thortho

And there's also just personal preference and what different people are used to. I'm a fairly small-town boy myself, and while I do enjoy visiting large cities as a tourist, I don't think I'd want to live there full time - and I suppose there's plenty of people who grew up in a big city who might really not enjoy themselves in smaller towns. But I don't think that living in a big city is actually unhealthy, and I'm sure that if it came up, I'd eventually adapt to living in a city. Well, most people are pretty adaptable, I think, so while there might be an initial "shock", it'd probably turn out fine in the end.

Yes, well. I think the thing is you can't reduce the amount of fat in a particular part of your body. The body gets rid of excess fat fairly evenly, so the idea of doing lots of exercises focusing on the legs in the hopes of making them smaller isn't that different from a guy with a bit of a belly doing a few hundred crunches or situps a day in the hopes of getting a sixpack (as I did when I was what, 16 or 17) - it just doesn't work that way. I suppose that the muscles will atrophy if you don't use them very much, but that's a terribly unsensible solution that'll come with a whole bunch of other problems of its own. So, if you're concerned about becoming more proportional, I'd suggest the same as others (including you) here - rather than trying to get your lower body smaller, which won't really happen unless you decide to let your leg muscles shrink from disuse, you'd be better off trying to increase your upper body. Weights if you can get them - but there's plenty of other stuff that could be available (swimming, bodyweight exercises, various sports that involve throwing, shovelling snow, etc.). But I guess a possible downside of that (if you're bothered about that kind of thing) is that your upper body gets bigger. It just seems that if you focus on fat/weight loss, your lower body will remain larger than your upper, so for more proportionality it'd probably give better results to focus on upper body mass increase. This would also be good for strength overall - and more strength is pretty much always better, or how often have you (or anyone else, for that matter) thought "Oh man, I wish I weren't so strong"? Possibly, if you go for gaining upper-body mass, you'd be better off just skipping the cardio, or at least reducing it, so that it won't get in the way of any increasing. For diet - sorry, no idea. Well, I don't know your dietary habits anyway, but apart from the generic, sensible stuff - fairly clean foods (or whatever it's called - I mean the stuff made from scratch, rather than pre-made or fast food), balanced meals (a bit of fat, some protein, some carbohydrates), plenty of water (rather than juice, soda and so on) - I don't think that dieting works like that. Well, then you could do some core exercises (well, if you're working out at all, then you should anyway - having a strong core is fairly important for everything else), increase the muscles there. Of course, a final thing could be that your view is a bit skewed. It's not uncommon for people to find some "faults" with their own bodies that absolutely nobody else even notices, let alone considers a fault. It sounds weird, I know, but if you have friends you consider better proportional than yourself, rather than just stand side by side in front of a mirror and comparing you to them that way (or worse, standing alone in front of a mirror and comparing yourself to your mental image of them - our mental images of people can be really deceptive, I've a friend who's two or three inches shorter than me, but in my mind he's at least my height, so I'm always a bit surprised when I see a picture of us standing side by side), you could (friend willing, of course) bring out the measuring tape, to see just what the difference is. Yeah, pretty much the same, except reversed - go for exercises that strengthen and build the legs (but don't skip strengthening the upper body - as I said, being stronger is pretty much always better than being weaker). I'd possibly skip the cardio/aerobic for the most part. I'm sure that a little googling could help out for finding the right kinds of exercise, too. Especially if you go for weight training, there's a little difference in just how to go about lifting, based on the end goal. From what I remember, for size increase it was recommended to go for a high amount of repetitions per set (something like ten to fifteen reps) with a relatively light weight, for a few sets. Not so light that after the set you won't even notice it, of course, but maybe not so much that you feel like crying once you're done. And for more strength - five or six repetitions per set with a relatively heavy weight. But I'm not an expert on these things, I just lift for fun (and strength). I think you'd both be better off googling something like "bodybuilding for women". I'm pretty sure neither of you need to worry about looking like some of the professional female bodybuilders out there (if that worries you at all), even if you adopt some of the routines you could come across - well, pretty much like most men won't need to worry about looking like the professional male bodybuilders even if they start to follow their routines - since achieving that sort of look takes years of pretty hardcore dedication, supplementation, and lifestyle changes.