To be so upset that exercise has effectively ruined my figure?

[MyBodySucks]

I was a size 6-8 until about a year ago, when I started Pole Fitness classes, as well as a few other classes at the same club, things like Body Pump.

I've eaten the same as always (clean!) but the exercising has given me a body that I hate and I'm so upset about it.

Basically my thighs and upper arms have beefed up, for want of a better expression. I can barely even get size 10 jeans over my thighs now, and my arms look like men's arms. My waist, and tummy look good I suppose but everything else is just horrible and I hate how I look!

I'm quite short at 5ft 4 inches and so in clothes I just look large and stocky.

Has anyone else found the same thing? I am stopping classes and going to just walk and do pilates in future and hopefully my muscles will shrink and I'll look ok again.

AIBU to be upset?

I can totally get why you feel like that.

In fact one of the pre requisites for a training system for my daughter was she didn’t want bulk. She’s petite and wants to look longer and leaner. I really don’t get why people are offended by that?

Walking, swimming and low intensity workouts like Pilates are the trick. Look up these type of exercises.

@CallmeFP

I can totally get why you feel like that.

In fact one of the pre requisites for a training system for my daughter was she didn’t want bulk. She’s petite and wants to look longer and leaner. I really don’t get why people are offended by that?

Walking, swimming and low intensity workouts like Pilates are the trick. Look up these type of exercises.

This is absolutely no criticism of you, or OP, but your daughter has not formed her preference to train without 'bulk' of her own free will. She has had a lifetime of conditioning by a society which has told her that femininity means being small, and which considers a woman who has large muscles and a woman who has excess fat to be equally unacceptable.

This stuff starts early but I didn't appreciate just how early until last year when a younger child with the same name as my DD started to attend her childminder. They quickly became known as Big Name and Little Name to distinguish them. My childminder apologised to me because she thought I would be offended by the adjective 'big' being attached to my six-year-old.

Your figure sounds awesome and exactly when I feel my best. But not all women like that look, your gym should have explained to you what different exercises do to your body, you've been doing muscle building so have built muscle. Try spinning, pilates, rumba even, you want movement focused on speed and agility without weights, this will be good for your heart and lungs and will tone you but wont build excess muscle.

I think it's just a simple case of changing your exercise, the bulk will go really quite soon.

Do more yoga, cardio, swimming, light weights, running if you run, and you'll look the way you want to within a few months.