Tag Archives: Fitness

Get Fit At America’s Only Queer Gym

Being a queer woman at the gym is a lose-lose situation.

If you’re femme, then you’ll have to keep looking over your shoulder, ready to defend against “well-meaning” (read: creepy) straight men who think the gym is a great place to cruise for women. There are only so many times you can say, “Stop correcting my form, Chad, and no, I don’t want to see you flex or do 100 pushups and please stop watching me run on the treadmill” before it gets old.

If you’re more masculine presenting, men often don’t know what to do with you. Some see you as a threat to their masculinity and get angry. Dealing with constant harassment and staring is exhausting.

Nathalie Huerta is sick of it.

The Oakland, California resident was tired of turning the wrong heads at the gym. She says:

I grew up in the gym and when I was more feminine, I only dealt with the general gym creeper dudes. Yet, the minute I cut my hair and ditched the makeup, things got weird in the locker room (women hiding from me) and in the weight room (pissing contest with dudes).

So she opened LGBT-only facility The Queer Gym in 2010. It currently has 150 members and is expected to reach 175 by the middle of 2017, at which point it will open new locations.

The Queer Gym aims to be a place, first and foremost, where LGBT people can work out in safety. Huerta says, “How can you think about getting healthy if you’re worried about getting jumped or sexually assaulted in the locker room?”

Yes, hookups do occur – with lots of attractive queer ladies and lots of adrenaline, what do you expect? – but that’s not the point of the gym. Huerta envisions a place where queer women can feel good about themselves and focus on their own wellbeing.

Working out at The Queer Gym is more than a chore. It’s a community. Some of the people who’ve met at her gym have even gotten married.

This is the first and only LGBT-only gym in the US. Get an in-depth look or check out the official website.

We Can’t Blame Our Metabolism For Weight Gain As We Get Older.

It’s always been assumed that as we start to approach our 30’s and 40’s our metabolism slows down and we gain weight a lot quicker. Well, science has now proven that to be untrue. Our metabolism hardy changes in the speed it works. It’s our speed that changes, as in the fact we become less active as we get older.

Our metabolism works by the rate it burns off calories as we go about our activities. It also works when we are resting as well. However, our metabolic rate and the speed it works at is determined by our height, sex and the genes we got from our parents.

There are also many myths that certain things can speed the metabolism up. But they are just that, myths. The effects that green tea, spicy food and caffeine laden drinks may slightly speed up your metabolism but nowhere near enough to make a change to your weight. The only thing that will speed up your metabolism and burn calories is activity.

This is depressing, right? Not necessarily, because forewarned is forearmed, so now we know why we are more susceptible to weight gain as we creep towards our 30’s we can put a plan into action and combat it.


Get Active

There are many simple things you can do during your daily routine to get more active. For example, take the stairs instead of the lift, walk to work instead of driving or taking the bus, power walk instead of strolling. After a vigorous workout when the heart gets pumping and your body temperature increases your metabolic rate will continue working faster even when you have finished exercising. It does not work at this faster rate while you are sat down resting, so, exercise first, then rest, knowing your metabolism is still burning off calories while you are chilling out in front of the TV.


Watch What You Eat

This might sound a bit obvious, but you should only eat what the body requires, not more. Some tips are to only eat when you are hungry, eat smaller portions but eat often and eat a balanced healthy diet. By reducing portion sizes and only eating when you are hungry plus engaging in activity of some kind will all help ward off weight gain as we get older.