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CHAPTER 7: FEMALE CHALLENGES & EXPECTATIONS
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Fat Loss, Muscle Growth & Performance Through Scientific Eating
Renaissance
Woman
D r. J e n n i f e r C a s e , D r. M e l i s s a D a v i s & D r. M i k e I s r a e t e l
Renaissance
Woman
Fat Loss, Muscle Growth & Performance
Through Scientific Eating
D r. J e n n i f e r C a s e , D r. M e l i s s a D a v i s & D r. M i k e I s r a e t e l
P. 0 4
About The
Authors
Renaissance Periodization is a diet and training consultation
company. RP’s consultants (including the authors of this book) write
diets and training programs for every kind of client. RP works with
athletes trying to reach peak performances, businesspeople that need
more energy at work, and people from all walks of life who want to
look and feel better.
Jennifer Case
Dr. Jennifer Case holds a PhD
in Sports Nutrition and is a
Registered Dietitian (RD). She was
formerly a professor of Exercise
Science at the University of
Central Missouri, where she taught
exercise prescription, functional
anatomy, and other Kinesiology
courses. A former MMA Fatal
Femmes World Champion, Jen
is the 2014 IBJJF Master World
Champion in the Purple Belt
division, both for her weight
class and absolute, and the Brown
Belt Absolute Pan Am champion.
She is currently a brown belt
under Jason Bircher at KCBJJ
in Kansas City. When Jen is not
working with her diet clients at
Renaissance Periodization, training
or competing, she likes to spend
time with her friends and beloved
pets (2 cats, 2 dogs), and has been
described as “the most world’s
most bad-ass butterfly enthusiast”
for her perennial attendance to
many of the nation’s top butterfly
exhibits.
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Melissa Davis
Dr. Melissa Davis holds a PhD in Neurobiology and Behavior. She is currently
a neuroscience researcher at UC Irvine where she studies plasticity and cortical
development. Her research has been featured in Scientific American (2013, 2015);
published in a host of high impact, peer reviewed journals; and recognized by
faculty of 1000. Melissa is the 2015 IBJJF Master World Champion in the Purple
Belt division, both for her weight class and absolute and represented the United
States for her division in the prestigious Abu Dhabi World Pro Competition
in 2015. She is currently a brown belt under Giva Santana at One Jiu Jitsu in
Orange County. She has taught neuroscience in an academic setting and coached
women in submission grappling and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in a sports setting. Melissa
also helps Renaissance Periodization clients as a personal diet coach.
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Michael Israetel
Dr. Michael Israetel holds a
PhD in Sport Physiology and
is currently is a professor of
Exercise and Sport Science
at Temple University in
Philadelphia, where he teaches
Nutrition for Public Health,
Personal Training, Advanced
Strength and Conditioning,
Advanced Sports Nutrition,
and Exercise, Nutrition, and
Behavior. He has worked as a
consultant on sports nutrition
to the U.S. Olympic Training
Site in Johnson City, TN.
Mike has coached numerous
powerlifters, weightlifters,
bodybuilders, and other
individuals in both diet and
weight training. Originally
from Moscow, Russia, Mike
is a competitive powerlifter,
bodybuilder, and Brazilian Jiu
Jitsu grappler.
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About Renaissance Periodization
Renaissance Periodization is a diet and training consultation company. RP’s
consultants (including the authors of this book) write diets and training
programs for every kind of client. RP works with athletes trying to reach peak
performances, businesspeople that need more energy at work, and people from all
walks of life who want to look and feel better. When he founded RP, CEO Nick
Shaw had a vision for a company that delivered the absolute best quality of diet
and training to its clientele. By hiring almost exclusively competitive athletes that
are also PhDs in the sport, nutrition, and biological sciences, Nick has assembled a
team of consultants that is unrivaled in the fitness industry. In addition to training
and diet coaching, the RP team also writes numerous articles and produces
instructional videos on diet, training, periodization science, and all matters
involving body composition and sport. Visit us at renaissanceperiodization.com,
email at nick@renaissanceperiodization.com.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Lori Shaw for her thorough text editing and James
Hoffmann for literature research and populating the references. We would also
like to thank all of our wonderful clients who sent us their pictures. All of the
photographs in this book are of actual Renaissance Periodization clients and
consultants and not fitness models. We believe your progress using our scientific
principles speaks for itself and we wanted to represent the diverse women and
athletes that make up our amazing clientele. We particularly appreciate Jennifer
Pope of Jennifer Pope photography in the Bay Area, CA who sent us a heap of
amazing high quality photos.
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Preface
W hy a b o o k fo r wo me n?
When sports competition first became popular for the general public around the
turn of the last century, it was an activity reserved almost exclusively for men. It
may seem strange to us now – in the current age of iconic female MMA fighters,
weightlifters, and CrossFit athletes – but the idea that women were too fragile
for sports prevailed in popular understanding for a long time. As late as 1967,
Katherine Switzer, the first female to officially complete a marathon, was nearly
run off the course by men protesting her participation on the basis that ‘women
could not run that far’. We have come a long way since. Female participation in
sports has increased at a nearly exponential rate. Now, a little past the turn of the
current century, almost all major sports have a large female participation.
The mode of female participation in sports has evolved as well. It used to be that
cardio was the domain of the female athlete or enthusiast, with heavy lifting and
strength sports left to the boys. Women began venturing into the world of muscle
building and competitive sports not too long ago, and have never looked back.
Today, a huge fraction of those seeking to lose fat, build muscle and enhance
their performance in a variety of sports, are women (slowly putting to rest the
stereotypically feminine and ill defined “get toned” goals of women of yesteryear).
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While the participation of women in fitness has skyrocketed, the majority of
fitness information purveyed is still geared towards a male audience. In much of
the fitness industry today, fitness articles and books are written for men, by men.
Those marketed to females are often the equivalent of a t-shirt cut for a man and
made with pink fabric – retooled to appeal to her, but unchanged. That’s not the
end of the world though - male and female physiology is very similar and most
of the guidelines written for men will apply just as easily to women. There are,
however, some challenges and circumstances that are unique to the female fitness
experience, and, until now, a comprehensive and scientifically backed guide to
these issues has been sorely lacking.
To date, many of the articles written by women and for women focus on just
getting women into training and dieting. What is missing is a resource to address
technicalities that concern women who have already been thoroughly inducted,
women who are now looking for diet and training to optimize physique, improve
performance, and give them a competitive edge. “Lifting won’t make you manly”
is a fine article topic, and has an important role in shifting public understanding,
but how about some info on how to best go about fine-tuning your training or
diet as an experienced female athlete?
In addition to being rather general and introductory in nature, a large portion of
female fitness writing is authored by female competitors or enthusiasts and not
by academics in the field. In fact, a huge subset of popular female-fitness writing
is produced by beginners and describes their experiences from a novice point of
view. There is absolutely nothing wrong with those perspectives, but there is also
a need for a more advanced take. If you are already training and already dieting,
there are female authors who have both the years of experience as women in
athletics and the multiple advanced degrees to help guide you to the next level of
body composition and performance.
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This book is just such a guide; it was written by women with the female
perspective in mind and its intended purpose is to help you get the most out of
your sports nutrition. Specifically, it was written for intelligent women who
would like to further their education in nutrition, for the sports and fitness
activities to which they give so much of their time, energy, and passion. If you
have had your fill of opinion articles by self-appointed Instagram “models” and are
ready for a deeper look into scientific dieting, this book is for you.
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What scientific dieting can do for you
This book is about the scientific approach to dieting and how it applies specifically
to female athletes and women on the fitness journey. This book is grounded
in science for one simple but important reason; science is the surest path to
the truth. Now, science is not the only path to the truth, but because science
controls investigations rigorously, its conclusions are much more likely to be an
accurate representation of the way things actually work than any other method of
observation or intuition. Knowledge obtained through traditions, experience, and
educated guesses can work sometimes, but are just not as reliable and informative
as knowledge gleaned from controlled scientific study.
Here is an example. Sally moves to a new town and decides its time for a new
start. She reads online that eating beets at night reduces belly fat and figures it
can’t hurt to give it a shot (after all, it was discovered by a mom and Dr.’s don’t
want you to know about it – it must be good). Sally sets about religiously eating
beets every night and after a couple months, her belly fat is visibly reduced. She
concludes that beets are the answer, writes a blog, and encourages everyone to
do the same with her stunning before and after photos. Here is the problem –
this is an anecdote or a single case in which other variables (changes that could
affect outcome) were not assessed or controlled for. What you do not see in
the blog is that, when Sally moved, she went from a suburb where she drove
everywhere to an urban area where she walked to work every day, and to the
store on the weekend. All of that extra walking increased her daily caloric burn,
causing her to lose fat all over (she just focused on belly fat changes because that
was her expectation or bias). So, the actual truth is that had she moved and not
eaten beets every night, the same and possibly greater results (she would have
been less the beet calories) would have occurred. In a scientific study of whether
eating beets at night reduces belly fat, a large group of women would have
been sampled and asked about their exercise habits before and after to check for
changes. Other eating habits and any variables that could affect outcome would
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have been checked before and after the start, so that the independent effect of
beet eating could be measured. In a controlled study like this, the majority of the
women would not have had belly fat reduction and the correct conclusion would
have been revealed – eating beets at night does not reduce body fat. In fact – the
scientific study might have even shown that women eating beets at night gain
body fat (since they were adding calories to their normal diet), though where on
their bodies (belly or otherwise) has everything to do with genetics and nothing
to do with food type.
Recommendations derived from anecdotes (one person’s personal account) and
intuition may work for you one time, but fail to produce the same results the next
time. Non-scientific advice might have worked for your friend, but have no effect
when you try to apply it to your own diet. On the other hand, the knowledge
about dieting derived from multiple, replicated scientific studies provides a set of
dependable principles. Putting these principles to use will result in effective and
fairly predictable changes for every woman on earth who does not violate the
laws of thermodynamics (I have yet to meet a woman, or man for that matter,
who does this). These dietary principles are a set of basic rules, about the way the
body responds to dieting, that form an incredibly effective and superbly reliable
guide to eating for fat loss, muscle gain and performance. It is these rules that
the majority of this book is based upon, and because these rules are derived from
the process of scientific investigation, they are going to work in nearly every
conceivable situation to produce real and meaningful results. In the first chapter,
we will take a look at what these principles are (there are five of them) and we will
derive straightforward dietary recommendations from them, recommendations
that can be put right to work to design and refine high performance diets.
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07
Female
Challenges &
Expectations
Here we will discuss some of the social factors that play roles in
women’s body image and motivation to make body composition
changes. We hope this chapter will help you think about your
goals and intentions when dieting and maintain a healthy outlook
regarding your body and health.
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Chapter
Seven
Males diet and train just as
hard as females do, but for
multiple reasons, the female
dieting landscape is fraught
with unique challenges.
For primarily sociological
reasons, females are more apt
to fall prey to a certain set
of inefficient and negative
assumptions and thought
patterns. In this chapter,
we’ll try to clear the way of
what we see as some of the
biggest informational and
psychological challenges to
dieting females.
Starting Slow
If you’re new to dieting or
you’ve been bouncing around
with some perhaps not-sosound dieting methods in the
past, many of the scientific
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dieting approaches in this book may be brand new or relatively new to you. So, if
you like the book so far and you’re convinced you want to make a change, what
do you do? Just set up your whole diet, from calories through macros, timing,
composition, and all the way down to supplements?
That is certainly something that can work for those with some good prior dieting
experience. For those just starting out, a simpler approach may be best. We
know from general psychological principles that human cognition is a limited
function… you can only have so many thoughts in any one time period. We also
know that if you try to juggle too many priorities and overload those limitations
on thought and concern, anxiety and worry tend to be a common result and can
lead to dropping the ball on your overly complex plan. Thus, if the first thing you
do when you begin your approach to scientific dieting is, well, everything, then
you might quickly find yourself overwhelmed.
Instead of jumping head-first into the scientific dieting world, a better idea
might be to start with just one or two principles at a time until it’s second nature
to you. This means that you’ll start with calorie balance first and maybe rough
macronutrient amounts, then move along to the other principles when you’re well
used to counting calories and eating an approximate amount of protein, fat and
carbs. To ease in even slower, you can keep eating the same foods you’ve always
been eating, regardless of macros, but for several weeks focus on controlling
portion sizes to adjust the calories you’re taking in – so as to put yourself in a
hypocaloric state.
After a couple of weeks, controlling portion sizes and thus the calorie amounts of
your daily intakes is pretty much second nature. Now you’re probably ready to
start counting macros. Track the total daily protein, carbs, and fats you’re eating
and do your best to hit your chosen goals for them. It’s gonna be a bit stressful at
first, but no worries, within weeks it will seem like you’ve always counted macros
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and calories. It helps to write down daily goals and amounts of macros you should
have in each meal or use a tracking app. Because macros and calories combined
account for roughly 80% of your diet’s effect, you can just stop right there and
IIFYM (“If It Fits Your Macros” – a popular style of more loose, but effective
dieting) yourself to success! Just as long as you eat plenty of healthy, nutrientdense foods (fruits and veggies), you’ll be well on your way to your fitness goals.
If you’d like a bit of an edge, you can focus on nutrient timing once macro
counting is second nature. And if you’re well used to all three of the most
powerful principles, you can get into the nitty gritty of food composition and
supplement use.
The important message here: start slowly
and make changes when you’re not
feeling overwhelmed.
There’s no rush to have the perfect diet right away, and the best news is that the
first couple of principles are the most powerful by far, so that you know you’re
starting at the place where you’ll be getting the most bang for your buck. As you
get more and more practice, it WILL get easier and feel more like second nature.
Then, adding other manipulations later will be less stressful.
Ok, some of this seems obvious. Why are we even mentioning this? Far too many
women have erred the wrong way in the past. We probably all know someone
(perhaps even ourselves some time ago) that bit off more than she could chew
with her first formal approach to dieting. Folks that do this tend to have very high
failure rates, not because the diet is necessarily hard, but because it’s too much,
too soon. You don’t jump into calculus in college for a reason; although it’s based
on simpler mathematic principles, learning them all at once and understanding
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how they are associated is overwhelming. You work your way up with important
building blocks until it is easier to swallow. By spreading out the novelty, you
can set yourself up for the kind of long term dieting success that has the power to
make real body composition and performance changes.
Realistic Paces of Change
Almost all fitness media is filled with stories of rapid transformations. “30 day
challenge made this woman a bikini model!.” Sounds great, right?
DEFINITELY! ONLY THE TWO-FOLD CATCH OF SUCH A RAPID APPROACH IS:
• How high is the risk of failure, unwanted side effects, and dropout from such a
rapid approach?
• How sustainable are the results after such a rapid approach?
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These are NOT inconsequential questions. It turns out that extremely rapid bouts
of dieting have a very high dropout rate and a very low sustainability rate. What’s
the use of suffering through a crazy diet just to gain the weight back? Or worse,
lose muscle and motivation for another diet AND then gain the weight back? For
the multiple psychological and physiological reasons mentioned in the preceding
chapters, a steadier and more sequenced (with maintenance phases interspersed)
diet approach is likely to yield better results in the short and long term. Any rate
far in excess of 1% bodyweight lost per week can lead to a much higher risk of
falloff or rebound.
Ok, so rapid dieting is really bad. Why not just avoid it in a big way and just eat
healthier than you are now? No misery, no suffering, and no rebounds or falloffs!
Right? This advice has been echoed numerous times in the anti-dieting camps.
“All diets are bad” goes the advice. “Just eat well and have a healthy lifestyle and
you’ll be in great shape.”
Well, this is certainly great advice for a balance phase, but by definition, no
weight is lost or gained in a balance phase. Since weight loss is the most powerful
weapon to cut fat, this leaves us with a pretty big problem. It turns out that
“healthy living” is just that, and doesn’t have much power to change your
body composition or performance. In order to gain ground in these qualities,
you’ve gotta diet with a purpose and make measurable changes, often to your
bodyweight.
Lastly, research has shown that the results of super slow rates of weight loss are
actually less sustainable after the diet than results of faster rates. Why? Motivation
is likely highly involved. Those who spend 3 months losing 5lbs are just not that
pumped about their results. They might be more likely to go back to their old
eating ways because they just were not that impressed with their results and 5
pounds comes back a lot faster than 15. On the other hand, those that lost 15lbs
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in the same 3 months can see and feel the changes. They tend to be much more
excited about the changes, and possibly for that reason they tend to have the
motivation to carefully maintain.
In summation, a weight loss rate of 0.5%-1.3% covers a good deal of fertile
ground. If results and sustainability are your goals, losing somewhere between
these extremes is likely to enhance your chances of success.
Expectations for Body Composition Change
Making weight loss or weight gain goals is pretty straightforward. We have a
great deal of control about how much weight we gain on a muscle gain phase
and how much we lose on a fat loss phase. But how much muscle can we expect
to gain on a muscle gain phase (vs. fat tissue) and how much muscle do we have
to put up with losing on a fat loss phase as just a cost of the process? Of course
when we start diets we want to do our best, but how do we know if our results
are in line with general expectations or so far behind them that we might need to
reanalyze our approach and change something about it in a big way?
Luckily, average expectations for muscle gains and losses on diets are not
completely shrouded in mystery. From a combination of research and coaching
experience (particularly looking at DEXA scans of body composition between
phases), we can give you some general ideas of what might happen on your
muscle gain and fat loss phases. You can use this data to enhance your own
programs if you find that you can be doing better or to give yourself peace of
mind when you realize you’re doing quite well!
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CUT T IN G & MUSC L E LO S S
The biggest determinant of muscle lost during fat loss phases (other than diet/
training and genetics) is the degree of body fat held by the individual during the
start and end of dieting:
• When you’re cutting down from any fat percentage to one that is above 20%,
the chances of losing appreciable amounts of muscle is tiny so long as you’re
following the principles well, or at least the calories and macros, while training
hard
• When you’re cutting from any fat percentage to 15% fat, you face a significant
chance of muscle loss, but usually not more than 10% of total tissue losses. Thus
if you lose 10lbs in this range, you might lose a pound of muscle. Nothing at
all to worry about.
• If you’re cutting from 15% or so down to 10%, you are risking some
significant muscle loss, unless you’re using anabolic steroids. The average
dieter might lose around 25% muscle for every 75% fat. If you’re dieting for
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a physique competition, it might very well be worth it. Otherwise (and for
female health reasons), it doesn’t often pay off because of the substantial muscle
loss risk
• If you’re cutting from 10% or so to the single digits without drugs, you’re
likely losing upwards of 50/50 muscle to fat. In our estimate, this is not worth
the cut, except for special cases such as needing that extra bit of conditioning
for a show if you have muscle to spare compared to your competitors.
GAI N IN G & FAT AC C U M U L ATI O N
Outside of genetics and diet/training, the biggest factor in muscle gain to fat gain
ratios is the training age of the woman (meaning how long she has been training,
not her actual age, though that is another factor):
• Women new to training (within the first 1 year) can gain muscle while losing
fat if they gain no weight, and can gain 50% muscle and 50% fat on a gaining
phase.
• Women who have trained between 1 and 5 years can no longer expect to gain
muscle and lose fat at the same time during an isocaloric diet (though that
might still happen to some in a small way). On a gain phase, these women can
expect to gain around 25% of their phase weight as muscle. This means that a
woman who gains 10lbs of tissue will likely gain around 2.5lbs of muscle and
7.5lbs of fat. Sounds like bad news, but there is a bright side. Fat is MUCH
easier to lose than muscle is to gain. And for most women that are not trying
to get super lean, muscle loss is not a big concern on a diet. So if a woman
can do 2 macrocycles per year of gain-maintain-cut, she can come out with
5lbs of muscle. 5lbs of muscle per year is a very impressive amount. If you
gain an average of 5lbs of muscle per year during your 1-5 years of training,
you’re going to be up 20lbs in muscle from year 1. That is a COMPLETELY
DIFFERENT physique.
• Women who have consistently trained and dieted well for over 5 years can
only expect around 10-20% of their gain phase weight to be muscle tissue. If
it sounds tough, it is. But that’s the reality. If you see ads for women gaining
pounds and pounds of lean tissue in mere months after they’ve been training
and dieting for more than 5 years, either they’ve had a drastic alteration in
diet, have not been training hard recently and mostly regaining lost muscle, or
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drugs are involved to some extent. Is this depressing news? Not really. This can
still mean upwards of 3lbs of muscle gained per year. After 3 years, that’s close
to 10lbs of muscle and a HUGE change in both physique and performance.
Plus with all the years of training, this woman is probably starting from a
pretty muscular point and these changes are just further refinement.
• Taken altogether, from year zero to year 10 of hard training and proper
dieting, an average woman may be able to gain around 40 pounds of
muscle. Think about that…. 40lbs of muscle. That’s going to change health,
performance and appearance in an absolutely astonishing way. Combine that
with 10 years of losing 40lbs of total fat (though most or all of that fat can be
lost within 2 years if fat loss is your main goal), and we’re talking about a total
physique transformation.
The big caveats to this are of course training inputs and genetics. If you don’t
always train for muscle building (you might do endurance races, CrossFit, or
many other great sports and activities), those numbers on muscle gain will be
lower for you. Genetics play a big role as well. Some women will struggle to gain
10lbs of muscle in their entire lives, while some women will gain 60lbs of muscle
over their bodybuilding careers. Both are extremely rare, but if you’re one of these
women, your results will differ accordingly.
The biggest reason we included these numbers in the book is to allow you to
have realistic standards to which to hold yourself, and also, so that you don’t beat
yourself up chasing the near-impossible. If you’ve been working with a trainer
in your first year and haven’t gained any visible muscle, you might want to get
a second opinion about his/her training methods. On the other hand, if you’re
a 7-year veteran of hard training and dieting and you’re upset that you’re not
gaining 10lbs of muscle a year, maybe a more realistic view can take off the
needless pressure and allow you to enjoy your results more.
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Body Composition Standards
Alright, we’ve got a good idea about how much muscle and fat we can gain and
lose, but where does that leave us compared to other women. What’s a “good”
body fat percentage to shoot for? What’s a very impressive body fat percentage?
First of all, there is no such thing as a “good” body fat percentage. “Good” is
how you treat others, not some amount of tissue on your body. As long as you’re
healthy, there is a very wide range of body fat values that are just fine. How
much is too much fat to be healthy? Anything much over 35% is likely to be
indicative of or independently cause health problems. Now, this is not always
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true, as there are numerous active people who have higher bodyfats than 35% but
are very healthy. The 35% number is just a general reference to keep in mind, the
number above which most women will be likely to face some health problems
related to their fat stores. On the other end of the spectrum, anything under
15% fat is going to interfere with the reproductive system of the adult female. If
you’re under - for a very long time, you’re going to be risking a higher chance
of osteoporosis later in life, among several other problems. Does this mean that
anything under 15% is bad? No way. But it means that the goal of LIVING in
balance under 15% is actually unhealthy, so is not advised. Can you dip below
15% for special purposes every now and again and be just fine? Totally.
Alright, so anything between 15% and 35% is healthy in the long term for ALL
women. But if you’re looking for realistic goals and standards in fitness and not
just for regular folks, what do those values look like?
For the general population, anything below 20% fat is probably a good
cutoff to consider “lean.” A female with 20% body fat will usually have no
visible outcroppings of fat tissue on anything other than her secondary sexual
characteristic bodyparts (breasts, thighs, glutes). Many (but not all) women will
have the beginnings of abdominal definition just below 20%. We don’t want to
paint this value as THE GOAL for EVERYONE. Absolutely not. The range for
healthy and fit body fat levels can run much higher, all the way up to 35% or so as
mentioned. But if you really want “a number” that most women can realistically
work toward and achieve, a number that in some very small way indicates “I am
fit,” then 20% body fat is that number. Just be careful to only use it as a guidepost
and not as an all-costs goal.
What if you want to be SUPER fit? To stand out in the fitness community as
one of the super lean? First of all, it bears repeating that this should not be your
FIRST goal as you enter the dieting world. As a matter of fact, if you have ANY
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goal when you first start, and if that goal is body fat related, you can start just by
reducing your own body fat percentage by 5 points in the span of 2-3 months.
Once you’ve done that and put in a maintenance phase, you can, if you choose,
take as many phases as needed to get to 20% fat. Only if you’ve comfortably been
around 20% for some time (months) do we recommend trying to dive deeper.
Where does this deeper dive take you? Anything under 15% is considered VERY
lean in the fitness community. This body fat level is occupied by very few, most
of them high level athletes or fitness competitors.
Anything under around 15%, as mentioned earlier, is going to negatively impact
long-term health somewhat, and thus, in our advice, should only be attempted
with a distinct competitive or aesthetic goal, and not as a sustainable body
composition level.
Why are we mentioning such numbers at all? Because there is such a paucity of
informed perspective on the matter. If you look out to all forms of media on this
issue, you’ll typically find just two major perspectives.
T H E ‘ B O DY FAT D O ESN’ T M AT TE R AT A LL’ S E C T
• Radical thinkers in some sects of gender studies will like to paint a picture
that even the question of goals and averages is itself flawed because women
shouldn’t care about their body fat. The assumption here is that any degree
of caring about body fat is a bowing down to the patriarchal standard that
forces you to conform to the dominant and male-driven society’s standards of
beauty. The first problem with this view is that it forgets aspects of physical
health that may be related to the amount of fat you carry. Secondly, this view
misses the possibility that you could have your own ideas about what you want
to look like and that those ideas might not only embrace attractiveness but
performance capacities as well. Many an athletic woman values her physique
not as merely a means to be attractive, but as a badge of honor or evidence of
her hard work and dedication.
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T H E ‘ B O DY FAT IS A L L THAT M AT TE R S ’ S E C T
• Not all fitness competitors are experts in health and sustainability. This may or
may not come as a surprise, but a small yet vocal minority of fitness women
have intrusive body image issues of their own. These same women are often
the most prolific posters and presence in social media, and they can paint
equally distorted views on body fats. Some of these outgoing fitness women
will have anyone who’s willing to listen believe that the best body fat is the
lowest body fat, and that ANYONE can attain it and sustain it indefinitely. This
is, of course, wrong on at least two counts. First, anything much below 15% is
decidedly NOT healthy for long periods of time (more than a few months at a
time). Secondly, genetics and lifestyle circumstances matter a LOT. It’s not in
everyone’s cards to be under 15% body fat for a long time or even at all. And
there is nothing wrong with being much, much higher than that.
As you can tell, these two historically dominant perspectives have left a lot of
women wanting. So please take our discussion of body fat standards with a big
grain of salt. Feel free to use it to craft realistic goals but as always, make sure they
are goals YOU want to accomplish, and not something you feel you have to or
should do because of outside perspectives.
Rules vs. Exceptions
You might have a friend or two that got into shape incredibly quickly. They
just trained a little more and ate a bit less or a bit healthier, and WHAM; within
several months they were completely transformed. Better yet, they kept the fat off
and kept adding muscle for months afterward with seemingly little effort. What
gives?!
On the other hand, you’ve maybe got a friend or two that has seemingly tried
everything and nothing seems to work. Endless diets, workouts, restrictions and
sacrifices for not much of anything in the way of results.
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Both situations may paint a bit of a distorted picture of the landscape of dieting
for body composition and performance. If you’ve seen a bit too many of the first
example, you might come into the dieting process with quite unrealistic goals and
become quickly disappointed at your lack of progress. This can end up leading
you to stall or quit an otherwise sound diet that was working just fine, other than
the fact that it was not producing miracles.
On the other hand, seeing a bit too many of the second example may lead you to
be somewhat nihilistic about the dieting process. “Diets don’t work” might sound
pretty accurate if you see enough people get pretty close to nothing out of them.
This might make you more likely to never even start a diet that may help change
your body greatly, especially over the long term.
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Why the disparity in results? Genetics and a dedication to the process are huge
variables in the effectiveness of a diet. Someone who has not-so-great genetics for
fat loss or muscle gain AND has less than stellar dedication (to be kind about it)
may experience very little in the way of results. On the other hand, some women
with gifted genetics for body composition and performance may also have the
dedication to go with it, and consistently get absolutely outlandish results.
The big challenge for YOU is to not get carried away and overly impressed with
either of these rare types of individuals. Exceptions are just that, and if you base
your reasoning and expectations for yourself on them, you’re almost sure to fail
in one way or another. Aim for the middle ranges we’ve outlined throughout
this text and you’ll be likely to experience most of the predicted effects. Save the
exceptions for the comic books.
Transformation Photo Pitfalls
Instagram is intimating! Everyone posting transformation pics can seem fitter
than you. Not only are people fitter, they started out much less fit than you
and made triple the progress at double the speed! Oftentimes, their timelines of
transformation make those changes seem effortless. Pictures of donuts, hot dogs,
pizza and ice cream appear to mark their journey’s progression from fat to hyper
fit.
Maybe you’re even scared to start looking at your diet because you don’t feel
like you can measure up. Maybe you have been dieting for a while and are NOT
measuring up. What gives? Is everyone just that much better at this?!
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A COUPLE OF THINGS GIVE, AND THEY ARE IMPORTANT TO CONSIDER:
• A lot of popular transformation pictures are from first-time dieters that used
almost every strategy (calories, macros, timing, etc…) in the book and trained
their butts off. Good news: they lost weight. Bad news: their weight is often
not sustainable and they may have lost muscle and sacrificed performance
• A lot of the same transformations are posted by people with great genetics. The
reason you see them on your feed is that they get a lot of “likes.” The reason
they get a lot of likes is because they are outliers in degree of change or final
outcome, which usually has a lot to do with the genetics of the individual.
There are probably numerous transformation photos on social media that
you’ve never seen, simply because they’re just not that unusually impressive.
People pay the most attention to the extremes and that is human nature and
just fine, just don’t hold yourself to outlier standards.
• People only post the most impressive transformation photos. They may
have done 7 diets in the last 4 years and THIS ONE was their all-time most
impressive transformation. And guess what? This one is likely to be the only
one they’ll ever post and that you’ll ever see. Most transformation photos
never even make it out to the internet because their subjects don’t find them
impressive enough to post.
• Drugs are involved in some of the most extreme transformations, especially
ones in which advanced fitness competitors or strength athletes seem to be
eating tons of junk and still getting lean.
With the above caveats, Instagram culture may not seem quite so intimidating
anymore. If you’re into healthy, sustainable approaches to diet, stay the course and
don’t let social media get too much in your way. There is nothing wrong with
impressive transformation pictures… why not put your best foot forward? But
when looking at these from the other end, we’ve got to remember that this is the
BEST foot forward, not the average step, and that we mustn’t get intimidated or
let our expectations be warped by it.
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