Having lived in both the USA and the UK I have noticed some rather large differences in what my female clients would like to achieve with their bodies.

The ideal look seems to change quite dramatically over the Atlantic. Many of those I work with in the UK tend to want to reduce the size of their bottoms and take focus away from this area, whilst ladies over in America seem to want to increase theirs and make it the centre point of their physique. This is not an absolute (I once heard that only a Sith lord deals in absolutes!) but it is certainly a trend I have noticed.

Think about it guys have you ever heard this sentence from your Indo-European girlfriend “I’ve got no bum”  or “I wish my butt was bigger” well those are comments I heard on a regular basis whilst working in gyms in LA. I think the reason may be a south American influence in the West Coast of America which focuses more on that area of the body as a factor of attractiveness, well,  perhaps they have a point I’ll explain in a moment….

Another factor I find interesting is that many ladies look at the women in celebrity and lifestyle magazines and compare themselves negatively to size zero women, when in fact these women are not necessarily the women guys are lusting over, or indeed paying any mind to. In fact in many cases women considered to be among the most attractive are those with a far curvier figure,  for example:  J-lo, Beyonce, Jessica Alba, Kim Kardashian.

This can lead to women dieting and using all kinds of pills, starvation methods and ridiculous exercise regimes to lose ‘weight’ these efforts are seldom successful and even when they are, ladies are often left thin, gaunt and unhealthy looking. It’s important to remember that when some of these extremely slim women are featured in the magazines, they often have headlines such as “health scare” & “weight crisis” accompanying them.

I know many out there will want to make it clear that women are not motivated to exercise just because they want to look good for men. I appreciate that and it would be wrong of me to say that is always the case. Having said that I do work intimately with many female trainers, clients and have female friends and it would not serve this article to overlook the fact that these women do have a desire to be found physically attractive by the opposite sex.

Missing The Point

Weight loss is often the perceived solution to having a more appealing body. This is missing the real point, whilst you may be able to reduce weight with dieting and extreme exercise, you often wont actually look any better for it. Drastic weight loss through starvation and over exercise will lead to muscle and water loss, which is actually very counter productive to your efforts because losing muscle will make you look less youthful and athletic and also drastically reduce your metabolism making it harder to actually burn existing bodyfat.

The Real Solution

By eating well, making use of resistance training and short intense workouts you can create a lean, toned and far more aesthetically pleasing physique than you ever could through starvation. This way you would look great, feel great and will nicely fill your clothing your body would also feel firm and full to the touch but you wouldn’t lose much weight – if any! –The point here is that unless you are a weight class athlete weight is arbitrary, its meaningless, it’s useless and it’s misguiding!

Waist To Hip Ratio

If you want a real measurement of how good you look, the most scientific measurement is the waist to hip ratio, which behavioural psychologists believe is the true indicator of a woman’s physical attractiveness to a man. It’s also a health indicator but for the purpose of this blog post we’ll discuss it from an attractiveness viewpoint.

The perfect score is apparently between 0.6 and 0.7  (this changes slightly in different cultures but we’ll focus on ours)
Let’s take a look at some celebrity scores courtesy of Wikipedia:  Kelly Brook (0,70), Jessica Alba (0,70), Marilyn Monroe (0,63), Salma Hayek (0,67), Sophia Loren (0,63), Raquel Welch (0,64), Bo Derek (0,65), Jayne Mansfield (0,59), Elizabeth Taylor (0,58) and Brigitte Bardot (0,57)

How To Measure Your Waist To Hip Ratio:

Measurement of waist to hip ratio: In a lean person (left), the waist can be measured at its narrowest point, while for a person with convex waist (right), it may be measured at about one inch[1] above the navel. The hip is measured at its widest portion of the buttocks at left, and at the great trochanters at right, although the object cheats a bit by not having his legs close together.
(courtesy of Wikipedia)

 

You can calculate your score here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/tools/hip_to_waist/hip_to_waist.shtml