Your body will change - try to lean into it

The short of it is that it’s incredibly hard for women to build muscle, but your body will undergo changes as you strength train. What I wish I’d known is that this is totally normal and is called re-conditioning. If you’re doing something different with your body, then it will respond and react accordingly, and that’s fine. Hell, it’s science.

I ended up in a complete tizz because I was trying to keep my body as small as possible while trying to build strength, and it reached a point where I had to choose between aesthetics and strength. Several things helped with this. The first was a realisation that getting stronger had given me everything positive, while trying to be as small as possible had given me nothing but heartache- whether that was feeling guilty about food or ‘punishing’ myself by burning off calories on the treadmill.

4 things I want every woman to know about strength training