interested in getting to know more about the woman who puts strength and muscles over simple bikini bodies with a side of a perched booty. I had the honor of chatting with Lewis, otherwise known as Follow the Lita and the woman behind the popular Body Blast Bootcamp, the Legs & Glutes Blaster training program, and the Abs Chiseler training program, about her fitness journey, her previous battle with depression, and how she became the sensation she is. And of course, she gave her two cents on everything from waist trainers to dealing with water weight and the right way to get some strong glutes. Find out what it means to be #ThickFit and get inspired to get it right and tight for the summer!
How Her Fitness Journey Started
After a relationship ended, it was a very unhealthy time. Now, in hindsight, I can look back and say that I did suffer from a deep depression. Life kind of felt not worth living. I found myself acting more like a robot. I would wake up, I would go to work, I would come home, and I would go to sleep. I would barely eat, and I would barely exist. I dropped a whole lot of weight in a short amount of time. Over three to four months I dropped close to 30 pounds, which is crazy right? It’s hard to shake five pounds off when I’m actively trying. So 30 pounds on somebody can have them looking drastically different. There’s a lot of people who would ask me if I was okay, and I found myself putting on this brave face, smiling and telling them everything was fine when I was truly suffering from depression.
One morning I woke up and I was getting up to get ready for work. I went to my bathroom and when I caught a glimpse of my reflection, I remember being terrified because I could barely recognize that person. I slumped to the ground and started weeping and crying. I thought to myself, “It’s time to move back to Australia.” At the time I had been living out here by myself and loving life, but when everything went bad I felt like I needed to go home and be around people who could support me and help me get healthy if I didn’t have the strength to do it on my own. But I also didn’t want to do that because my pride and my ego said no. I equated that to failure, and I don’t like to fail at anything. So I remember calling in sick and telling my boss I needed some time, which he was happy to give me because he too was recognizing my spiral down from being depressed. The one thing I could think of was going back to my track and field days. I thought, “I should go to the gym. I know a good workout would make me feel better.” I remember giving that workout everything I had. I was in the gym for three to four hours going HAM, looking stupid. But it was after that workout, I remember showering and going, “Oh my gosh, I’m hungry.” I hadn’t been hungry and had an appetite for months so I remember going out and eating like I was feasting for five men and eating really good food. That kind of stopped everything: Going to the gym and refueling my body became an addiction. And so I started doing this consistently and feeling a need to share it on social media. During that time, I just started on social media. I was just sharing the food I was eating, little workout things I was doing. During that time, I also took some time off from my job in the corporate world to travel. I was traveling by myself to different parts of the world. There were humbling things that really put everything into perspective. So here I was crying about heartbreak when I’m witnessing things like women who can’t afford to feed their children. I thought, “Oh wow, there’s actually real sh*t going on in the world.” It also sparked my interest in reading more. So not only was I working out consistently and feeding my physical health, but traveling, reading, meditation, prayer, these were feeding my mental and spiritual health, which was just as important. My mind was still dealing with the depression, dealing with all this other stuff. I wanted to start feeding my mind so I could get healthy mentally and spiritually. This all became something I shared on social media. That’s how it became what it is and evolved.
Why She’s For Strength Over Skinny
I posted a before and after picture and the before picture was me at maybe 135, the lightest I’ve ever been in my adult life. This was when I was unhealthy and depressed. I lacked strength and any sort of confidence. Then there was the picture of me today at 165 and 5’5″. I can sprint faster and squat 255 for reps, and people bashed me! They were like, “Well sh*t, I’m trying to get to your before picture. I can’t relate to this.” I said, that’s a misconception. I was unhealthy. It doesn’t matter what I looked like, my strength wasn’t there, nor was my mindset there. This is something I have to bring to the forefront because I think people are so caught up on what they see visually rather than what is really going on inside.
I don’t shame anybody’s personal goals. But I don’t care to be skinny. That’s not something esthetically I care for. And genetically, I’ll never be very skinny. I won’t ever be that. So instead of trying to fight my own genetics and molding my body into something that pleases everybody else, what does Lita want? that’s when I was like, “Oh, I want to be strong!” I want to be fast, I want to be powerful, and I want to give women another definition of what it means to be fit and beautiful. A good percentage of many women in the United States, especially women of color, will never be able to identify with the 5’11” very skinny white woman who graces the cover of your favorite fitness magazine talking about five-minute abs. I think it’s really unfair that media portrays these ideals, but instead of getting mad, I thought I’d take Ghandi’s lead and be the change I wanted to see in the world. I really move in a space of leading by example. I tell women to be the best versions of themselves. We’re all built and created very uniquely and perfectly, but perhaps, we are carrying 20 or 30 pounds more than we should or that makes us feel comfortable. So whatever it is for you, just aspire to be the best version of yourself. I’m a work in progress just as much as everyone else is.
What Does It Mean To Be Thick Fit?
Thick Fit really isn’t about a physical form. I’m using the word thick. It’s what I identify myself with, but it really speaks to not just a physical thing, but a mentality that says I totally and proudly accept who I am. I’m a thick girl, I’m always going to be thick. I train in a certain way and style to maintain my thickness. But just because I’m thick, that does not mean that I can’t be fit. So I combined the two, which is funny because I just randomly started doing it. It wasn’t like, “I want to start hashtagging Thick Fit on everything.” People just started seeing that in my hashtags and it became its own brand, which I was super proud to support and be the engine behind. People ask me, “What about the skinny fit?” and I’m like, Skinny Fits are part of this too. It’s just about the mentality of being proud of your curves and the body type that you carry.
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.
-
Beauty Of 5: Meet Wakati, The Newest Line Catered Specifically To Women With 4C Hair
-
She Tried It: Inahsi Naturals Aloe Hibiscus Leave-In Conditioner & Detangler
-
She Tried It: Ivy Park Drip 2 and 2.2 Black Pack
-
‘Always Work On Your Next Move’—Kandi Burruss Talks Leaving ‘Housewives,’ Broadway Wins, And Her Mogul Mindset
-
Not Just An Influencer—An Influence: How 'Just Add Hot Sauce' Creator Alex Hill Serves Food & Her Community
-
'This Is Really Home For Me' — Jerome Baker Talks Signing With Cleveland Browns, Giving Back & Entrepreneurship
-
'My Experience Shaped Everything'—Jimmy Akingbola Talks Wrapping ‘Bel-Air,’ Foster Care, And Transforming The Industry
-
Angel Reese 1 Is Here: Inside The WNBA Star’s Debut Sneaker With Reebok