I wanted to share with you all one of my favorite websites and resources for women in regards to health and fitness, Stumptuous.com. What better way to do it than talk with the creator of the site, Krista Scott-Dixon. She’s a sassy, smart lady (a PhD even!) who made the journey from unhealthy grad student to fitness guru. So, not only is she a great source of information, she’s a shining example of what’s possible for all of us.

This is a two part series. In part one Krista talks about her site, her personal journey and gives advice to women wanting to get started in weight lifting. In part two (on Wednesday), we get Krista’s uncensored thoughts on what it is to be a woman and be strong (her doctorate is in Women’s Studies, after all)…and even get her advice for you guys out there!

Can you define the word “Stumptuous” for us?

“Stumptuous” is a conjunction of “stumpy” and “sumptuous”, which I was originally when I started training. When I started training, I was just over 5 feet tall, and 50 lb overweight. Now, I ain’t getting any taller, but at least I’m a lot less “sumptuous”!

When did you start Stumptuous.com and what was your original concept behind it?

I started it in 1996. I was getting into training more seriously, and it was frustrating to me that there was so little quality information available to women. As the proud owner of a 1980s bodybuilding book for women, I knew that the mainstream info about women’s training was BS. I didn’t want to look like a pink-weight-lifter — I wanted to look like the fabulous women that characterized early bodybuilding.

I did my own research, taking advantage of the university libraries I had access to, and thought that other women might find it useful to know what I was discovering.

Have you stayed with that concept or has it evolved?

The concept has stayed more or less the same — a noncommercial (that part is very important), woman-positive (also important) site with evidence-based information and resources for ALL women wanting to train seriously (or at least start out).

And I wanted it to be funny and smart. So much material aimed at women is so bloody serious or trite. It’s like being female is either a really complicated, fussy undertaking or frivolously idiotic. You know what? Farting while squatting is funny. Let’s lighten the hell up and stop pretending that women are all rose-scented powder puffs. We sweat, we fall on our ass, we get dirty — let’s rock that and have some fun with it.

There’s still very little of that available, sadly. I had assumed there would be a lot more by now.

Stumptuous is a fantastic resource for fitness and health information, for both men and women.  Still, do you find your audience either predominantly male or female? Why do you think that is?

Hard to say, because I can’t really track it. But from the commentary, I’m guessing it might even be half and half. I seem to get a LOT of male readers. I think good information is good information. Good writing is good writing. Plus, men who train seriously are often great advocates for women’s training — many men are looking for information to help their girlfriends, wives, sisters, moms, friends, etc.

And many men are the ones who find my site and pass it along to the women in their lives. Perhaps the guys have been trying to convince the ladies to lift heavy, but the women resist the idea. So the guys are happy to find another woman who can bring the truth. After all, when have wives or moms ever listened to their husbands or sons? It’s a lot easier to convince women that they won’t turn into beasts when you can show them another very normal-looking woman.

Tell us a little bit about your personal fitness journey — where did you start and why? Where are you now?

Oh man, I feel like I’ve gone through so many stages. I started out as a sedentary grad student, 50 lb overweight and feeling like shit. I was too poor to afford a gym, so I went out every day and walked an hour around a local high school track, wearing one of the few items of clothes that fit me — a pair of sweat pants I stole from my sister’s ex boyfriend. (Is that a new low in workout wear or what?!)

At first I was into the bodybuilding mindset, so I focused a lot on “building muscle” and meals of chicken breasts and cottage cheese. I read the bodybuilding mags and followed the sport.

Then I got into powerlifting and considered competing until I realized that obsessing about three lifts sucked the fun out of everything (and left me injured). For a few years I was really into weirdo strength and conditioning stuff, along with Olympic weightlifting. Then training for grappling competition — lots of metabolic conditioning workouts, bizarre exercises that I cooked up for sport-specific application, etc. That was a lot of fun for sure, but it came with some consequences.

With grappling and strength training, the impulse was to beat myself into the ground. Grappling is one of the hardest sports you can do — when you’re competing, it’s an all-out muscular effort for several minutes. It’s like the most awful CrossFit-style workout you can imagine, combined with someone trying to choke you or break your arm. The workouts thus have to prepare you for that. And if you’re driven, like I was, it’s so easy to overdo it. So, I was cycling up to 6 hours per session during the summer months, plus doing tons of met-con-type workouts… just plowing my body into the dirt, basically.

I used to have detailed spreadsheets of mileage cycled or run, poundage lifted, total hours per week, my bodyweight and body comp, calories consumed… I mean, it was total OCD. And in lots of ways it sucked the joy out of everything. It made me into a crazy person with an exercise compulsion.

My body looked great, and I felt good — so I thought — but in fact, my body wasn’t happy, and I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t sleeping; my hormones were all screwed up; I was working on a nice little eating disorder thanks to my constant pursuit of ripped abs, all my focus on spreadsheets, and weight cutting for competition combined with a heavy training load. So, I’d go away to a training camp for a week, beat the snot out of myself, come home, and my pissed-off leptin levels would plow me face-down into a jar of nut butter in a desperate attempt to recoup some energy and recovery.

Eventually my body kicked me in the ass and said “Enough of that shit.”

At present I’m really getting into the idea of just *moving*. Now I’m really interested in the evolutionary fitness angle. Part of that is about being less hard on myself. The evidence shows very strongly that humans didn’t evolve to beat the shit out of themselves constantly. They evolved to just move — a lot — daily, but in ways that were varied, complex, and within a range of intensities. They rested a LOT. They sprinted when they needed to sprint, and hauled heavy stuff when they needed to haul heavy stuff, but the rest of the time they were just moving — walking, scrambling, rambling, just being physical.

So my new goal is simply “live actively”, “play” and “move as much as possible”. If that means blowing off a scheduled workout to go to the park with my husband and kick a soccer ball in the sunshine, so be it!! When I finish this email I’m going out into the garden.

What advice do you have for women looking to begin lifting weights?

1. A “free weight” can be as small as you need it to be. Lift anything you can manage.

2. However, don’t underestimate your capacity. Sure, you’ll start small. But think big. You CAN train for that pullup or pushups. You CAN squat and deadlift heavy. Just give yourself time.

3. There’s no rush. You have the rest of your life to get good at this stuff. Take the time to learn good form. Your body recovers on its own schedule. You can’t MAKE a plant grow; you can’t MAKE your body recover and get stronger and fitter. All you can do is provide the conditions for growth and recovery to occur.

4. Be real. Real life means carrying bags of groceries or a squirming kid up stairs. It means running for the bus. It means climbing and throwing and hauling while in awkward positions or moving. Train for THAT — not some imaginary universe where you’re balancing on a ball. (Unless you’re a circus performer — in which case that might be part
of your repertoire.)

5. Keep it simple. Push, pull, squat. Move through space. Then make that movement harder. The end.

Click HERE for part two of our talk with Krista!