May 2003. Mandy came to me for help in changing her body. She had suffered from pre-diabetes for some time and as a result had been counseled to stay clear of sugars and processed starches. But that had turned her into a little stick figure. She took in little in the way of energy-producing foods and, to date, she wasn't real big on expending any energy either. This girl had the face of a super-model, but her body was that of a little boy, and she hated it.

Mandy and her beau had scheduled a trip to Mexico when she called. When I first saw her, though, I thought, "Why in the world would someone this beautiful and thin call me?" But she didn't like the fact that she was too thin and wanted to build her body a bit so that she looked more like the model she could be.

We met two or three times a week for awhile, and then one day she said to me, "I'm sure by now you realize that my boobs are fake, and I'm afraid they are going to pop if we keep doing chest exercises. Well, that one caught me off guard. Her breasts looked great--but they were fake? That was some surgeon! Could they "pop" from exercising too strenuously? I didn't have a clue.

So I did some reserach. Dr. Moody of Associates in Women's Healthcare in Raleigh explained to me that today's breast implants are designed to withstand the intense pressure of a mammogram, and that regardless of whether the implant is placed above or below the muscle wall, resistance training shouldn't damage it. Another client told me a story about visiting the doctor's office to see her own mammogram X-rays. She noticed that most of the other X-rays on display looked different from hers, and the doctor explained that she was seeing implants in the other X-rays. She was understandably stunned to discover that in 2002 alone, 236,888 women had breast augmentation done, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, making it the #1 female surgical cosmetic procedure.

Mandy and I quit meeting soon after. My frail Mandy decided that the work of building muscle was really too much like--well, work. She would rather sit pain-free on the couch and be comfy with her new beau and her beautiful new boobs. And who can blame her?