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How can I get a Victoria's Secret model body?
How can I get a Victoria's Secret model body? I am 16 and want to be in better shape. I weigh 164 and I am 5'6. I don't really like to run but I love to dance and will try new things. I want to lose 40 pounds before the summer. Is that possible?
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Want to answer more questions in the Health & Fitness category?
Maybe give some free advice about: Fitness?
First, don't obsess over the number that you see on the scale. Because everyone is genetically a little different, those numbers mean different things for different individuals. I went out with a swimmer in my teens who was your height, or maybe a bit shorter, and 140 pounds and she had a smokin' body because she had a lot of underlying muscle from the miles of laps she put in during her workouts.
Also, women are genetically predisposed to have soft bodies. A soft body feels a lot better when you hug a girl than one who is skin and bones (like too many models).
As per the earlier recommendation, join a swim club like my old girlfriend did. You will burn up calories like mad, it is low impact and it promotes good aerobic health and general body strength. You will NOT get massively muscular unless you also start doing lots of weight training with it and also take anabolic steroids. Women just do not muscle up like guys do. Instead, what you will get is a tapered body.
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Go swimming.
Not float around the pool, dive off the diving board, play some pool games swimming. Find an Olympic style pool and go out three to five days a week and swim laps for an hour or two.
Swimming is one of lowest impact exercises you can do, and one of the best calorie burners. It's a fully body exercise which helps with the burning of more as opposed to say running which primarily works on the lower body.
In addition, try to cut sugars from your diet. Cut some starches too where you can. Wheat bread instead of white, less potato and more pasta (pasta is a healthier starch) and try to add green veggies and fruits to your diet to fill in where you cut other things. The key here is balance. You don't want to do some stupid shit like atkins where you cut carbs entirely and eat tons of protein, you want a little of everything in the right portions. A small serving of meat with some pasta or a little potato (that isn't doused in butter or sour cream or cheese)and some green veggies is better than cutting any of these things out entirely in favor of the others.
Cut sugars wherever possible. Soft drinks are a big killer, but just about anything with high fructose corn syrup is a recipe for disaster when you want to lose weight.
And here's the catch. You are the weight you are because your lifestyle causes your body to maintain that weight. Dropping your weight isn't just about dieting to get it off. When you stop exercising or start eating a ton of bad stuff again you will go right back. It's about finding a balance where you can maintain a lower weight.
This is also why crash diets or exercising until you cannot move until the weight is off are a bad idea. Depriving yourself will just make you want to cheat, hate your diet, and want to be lazy. Instead, modify your lifestyle by adding exercise you can maintain permanently, and cut some of the things that aren't good out.
You will drift down. Slow weight loss is by far healthier because it happens when you adjust your lifestyle for the better and your weight goes away not because you starve yourself or abuse yourself through exercise but because your lifestyle causes your body to simply adjust to a lower weight.
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Everything the previous responder said is true. I would add this to it: NO ONE actually has a Victoria's Secret model body. Even the models don't. They're in good shape, of course, but they also have makeup artists, professional photographers who know how to manipulate lighting, and Photoshop. To even get to the point where they are in real life, these models essentially work full-time at maintaining that near-perfection; they spend hours upon hours at the gym every week and count every single calorie they take in. Finally, let's not forget that many of them have gone under the knife to attain those figures. All things considered, it's an unattainable goal for the vast majority of us.
By all means, exercise and lose a little weight if you feel like you should. 40 pounds would be the maximum that someone of your height and current weight should try to lose; any more than that, and you're getting too skinny for either aesthetic appeal or your own health. You should also bear in mind that weight by itself is fairly meaningless; muscle weighs considerably more than fat, and if you exercise and build up muscle tone, you can have an attractive and healthy figure and yet weigh rather more than 124.
Don't use Victoria's Secret as your guide; ask your doctor or a professional trainer for advice on what you should be shooting for.
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Deep down (or not so deep down) we all know what we need to do to lose weight: eat well, eat healthy, move more. I would say the main barriers between you and your dream body will be motivation when it gets tough, and dietary compliance. To help with that, make sure you are very clear in your own mind why you want that body, write it down, and stick it up somewhere you will see it every day, maybe on your bathroom mirror. Cut out some images of your ideal body and keep them in your purse so you can look at them and keep focused.
You don't necessarily have to run to lose weight and in fact this may not even be the best or most efficient way. If you enjoy dancing then do that! Keep your exercise interesting and varied so that it never becomes a chore. You should incorporate some weight training or toning exercise to help you retain your muscle while you lose the fat. It might help to get a training buddy so you can motivate each other.
As for 40 pounds by summer - ideally you would want to lose about 1-2 pounds a week. Any more than this will get you into trouble, be it with fatigue, eating problems, or undesired metabolism changes.
Good luck!
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