One Year of Photo-Logging (PICS INSIDE OBVS!!)

Very inspirational! Now that a year has gone by, did it seem like a never ending battle?

There were occasional fleeting moments where it felt that way, but most off the time I found myself enjoying what I was doing. It helped to have a personal trainer that was motivated by more than just money and who was invested in helping me to better myself. He's also not the biggest fan off doing things traditionally all the time, so we do a lot of fun stuff like boxing and taekwondo. I think you just need to find not only what works but what's fun so it doesn't become tedious. Also, the progress photos helped a lot when it felt like I wasn't making any progress because to look at them made it obvious that my body was transforming.

Thank you to everyone for all your kind words and replies!! Sometimes I have a hard time believing that I've accomplished what I have or thinking of myself as an actual success story. Hopefully anyone who I've inspired will also succeed and pay it forward by inspiring others! :happy:

CONGRATS!!! Your photos are so inspiring and awesome. I wish I had taken photos but I just couldn't bring myself to do it (HW 307 CW 173). When I see stuff like this, even if my transformation may not be quite as amazing it makes me wish I had better documentation!!!

Sometimes, when I found myself facing a rough patch, the photos were what inspired me to keep going.

Okay, for those of you who were wondering how I got so much definition in my arms, I spoke to my personal trainer today. He tells me that he believes at least part of it might be genetics, but as for the exercises we did that focused on building strength in my shoulders, well, it was a lot of weight lifting. I know some women shy away from weight lifting because they don't want to bulk up, but, unless you're somehow genetically pre-disposed to bulking up or you're taking some sort of enhancer with the intention of bulking up, it's just not that likely that you'll end up looking like you're on steroids.

My trainer intentionally did circuit training with me that changed slightly from week to week, and he have me do short reps to help me build up my strength, depending on the weight he had me lifting, we would usually do anything from 5-12 reps. He said that, around the time that he was focusing on my shoulders, we did a lot of bench pressing and drop sets, shoulder abductions, shoulder presses, curls and flies. Almost everything that was intended to be shoulder-strengthening was weight lifting of one type or another.

Basically the short answer is lift weights and do short reps if you want to tone your arms and build strength in them. Hope that helps!!