biker_ballerina

Hi everyone,

I'm new on this site and my goals are to gain weight by growing muscle mass.

I've recently come out of an abusive relationship in which I was so stressed I started smoking, drinking, stopped exercising and stopped eating. My self esteem was rock bottom and I had no mood to do anything positive for myself. I felt completely worthless. There is now a restraining order in place and I have had some counselling and I am now at a point where I have got back some of my self confidence and feel motivated to start leading a healthier lifestyle.

I'm 5ft 7inches and at my worst I was smoking 40 a day and weight 45kg (99lbs). I have cut my smoking down to 3/4 a day with the intention of giving up completely and am currently at 53kg (116lbs). I would like to get my weight up to 60kg (132 lbs) and be a dress size 10UK. At the moment I'm a 6-8UK and my clothes look baggy.

I used to look very athletic as I did gymnastics and ballet for many years but sadly the muscle tone has disappeared as I stopped doing these activities for 3 years.

I'm 28 years old and have a lot of weight lifting equipment at home so I plan to start training from home rather than going to a gym.

One thing that I would really like to focus on is increasing my legs and glutes. My ex used to criticize me everyday that I have a flat butt and tease me for it. I'm more of an hourglass/ pear figure but I think my problem is lack of muscle/fat in that area rather than genetically never being able to have a larger butt. There is a butt there, and it is slightly curved, it's just small as I am underweight. My measurements are 35inch chest, 25inch waist and 36inch hips, but I would like my butt to pop out more.

So, can anyone give me some help with exercises that will tone the legs, but not make them huge, and also tone and increase the size of my glutes? I think that if I grow my legs a lot, it's not going to help with the aesthetics of my glutes as I would need to grow my glutes even more for there to look like there's a big difference.

I am going to be taking fortnightly photos to watch for progress, and also tracking my weight with a weekly weigh in.

Hoping to be mentally and physically stronger by September, so 5 months of real hard work.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Kathy13118

If you have amazon prime in the U.S., there are some free workout videos you can stream to your computer. They are a little more organized than what you see on youtube, for example. Good luck!