Diet and Supplement Secrets of Female Bodybuilders by Jerry Brainum 12/24

 

 

Although muscular physiques are usually more associated with men, women can build extensive muscle mass. In my experience of interviewing and writing about countless competitive bodybuilders during my tenure as a magazine writer and editor for major bodybuilding magazines, I realized that most female bodybuilders were more dedicated to their training and diet than their male counterparts. One apparent reason for this discrepancy is that it's more difficult for women to build muscle than for men. This difference is usually attributed to hormonal differences between the sexes. Men have average testosterone levels that are ten times higher than women, in whom the predominant hormone is estrogen. Estrogen in women can offer both advantages and disadvantages to bodybuilding. The disadvantage is that estrogen promotes increased subcutaneous fat, or fat just under the skin, that can obscure muscle definition. Estrogen also stimulates receptors in a woman's lower body, making it difficult to lose body fat in that area, including the buttocks. An advantage of estrogen for women is that it promotes increased fat oxidation during exercise since it favors stored fat over carbohydrates as an energy source. Estrogen also allows a woman to recover faster after intense training. Estrogen does many other things, but most of it is related to health and is beyond the scope of this article.

A little-known fact about female bodybuilding competition is that the first female bodybuilding competition occurred at the same time as the first male bodybuilding competition in the early 20th century. However, the women in that seminal competition were not judged by the same standards as the current female bodybuilding competition. Instead, they were judged entirely on visual aspects of ideal femininity. When male strongmen displayed their feats of strength in music halls and other venues in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a few women also showed prodigious feats. The original muscle entrepreneur, Bernarr MacFadden, was a big fan of female athletes and featured them in his magazines, the forerunner of later bodybuilding magazines. MacFadden also held female competitions that were not strictly bodybuilding but highlighted the ideal female form. Such women had no muscle definition and wore outfits that didn't bare their bodies like current competitors. They tended to be what would be called "zoftig" or "pleasingly plump," but they did feature pronounced female figures and a small waist that was considered attractive in women.

Women's bodybuilding competition was short-lived, but fit women still appeared in various bodybuilding publications. One woman who is considered a progenitor of female bodybuilding and fitness was Abbye "Pudgy" Stockton. Abbye was a quiet, shy woman working as a telephone operator when she met her future husband, Les. Les was an amateur bodybuilder and acrobat who often visited the original Muscle Beach in Santa Monica, California, where he engaged in hand-balancing feats. He introduced  Abbye to weight training, which was then rarely done by women because of fears . . .