How Lifting Weights and Eating More Change You

Elizabeth Narins
Updated

 

Photo: Getty Images

From Cosmopolitan

Seven years ago, the now Instagram-famous fitness guru Emily Skye (@EmilySkyeFit) weighed just under 104 pounds. “I was obsessed with being as skinny as I could be,” she wrote in a recent Instagram caption.

To make it happen, Emily forced herself to sweat through crazy long cardio sessions while drastically restricting her food intake. Being lighter began to take a toll on her mental health. “I was starving myself and was really unhealthy and unhappy,” she wrote on Instagram. “I suffered depression and had terrible body image.”

Realizing that her choices just weren’t making sense, and that her goal didn't make her happy, Emily decided to change things up. She began to lift heavy weights, replacing her lengthy cardio workouts with high-intensity interval training.

Before anyone whips out the "I like the before pic better" comments, read the following: - 1st pic: 2008 / 47kg This is before I started strength training. I was only doing cardio & I was obsessed with being as skinny as I could be. I was starving myself & was really unhealthy & unhappy. I suffered depression & had terrible body image. 2nd pic: 2016 / 60kg I now weigh 13kg more, I lift heavy weights & do a little bit of HIIT. I dont do ANY long cardio sessions & I eat more than I've ever eaten in my life. I'm also happier, healthier, stronger & fitter than I have ever been. I no longer obsess over the way I look. I eat & train to feel my best, for overall "health" & longevity. I LOVE having muscle & I feel more confident than ever. When I first started lifting weights 7 years ago, I was finally starting to become healthy & happy for the first time in my life. I had friends at the time telling me I wasn't healthy & was taking it "too far". - This devastated me & had me in tears! I couldn't believe that the people who were supposed to love me weren't happy for me even though I was obviously much happier & healthier than I'd ever been. Luckily I decided not to listen to their put downs and kept going with my new healthy lifestyle & here I am today the best I've ever been, and I no longer have those "so called" friends. I now surround myself with positive, supportive people who are true friends to me! I love my life & I'm so grateful I decided to make those changes several years ago & committed to my healthy lifestyle. Now I'm able to help others become their best too! 😊 - My F.I.T. Programs that I created are all based around strength training & HIIT - it's what's given me & thousands of other ladies amazing, healthy, lasting results. (Click the link in my profile to join!) ☺️ Exercise & eat nutritious food because you LOVE yourself & know that you deserve to be your best. Try not to focus on being "skinny" & just focus on your overall health - mental & physical. Don't listen to anyone who tries to bring you down. Surround yourself with positive, supportive, like-minded people & always do what makes you happy regardless of what anyone else thinks! 😉😘 .

A photo posted by Snapchat 👉🏼emilyskyefit 👻 (@emilyskyefit) on

 

Emily also began to eat much, much more. “I eat more than I've ever eaten in my life,” she wrote of the new diet that’s still going strong, which I'd definitely have a bite of, had she offered:

Now, Emily tends to avoid bread just because it upsets her stomach, but she still gets all up in dessert a couple times a week. “I’m all about balance,” she wrote on Instagram.

And while you might think that eating more food, including dessert, and lifting all the heavy things would make a woman look hefty, that's not always the case: So long as you don't eat more calories than your body needs to carry out basic functions, and you make sure you eat a mix of complex carbs (to fuel your workouts) and lean proteins (to repair and rebuild the teeny muscle tears that result from working out hard), you'll end up gaining muscle, not fat. And because muscle is denser than fat, meaning it can weigh a bunch without taking up too much space, increasing your food intake and strength training can leave you looking lean, even if you end up weighing more than when you started. Emily is living proof:

In the after photo above (right), Emily weighs almost 30 pounds(!) more than she did back in the day when she obsessed over being skinny (left). In her case, it was gaining weight, not losing it, that left her positively ~*glowing*~ - a welcome reminder that the number you see on the scale isn't always the best gauge of your health.

But the real takeaway here has nothing to do with the way Emily looks or how much she weighs now. “I'm also happier, healthier, stronger, and fitter than I have ever been,” she wrote on Instagram.

If *that* kind of transformation doesn’t convince you to stop eating like a bird and pick up some heavy AF weights, IDK what will!

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