“I don’t want to get too bulky. I want to know how to lose muscle mass.”

That’s what I hear from a lot of women when they are about to start strength training. Much of the time, I calm them down, and tell them not to worry about it. A routine that makes a man bulky makes a woman toned. But, about 20-30% of the time, we do have female clients who legitimately bulk up too easily. Underweight guys, with super-fast metabolisms wish it was that easy.

Original source: here.

Old Myth: Women Can’t Bulk 

In the fitness industry, it’s always been a mantra: “women can’t bulk like men. You need testosterone to get bulky, and women don’t have nearly as much testosterone as men. So fogedaboudit” (that’s “forget about it”, pronounced with an Italian accent).

Well, from practical experience, I can tell you that it’s true most of the time. But there’s a fairly large minority of women who really will bulk up too easily. I’m a physiology geek, so I like to know not just an effect, but the actual reason for that effect. Indulge me while I tell you my theory on why some women actually bulk up too easily.

Excess body fat is feminizing to men (body fat has an enzyme called “aromatase”, which converts testosterone to estrogen), but masculinizing to women. How many women have either PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome), or subclinical PCOS? In the overweight population, it’s pretty high. This is characterized by having testosterone levels that are too high in a female. So this is more pathophysiology than regular physiology.

These women will legitimately build muscle mass too easily with strength training. Though unfortunately for them that due to insulin resistance, that muscle comes together with extra body fat as well. If you want to delve deeper on workouts for PCOS, check out my article on that topic. And if you want to learn about the 4 best supplements for PCOS, check out the video below.

How Do You Know If You Bulk Up Too Easily? 

            If you’ve ever done strength training (which I’ll use interchangeably with the term “resistance trainin”) in your life, you already know it. Your muscles are much more responsive to strength training compared to your female friends. You both may follow the same routine, but she gets toned, and you get bulky.

If you’ve never done strength training before, here are a few ways to know:

  • Are you over 20-30 pounds overweight?
  • Do you have a large frame (I mean really a large frame… not the “I’m big boned” excuse a lot of people use to justify excess weight)?
  • How do your female family members respond to strength training?
  • In high school or university or at any time did you gravitate towards more strength/power/speed sports, like track and field, judo, etc. (as opposed to endurance sports, like running long distances, or mixed sports, like soccer, basketball, etc.)?

If you answered yes to any of the above, then there’s a decent chance that you’re a female who can bulk too easily.

If you’re naturally petite, then it’s very unlikely that you bulk too easily.

How to Reduce Muscle Mass for Females – What to Do 

If you’re indeed in the 20-30% of females who can bulk too easily, here’s what we do with our clients who are in that boat:

  • Only do one set of an exercise. With most of our clients, we’ll do 3-7 sets of an exercise. With our females who bulk up very easily, one set is it.
  • Use lighter weights.
  • Follow your strength training with 20-30 minutes of steady cardio (not interval training). Nothing burns muscle like cardio. That’s why we tell many of our clients who are working on muscle gain to avoid cardio like the plague. But if the direct goal is to burn muscle, use that tool in your toolbox.
  • The opposite of a high-protein diet: decrease your protein consumption. For most of our clients, we recommend meat, fish or seafood at all 3 meals per day. For our easy-gaining female clients, we recommend animal protein only once a day.
  • Consume fewer calories in general.

Combine these strategies all together, and you can expect:

  • The obvious: some muscle loss.
  • A more toned body.
  • Less muscular arms.
  • Lose fat along the way.

If you’re a woman, who needs help reducing muscle mass, and needs to address her hormones, we have a special program specifically for that, called “Body Recomposition for Women.” If you’d like to see whether this program is for you, just fill out the application form on our home page. Once you do that, we’ll just chat for 10-15 minutes to see whether we can help you. This is not a high-pressure sales pitch, and there’s no obligation to do anything after our chat.