ask the expert

Tone-up tips for women. › By

Take it from a personal trainer—it’s all about the journey.

“Just take it one day at a time. All goals take time if we want to see lasting results,” says Personal Training Director and Group Exercise Director Christal Churchill from Zone Health and Fitness.

When it comes to toning up, Christal answers some of our most burning questions.

OS: What would you consider to be the toughest area for most women to tone?

CC: In my opinion, the hardest place to tone for women is the back of the legs right into the glute area, mainly because this requires both muscle building along with a healthy lifestyle in the kitchen.

OS: What’s your approach to helping women target this area?

CC: My approach involves educating women with the idea that building lean muscle is both fun and necessary to get the results they want to achieve, creating workouts that they actually enjoy and helping them understand why a mix of low

Cealia Athanason

intensity cardio and weight lifting will get them there.

OS: Why do you think some areas of the body are more di cult to shape up than others?

CC: I believe our genetics play a role in which areas are going to be more di cult for some women than others. That is where healthy food choices make such an impact. Along with that, the timing of meals [meaning when to eat in relation to your workout] for each woman can be so di erent depending on how each woman’s body processes macronutrients.

OS: What do you say to women who are worried that lifting weights will cause them to bulk up?

CC: I absolutely love this question, and my answer is always, always the same! Our bodies were not designed to naturally put on tons of muscle without some type of supplementation. It takes an extreme amount of dedication, persistence and commitment to actually achieve a lot of muscle—both in the gym and in the kitchen. But the more muscle I can put on a lady who just wants to tone will always help take o the unwanted fat.

OS: Where does diet come into play?

CC: My first question back to that is: What results are you wanting to achieve and how quickly do you want to accomplish them? I ask this because developing a healthy lifestyle in the kitchen does not happen overnight. A woman’s body does not change overnight, and it will not go back overnight. In the big picture, what we put in our mouths accounts for 80 percent of it and working out accounts for 20 percent.