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Sunday, 09 Nov, 2025
Opinion: #StrongNotSkinny: Why I want chunky legs
I want chunky legs. When I say that, people smile with polite incredulity.
That dissipates if I elaborate that I’d rather be strong than slender, so I can carry hefty groceries or care for others. Besides, wandering the globe and trekking in high, hidden places everywhere for many years to come will be immense fun.
I’d love to live independently and fully, in essence. Fun is a huge motivator for that.
That desire to be #StrongNotSkinny got a boost the other day. I was delighted to have gained 0.9kg in muscle mass, as I discovered after comparing body composition tests done in January and October at my ActiveSG gym.
In the intervening nine months, I had started a bunch of fitness classes there and trained at Bukit Timah Hill for a recent seven-day trek on Mallorca’s rocky peaks and coastal paths. Happily, the results were showing.
Building nearly 1kg of muscle is not minuscule in my case.
After all, I’d tried valiantly to achieve muscular strength in previous years, with hardly stellar results. Month after month, I’d do weight training and kick-boxing with personal trainers (spending a small fortune compared to subsidised rates at ActiveSG).
I signed up for HITT (high-intensity interval training), not really my thing but a should-try, I decided.
I persevered with Pilates for a dozen years, loving its mind-body benefits.
I might take the stairs instead of escalators, sometimes glancing judgmentally at the sedentary folks around me.
Then, there were all the adjacent buys for an active lifestyle: big bottles of protein supplements; fitness trackers; trekking apparel, shoes, poles, backpacks, insurance, the whole list.
Perhaps I wasn’t always consistent in my pursuit of the vigorous life. Possibly it was creeping middle age. And for sure I loved food, glorious food. My snacking would have slowed me down – but it’s just as true that I never stopped embarking on multiple, enjoyable journeys to fitness and health.
Very sadly, though, whenever I measured the results of my workouts every few months, I’d see only that my muscle mass was maintained. A flat line, with zero gain. Rarely, I might notch a prized improvement of 1 per cent.
Zero is hero
I tried to look on the bright side. Maintaining mass can also be portrayed as a neutral-to-positive outcome, since muscle decline is very real.
Among various reports, the Harvard Health Publishing site indicates that muscle loss can begin as early as the age of 35. The diminishment occurs at a galloping pace of 1 to 2 per cent a year. After age 60, this can spike to 3 per cent a year.
It’s sobering news for super-ageing Singapore. But the nation is doing something about it, from rolling out public health initiatives to funding advanced research.
In May, The Straits Times reported that researchers here had secured a $10 million grant to address the rising tide of sarcopenia – the age-related disease signalled by loss of muscle mass, strength and function.
Led by SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Medical Centre, this is Singapore’s first large-scale study on the disease that increases fall risks, lowers immunity and also causes poorer post-surgery recovery.
Recent studies show that sarcopenia affects nearly one in three Singaporeans aged 60 or older.
“By the time we are 80, even if we are healthy, we would have lost at least about one-third of our muscle mass,” said Associate Professor Samuel Chew, a senior consultant at Changi General Hospital’s geriatric medicine department, according to the ST story.
It is hence important to “bank” muscle health during younger adulthood to help counter muscle loss over time, Dr Chew added.
You’re strong’
His remark transported me to a time in my 20s, when I would jog or go to the gym with an athletic friend. “You’re strong,” she observed once, approvingly. In retrospect, that was the ultimate compliment, at a life-stage when young women prefer to be depicted as slim and shapely.
Subconsciously, her praise has propelled me in my fitness forays and fostered body respect. For while it is ideal to be both sturdy and svelte, that’s not really my genetic body type.
There are three body types and I’m an in-between, like most people. So I’m likely a mesomorph (naturally muscular) with endomorph elements (tendency to gain weight and fat more easily).
(The third body type is the long-limbed ectomorph – lean with a fast metabolism.)
Unstoppable Zumba
I had another epiphany when a personal trainer gently commented on one of his young-adult clients who looked fit, but surprised him when she could not lift even light weights. “Some young women do Zumba six times a week, but don’t have power,” he reflected.
Zumba enthusiasts are paragons of fitness, I’d always thought. But perhaps not? I doubled down on strength training.
A health-conscious colleague has also noticed the unstoppable Zumba-out trend. She said: “The majority are obsessed with being thin. That’s fine when they’re young. But they look disproportionate when they’re old.”
That’s when thin, sagging arms and legs appear, she pointed out, adding: “It’s healthier to build muscle mass, structure and tone when we’re young.”
Meanwhile, I playfully quizzed several women: Will they be fine with muscular legs?
Even my fittest friends seemed ambivalent. In Mallorca, I learnt that a trekking companion, who is slim and strong, dresses to conceal her “big calves”. She said: “I wear long skirts.” That’s mainly to look her best, she explained, as she is secure in her looks and identity.
Where does this leave #StrongNotSkinny, the decade-long movement that celebrates what the body can do rather than how it looks?
I have been living by the conviction that strength is desirable. But I’m also aware that #StrongNotSkinny has limits.
Significantly, our sense of self-worth can be pinned too much to our “health identity”, Dr Rachael Kent, a researcher in digital economy and society at King’s College London, told Cosmopolitan magazine last year.
I thought about it. Neither fetishise strength nor idolise appearance, I say. Get strong, but quit trying to be perfectly strong or slender.
I’m going to stay with the strength exercises, so I can carry those groceries when I over-buy. It’s a blessing that in fortifying the physical, I amplify fun and purpose each day.
Lee Siew Hua edits the Design & Living pages of The Straits Times, creates omni-channel partnerships and writes Sunday opinion columns. A former foreign correspondent in Washington and Bangkok, she was also ST’s first travel editor.