The weights must tax your muscles. Doing four sets of a shoulder press where all four sets are easy and the last set no different from the first is not going to do the trick. Each set of any exercise must be increasingly more difficult and result in fewer repetitions of that set. This is the key to getting the most out of it. Most women will step in at this point; hold up their hand, and state "I don't want to be muscle-bound". Think about this statement and just how illogical it really is. The vast majority of men who weight train three or four times a week, for years, have little more than some well defined muscles. They are far from muscle bound. Without a large amount of added protein, ultra-intense workouts, and TESTOSTORONE, bulging muscles are not a concern. To middle-age women in particular, hard weight training will add well-define, tone muscle and added bone strength while avoiding sagging skin areas like the triceps. It really is time to put this widely accepted fallacy behind you and focus on the major muscle groups that support your body. Muscle recovery and the presence of muscle burns calories and fat. The body needs no additional energy to support fat. Building and keeping muscle takes work by the body. The body needs calories to accomplish that work. If you maintain the same amount of calories in your diet, your body will gradually return to a normal weight for your size and frame.

Good nutrition and hard weight training will give you the optimum, toned body when you make it a way of life. Super-models and actresses, who use eating disorder, starvation and crash diets to maintain a superficial appearance are doomed to a lifetime of poor heath and the stress of the up and down syndrome that goes with it. How many starlets do you regularly see on entertainment shows who have 30 to 40 pounds swings in a short period of time? A starved, pencil thin body of a model is not a natural state, only a sickly sign of starvation that marketers of fashion dangle out in front of you as a prize to be sought. The bad health effects of that condition are not much better than those of the overweight. Balance and common sense, along with proven training techniques are the only way to a natural, toned body of normal weight and optimum health.