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Read MoreBy: Eric Olesen from Fitness Goals
photo via favim.com
If you’re someone who has always had big thighs, you would know the importance of a thigh gap.
A thigh gap is the clear space right under your crotch and in between your middle and upper thighs.
A small gap within your thighs is an ultimate symbol of a well-toned female body according to most media today.
It appears that in order to have a minimum thigh gap, your thighs should be totally devoid of fat.
However, as every woman knows, the inner thighs are outrageously difficult to curb fat and hence for all dieting women, inner thighs remain the Mount Everest of their body.
The extent to which some girls have gone in order to try and bring that gap in between both thighs has made it an extremely controversial topic.
This has raised a bunch drama around the thigh gap... so what are the few myths and facts surrounding this topic?
Under optimal situations, the female bone structure and the way in which the femur bone is spread out naturally forms a thigh gap.
Since every woman is different, there are some who can never ever achieve a slight gap in between their thighs, no matter how much toned and thin their thighs are.
This is simply a matter of bone structure and it is okay if you have a body type that doesn't allow for a thigh gap.
While the majority of women can obtain a thigh gap with enough dedication, it may not be healthy.
It requires low body fat percentages that many people cannot maintain.
And always remember: even if your bone structure doesn't allow the gap, there are still many other benefits to remaining healthy and fit.
The absence or appearance of a gap within thighs is usually due to a layer of fat within your inner thighs.
The less fat that you have, the more likely you are to have a gap.
This automatically means that the skinnier you are, the easier it will be for you to get that gap in between thighs.
But again, as every woman is shaped differently, the structure of your body plays a big role in deciding the gap that you can have.
Unless you’re working out like a man with heavy weights and doing squats with 225lbs, plus eating enough to put on tons of muscle, it’s pretty unlikely that you will get quads which block the thigh gap.
Nevertheless, if you still want to do leg exercises with weights to ensure that you have streamlined legs, you have to ensure that you stick to lower weights to create strong, but lean, muscles.
Though it is true that losing those extra pounds through a proper schedule of diet and exercise is the best way in which you can get a thigh gap, yet there are 5 exercises which can speed up the long-muscle building process.
1. Pile squats
2. Pilates leg lifts
3. Bridge raises
4. Inner leg lift
5. Lateral lunge
Once you keep doing these exercises daily, along with proper diet, you will be able to accomplish your dream of having a gap in between your thighs and feel like a supermodel (assuming, again, that your bone structure allows it).
To know more on this, you can check out www.fitnessgoals.com
Resources:
http://thighgaphack.com/how-to-get-a-thigh-gap/
Retrieved from Pranzo UK (6)
Well, well, well. We meet this subject again.
If you've been following my Instagram, Facebook, or this website for any length of time now then you're already acquainted with my strong bias in support of producing food at only the highest sustainable quality.
However, I will do my best to push that aside and do an objective report on how the food in Italy has affected my body over the past 7 weeks.
This is usually referred to as an "n=1 study," since I am only testing it on myself.
These are usually super effective for people trying to figure things out for themselves and their health, because I am in my body and only I am in tune with that enough to feel what it feels and see how it is being affected: by clothes fitting a certain way or how heavily I'm breathing after certain activities.
So that being established, this is going to be a compilation of how I've felt with this drastic diet change while in Florence for the summer.
The diet change I'm referring to is this: at home, I eat primal (no legumes, only rice sometimes if grains are consumed, no processed sugar, moderate dairy, LOTS of veggies, high protein, a little bit of fruit, lots of healthy fats).
Here, I've pretty much only stayed away from gluten and soy because they really bother me.
Pizza and pasta and gelato and milk chocolate that exists without soy lechitin as an emulsifier here have been very present in my body.
I will place here that there are also other variables.
One is that I've walked at least 5 miles a day, usually more.
My workout routine went from lifting 5-6 days a week plus at least 4 cardio sessions on top of that to 3-5 HIIT & body weight workout sessions per week, not lasting longer than 45 minutes.
So, I will do my best to explain what happened as a result of that. But first, I think a little Italian food history is in order.
In the Italian cooking class I took the first week I was here, the chef got on his soapbox for a few minutes.
He talked about how when the US really started pumping GMOs and hormones into their food, Italy went the opposite route.
He explained the laws here are really in favor of organic produce, grass-fed and free-range meats, and full-fat foods without the sugar added to reduce it.
I decided to do a little poking around on the interwebs and found some cool stuff in these regards.
For instance, Italy not only rejected the idea of GMOs when they first became popular in the US, they still stringently fight against them.
As recently as 2015, the country opted to reject 8 strands of GMOs that the EU was promoting for its countries (1).
In 1993, the year before the first GMOs hit grocery stores in the US (2), Italy was not super focused on organic farming, either.
They were pretty exclusive to small northern markets near the farms that produced them.
However, as the "organic" title began implying the meaning that a product was also "non-GMO," it seems that my chef was right about Italians' push back against GMOs.
Production of organic produce increased 200% between 1997-1999, with production still increasing yearly, though not necessarily at that high a rate each year (3).
After hearing the chef & reading those things about Italy's unique perspective on food production, I was more confused about this place than ever.
If you've ever been to Italy, you know they love their sugar.
Gelato or a granite (basically a slush) for breakfast is the thing to do in Sicily, and up north it's not much better with sugared tarts or croissants paired with your sugared-down cappuccino first thing in the morning.
Pizza or a bread-heavy sandwich for lunch.
Gelato as a cool afternoon snack, followed by a 3-course dinner of pasta, meat & veggies, and dessert. Oh, and always wine.
The realization that the people are very concerned about food quality & sourcing here was interesting to me.
I've crusaded against processed sugar for the past 2 years and haven't consumed any other than the tiny bit in dark chocolate back home.
So the fact that the sugar capital of the world cares about quality means maybe our idea of "quality" is skewed.
I was even more interested to see if the fact that even though there is a lot of white cane sugar in Italian food, high fructose corn syrup is rarely used.
In fact, the population in Italy consumes less than 1 pound of it per person per year (4). Compare that to the 35 pounds per year the average American takes in (5)!
Okay, enough of the research.
Retrieved from Gelato Giuliana(7)
The first week, I was in full "vacation mode." Eating out for almost every meal, gelato at least once a day, and skipping breakfast.
I didn't work out because at that point I was allowing a week off since my training was vigorous for a solid 4 months leading up to coming here.
Plus, I wasn't sure if I was going to join the local gym or not and wanted to check it out before "settling" for using the staircase in the hallway to our apartment. It's 98 steps, by the way.
The second week, I could feel it.
My normally-low-carb body was in full revolt with bloating and breakouts galore.
The reintroduction of excessive white sugar was definitely the culprit, in my opinion.
Because of these crappy feelings, I began inventing HIIT workouts on the stairs and turning it into my little gym.
I went to the local market and got fresh, preservative-free cheeses & meats and lots of produce.
Another great thing on the produce: Italians are snobs about eating in-season.
So a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of peaches was €2 since they're a summer fruit, whereas apples were closer to €5 per kilogram.
Still way cheaper than America for ANYTHING organic, in-season or not. But it's cool to see that most farmers refuse to even sell things that aren't in-season.
Cooking for myself definitely helped.
I made sure to remember probiotics and prebiotics daily, only discoverable here in the form of full-fat yogurt and the tub of Vital Proteins Collagen Peptides I brought along with me (thanks, Sarah!).
I still ate out plenty of times, mind you.
Lots of GF pizza. And gelato was still a very regular occurrence.
But here's the interesting part: those HIIT sessions invigorated me. Walking everywhere rarely felt like a chore. I began loving the constant movement.
I ate until I was full, and then some.
If I was exhausted from visiting 2 museums and rehearsing Shakespeare and writing too much all in one day, I let myself not worry about missing a workout.
This resulted in the 3-5 times a week exercise schedule.
Sure, I lost some muscle since I wasn't lifting weights like back home.
But my core is much stronger now from the functional nature of the workouts I've been doing. My acne went away and the bloating reduced.
My clothes still fit, so I haven't gained that much weight, if any.
I'm actually scared the number went down because of muscle loss... I was very hypertrophic from over-training when I got here.
My abs are hiding a little more than my first week, but honestly not as much as I'd expected.
And you know what?
My mental state is better than ever.
I love the routine I've got at home: I kick ass on a primal diet there. But I needed this break more than I knew.
Italy taught me how to enjoy dessert again without guilt.
But I strongly feel that the simplicity, care, and quality put into food production in this country made all the difference between how I do feel and how crappy I would be feeling if I ate like this regularly at home.
I've eaten like this before in the States.
It's called the no-diet plan.
Or if you're on one, IIFYM.
And I was always depleted, constantly had cravings, and got irritable very easily. My brain got foggy.
Maybe because I was eating pounds of HFCS without meaning to. Maybe because I wasn't exercising for stimulation and health.
But whatever it was, I've never felt this good on a lifestyle considered so "unhealthy" back home.
Here, I've filled a journal and written more than 30 letters just on this trip.
Again, I credit the food quality and lack of hormones, GMOs, and preservatives.
I'm luckily very in tune with my body and am a hippie snob with chemicals as a result.
But you can take from my n=1 experience what you will. :)
(1) Tropia, C. (September 28, 2015). "No a 8 produtti ogm, l'Italia contro l'Ue." il Salvagente Test. Retrieved from https://www.testmagazine.it/2015/09/18/no-a-8-prodotti-ogm-litalia-contro-lue/2714/?v=cd32106bcb6d
(2) Shireen. (March 10, 2013). "GMO timeline: a history of genetically-modified foods." GMO Inside Blog. Retrieved from http://gmoinside.org/gmo-timeline-a-history-genetically-modified-foods/
(3) n.a. n.d. "Italy." FAO Corporate Document Repository. Retrieved from http://www.fao.org/docrep/004/y1669e/y1669e0a.htm
(4) n.a. (December 4, 2012). "Countries with the greatest use of high-fructose corn syrup also have more diabetes." Yahoo! News. Retrieved from https://www.yahoo.com/news/countries-greatest-high-fructose-corn-syrup-more-diabetes-182823674.html?ref=gs
(5) Gucciardi, A. (June 2, 2012). "Americans eat 35 lbs of 'stupidity' linked high fructose corn syrup on average." Natural Society. Retrieved from http://naturalsociety.com/americans-eat-35-lbs-high-fructose-corn-syrup-average/
(6) n.a. n.d. "home." Pranzo Fresh Italian Food to go. Retrieved from http://www.pranzo.uk
(7) n.a. (2016). "Our passion." Gelato Giuliana. Retrieved from http://www.gelatogiuliana.com
Act like a kid again and reap the benefits on a mini trampoline.
Read More"Some are born great,
Some achieve greatness,
And some have greatness thrust upon them."
- William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Let's achieve greatness together.
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