Muscular men, slim women – this ideal of beauty that is widespread in the media can cause damage. Women also depend on proteins and muscles. There are numerous reasons for this.
“There is this narrative that revolves around reducing: less body fat, eating less, being less. But that is not necessarily what is best for our health. We should therefore talk more about muscles in women too,” said sports physiologist Katie Hirsch in a recent interview with Der Spiegel. It is more positive and healthier to direct the conversation towards growth and building, instead of always talking about fat and loss.
Muscles are essential for every body
“Protein supplies the body with amino acids and nitrogen for the formation of cells, tissue, enzymes, hormones and antibodies, among other things, and provides energy,” explains the German Nutrition Society (DGE) on its website. Proteins are therefore essential for muscles, skin, hair and generally for every body – and thus also for building muscles.
Because muscles are made of proteins. With a high protein intake, damaged proteins in the body can be replaced by new ones, explains sports physiologist Hirsch in an interview with Spiegel. This improves the quality of the muscles and the body becomes healthier. “And what helps the muscles also helps the bones and health in general.” The narrative that women should lose weight and men should build muscle therefore benefits men’s health – and harms women’s.
Muscle training is more sustainable than losing weight, says Ingo Froböse
Ingo Froböse is a professor for prevention and rehabilitation in sport at the German Sport University Cologne and director of an institute for exercise therapy. In an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, he emphasized that long-term muscle training reduces the so-called visceral fat that surrounds the organs in the abdominal cavity – according to Froböse, the unhealthiest fat. The release of inflammatory messenger substances is also reduced, regardless of weight loss. “Muscle training is therefore the better and more sustainable strategy for promoting long-term health.”
Sports medicine specialist Prof. Christine Graf, head of exercise and health promotion at the German Sport University Cologne, also explained in an interview with the AOK health insurance company: “Muscles release hormone-like healing messengers when they work and contract. This process not only strengthens the immune system and breaks down harmful fatty tissue. It also has a positive effect on the cardiovascular system and the brain.”
Fear of supposedly “unfeminine” appearance
Nevertheless, many women shy away from training their muscles and thus changing the supposedly typically female shape of their body. However, the beauty ideal of muscular men and slim women seems to be slowly changing, as sports scientist Tilo Petersdorf from the MTMT fitness studio in Munich told the Tagesschau: “Nowadays, women are allowed to have a little more, i.e. more muscles. But that doesn’t mean that the scales have become obsolete as the most important measuring instrument of beauty. That’s a bit of a shame, because muscles simply weigh a little more.”
According to Ingo Froböse, there are ways to train your muscles without changing your appearance too much. If you don’t train with the goal of building mass, you will hardly increase your volume, the expert emphasized in an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung magazine.
Sources used: DGE, Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, AOK, Tagesschau
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