Mum not approving of my muscles, A bit of advice..Please x

Of_Monsters_and_Meat

TL;DR

Logic won't work on a mom. Just say something like "but mom I know this Doctors and he likes athletic girls."
"so do you want to be a grandmother?"

This will pretty much take care of any situation from what I understand.

kjo9692

TL;DR

Logic won't work on a mom. Just say something like "but mom I know this Doctors and he likes athletic girls."
"so do you want to be a grandmother?"

This will pretty much take care of any situation from what I understand.

:laugh: This reminds me of the million times I've told my mom "Don't worry mom, he has a lot of money" to keep her off my back.

redheaddee

I will be quite blunt here. With all due respect, since when does a 27 year old give a fig what their mom thinks? You are an adult, and if YOU are happy with the changes, then the rest of the world be d@mned.

Your mom's generation felt women should be soft and submissive. Is that what you want?

ZOOpergal

You're more equipt to survive the zombie apocalypse. Michonne is doing just fine. :happy:

bcattoes

So my question to you guys are:

1) Has the same thing happened to you with your family commenting on your toned and defined look and wanting you to look slimmer like you did before?

2) Do you think I should go back to how I was before? So basically lose my muscle and get back to the scales being lower?

3) Shall I just carry on with my lifting?

The important thing is are you happier with the way you look now, or then? If you are satisfied with your new look, then I would suggest that you carry on and stop showing pics of yourself flexing to your mom.

Dreamingallday

For what it is worth, I think you look amazing. It's hard not to be affected by a family member's opinion of us, especially a parent. If you are happy with your accomplishments, then she should know she needs to deal. Being a parent means supporting your child in their accomplishments, even if they personally don't like the general theme of them

bcattoes

I will be quite blunt here. With all due respect, since when does a 27 year old give a fig what their mom thinks? You are an adult, and if YOU are happy with the changes, then the rest of the world be d@mned.

Your mom's generation felt women should be soft and submissive. Is that what you want?

As a mom of that generation, I say BS!! Soft, yes. Submissive? Are you joking?

WTH do muscles have nothing to do with submissiveness, anyway?

redheaddee

I will be quite blunt here. With all due respect, since when does a 27 year old give a fig what their mom thinks? You are an adult, and if YOU are happy with the changes, then the rest of the world be d@mned.

Your mom's generation felt women should be soft and submissive. Is that what you want?

As a mom of that generation, I say BS!! Soft, yes. Submissive? Are you joking?

WTH do muscles have nothing to do with submissiveness, anyway?

It was a general statement based on women of that generation that I personally know, but a) there are ALWAYS exceptions, and b) I live in the South. These women STILL want to be soft and submissive, and I will not apologize for making a specific cultural obsevation. However, please accept my apologies if my personal opinion raised your hackles.

bcattoes

I will be quite blunt here. With all due respect, since when does a 27 year old give a fig what their mom thinks? You are an adult, and if YOU are happy with the changes, then the rest of the world be d@mned.

Your mom's generation felt women should be soft and submissive. Is that what you want?

As a mom of that generation, I say BS!! Soft, yes. Submissive? Are you joking?

WTH do muscles have nothing to do with submissiveness, anyway?

It was a general statement based on women of that generation that I personally know, but a) there are ALWAYS exceptions, and b) I live in the South. These women STILL want to be soft and submissive, and I will not apologize for making a specific cultural obsevation. However, please accept my apologies if my personal opinion raised your hackles.

I am from the south (eastern US) and still have many friends and relatives there. Some are softer than others, some are more submissive than others. Just like anywhere else. Soft and submissive don't go hand in hand. You can be a world class bodybuilder and be submissive.

FromHereOnOut

So I need your help please............!

How do I still keep my muscle, but be a lot smaller if that makes sense? The slimmer toned look, Not as big as my profile pic!

But I don't want to lose all the hard work and muscle I have built up.

Thanks for your advice - Look forward to reading how I can get a bit smaller.

Thank you xxxx

I'm no expert, but here's how I understand it (and maybe an actual expert will jump in to clarify).

It all depends on the rep range/weight selected. There are two ways to go, in order for you to work with weights without "bodybuilding". Either go all the way heavy (low rep), for strength...or go to pink dumbbells and endless reps. Just don't work in the middle, where muscles get bigger looking (hypertrophy).

So, since you don't want to "lose all the hard work", I assume you want to maintain your strength gains. So forget the pink dumbbells and 30+ reps. Instead, you go with 5REPS AND UNDER. You do fast, explosively powerful lifts in something like 5x3 or 5x5 and *long rest periods in between*. You will be adding weight regularly to encourage strength gains. This will make you strong, but as long as you are NOT doing slow reps with weight/reps that fall in the mid- rep range (6 to 12 reps), then you will not build size. Of course, even as you are building strength, your muscles are holding water to repair themselves and you may appear bigger, but as long as you are in the strength range, you shouldn't be doing too much actual muscle size increase.

Lastly is the issue of calorie intake. Besides muscle temporarily holding onto water (which might be somewhat what's happening with you), normally people don't gain muscle in a calorie deficit (there is the legendary exception of "newbie gains"--which may also be happening with you and will not continue beyond the "newbie" stage), so anyway if you eat a little below maintenance, there's little chance of you building mass.

Good luck!

(hehe, "Too much muscle" is definitely a problem that plenty of girls would like to have.)

2013sk

So I need your help please............!

How do I still keep my muscle, but be a lot smaller if that makes sense? The slimmer toned look, Not as big as my profile pic!

But I don't want to lose all the hard work and muscle I have built up.

Thanks for your advice - Look forward to reading how I can get a bit smaller.

Thank you xxxx

I'm no expert, but here's how I understand it (and maybe an actual expert will jump in to clarify).

It all depends on the rep range/weight selected. There are two ways to go, in order for you to work with weights without "bodybuilding". Either go all the way heavy (low rep), for strength...or go to pink dumbbells and endless reps. Just don't work in the middle, where muscles get bigger looking (hypertrophy).

So, since you don't want to "lose all the hard work", I assume you want to maintain your strength gains. So forget the pink dumbbells and 30+ reps. Instead, you go with 5REPS AND UNDER. You do fast, explosively powerful lifts in something like 5x3 or 5x5 and *long rest periods in between*. You will be adding weight regularly to encourage strength gains. This will make you strong, but as long as you are NOT doing slow reps with weight/reps that fall in the mid- rep range (6 to 12 reps), then you will not build size. Of course, even as you are building strength, your muscles are holding water to repair themselves and you may appear bigger, but as long as you are in the strength range, you shouldn't be doing too much actual muscle size increase.

Lastly is the issue of calorie intake. Besides muscle temporarily holding onto water (which might be somewhat what's happening with you), normally people don't gain muscle in a calorie deficit (there is the legendary exception of "newbie gains"--which may also be happening with you and will not continue beyond the "newbie" stage), so anyway if you eat a little below maintenance, there's little chance of you building mass.

Good luck!

(hehe, "Too much muscle" is definitely a problem that plenty of girls would like to have.)

Many thanks for the above information that is very very helpful!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes I want to maintain my strength gain, and also not lose all my hard work!!

With regards to calories - I think I am going to pay close attention to the amount of calories I am having, but I have noticed that my metabolism has speeded up massively as I can be hungry all the time, maybe this is due to the amount of exercise and weights I am doing? Not too sure. I think I can clean up my diet massively and I am sure I can lose a few lbs from this too. Which then I will appear smaller, and the weight might come off my back and thighs!!

Well my body likes to be at 140lbs - But now with that current picture of me on my profile picture I am 147lbs. But I need to work out how much of me is muscle, how much fat I have, How much water am I storing etc.

I actually think I don't have a lot of body fat on me.