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
Table Of Contents
About The Authors 4
01. The Five Basic Principles
15
02. Dieting Procedures For Fat Loss50
03. Dieting Procedures for Muscle Gain80
04. Performance Dieting Strategies
104
05. The Psychology of Dieting
137
06. Female Health Issues Across the Lifespan
191
07. Female Challenges & Expectations
217
08. Fads & Fallacies In the Female Diet World
234
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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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P. 1 5
01
The Five Basic Principles
The construction of a maximally effective diet for fat loss, muscle
gain, weight maintenance and performance is based on five
principles. These principles instruct the ways in which diets need to
be designed in order to produce the best results, as well as the ways
in which they need to be altered to keep the results coming when
stagnation is encountered. We will go over these principles in detail
in this chapter.
Chapter One
The construction of maximally effective diets for fat loss, muscle gain, weight
maintenance and performance is based on five principles. These principles instruct
the ways in which diets need to be designed in order to produce the best results, as
well as the ways in which they need to be altered to keep the results coming when
stagnation is encountered.
THESE PRINCIPLES ARE
1. Calorie Balance
2. Macronutrient Amounts
3. Nutrient Timing
4. Food Composition (Including Micronutrient Content)
5. Supplements
While all five of these principles are important, they are not all equally important
with regard to results. That is, some of them are critical to follow when designing
even a moderately effective diet, some are just small details and won’t change
the big picture of results much, and others fall somewhere on the spectrum
in between critical and minor. Another way of looking at these principles is
as priorities; When you have a limited ability to focus on diet planning and
execution, the most effective diet principles form the top priorities, the least
effective form the lowest priorities, and so on. When we compute the actual
effects each principle has on the results of a diet, we get the following ratio of
effects:
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Diet i n g Fo r Pe r fo r ma n ce & A p p e a ra nce
Figure 1. The Diet Principles as Priorities
As you can tell from Figure 1, calorie balance accounts for roughly 50% of the
effect of any diet, macronutrient amounts account for around 30%, and nutrient
timing for 10% or so, with composition and supplements coming in as 5% details
to focus on only when the top principles have already been put in place. Ok, so
calories are super important and the other stuff matters too, but what is it about
calorie balance that makes it so important? Let’s take a look at the basics of calorie
balance next, after which we will dive into the details of the other four principles.
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Calorie Balance
Calorie balance is the amount of calories you consume versus expend every day.
If you are hypocaloric for the day, it means you expended more calories than you
took in. In every single studied instance (and in accordance with the 3 laws of
thermodynamics), a hypocaloric diet leads to tissue loss, which is usually a loss of
fat tissue, but can be muscle tissue loss as well. You may not notice a day’s worth
of hypocaloric weight loss, but if you consistently run a caloric deficit for days and
weeks on end, the weight loss will become detectable on the scale and visible on
your body. If you eat just as many calories as you expend, then you are eating an
isocaloric diet. In this case, you will neither gain nor lose net tissue weight. When
your weight stays the same for weeks on end, not every day is truly isocaloric, as
some days will have more or less eating or activity, but on the net balance, the
average for the week is isocaloric, thus the result is a maintained body weight.
Lastly, you are hypercaloric when you take in more calories than you expend. In
this case, you will gain weight, and such gains will become clearly evident over
the course of days and weeks of consistently hypercaloric dieting.
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We already stated this, but it’s worth emphasizing; Calorie balance accounts for
about 50% of the success rate of any diet. That’s a HUGE chunk, and there is a
very good reason for this. The single biggest factor in fat loss is whether or not
you have a calorie deficit. If you don’t eat enough food to meet all of your body’s
needs, it uses body fat to meet the shortfall in supply. That’s actually probably why
body fat has developed evolutionarily as a standard part of physiology, a backup
energy store during hypocaloric conditions is great for survival in non-modern
conditions. You do not generally lose fat on an iso or hypercaloric diet, there is
simply not much demand by the body’s tissues for the extra calories from body
fat, so it remains (or increases). Yes, you can gain muscle and lose fat at the same
time on an isocaloric diet by training so hard and eating so well that most of the
food you eat goes to your muscles, and your fat tissue is still starved and has to
be used up for energy. However, this almost never happens in any meaningful
way for people who have already been training for longer than several years and
who already follow a decent diet (and by “decent” we mean, not Twinkies for
most meals of the day). In addition, this process is incredibly slow and inefficient
for both muscle gain and fat loss. Thus, if fat loss is your goal, a hypocaloric
diet is absolutely your best weapon; conversely, if you want to gain muscle, a
hypercaloric diet is by far the most effective means of doing so. Trying to do
both at once makes both results needlessly more difficult (if not nearly impossible)
to attain.
Just as with fat loss, calorie balance is the single biggest factor in successfully
accomplishing muscle gain with your diet. Only when you eat more food than
you need does your body have the excess calories it needs to build a bit of muscle.
In our ancestral environment, starvation was always a risk and extra food was not
always around. Body fat is an efficient way to save up calories for later periods
of deprivation (much better than muscle), so your body doesn’t like to let this
reserve go easily and it also doesn’t like to spend energy building muscle - the less
efficient and more metabolically costly storage system.
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Thus, in order for your body to relax
enough and be ok with giving some
calories towards muscle growth, a
situation of excess calories is needed.
Only if the body has extra calories around does it really get muscle growth going,
because having more muscle than you need for survival is metabolically expensive
- extra muscle burns extra calories - and to the logic of your evolutionarily
developed body, this is a dangerous waste and not something it is programmed
to do by default. As mentioned, you can gain muscle while in an isocaloric and
possibly even hypocaloric environment, but the rates at which this occurs are
incomparably smaller than in a hypercaloric environment, and pretty close to
impossible for more experienced trainers and dieters.
If you want to lose fat, your best weapon is a hypocaloric diet. If you want to gain
muscle, your best weapon is a hypercaloric diet. A very simple implication of this
is that you cannot do both at the same time, and thus you should have distinct
phases of fat loss and distinct phases of muscle gain. If you try to do both at once,
you end up in an isocaloric diet and then you get neither advantage!
In later chapters on fat loss and muscle gain strategies, we will take a very close
look at calorie levels – including, what isocaloric means for different people, and
by how much we have to cut or add calories in order to lose fat and gain muscle at
the best rates.
For now, on to the second most important principle: macronutrients.
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Macronutrients
By accounting for roughly 30% of diet success, macronutrient amounts are a
very large piece of the body composition and performance puzzle. When we say
‘macronutrients,’ we are referring to the three main energy sources required in
large amounts by the body: proteins, carbs, and fats. The term ‘Macronutrient
amounts’ refers to the separate amounts of each that contribute to the overall sum
of calories in a diet. Let’s go through each nutrient and describe its importance
and role in the body as well as its recommended intake. For a much more indepth discussion of roles and recommendations, including intricate discussions of
minimum and excessive macronutrient intakes, please check out the original
Renaissance Diet book.
P ro t e i n
Protein molecules are specific arrangements of amino acids. Because of their
specific arrangements, different proteins are capable of doing different tasks, and
proteins in the form of enzymes facilitate some aspect of nearly all important
functions in the body. While these functions include cellular transport, forming
body structures and constructing most of the nervous system, for our purposes, the
most important function of proteins is their role in muscle tissue.
That last sentence is perhaps one of the biggest understatements of this book.
Protein does not just have “an important role” in muscle building… it literally IS
the building block of muscle. The fibers and components of muscle that produce
movement and force are themselves protein (actin and myosin, to be specific).
Thus, if having, maintaining, or building muscle is your goal, protein is of
primary importance; something like the importance of steel and concrete to the
function of a skyscraper.
Because protein literally constructs muscle, along with all of the enzymes
(molecular machines) that help to build and repair muscle, the athlete interested in
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body composition and performance needs plenty of it. In general, hard-training
female athletes and fitness enthusiasts need just under 1g of protein per pound
of lean body mass per day. Much less than this will reduce muscle growth, and
impair muscle maintenance and recovery. Much more than this recommended
amount just contributes to excess calories that could be better spent on other
macronutrients.
What does “per pound of lean body mass” mean, exactly? Well, lean body mass
is the amount of non-fat mass (muscle, organs, bone, blood and so on) that an
individual carries. Thus, if we have a 150lb female that carries 20% fat (a rather
lean and athletic physique), then she’s going to have roughly 30lb of fat tissue
(20% of 150 is 30: 150 x 0.20 = 30). When we subtract this fat tissue away from
her total mass, that gives us her lean body mass (LBM): 120lbs. Thus, for her to
get near-optimal protein intake per day, her daily total protein intake should sum
up to around 120g of protein (120lbs x1g). For all of the fat loss and muscle gain
diets we will look at designing later, 1g / lb body weight will be our base standard
for protein intake.
Ca r b o hyd ra t e s
While protein is the single most important building block of muscle tissue,
carbohydrate is the single most important source of energy. In particular, carbs
are the best source of energy for athletic and high intensity activities. Whereas
fat is a perfectly fine fuel source for keeping the body functioning while sitting,
standing, or in leisurely activity, carbohydrates are by far the body’s preferred
fuel source for more intense activities such as running, biking, swimming, lifting,
gymnastics, and most other sport and training tasks. Low carb diets are notorious
for decreasing athletic performance and training productivity for this very reason.
Not only do carbs provide energy for the activity you’re going to do next, they
are the primary refueling source for recovery from activities you just did, so that
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you can have plenty of energy the next time you are active. The most dominant
source of carbs for high intensity work is in a stored form in the muscle (and a
bit in the liver) called glycogen. Glycogen is a giant molecule of glucoses packed
together, and glucose molecules (the most fundamental component of all carbs)
are broken off of it to be used for energy. The glycogen stored in muscle is the
single most important source of glucose, thus it depletes the most after hard
training. Taking in carbs after hard training repletes stores of glycogen and allows
you to recover and train hard again, whether that be later that day or a few days
down the road.
Because carbs allow you to keep training hard, they offer several advantages for
performance and body composition:
• They provide the best energy source for high performance activities
• They recover you so that you can perform day in and day out
• The resulting ability to train hard increases the adaptive potential of the
exercise, facilitating muscle growth
• The resulting ability to train hard prevents muscle loss when fat loss is
occurring
• The very presence of high glycogen levels in the muscle cell turns up musclebuilding machinery in that cell, while a lack of glycogen turns that machinery
down
As you can see, carbs are of very high importance to performance and body
composition - not quite as important to body composition as protein, but at least
as important to performance, if not more so.
How much carbohydrate does a female athlete and fitness enthusiast need? Unlike
with protein, just LBM is not enough for this calculation. Carb intake varies
based on LBM, but also on the amount of daily activity that the individual is
undertaking, including both formal training and day-to-day tasks.
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As you can see from the table below in Figure 2, how much carbohydrate you
take in per day can vary greatly in accordance with your daily training and
activity level. This means that women of a similar size may be consuming very
different amounts of carbs based on their different training and activity levels, and
that the same woman can be consuming very different amounts of carbs on the
different days of the same week, depending on when she is more or less active.
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The more activity a woman performs per day, the more carbohydrate intake she
can benefit from. The following is a general guide to carb intake in relationship to
activity levels:
ACTIVITY LEVEL
S edentar y (wor k from ho me, office wor k, a relax ing day
off )
R E C O M M E N D E D DA I LY
CARB INTAKE
0-0.5g per lb LBM
Light Activi ty (u p to 45 minu tes of hard training per day,
cou pled wi th a sedentar y or lightly- active wor k/home
0.5-1.0g per lb LBM
environment)
Modera te Activi ty (u p to 1.5 hour s of hard training per
day, wi th u p to a fair ly active wor k/home environment
1.0-1.5g per lb LBM
w here you’re on your feet a good par t of the day)
Hard Activi ty (1.5-2.5 hour s of hard training per day,
cou pled wi th u p to a fu lly active wor k/home environment
w here you’re on your feet and doing physica l wor k mos t
1.5-2.0g per lb LBM
of the day)
Ver y Hard Activi ty (2.5+ hour s of hard training per day,
of ten including endurance spor t training and/or a ver y
physica l job w hich necessi ta tes being u p and a bou t
through the major i ty of the day, including hard physica l
2.0-3.0g per lb LBM
tasks such as factor y wor k, cons tr uction, in-per son
coaching and fi tness class ins tr uction, etc.)
Figure 2. Recommended daily carb intake by activity level
Fa t s
While proteins and carbs definitely steal the show in terms of their importance
towards body composition and performance results, fats are our last, but still
important macronutrient to consider in building a diet for body composition
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and performance. Fats are utilized by the body to form important hormones, to
construct important parts of all cells (especially those of the nervous system), and
to insulate and cushion our joints from the constant pounding they receive during
training and competition.
Fats do not benefit us in any additional ways just by themselves so long as
we meet a minimum standard of intake per day. That is, there is no actual
recommended amount for fats. One simply calculates fat needs by summing up
the calories taken in from protein and carbs, and then eating the remainder in fats.
Thus if you need 2000 calories a day and your proteins and carbs sum up to 1500
calories, then you need 500 calories from fat. Because fats have about 9 calories
per gram, this means that for that day you will be consuming about 55g of fat
(500/9).
The minimum intake of fats for regular, sustained maintenance dieting is likely
around 30% in grams per pound of your LBM in most cases. Thus, our 150lb
woman with 20% body fat needs around 36g (120 x 0.3) of fat per day. For short
periods (up to 2 months), 10% in grams per pound of LBM are acceptable, but
much lower than that will have negative effects on training volume and intensity,
as well as muscle retention, metabolism speed, and fat loss.
Now that we have our calorie balance and macronutrients figured out, we have
80% of the daily nutrition puzzle pieces in place! Let’s move on to our most
important smaller detail of dieting; nutrient timing.
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Nutrient Timing
While nutrient timing is categorized under one topic, it actually consists of three
distinct considerations:
• How far apart should meals be spread?
• How many meals should be consumed per day?
• Should we be eating in any special way in relation to times of activity or
inactivity?
Let’s go through each consideration separately and come up with
recommendations from the scientific literature and practical application.
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1 ) MEAL SP REA D
No matter how many meals you eat throughout the day, the first question we
must answer in the design of meal timing is with respect to meal spread. The two
ends of the spectrum of options are:
• Meals spread evenly throughout the day with relatively even spacing between
them
• Meals eaten mostly during the morning, afternoon, or evening with less focus
on intake at other times of the day
Muscle growth and the prevention of breakdown are continuous processes. Put
another way, muscle growth after a workout happens over days of constant amino
acid influx into the muscle; Muscle breakdown, if it happens, does so over long
stretches of time, in most cases, as well. In order to supply the amino acids needed
to promote growth and prevent loss, a relatively constant amount of them must
be available in the bloodstream at any given time so the muscle cells have ready
access. This means that the best likely recommendation for meal spread is to have
meals relatively evenly throughout the 24 hour feeding cycle. For example, if
you wake at 8am and go to sleep at 12am, 4 meals, each at 8am, 1:30pm, 7pm
and 12am is s reasonable timing split, as opposed to 12pm, 4pm, 8pm, and 11pm,
which leaves a 17 hour fasting window each night and morning.
Simple implication: whatever number of meals you have during a day, try to
spread them fairly evenly.
2 ) MEAL N UMB ER
If we’re looking to spread amino acid titration out of the GI tract fairly evenly, we
must also be concerned with how many meals we are consuming across the day.
No matter how big a single meal is, the contents of that meal will take no more
than 12 hours to digest completely in most cases. Thus if you eat ALL of your
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daily intake in one sitting at 8am (which would be both impressive and scary),
your muscles will still be lacking in amino acids from 8pm until your next snakelike meal at 8am the next day. If you eat two meals a day, the spread gets better,
but because the meals are smaller by half, their digestion time also speeds up, so
that now maybe instead of 12 hour gap, you have an 8 hour gap in amino acid
availability. As we add more meals in, we lessen the gap in amino acid availability
until it gets fairly ideal - somewhere around 4-6 meals per day. At this point, the
gap is so small that muscle loss is minimal, and in fact, a small amount of exposure
to an amino acid-free environment fires up muscle building machinery during the
next meal - so much so that if any small amount of muscle was lost between meals,
it is gained back. At around 7 meals per day, amino acids essentially titrate around
the clock with no interruptions. Thus eating more than 7 times per day without
an extenuating circumstance is not needed and would be pretty inconvenient.
What does all of this mean? From the perspective of body composition,
anywhere between 4 and 7 meals per day is a very good place to start
for meal frequency. Anything much less than 4 will start to cost muscle, and
anything much more than 7 offers no additional advantages and just makes life less
convenient.
3 ) T IMIN G IN REL AT IO N TO AC TI VI T Y
The research on timing in respect to physical activity tells us several
important things
• Protein timing does not affect performance and recovery, so long as protein
intake is spread evenly through the day
• For training longer than 1 hour, carbs and protein consumed during training
improves performance and saves muscle tissue from being broken down
• Carbs eaten in the several meals after training are much more likely to
be assembled into muscle glycogen and to improve the next workout’s
performance than they are to be stored as fat, especially compared to eating the
same amount of carbs at other times of the day
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• Carbs in the meal before training reliably improve performance
• Fat intake slows, by a considerable magnitude, the digestion and absorption of
all other nutrients eaten in that meal
Ok, so from the information above, we don’t need to worry about timing protein
intake in any special way – we just spread that consumption out over the day.
What we absolutely do need to focus on, is on structuring carb timing. Based on
these concepts, we can recommend that having some carbs in the meal before
training (1-3 hours before in most cases) is a good idea to optimize workout
energy and productivity. Something like 15% of the daily carb total is likely a
good idea here. We can also recommend that during and post workout (up to
about 6 hours after the conclusion of the workout) is where most of our carbs
should be consumed, with about 70% of total daily carbs being taken in here if
body composition and performance is the goal. The remaining 15% or so of carbs
allotted for that day can be spread among the meals that are far outside of the
workout window.
Since fat intake slows the digestion of other nutrients, having too much fat in the
meal just before training can delay digestion until during training, which produces
two undesired outcomes: first, we don’t get those pre-workout carbs when we
need them, and secondly, we risk some GI discomfort as blood flow is directed
away from the stomach and to the working muscles, leading to an increased
chance of nausea as the digestion rate slows and the food just ends up sitting there.
In much the same way, fat during and right after training delays the appearance of
carbs in the blood and thus the muscles, interfering with glycogen repletion and
ultimately, recovery.
For these reasons, we can recommend that fat intake needs to be lower pre,
during, and post-training, with most fats for the day being consumed outside of
the workout window.
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TO RECAP TIMING, JUST FOLLOW THESE SIMPLE RECOMMENDATIONS
• Eat your meals spread evenly through the day
• Eat between 4 and 7 meals per day when you can
• Have most of your carbs pre, during and post-workout
• Have most of your fats in the meals of the day furthest away from your
workouts
By following these guidelines, you can get a bit more out of your diet, perhaps
around 10% more effect for body composition and performance. Not a huge deal,
but an important detail.
Now that we have timing pretty well squared away, it’s time to follow those rules
with just soy protein shakes, Oreos, and bacon! Yay! Wait, does the KIND of food
we consume to get our proteins, carbs and fats matter? Let’s find out in the next
section on food composition!
Food Composition
How much we eat (calories) is by far the most important factor we can control.
What we eat (macronutrients) matters a lot, and when we eat (timing) is a small
but important detail. Much less important but still impactful is the question of
where our eaten macronutrients come from. Coming in at roughly 5% of the total
effect of the diet on body composition and strength, food compositions tells us
where we are getting our proteins, carbs, and fats and how that matters for results.
Let’s take a look at each nutrient separately:
1 ) P R OT EIN
Protein composition, otherwise known as protein quality, determines to what
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extent eaten proteins are fully digested, absorbed and used to make and preserve
muscle tissue. Proteins with the highest quality have the best effects on muscle
mass; proteins with the lowest quality have a good, but measurably smaller effect.
Here is a list of some common protein sources in descending order of their
quality:
• Whey Protein
• Egg Protein
• Chicken Breast
• Soy Protein
• Peanut Protein
• Brown Rice Protein
Generally speaking, milk proteins are the highest quality, followed by egg and
animal proteins. Complete plant proteins like soy are lower in quality, and
incomplete plant proteins like brown rice proteins are the lowest quality. Getting
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most of your protein from higher quality sources likely has a very small, but
significant, effect on muscle size gain and retention.
When you stray from the recommended quality protein sources like those at the
top of the list above, and instead, find yourself reaching for a protein bar on the
go, or if you decide you want to mix it up by buying some protein pancake mix,
you might want to take a minute to assess protein quality. When reading food
labels and determining the amount of protein in something you are considering
as your protein source, also check out the ingredient list to see where the protein
comes from. An occasional meal with wheat protein as its sole protein source
is not the end of the world, but you want to consume mainly quality complete
protein from sources like those at the top of the list.
2 ) CARB S
Carbohydrates vary along two basic dimensions; the glycemic index and
micronutrient density. Higher glycemic index carbs digest more rapidly and spike
insulin higher, while low glycemic index carbs digest slowly and spike insulin
much less. Potential effects of carb consumption are revealed in body composition
and performance. Performance is better enhanced by higher glycemic carbs,
especially when they are consumed during and post workout to provide energy,
anti-catabolic drive (prevention of muscle loss), and faster glycogen repletion
(replacement of energy stores in muscle).
Although the data on this subject is less clear, low glycemic carbs usually have
high vitamin, mineral, and fiber density, which may have a small benefit to
body composition. Thus, our recommendation is to consume higher GI carbs
(like sugary cereal and Gatorade) during and post-training, but stick to high
micronutrient density lower GI carbs (like sweet potatoes and whole grain bread)
for most other meal times. If you are unsure, there are online resources for looking
up glycemic indices. Use sugar as your reference for high GI and whole wheat
bread or brown rice as your reference for lower GI carbohydrate sources.
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3 ) FAT S
Fats come in several varieties important to body composition and health.
• Monounsaturated Fats tend to have a large positive impact on body
composition
• Polyunsaturated Fats have a pretty neutral effect on body composition
• Conventional Saturated Fats can have a negative effect on body composition
if over-eaten, but need to be consumed in minimum quantities to provide
important hormonal and cell machinery support for body composition and
performance adaptations
• Healthy Saturated Fats (grass fed animal fats and coconut oils, for example) may
be a healthy fat, but the research is still unclear at this time
• Trans-Saturated Fats are generally unhealthy and have a negative effect on
body composition
In Figure 3 below, we’ve given a rough recommendation table for various forms
of fat consumption.
FA T T Y P E
RECOMMENDED INTAKE
Monounsa tura ted
60%
Polyunsa tura ted
15%
Hea lthy S a tura ted
15%
Conventiona l S a tura ted
10%
Trans
0%
EXAMPLE FOOD
Avocado, nu ts and their bu tter s ,
olive oi l
Vegeta ble oi ls
Coconu t/macadamia nu t oi ls ,
grass fed anima l fa ts
Fa ts from conventiona lly far med
bacon, eggs , cheeses , bu tter s
S tore -bought ba ked goods , mos t
fas t food
Figure 3. Fat Composition Intake Recommendations
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In summary, eating mostly animal protein products, mostly low GI and
micronutrient-dense carbs (except maybe during and right after workouts) and a
diet rich in monounsaturated fats may slightly help to promote body composition
and performance.
Percentages in the above table are listed in terms of percent of your total fat
intake, not of total calorie intake…in case you got excited about a diet of 60%
avocados and almond butter.
Next, we will take a look at which supplements might work to give us our last 5%
boost to physical appearance and performance enhancement.
Supplements
The bad news on supplements is that most of them have no measurable effect
on either body composition or performance. That’s right, when you walk into a
supplement store, most of the supplements you see on the shelves contain extracts
and compounds that are quite simply a waste of money.
The good news is that there are a few supplements which, over the course of
many years of research, have been shown to have a positive effect on performance
and body composition, and we have a quick summary of them right here:
1 ) W H EY P R OT EIN
Whey protein is a protein fraction of milk (the other component of milk protein
is casein). It digests and absorbs faster than any other known protein and is of the
highest quality, making it ideal for consumption when the GI tract can’t work
very hard (due to blood being away, in the working muscles) and when amino
acids are rapidly needed, exactly the kind of environment seen during and right
after training.
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2 ) CASEIN P R OT EIN
The other fraction of milk protein, Casein, is incredibly slow digesting, capable
of releasing a steady stream of amino acids into the blood for up to 7 hours after
consumption. For this reason it’s a poor post-workout choice, but a great meal
replacement for long durations without food and the most commonly occurring
example of such a situation; the pre-bedtime meal.
3 ) C REAT IN E
Creatine increases the ability of the phosphagen system to provide high-intensity
energy for exercise. Essentially, it gives you several seconds worth of high-rate
ATP with which to smash through each set during workouts. Not only this, but
creatine also builds muscle over the long term. 5g of creatine for 2 months on and
then one month off will do the trick for most people, but expect a 5lb temporary
water weight gain within a week of starting the supplement. Don’t worry, at the
end of the 2 months that weight comes right back off, but you keep the muscle.
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The creatine type with the most research behind it is Creatine Monohydrate, so
that’s the one we can best recommend. As a bonus, in simple powder form, it also
tends to be the cheapest option available.
4 ) GLYC EMIC CARB P OW D E R S
By spiking insulin and taking very little digestion time to appear in the blood,
glycemic carb powders such as Gatorade, Powerade, and Tang are a great combo
for post-workout glycogen repletion, especially when training twice per day. The
expensive stuff is probably not any better than plain old store-bought Gatorade
powder, and if it is, it’s just by the tiniest bit.
5 ) ST IMUL A N T S
Stimulants, the most common of which is caffeine, offer several distinct
advantages to the athlete
• Stimulants reduce appetite and thus make hypocaloric dieting easier
• Stimulants increase workout energy, pain tolerance, and endurance, even in
hypocaloric conditions
• Stimulants can enhance your focus and attention span, which can help you
both at work and in training, especially when calories are low
By using stimulants responsibly (starting with low doses, ramping up the doses
slowly, taking several weeks out of every several months to reduce or cease
stimulant intake to re-establish a sensitivity), your regular training and especially
your training on a hypocaloric fat loss diet can be impressively enhanced.
Do these 5 supplements work? Almost certainly. Do they have a big impact
on results? Almost certainly not. Even if we combine the effects of all of these
supplements at the same time, the total improvement to body composition and
health sums up to just around 5% of the total effect that diet can bring. In a word;
focus on your food intake way before you spend time concerned about which
supplements to take.
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Micronutrients
Before we round out the chapter on basic nutrition, we must briefly discuss an
aspect of nutrition that not only has pertinence in terms of performance (especially
if very badly approached), but on general health as well. While macronutrients get
much of the attention, micronutrients are actually of critical importance. While
micronutrients do not really boost performance directly, they support it at a deep
level by promoting general health.
Let’s zoom in and talk specifics about the four micronutrients: water, vitamins,
minerals, and fiber.
1 ) WAT ER
Proper hydration results in part from eating moist foods (such as fruit), but
also from drinking water and other beverages. Generally speaking, for a high
likelihood of health and performance maximization, 5 ounces of fluid for every
100 calories of food consumed seems to be a good starting value. So if you are
consuming around 2000 calories per day, you should be shooting for around
100oz of water intake per day, not including food. This value might seem
intimidating, but it’s really just over three 32oz Gatorade bottles of water for the
whole day. Not too crazy if you think about it. While this amount of water is
a baseline, some populations may need more water, including women who are
pregnant or breastfeeding, exercising or eating a high protein diet. Some readers
will be in several of these categories at once, so please take note! How do you
know you are hydrated? If you urinate four or more times per day and your urine
is either off-yellow or clear consistently, you are likely sufficiently hydrated. If
you notice less frequent urination or darker urine for a day or two on end, upping
your fluid intake is a good first step.
It also turns out that there can be ‘too much of a good thing’. If you overdo it
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with the water, an unlikely but possible result can be a dangerous condition
called hyponatremia. As its Latin name implies, hyponatremia is a condition of
abnormally low sodium in the bloodstream and body fluids, usually resulting
from over dilution caused by too much water being taken in without adequate
sodium or too much sodium being lost and not replaced. Because sodium is a
critically important ion for nearly all forms of muscle contraction and nerve signal
transduction, dangerously low levels of it are very serious.
Acute bouts of hyponatremia can result in the death of brain tissue and may
(and have in rare cases) result in brain damage, coma, or death. Post-menopausal
women are one of the highest risk groups for brain damage as a result of acute
hyponatremia.
The two predominant causes of hyponatremia are rapid and excessive water intake
without any electrolytes or food added (such as in water-drinking challenges as a
part of hazing rituals) and rapid water-only rehydration after intense dehydration
that lead to lots of sodium loss in the sweat. Weight cutting and hard training in
hot environments are typical causes of hyponatremia in the fitness world.
The great news is that preventing
hyponatremia is not terribly difficult.
Consuming electrolytes (Powerade Zero or electrolyte mini-squirt bottles added
to water) along with water, during and after intense exercise is a great start. While
basically any sports drink would also work, many sports drinks add extra calories
you may or may not want to consume in your diet at the moment. Additionally,
rehydrating more slowly always helps, with 7-10 ounces being consumed every
10-20 minutes instead of gallons at a time.
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On the opposite end of the spectrum is dehydration. Transient dehydration can
occur during exercise; the GI tract can only absorb around a quart (32oz) of
water per hour, and some very tough or hot exercise can exceed those uptakes,
sometimes by double. In fact, one of the reasons behind the fatigue of hard
exercise is the dehydration itself.
Light dehydration during exercise can lead to a 1-2% temporary loss in body
weight, a small thirst response, and decline in mental focus and physical output via
mild fatigue. Moderate dehydration can cause bodyweight losses of 2-4% at the
end of exercise, dry mouth with a powerful thirst response, headache and dizziness
or lightheadedness. On the higher end of moderate dehydration (around 5%),
cramping will become a noticeable symptom for many people and athletic ability
will be greatly reduced.
Severe dehydration occurs at 7-10% bodyweight loss, a situation which, in the
fitness world, almost exclusively happens during intentional weight cutting to
make a low weight class. Symptoms may include hallucinations, extreme thirst,
low blood pressure and rapid heartbeat and breathing. Possible risks include heat
stroke, shock, coma and death. To say that we do not recommend cutting this
much for a meet is an understatement.
While hydrating for activity varies greatly with the activity intensity and duration
and the temperature (both outdoor and related to how much clothing you are
wearing), some general recommendations are helpful. Consuming 2 cups of fluid
2-3 hours before exercise, a cup right before exercise, and a cup for every 2030 minutes of activity can be a great start. After activity, consume fluids slowly
but steadily until voluminous and clear urination returns, which often means
consuming around 1.5x the water weight you lost during the activity. And
remember, if you’ve been dehydrated to a moderate or greater extent, rehydrate
with electrolytes added, not just plain water.
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2 ) V ITAMIN S
Vitamins are important for both health and athletic performance and come in
two basic types; water soluble and fat soluble. Water soluble vitamins are readily
absorbed from the GI tract and are not stored long term in the body, with excess
intakes being excreted in urine or fecal matter. Fat soluble vitamins must be
bound to fat to be absorbed from the GI tract, and thus often have to be consumed
with a food source. Fat soluble vitamins can be stored for longer periods of time in
the body’s adipose tissues, and prolonged very low fat diets may cause fat soluble
vitamin deficiencies. Vitamins A, D, E and K are fat soluble and the rest are water
soluble.
Vitamin A, most B vitamins, vitamin C and vitamin K are found largely in fruits
and vegetables, which is part of the reason why consuming fruits and veggies is
so important. In addition, fruits and vegetables contain phytochemicals, which
unlike vitamins, are not essential for life, but have small positive effects on health.
The trick with most phytochemicals is that you can only get them by eating real
fruits and veggies, not through most supplements.
Vitamins B12, D, and A are available most abundantly in animal sources such
as meat, fish, poultry, eggs, and dairy. In fact, vitamin B12 is only found in
animal based sources, so vegan and vegetarian fitness enthusiasts likely need to
supplement with B12.
Vitamin E is most abundant in
seeds and oils, such as many of
the monounsaturated fat sources
recommended earlier.
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Still other vitamins, such as K and D, are made in the human body, by gut
bacteria and by the skin, respectively. Is vitamin supplementation a must? Surely, a
multivitamin tab once a day is a good “just in case” policy to round out intake, but
nothing beats a healthy diet. 6-8 servings of fruits and veggies per day, especially
varied ones of different colors can go a long way in ensuring needed vitamin
intake. In addition to consuming whole grains, enriched cereals, lean meats and
healthy fats, vitamin supplementation is likely not needed. In the case of dieting
for weight loss, vitamin supplementation however is likely a good idea, just in
case your hypocaloric diet results in too big a reduction in vitamin intake.
3 ) MIN ERAL S
Minerals come in many varieties, an important one of which is electrolytes.
Sodium, chloride, magnesium, potassium, and calcium are important to the fluid
balance of the body and to the proper functioning of all muscles and nerves. Most
people get enough sodium and chloride by a long shot from table salt intake,
and magnesium deficiency is rare, but potassium and calcium are often underconsumed, especially by women. While potassium can be found in most fruits
and vegetables, and especially in potatoes, dairy products are the best source
of calcium, with Vitamin D being critical to the latter’s absorption and thus
utilization in bone growth and repair. Adequate calcium, vitamin D, phosphorous
and protein are required in order to slow the inevitable loss of bone mineral
density after age 30. 1200mg of calcium and 600mg of Vitamin D per day is the
goal for most women, with supplementation being helpful in many cases.
While iron is not an electrolyte, it is the central and critical atom of hemoglobin,
the molecule in red blood cells that transports oxygen to the cells and carbon
dioxide back out through the lungs. If insufficient intakes of iron occur, a lack of
functioning red blood cells can result, which is termed Iron Deficiency Anemia
(IDA). IDA impairs oxygen transport to working muscles and will thus greatly
interfere with both training and recovery. In order to prevent or reverse such
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anemia, iron should be taken in from mostly animal protein sources, with plant
sources containing an inferiorly absorbed form of iron. Interestingly, the presence
of Vitamin C in a meal enhances iron absorption, which supports the practice of
eating fruits and/or veggies with meat-containing meals. Due to menstruation
and the iron loss of that process, women of childbearing age may need an iron
supplement in some cases.
4 ) F IB ER
Fiber is a type of carbohydrate that usually provides no calories or trace calories
for humans because our digestive enzymes cannot break the bonds that connect
the sugar molecules of fiber together. However, beneficial bacteria in the gut
can ferment fiber and use it for energy, which can help promote healthy bowel
function for their human symbionts.
Fiber comes in two general varieties; soluble and insoluble. Soluble fibers retain
water and form gels when in water. They are easily digested by bacteria in the
colon and they can bind to cholesterol and glucose in the small intestine, lowering
the absorption of both. Their inclusion in food usually adds a pleasing consistency
to the food. Insoluble fibers are the molecules that used to form the supporting
structure of plants before they became a part of your next meal. They largely do
not dissolve in water and are not easily fermented by gut bacteria. Included in
this category are fibers that retain much of their tough structure after cooking,
including bran, strings of celery, and skins of corn kernels. Because such fiber
draws fluid into the bowels and because it acts as a kind of scrubber brush to the
GI tract as it passes through, insoluble fiber is helpful in aiding digestive system
health and effectiveness as well.
Fiber has numerous health benefits. It lowers blood cholesterol levels by binding
to the cholesterol of bile in the GI tract and passing it along for excretion. It can
help control diabetes by slowing the release of glucose from the small intestine
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into the blood, and it has even been shown to reduce heart disease risk. By
softening stool and drawing fluid into the GI tract, fiber can decrease the risk of
GI conditions including diverticulitis, constipation, and hemorrhoids. By pulling
along the contents of the GI tract faster, fiber intake can reduce exposure to
carcinogens and may reduce the risk of certain cancers, including those of the
colon.
Another big benefit of fiber is its role in weight management. In a process that
will be greatly detailed in a later chapter, fiber can add a significant volume to
food. In addition to drawing even more fluid into the GI tract for even more
volume, this effect can stretch the walls of the GI tract and lead to enhanced
feelings of fullness. Because fiber has at most trace calories, this feeling will ease
hypocaloric dieting without adding a bunch of calories! With between 25 and
35 grams of fiber per day, most females will be well on their way to the multiple
health and functional benefits of fiber consumption.
References
P OSIT IO N STAT EMEN TS A ND G U I D E LI NE S
• Sport Nutrition. An Introduction to Energy Production and Performance.
2nd ed.
• National Athletic Trainers’ Association Position Statement: Fluid
Replacement for Athletes.
• Practical Sports Nutrition
• Advanced Sports Nutrition
• Nutrition: Concepts and Controversies. 13ed.
• NSCA’s Guide to Sport and Exercise Nutrition.
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SPEC IA L C O N D IT IO N S
• Mayo Clinic. Diseases and Conditions. Iron deficiency anemia.
• Mayo Clinic. Diseases and Conditions. Hyponatremia.
• Mayo Clinic. Diseases and Conditions. Dehydration.
CALO RIE BA L AN C E
• ACSM position stand on nutrition and athletic performance
• Body fat content influences the body composition response to nutrition and
exercise
• What is the required energy deficit per unit of weight loss
• Nutritional guidelines for strength sports: sprinting, weightlifting, throwing
events, and bodybuilding
M AC R O N UT RIEN T S
• A critical examination of dietary protein requirements, benefits, and excesses
in athletes
• Dietary protein requirements and adaptive advantages in athletes
• Dietary protein for athletes: from requirements to optimum adaptation
• Effect of two different weight loss rates on body composition and strength
and power-related performance in elite athletes
• Effect of dietary macronutrient composition on AMPK and SIRT1
expression and activity in human skeletal muscle
• Effect of glycogen availability on human skeletal muscle protein turnover
during exercise and recovery
• Guidelines for daily carbohydrate intake: do athletes achieve them ?
• Carbohydrates and fat for training and recovery
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NUT RIEN T T IMIN G
• Nutrient Timing: The future of Sports Nutrition
• Nutrient timing revisited: is there a post-exercise anabolic window?
• International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: meal frequency
• Meal Frequency and Energy Balance
• International Society of Sports Nutrition Position stand: nutrient timing
• Association between eating frequency, weight, and health
• Sports nutrition needs: before, during, and after exercise
• The use of carbohydrates during exercise as an ergogenic aid
FOOD C O MP O SIT IO N
• The protein digestibility-corrected amino acid score
• Glycaemic index, glycaemic load and exercise performance
• Glycemic index in sport nutrition
• Trans fatty acids and cardiovascular health: research completed?
• Trans fatty acids and weight gain
• Saturated fat and cardiovascular disease controversy
SUP P L EMEN T S
• Effect if whey isolate on strength, body composition, and muscle
hypertrophy during resistance training
• Effects of whey protein supplements on metabolism: evidence from human
intervention studies
• Fluid and carbohydrate replacement during intermittent exercise
• In sickness and in health: the widespread application of creatine
supplementation
• Creatine supplementation and athletic performance
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• International Society of Sports Nutrition Position Stand: creatine
supplementation and exercise
• Efficacy and safety of ingredients found in preworkout supplements
• Nutritional supplements and ergogenic aids
• Dietary supplements for improving body composition and reducing body
weight: where is the evidence?
Summary & Implications
The effect of the diet principles on body composition and performance can be
summed up simply as follows:
• Calorie Balance: 50%
• Macros: 30%
• Timing: 10%
• Food Composition: 5%
• Supplements: 5%
If we are just starting out in our diet journey, where do we first make changes?
If we have a limited time to dedicate to the dieting process, which is often the
case, what do we focus on most? Well, the priorities make these answers very
straightforward. Every attempt at dieting should begin with calorie manipulation.
That is by far the biggest and most impactful piece of the puzzle. No matter what
the situation; vacation, airports, conferences, stressful exams or deadlines, a specific
calorie allowance can be met by simply controlling food intake. With a little
more breathing room and in most situations, macros can be at least somewhat
approximated and tended to next. Trying to eat some lean proteins and carbs with
every meal is not the most difficult thing in the world, and once you get your
calories correct, just these two manipulations will pay off hugely. When you have
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Every attempt at
dieting should
begin with calorie
manipulation.
the first two priorities taken care of, you can move on to timing, composition,
and supplements at your leisure. It might even be the case that your first few
rounds of dieting, you get some practice fulfilling the first two principles. Then
once you feel comfortable with these and find it’s less work to think about them,
you will have the mental capacity and time to start applying the other three
principles. Of course if you were not aware of the priorities, you could get this
totally backwards. For example, every year, thousands of male college students
(and probably a growing number of females as well) living in dorms try to gain
muscle and fail. They buy supplements galore, but don’t eat either enough food
to be hypercaloric, or enough protein to support muscle growth. They simply do
not know about the priorities. They spend money on buying the latest creatine
formula, but fail to take advantage of the calories provided in the all-you-can-eat
cafeteria!
Having read this chapter, you can now avoid this kind of mistake; we have
discussed the main priorities to tend to when dieting to lose or gain weight. Apply
them in the described order and you will achieve results.
Now that we have covered the basics of dieting for body composition and
performance, it is time to zoom in on the details of dieting to lose fat.
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P. 5 0
02
Dieting Procedures
For Fat Loss
When setting up a strategy for fat loss, there are a series of steps
in the diet design process. We will walk through the steps of
constructing an effective fat loss diet based on the principles we
learned in Chapter 1.
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Chapter Two
When setting up a strategy for fat loss,
there are essentially seven steps in the
diet design process. Below is a list of
these steps, in general terms. In this
chapter, we go into the detail behind
each step, one at a time..
1. Establish a base intake for your
stable bodyweight
2. Generate a caloric deficit to
lose weight at the right pace
3. Calculate the amounts of
proteins, carbs, and fats you
will need to take in to meet
those calories, and follow
the rules of timing, food
composition, and supplements
4. Track bodyweight to make
sure progress is on the right
track
5. Adjust calorie and macro
intake as needed in order to
keep bodyweight loss on track
6. Plan your diet duration for best
results
7. Take time to re-establish
positive and stable
psychological and physiological
states after dieting - before
embarking on another fat loss
diet
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Let’s take a close look at each of these steps and establish our recommendations in
terms of executing them in the best way possible. This will give you a blueprint
for planning your own successful fat loss diet.
1 ) ESTAB L ISH A BASE I NTA K E F O R YO U R S TA B LE B O DY WEI G HT
In Chapter 1, we determined that the most important factor in fat loss dieting is
the creation of a caloric deficit, accomplished by the reduction of calories being
taken in per day. Before we can find out how much food to reduce for a fat loss
diet, however, we need to determine the number of calories we would need to
consume to maintain our current weight.
In figure 3 below, we list a starting point of calorie intakes by bodyweight and
activity.
TRAINING VOUME
BODY WEIGHT
LIGHT/OFF
MODERATE
HARD
100lbs
1500
1935
2400
125lbs
1650
2185
2650
150lbs
1850
2435
2900
175lbs
2050
2785
3200
200lbs
2300
3135
3500
225lbs
2550
3585
3950
250lbs
2850
4035
4400
275lbs
3150
4585
4950
300lbs
3550
5135
5500
Figure 4. Estimated Average Caloric Requirements for Maintenance
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It is important to understand two qualities of the above table. First, these numbers
were generated from several metabolic equations, and represent averages. Since
there is, without question, individual variation, these averages should be used just
as starting guides. Taller women will need more calories, while shorter women of
the same weight will need fewer. Younger women will need more calories, while
older women will need fewer. Those with genetically faster metabolisms will
need more calories than those with slower metabolisms. Thus, you can and should
absolutely start your baseline maintenance diet with these average values, but they
will need some adjusting in most cases, which brings us to the second point.
In order to individualize the diet for yourself, you should start with the
appropriate average from the table above, and then modify according to how
your weight changes as you progress through the diet. If you are gaining weight
steadily once you begin following a diet based on one of the above averages, then
you need to lower your calorie intake. This should be done via reducing 250-500
daily calories at a time. Once you have made this alteration, track your weight for
a week or so and see if that stabilizes weight. When you have found the caloric
intake that keeps your weight the same, you have found your base intake for
stable body weight. If you are losing, apply the same strategy in reverse, adding
rather than subtracting calories. To determine whether you are losing or gaining
weight, never go by a single weigh in. Weigh yourself 2-3 times per week, take
an average, and then assess changes week to week.
The above strategy will allow you to establish a caloric intake across weeks that
will keep your weight stable. To perfect this in terms of daily caloric intake – as
your caloric needs will vary depending on whether you are sedentary or have
a hard work out – you can use Figure 1 from Chapter 1 to help adjust intake
according to energy output for all of your different weekly workout and rest days.
Now that you have established your baseline intake, it’s time to move onto Step
two, generating a caloric deficit.
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2) G e nera te a
ca l o r ic defici t to
l o s e weight a t the
r i g h t pace
Since the most important
ingredient of a fat loss diet is the
act of eating less than you burn,
creating a caloric deficit is the
most critical step of the process.
Current data suggests that the
most productive middle ground
for a caloric deficit is one that
results in losses of somewhere
between 0.5% and 1.0% of
bodyweight per week. This
means that for a woman that
weighs 150lbs, a very good start
for a weekly weight loss goal
is somewhere between 0.75lbs
and 1.5lbs. It doesn’t sound like
much, but a 12 week diet at this
rate (even with a middle value
of around 1lb per week) will
lead to a bodyweight of around
138lbs. A 12 pound loss for a 150
lb woman means a completely
different look and performance
level a mere 3 months later.
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We went over this in Chapter 1, but let’s fine tune it now.
• Too small a deficit and we end up having to diet for weeks, if not months
longer than necessary. Because dieting to lose fat ranks in fun somewhere
between doing yard work and catching darts for a hobby, we don’t want to
needlessly prolong the process.
• Too large a deficit, and we end up accumulating a ton of fatigue quickly,
because we are lacking the nutrients to properly recover from training. This
also leads to muscle and performance loss, which nullifies aesthetic and athletic
goals alike. Additionally, super fast dieting can be psychologically unsustainable
(radical hunger cravings, excessively low daily energy, and so on) and often
leads to burnout and rebound.
In order to generate such a level of weight loss, we will use the common
understanding that a pound of fat is 3500 calories. Now, this is just a very rough
estimate and tends to differ quite a bit based on the situation, but because we
are just establishing our starting point for dieting, we can afford to make rough
calculations. Later we’ll learn how to make much more precise adjustments to
individual circumstances and physiologies.
If a pound of fat is lost with 3500 calories burned, we can assume that around 500
calories of deficit per day is going to lead to roughly 1lb of weight lost per week,
at least at the start of a diet, and in most situations. Thus, for our 150lb example
woman (sounds like a superhero… “it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Example Woman!”),
a 500 calorie deficit is going to generate the 1lb per week weight loss we’re
looking for, or at least close.
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SO, TO START THE PROCESS OF GENERATING YOUR CALORIC DEFICIT DIET
PLAN FOR FAT LOSS
a. Choose your percent weight loss. Example: 1.0% per week.
b. M
ultiply your weight loss percentage by your current bodyweight to estimate
weekly weight loss needs. Example: 150lbs x 0.01 = 1.5lb per week.
c. M
ultiply your weekly weight loss in pounds from b. above by 3500 calories
to get the calorie number per week. Example: 1.5lb x 3500 = 5250 calories per
week.
d. Divide the weekly calorie deficit by 7 to get the average daily deficit.
Example: 5250/7 = 750 calorie deficit per day
There it is; your daily deficit is calculated. Now, this is the deficit which can and
should be generated by a combination of increased activity and decreased food
intake. Make sure that if you increase your activity, you follow the guidelines for
calories listed in the activity levels (rest day/light day, moderate day, hard day)
above. If you do this, you can just subtract your deficit from the higher intake
amounts for those more active days, and the result will still be a calculated deficit,
not accidentally more or less.
Does 750 calories sound like a lot to cut from a 150lb female diet? You bet, but
1.5lbs of weight loss per week is one heck of a pace and the fastest we would
recommend. For most beginner dieters, we recommend starting closer to the
0.5% mark, which in this example would be only a 325 calorie per day cut. If
you are not used to dieting, this will be a less painful pace and therefore might be
more sustainable for newbies.
Now that you’re on track to lose weight at the right pace by cutting calories,
we’ve gotta make sure those calories are coming from the right macros.
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3) Ca l cu l a t e t h e a mount s o f p ro t e i n s , car bs ,
a n d fa t s t o t a ke i n t o me e t t h o s e ca l or ies , and
foll ow t he r u l es o f t i mi n g , fo o d co mp osi tion and
s u p p l e me n t s
This part starts out super easy; we’re just going to carry over our protein and carb
recommendations right from the maintenance phase.
Why are we keeping proteins and carbs high at first? If we have a certain number
of calories to cut, why not just cut them evenly from all three of the macros?
The answer is very straightforward; the three different macros do not have the
same effect on body composition and performance. Since protein has the highest
positive effect on diet outcomes (it provides building blocks for muscle growth or
maintenance), we’re going to keep it high for as long as we can and avoid cutting
it for as long as possible. Carbs are a close second to protein in their effect on body
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composition and arguably even more important for performance, so we want
to avoid cutting those for as long as we can also (though they would go before
protein).
Then, where will we cut calories first? While fats are a critical part of the
macronutrient intake equation, their beneficial effects can be had with minimal
intake levels, even below recommended intake. This means that, to a certain
low point (0.3g fat per lb LBM for long term, 0.1g fat per lb LBM for 2 months
or less), we can use fats to cut our calories without much of an impact. Yes,
the intake of fats helps us upkeep muscle and performance via hormonal and
intracellular processes, but as stated, we can cut fats, even to pretty extreme levels
for short periods without any detriment to these processes. So fats are the perfect
place to start cutting when shooting for our deficit.
When beginning our calorie cut, we now know what macros to start with. Let’s
use our 150lb example woman who wants to lose at a 1lb per week pace, and use
her “moderate” training day as an example. We will assume she is at about 20%
body fat, making her lean body mass (LBM) about 120lbs.
Base Calories: 2435
Base Protein: 120g (1g of protein multiplied by 120lbs as her LBM)
Base Carbs: 180g (1.5g of carbs multiplied by 120lbs as her LBM)
Base Fats: 137g (2435 total calories minus 1200 calories from protein and carbs,
leaves us with 1235 calories. Divide this by 9 calories per gram of fats= about 137
grams) (Remember from Chapter 1 that fats have about 9 calories per gram.)
We know that she needs to drop her calories by about 500 per day if she wants
to lose a pound of tissue a week, so our new base calories are 1935 (2435-500).
And because we’re going to take all those away from fat, we’re going to leave our
protein and carbs the same at first:
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Starting Cut Calories: 1935
Starting Cut Protein: 120g
Starting Cut Carbs: 180g
Starting Cut Fats: 82g (1935 total calories minus 1200 calories from protein and
carbs, divided by 9 calories per gram of fats)
So there we have it… dropping only our fats from 137g to 82g reduces our
calories by 500 or so and gets us rolling at 1lb of weight loss per week. As
metabolism changes (addressed in the next section), we’ll have to drop more
calories to stay on track. So do we just keep using fats? Yes, until the following
happens:
a. There is more than 2 months left of dieting, and you’re down to 0.3g fat per lb
LBM.
b. There is less than 2 months left of dieting and you’re down to 0.1g fat per lb
LBM.
In both cases a. and b. above, you can start cutting carbs to increase the calorie
deficit. Using our 150lb example female, if she’s down to 1524 calories and has
2.5 months left in her diet and needs to make another reduction, we have to cut
carbs. At this point, she’s at only 36 total grams of fat, which is 0.3g of fat per
her 120lb LBM, and going any lower would greatly impact muscle retention and
performance. By cutting her carbs, we leave the all-important proteins alone and
we make sure we’re still getting enough fats to maintain the minimum needed
levels for best results given our low calorie conditions.
Is it ideal to cut carbs at this point? Of course not. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t
have to make any cuts whatsoever and we could still make crazy fat loss possible.
But since the calories have to be cut from somewhere, once the fats are at their
bottom limit, the carbs have to start being cut.
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Do proteins ever get cut? That is possible, but for our example woman to run
completely out of carbs through calorie cuts, she’d have to be eating 120g of
protein and (let’s say it’s within 2 months of the end of a diet and we can drop to
0.1g fats per lb LBM) 12g of fats. That comes out to a total daily calorie amount
of 588. Unless you’re a couple weeks out from a super-competitive physique show
and you need that last little bit of out-of-this-world conditioning, going that low
in calories is neither needed nor recommended in almost any case. Thus, the takehome message about protein cuts is; if you’ve dieted so far that you need them,
you should almost certainly hire a highly qualified diet coach to guide you that
last step of the way. If you’re eating 600 calories per day or less without a clear,
proximal and exotic goal of an extreme physique or weight for some kind of
important competition, you’re almost certainly doing something wrong in your
dieting approach.
APP LY IN G T H E L AST T HR E E P R I NC I P LE S F R O M C HA P TE R 1
When programming your cutting diet, don’t forget sensible timing. Don’t go
longer than about 5 hours without eating, and make sure you have a post (or even
intra/post) workout shake after your weight training sessions. Eat most of your
carbs around training and most of your fats far away from it. Have a relatively
even amount of protein in each meal.
While you’re cutting all of these nutrients slowly but surely, don’t forget to keep
in mind the food composition rules from the 4th principle of scientific dieting. Eat
mostly whole foods, with lean animal proteins, whole grains, fruits, veggies, and
healthy monounsaturated fats for most of your meals. At night, try to consume a
casein or milk-protein source of protein to keep your blood levels of amino acids
up while you sleep. This prevents muscle loss during sleep (which is essentially a
prolonged fast).
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If you’re going to take supplements, do so consistently and intelligently. Slowly
ramp up caffeine intake as the diet progresses… don’t just start with the kitchen
sink!
4) Tra ck you r b o dywe i g h t t o ma ke s u re progress is
on t he r i g ht t rack
So our example woman cut her calories by 500 per day with the intention of
losing about a pound of tissue per week, of which most should hopefully be fat
if she does everything else correctly, including training hard. But how does she
know she’s’ on track? Let’s say she wanted to lose 12lbs of fat within 3 months…
how does she know if the diet is working and if she needs adjustment?
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The very simple answer is that she has to track her bodyweight. We have to
remember that our calculations of calories being taken in and calories being
burned are just estimates. Metabolisms differ, portion sizes differ even with the
best intentions, and actual daily calories burned differ as well. The only sure way
to know if weight is changing is to measure.
HOW OFTEN SHOULD BODYWEIGHT MEASUREMENT OCCUR? A COUPLE OF
CONSIDERATIONS
• Bodyweight fluctuations can normally fall within 2% of actual tissue weight,
both up and down. Thus, even aside from menstrual cycle fluctuations, a
150lb female may weigh between 148lbs and 152lbs on any given day without
actually gaining or losing any tissue, just water weight. Eating more or less
carbs or fats in the day before a weigh-in can be a big contributor to this
phenomenon.
• Given that weight tends to fluctuate, we can’t just measure bodyweight once
per week and use that to decide our next week’s diet changes. If you eat some
Chinese food (within your macros) the night before a weigh-in, you could be
up 2lbs over your actual tissue weight, causing you to make the decision to cut
calories further than you need to, and risk muscle loss for no reason. If you are
a bit dehydrated or eat a low-carb and low salt diet the day before, you could
be tricked into thinking all is well with an artificially low weigh-in the next
day, prompting a week of slow or no fat loss progress because you didn’t make
the cuts you should have.
• Measuring bodyweight once a day is just fine, but catches mostly water
fluctuations in its daily changes. It gives us a needless level of precision, and
likely anxiety, while coming at the cost of high dedication. Weighing in daily
means having to drag your scale around on weekend trips and other such
inconveniences.
Taking the above considerations into account, the best approach to weight
tracking seems to be to take a bodyweight measurement between two and three
times per week. To be consistent, first thing in the morning is a good time to
take weight, as water and food weight is largely obviated, or at least somewhat
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normalized. Also remember to weigh in either naked or with the same amount of
clothing on each time. It’s also a good idea to use the same scale, as variations in
scale accuracy may exist.
Lower your calories by cutting fats and weigh yourself 2-3 times per week, and
you’re well on your way. Usually this will result in a couple of weeks of wellpaced weight loss. Now, what is the procedure for getting weight back on track if
it doesn’t cooperate after a few weeks?
5) Ad j u s t ca l o r i e a n d ma cro i nt a ke t o keep
b od y we i g ht l o s s o n t ra ck
Once you have your weight loss moving at the desired pace, it is likely that after a
few weeks, losses will slow and you will need to adjust. Below are instructions for
how to deal with this as well as for other scenarios you might face earlier in the
diet process, when first establishing your cut. As you start cutting, there are three
possible scenarios:
a. You are losing weight at approximately the rate you want.
b. You are losing weight too quickly.
c.You are either losing weight too slowly for your planned rate of loss, not losing
any weight, or gaining weight.
Let’s take a look at each of these scenarios and see what, if any, adjustments need
to be made.
A. O N - T RAC K W EIGH T LO S S
This is the easiest option by far, and requires no effort whatsoever on the part of
the dieter, other than of course to continue to execute the plan as written. As easy
as this sounds on paper, there are two common pitfalls in this situation:
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• The temptation to try to change the plan to get even faster results. Because
you should already be on track to make good progress, this move is much
more likely to throw off sustainability than it is to help. If it’s a calculated
decision and it is made logically and in advance, that’s completely fine. It’s the
emotional temptation to always seek more out of the same limited resources
that carries problems. Pick a good plan and stick to it.
• Related to the first pitfall, the temptation to want to change the diet just for the
sake of changing the diet, even though the results are already the desired ones.
In our consulting work at Renaissance Periodization, very occasionally some
clients will go weeks without needing any update to their diets. They just lose
and lose and lose weight at a steady pace while sticking to the original plan; an
almost ideal situation! A tiny minority of these clients, having been promised
an interactive and continuously updated diet, will become quite upset that their
diet has not been updated, regardless of their progress! It’s important to avoid
the thinking that changing a diet is good in and of itself… it’s only a good
thing when it’s needed, not when all is on track!
If you’re losing at the right pace, smile and enjoy the temporary serendipity of the
universe… this state of affairs usually doesn’t last long!
B.) RAP ID W EIGH T LO S S
At first glance, this situation sounds like a good thing, but muscle and
performance will be negatively impacted if weight loss proceeds much faster than
1% per week, so we’ll want to have strategies to deal with this possibility.
If you’re still chopping away at your fats and are at a full complement of proteins
and carbs, adding fats back into the diet until weight loss returns to an acceptable
pace is likely the best idea. If your weight begins to fall too quickly when your
carbs have already been cut, then returning more carbs to the intake is the first
step in normalizing the pace.
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Add fats if you haven’t cut carbs yet, and add carbs if you have cut carbs already,
but how many calories are we adding? That can depend on the rate of weight loss,
but generally, adding around 250 calories per day to the diet will be a good start.
If you’re losing MUCH faster than 1% per week (3% or so, consistently), then
adding 500 calories might need to occur. But hey, great problems to have!
Adding 250 calories per day at a time for a week or so is probably the best way to
begin slowing rapid weight loss. For example, if you are eating 2000 calories a day
and losing too quickly, switch to 2250 calories per day. Eat that for a week and if
you’re still losing too fast, go to 2500 per week and see how it goes.
C. SLOW O R N O W EIG HT LO S S
The not-so-great problem to have is that of slow weight loss, no weight loss, or
even weight gain. In this situation, you want to follow the opposite advice of
situation b. and cut calories once a week by 250 per day in order to get weight to
move in the right direction and at the right pace.
Even with the best designed diet, and even if you make no changes to it, weight
loss will eventually begin to slow from your initial pace for the following reasons:
• The longer you stay in a hypocaloric diet, the more your metabolism will slow
down. This means that on your original cut plan the rate of loss will get slower
and slower, eventually stopping completely.
• As your metabolism slows, you’ll unconsciously begin to move and fidget less
in your daily life, causing a reduction of total calories burned.
• The more weight you lose, the less tissue you have. The less tissue you have,
the lower your metabolic rate will be, independent of hypocaloric effects.
You’re now simply smaller and it takes less food to keep all of your body
functions operating.
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In most any situation, as you continue to lose weight on the diet, your results
will inevitably slow. Each time this happens, you’ll need to update the plan to
re-create a deficit so as to speed things back up into the desired range for fat
loss. You can do this through a combination of decreasing intake or increasing
expenditure (traditionally done through cardio exercise), or a combination of
both. In most of the examples, we’ll be assuming that you’re already training hard
and that your diet is the primary place for manipulation.
In this case, if your last week didn’t lead to the weight loss you had planned, lower
your calorie intake by dropping 250 calories worth of fats (and that many worth
of carbs if you can’t spare any more fats). By following this procedure, you’ll be
assured of continual weight loss for the duration of the diet.
Speaking of duration, just how long should a diet be, exactly?
6) Pl a n you r di e t dura t i o n fo r be s t re su lts
There are 3 simple rules that you can apply sequentially in order to determine
your diet duration:
a. Create a weight loss goal.
b.Apply a maximum pace limit of 1% weight loss per week (with 0.5%-0.75%
usually being more sustainable).
c.Diet for no longer than 12 weeks at a time without a break to re-set your
metabolism.
LET ’S EX A MIN E 2 EX A M P LE S C E NA R I O S
Woman X wants to lose 10lbs by her next CrossFit competition. The competition
is two months away. She weighs 160lbs. She’s got 8 weeks and 10lbs to lose,
which gives her a minimum weight loss of 1.25lbs per week. Her maximum
allowable pace is 1.6lbs per week, so her goal is completely realistic and attainable
within the 2 months she has allotted.
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Woman Y wants to lose 30lbs and she doesn’t quite care when, she just wants the
weight off! She currently weighs 180lbs. If she diets for the maximum duration of
12 weeks, she’s limited to dieting at around 1.8lbs per week at a max pace. This
means that 12 weeks of diet at the fastest pace will yield her just over 21lbs of
weight loss.
Woman Y must, in her case, take a diet break to re-set her metabolism and come
back and lose the remaining 9lbs in another stretch of hypocaloric dieting. Just
9 pounds away and we’re cutting the diet short? Seems annoying and mildly
heartbreaking…the finish line is just in sight! Why the need to pause the diet and
come back later? Let’s take a look in the next section.
7.) R e - es t a b l i s h i n g P s ych o l o g i ca l a nd
P hy si o l o g i ca l S t a t e s
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After a single stretch of dieting and before the next one, the dieter is best served
by taking a period of time to re-set her metabolism and psychology. Why the
need for this approach? Prolonged (especially 12 weeks or more) hypocaloric
dieting has the following effects on the physiology and psychology of the dieter:
a. Down-regulation of metabolism via thyroid function
b. Increase of general fatigue via high workloads and low calories
c.Increase of AMPk (an enzyme involved in a cellular energy homeostasis)
activation via high workloads and low calories
d. Retention of set point at historically high body weight values
e. Increased hunger and desire for palatable foods
f. Decreased motivation via overwork and monotony
Let’s take a look at each one of these effects and explore what sorts of constraints
they place on the duration of a diet.
A. D OW N - REGUL AT IO N O F M E TA B O LI S M VI A THY R O I D FU N CT I O N
Long periods (weeks) of strict hypocaloric conditions tend to lead to a decline
in thyroid hormone secretion. To be sure, thyroid hormones (T3 and T4) are
still being secreted, just not at as high a level. One of the main functions of
thyroid hormones is to set the base metabolic rate of every cell in the human
body. Generally, the more thyroid hormone there is in the blood, the higher the
metabolic rate will be. Because thyroid hormone production is lowered during
the fat loss dieting process, a predictable decline in metabolism (and feelings of
lethargy and a higher likelihood of being and/or feeling cold) is expected. Eating
a balanced diet and getting a full complement of vitamins and minerals is a good
way to ensure that thyroid activity stays as high as it can; the biggest effector of
thyroid hormone secretion is the total calorie level of the diet. Assuming we’re
already controlling calories properly (not dropping them needlessly low when
our weight is falling on track anyway), we can’t really manipulate this variable.
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So other than just dieting properly, we can’t do a ton about thyroid hormone
secretion during a fat loss phase and we’re gonna have to fix the imbalance after
the diet ends.
Like every single one of the factors in this list, the metabolic drop due to thyroid
hormone reduction is a big factor in terms of the unsustainability of continuous
hypocaloric dieting.
If a diet is run far too long, thyroid
activity can drop so low that metabolism
becomes significantly reduced.
This makes losing weight much more miserable because you would have to drop
calories even lower to compensate and because you would feel increasingly less
energetic due to the thyroid reduction itself. Not a state of affairs you want if
long-term success is your goal.
A final important reason to avoid letting thyroid activity drop too far is that due
to the greatly lowered metabolism after dieting, even a previously normal caloric
intake (pre-diet) will lead to rapid weight gain; very bad news, especially when
we’re looking for long term success.
B. IN C REASE O F GENE R A L FATI G U E VI A HI G H WO R K LOA D S AND LOW CALO RIES
When you’re training hard, you deplete fuel stores and suffer some small (mostly
microscopic) wear and tear. With proper recovery strategies and a good grasp
on training volume, this fatigue can be healed and recovered on time. But with
a hypocaloric diet, we take away one of the most powerful weapons with which
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to fight fatigue; high calories. We also start to sleep a bit less or not as well due to
several factors like higher levels of hunger, so there goes another super-powerful
recovery modality. Add into the mix the high volume of weight training and
cardio that many tough fat loss phases include, and we’re setting up the perfect
storm for continual fatigue accumulation. By training smart, eating properly
and using the best recovery modalities available, we can retard the fatigue
accumulation process to a great extent, but we cannot stop it. As calories drop
and a diet continues on from weeks to months, fatigue will eventually accumulate
to unsustainable levels. This high level of fatigue increases the likelihood of
poor technique acquisition and expression in sport, poor physical performance
(strength, endurance, speed, and so on), muscle loss, and possibly even injury.
At some point, fatigue must be brought down to low levels so that hard training
can resume without being counterproductive or risky, and that means the diet
has to return to at least isocaloric for some time. An important point to remember
is that fatigue reduction while in a hypocaloric state is always a half-measure. It
can buy you some time, but the amount of time it buys lessens the longer the diet
runs. At some point you’ll need more time to recover than you need to train, and
any attempt at continuing to make progress past that point is a fool’s errand.
C. IN C REA SE O F A MP K AC TI VATI O N VI A HI G H WO R K LOAD S AND LOW CALO RIES
As fatigue accumulates, one of the chemical processes that both detects fatigue
and contributes to it is AMPk. A chemical messenger pathway in the cell (and, for
our interests, in muscle cells, specifically), AMPk or Adenosine Monophosphate
Kinase is an energy regulator. When calories are high, carbs are high, and activity
is relatively low (especially endurance activity like cardio), AMPk activity is quite
low. However, as calories and carbs drop while training volume and especially
endurance activity rise, AMPk becomes much more active.
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What does AMPk do? Oh not much, it just signals muscle catabolism (breakdown
of muscle tissue) to occur, reduces muscle growth, and converts muscle fibers to
be more slow twitch, making them smaller, less explosive, and weaker. Diet for
long enough, and pretty soon AMPk activity is dominant. Muscle loss and rapid
declines in power and strength performance are sure to occur with increasing
magnitude as the diet goes on. Without a rise in calories and carbs and a reduction
in training volume, AMPk activity will continue to be elevated, thus presenting
serious problems for almost any athlete and fitness enthusiast.
S e t t i n g Bo d y wei g h t s Ove r Ti me
Figure 5: Set Point Bodyweights over Time
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D. RET EN T IO N O F SET P O I NT AT HI S TO R I CA LLY HI G H BODY WEI G HT VALU ES
The human body has a very impressive set of drives to keep it in homeostasis;
a stable internal environment. One facet of that stability is the stability of
bodyweight. When bodyweight rises or falls, various adjustments are made in
order to re-normalize it.
Scientists have called this maintenance of weight homeostasis the “set point
theory,” and it is quite well supported in the literature. Spending several months
or more at any bodyweight seems to lead your physiology to recognize all of
that body mass as “its own.” In other words, for lack of a better description, the
body ‘wants’ to stay at that weight. Thus, if any of that mass is lost, physiological
responses kick in to bring it back. If any gains occur, physiological responses kick
in to remove them.
The effect of this for fat loss is very straightforward; the more weight you lose, the
more the body tries to pull you back up to that old weight. If you’ve gone from
165lbs to 150lbs in 12 weeks, your body will try to pull your weight back up to
your set point of 165lbs via various mechanisms including metabolic slowing and
hunger level increases. So anytime you lose weight, your body wants to gain it
back! Bad news!
On the bright side, set points do not function on infinite historical memory.
They seem to mostly be a factor of how much you weighed in the past several
months. So if you lost 15 lbs to weigh150 lbs, and you carefully maintain that 150
lbs for a few months, then your physiology begins to establish a new set point at
150 pounds or so. After several months at most any new weight, your body now
responds as if that’s supposed to be your weight, and will help you stabilize at that
new weight instead of dragging you back up to an old weight. The implication
here is twofold:
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• Simply returning to unrestricted “normal” eating right after a fat loss diet is a
bad idea. Your body’s set point is still up there in the old bodyweight range
and your weight has a high chance of floating back up if you aren’t very
careful to maintain for a few months.
• Taking several months to make sure to stay at your new low bodyweight is a
very good idea after a fat loss phase. Once you spend several months at the new
weight, your body’s drive to move you back up to the old weight will have
diminished hugely, and staying at your new weight while eating “normally”
becomes much easier.
E. IN C REA SE IN H UN G E R LE VE LS A ND D E S I R E F O R PA L ATAB LE F O O D S
The human body has a host of mechanisms to keep you at your set point or return
you there once you’ve strayed away. Various physiological adjustments are made
(completely outside of your conscious control) to “help you” re-gain lost weight.
One of the most powerful of these adjustments is the elevation of hunger levels
as weight loss proceeds. The more weight you lose in one continuous streak,
the more hunger is upregulated. Not only is hunger upregulated, but hunger
for super high calorie and tasty foods (pizza, ice cream, burgers, and so on) is
upregulated the most. Why these foods? Because they give you the most caloric
bang for the buck, and when your body is on a mission to get back up to a higher
set point weight, it is very good at choosing to make you crave the foods that will
do this the fastest.
Most people who diet end up gaining the
weight back, and the hunger factor is a
huge part of the reason why.
This hunger for tasty foods can present a big problem to dieters interested in fat
loss. We’ll definitely need to be aware of this effect if we’re to devise an effective
long-term plan to reduce body and fat mass.
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F. D EC REA SED MOT IVATI O N VI A OVE R WO R K A ND M O N OTO N Y
With high work outputs and hypocaloric conditions, fat loss phases are very
fatiguing. In addition, the lack of high volumes of flavorful foods combined
with the consistent need to train often leads to quite a bit of monotony. The
combination of fatigue and monotony has an incrementally more negative effect
on motivation. This effect gets increasingly powerful as a diet wears on. Several
months is well tolerated by most people, but more than 3-4 months at a time leads
to considerable motivation losses for many, and begins to increase the chances of
skipped workouts, cheat meals and even total program stoppage.
Alright, so that’s a lot of pretty bad news. The good news is that taking some time
to eat at maintenance (neither gaining nor losing weight) reverses all of these
effects and allows the dieter to come back later and continue to lose more weight,
if desired or needed.
After 3 months of dieting, you’ll start your maintenance phase. The purpose
of this phase is to re-set every single one of the problems encountered in the
discussion above; from metabolism slowdown to hunger cravings and set point
lag.
SOME GUIDELINES FOR DESIGNING A MAINTENANCE PHASE
a. Adding in initial calories
b. Preparing for an initial bloat rebound
c. Choosing the duration of the maintenance phase
d. Adding calories back in at the needed pace
a. A ddi ng i n i ni t i a l ca lo r ies
When you cease trying to lose weight and switch into weight maintenance mode,
calories will have to increase - for two reasons, initially, because of the direct
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need for higher calories, and later, in multiple increases due to gradual metabolic
increases.
When you begin to add back calories initially, for most people, we recommend,
starting with between 250 and 750 per day. For women over 200lbs, you’ll
want to add closer to 750 calories per day and for women around 100lbs or less,
you should start with adding around 250 calories per day. The more precise
recommendation is this: let’s say you were losing at a rate of 1lb per week when
you ended the diet. That means you were in a roughly 500 calorie daily deficit.
In this case, you would need to eat roughly 500 additional calories per day to get
to an isocaloric, maintenance level. This addition is made as soon as the fat loss diet
is over. It seems like a lot of calories to throw in right away, but there is a very
good reason for this; you want to move completely out of the hypocaloric state
and into the isocaloric state. All of the benefits of the maintenance phase (which,
remember, is crucial to allowing you to efficiently lose fat again later if need be)
will not occur if you simply slow the rate of weight loss down; they only occur
when you stop losing weight completely.
The macronutrients to add in order to bring the diet back to an isocaloric state
should be of the type you most recently subtracted to generate your deficit. For
example, if you had to cut proteins (unlikely), add those in first until you’re at the
recommended value for your LBM. If you cut carbs last, add those back in until
you’re at recommended carb intakes for your LBM and activity levels. If you
only cut fats during your diet, or have added less than the needed calories after
bringing carbs back, then you’ll be adding fats back to make up that calorie deficit
and turn the diet isocaloric.
The prediction is that your weight will stabilize, but, for most people, that won’t
happen right away. For about a week, your bodyweight has a good chance of
going up 3-6lbs more than the weight at which you ended your fat loss diet just
days before. Don’t freak out! This is completely predicted and explained in the
next section.
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b. P re pa r i ng fo r a n in i t ia l blo a t reb o un d
When you go back to eating any higher calorie or carb value than you are used
to, additional water retention is a likely effect. Carbs, especially when you’re not
used to eating them, can pull a considerable amount of water into your tissue.
Combine that water with the water brought in by the high salt concentration
of some of the “end of diet cheat meals” you’ll likely have, and voila! You’re 5
pounds heavier.
The good news is that this weight will be off in a week or two at the most, so long
as you’re actually eating an isocaloric diet. If you stop a diet and cheat like crazy,
you’re likely to be very hypercaloric and just gain a bunch of actual tissue weight.
As the water drops off but you keep cheating, the scale never drops and you’ll
have actually gained the 5lbs or so. But so long as you stick to the plan and only
elevate your average daily calories to maintenance, that 5lb bloat will drop off
within a week or two, and you’ll be back to the your end-of-diet weight.
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c. C ho o s i ng t he du ra t io n o f t h e m a in ten a n c e ph a se
This phase should run anywhere from 1-3 months. The longer you’ve been
dieting and the more you had to drop your calories from baseline (a big part of the
equation), the longer your maintenance phase should be. So if the diet was a
breeze and was only 2 months long, a one-month maintenance might be enough
to get you ready to diet full steam again. For diets of 3 months in duration and/or
those diets that truly drain you and push you to the limit with low food amount
and high workloads, up to 3 months of maintenance dieting might be needed in
order to re-establish normal psychology and physiology. By then, you’ll be ready
for another bout of fat loss dieting, if needed or desired.
d. A ddi ng c a l o r i e s b a ck in a t t h e n eed ed p a c e
Let’s say you’ve added in the calories needed to erase the initial deficit, you’ve
bloated up and then lost that bloat, and you’re on your way and planning on
7 more weeks of maintenance dieting. If you’re doing everything right, your
weight should actually start falling within the second or third week. Why would
it do that? Because your metabolism is speeding back up! The more speed your
metabolism regains (it can take 2-3 months to fully ramp up), the more food you
have to keep eating in order to keep weight the same and truly benefit from the
re-setting effects of the maintenance phase.
Every week that you register as underweight on average, add 250 calories to your
daily intake from there on. These calories should fill in the rest of your deficit
until needed values of protein (first), and carbs (second) are met. After that, add in
healthy fats as much as needed to make sure you’re getting in enough calories to
maintain your weight.
The process of adding food to maintain may last between several weeks and 3
months, and is literally the symptom of your increasingly more rapid and “back to
normal” metabolism. After the conclusion of the maintenance phase, you should
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be eating a heck of a lot more calories per day than when you just finished the last
diet, and at the same exact bodyweight. Now that your metabolism is back online
and you have lots of additional calories to cut from your diet if you so choose,
you’re ready to go back into another phase of hypocaloric fat loss dieting if you
are not yet at your final goal weight. Continuing along with this loss/maintenance
pattern is the most promising method of consistent and long term fat loss of which
the authors are aware.
That’s the nuts and bolts of dieting for fat loss. Next, dieting for muscle gain!
References
ENER GY BAL A N C E
• What should I eat for weight loss?
• Energy availability in athletes
• Energy balance and body composition in sports and exercise
• Sport Nutrition. An Introduction to Energy Production and Performance.
2nd ed.
• Advanced Sports Nutrition
• Diet, exercise or diet with exercise: comparing the effectiveness of treatment
options for weight-loss and changes in fitness for adults (18-65 years old)
who are overfat, or obese; systematic review and meta-analysis
DIETIN G F O R W EIGH T LO S S
• Evidence based recommendations for natural bodybuilding contest
preparation: nutrition and supplementation
• Adult weight loss diets: metabolic effects and outcomes
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• Body composition changes after weight-loss interventions for overweight
and obesity
• Effects of energy-restricted high-protein, low-fat compared with standardprotein, low fat diets: a meta-analysis of randomized control trials
• Effects if reducing total fat intake on body weight: systematic review and
meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials and cohort studies
• The role of diet and exercise for the maintenance of fat-free mass and
resting metabolic rate during weight loss
• Dietary protein, weight loss, and weight maintenance
• Effects of energy-restricted high protein, low fat compared with standard
protein, low fat diets: a meta analysis
• Role of protein and amino acids in promoting lean mass accretion with
resistance exercise and attenuating lean mass loss during energy deficit in
humans
• Body fat content influences the body composition response to nutrition and
exercise
• Lean body mass-body fat interrelationships in humans
SET P O IN T T H EO RY
• Body weight set-points: determination and adjustment
• Factors influencing body weight regulation
• Do adaptive changes in the metabolic rate favor weight regain in weightreduced individuals? An examination of the set-point theory
• The defense of body weight: a physiological basis for weight regain after
weight loss
• Is your brain to blame for weight regain?
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P. 8 0
03
Dieting Procedures
for Muscle Gain
When setting up a strategy for muscle gain, similar to that for fat
loss, there are steps to adhere to in the diet design process. We will
walk through the steps of constructing an effective muscle gain diet
based on the principles we learned in Chapter 1.
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Chapter Three
In many (but not all) ways, muscle gain diet design is a mirror-image of fat loss
dieting. Let’s look at the basic steps in designing a muscle gain strategy. Many will
be quite familiar from the fat loss phase:
1. Establish a base intake for your stable bodyweight
2. Generate a caloric surplus to gain weight at the right pace
3. Calculate the amounts of proteins, carbs, and fats to take in to meet those calories,
and follow the rules of timing, food composition, and supplements
4. Track bodyweight to make sure progress is on the right track
5. Adjust calorie and macro intake to keep bodyweight gain on track
6. Plan your diet duration for best results
7. Take time to re-establish your new set point and re-sensitize to hypertrophic (muscle
building) processes before embarking on the next phase of dieting to gain muscle
8. If you want to keep gaining muscle, proceed into a fat loss phase after the
maintenance phase and before the next muscle gain phase.
Let’s take a close look at each of those steps, along with the corresponding
recommendations in terms of executing them in the best way possible. There will
be many commonalities with the fat loss structure, but important differences as
well that we’ll make sure to note.
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1) E s t a b l i sh a b a s e i n t a ke fo r you r s t a ble
b od y we i g ht
In Chapters 1 and 2, we learned that the most important factor in fat loss dieting
is the creation of a caloric deficit, at least in part by the reduction of calories
being taken in per day. In much the same way, the most important factor for
muscle gain is the presence of a caloric surplus - eating more calories than you
burn. Before we can determine how much food to add to our diet in order to
successfully gain muscle, however, we should look back and review the calories
needed for maintenance:
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TRAINING VOUME
BODY WEIGHT
LIGHT/OFF
MODERATE
HARD
100lbs
1500
1935
2400
125lbs
1650
2185
2650
150lbs
1850
2435
2900
175lbs
2050
2785
3200
200lbs
2300
3135
3500
225lbs
2550
3585
3950
250lbs
2850
4035
4400
275lbs
3150
4585
4950
300lbs
3550
5135
5500
Figure 4. (repeated): Estimated Average Caloric Requirements for Maintenance
As previously mentioned in Chapter 2, this table is merely a rough beginning
guide and tracking bodyweight to adjust calories to fit maintenance for every
individual is needed. If your adjustments (using rises and drops of fat intake that
amount to 250-500 calories at a time) lead to a stable weight within several weeks,
you’re ready to begin altering the diet to increase muscle size!
2) G e n era t e a ca l o r i c s ur p l u s t o ga i n weight a t
th e r i g ht p a ce.
Since the most important factor in a muscle gain directed diet is the act of eating
more than you burn, creating a caloric surplus is the most critical step of the
process. Just as with a fat loss diet, however, there is an ideal surplus to aim for:
• If the surplus is too small, we end up spending more time than needed to
achieve our desired gains. Why gain 2lbs of muscle in 12 weeks if you could
have done it in 8?
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• Too small of a surplus, and we also run into a serious measurement problem.
If you aim for a ¼ pound of weight gain per week, that’s 1lb a month. There
is no scale you can buy at your local department store than can reliably detect
such small changes week to week. Add body water fluctuations to that and
you end up with the very possible scenario that you spend a whole month on
a “gain” plan but due to scale error and water weight variability, you fail to
detect that you’ve actually lost tissue and gained no muscle. Anything slower
than ½ pound per week is not within normal instrument or bodyweight
variability to detect. This means that females weighing close to 100lbs will
need to gain weight at a rate closer to the 0.7% body weight per week pace to
stay ahead of this 1/2lb figure.
• Too large of a surplus, and we end up risking great fat gains. Fat will be
gained at ANY rate of weight gain, but anything over 0.7% per week will
just add to fat gains without increasing muscle gains. For a quick example, if
two women weighing 150lbs train the same and eat well, but one gains 16lbs
of tissue in 8 weeks and the other gains on 8lbs of tissue in 8 weeks, what will
the likely change in muscle and fat be? What’s been found in research and
coaching practice so far is quite jolting; both will (under great circumstances)
gain roughly 4lbs of muscle. That’s right, gaining much faster than 0.7% of
bodyweight per week leads to almost exclusively extra fat and essentially little
or no extra muscle gain. So gaining too fast will just lead to your having to
burn off twice the fat later!
Based on the constraints above, it seems that the best range for a caloric surplus
lies somewhere between 0.3% and 0.7% of bodyweight per week. This means that
for a woman that weighs 150lbs, a very good start for a weekly weight gain goal
is somewhere between 0.5lbs and 1.0bs. You’ll notice that this rate is lower than
the fat loss rate, and that is indeed true. Especially for females, muscle seems harder
(and slower) to gain than fat is to lose.
Hold on a second…. do we have to gain weight in order to gain muscle? No, but
the rates of muscle gain with no weight gain are abysmally slow in most people.
The only lucky ones who can sometimes attain these elusive “lean gains” are
people brand new to lifting or scientific dieting. If you are unwilling to gain
weight under any circumstances, even temporarily, you will be reducing your
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ability to gain muscle by roughly half. We will discuss the lean gains myth more
in the “myths and fads” chapter at the end of the book. If you’re serious about
muscle gain, you have to gain the weight.
In order to generate our desired levels of weight gain, we’ll again use the
estimation that a pound of tissue is 3500 calories. For fat, this is roughly accurate.
For muscle, this turns out to be accurate because while muscle itself does not
contain as many calories per pound of tissue as does fat, it’s much harder to build.
In any case, we only have to be in the ball park with this initial estimate because
later we’ll learn how to make much more precise adjustments to individual
circumstances and physiologies.
If a pound of tissue is gained with 3500 calories in surplus, we can assume that
around 500 calories above base daily caloric intake is going to lead to roughly 1lb
of weight gain per week in most situations. Thus, for our 150lb example woman,
a 500 calorie surplus is going to generate the 1lb per week weight, 0.7% body
weight per week gain we’re targeting.
If you’d like to calculate your own projected surplus to start a muscle gain diet,
just use the following steps:
a. Choose your percent weight gain. Example: 0.5% per week.
b. M
ultiply your weight gain percentage by your current bodyweight to estimate
weekly weight gain needs. Example: 100lbs x 0.005 = 0.5lbs per week.
c. Multiply your weekly weight gain in pounds from b above by 3500 calories to
get the calorie surplus number per week. Example: 0.5lb x 3500 = 1750 calories
per week.
d. Divide the weekly calorie surplus by 7 to get the average daily surplus:
Example: 1750/7 = 250 calorie surplus per day.
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There it is, your daily surplus is calculated. Now that you’re on track to gain
weight at the right pace by adding calories, we’ve gotta make sure those calories
are coming from the right macros.
3) Ca l cu l a t e t h e a mount s o f p ro t e i n s , car bs ,
a n d fa t s t o t a ke i n t o me e t t h o s e ca l or ies , and
foll ow t he r u l es o f t i mi n g , fo o d co mp osi tion, and
s u p p l e me n t s .
Once we have our maintenance intake of proteins, carbs and fats, where do
we add the calories? Well, here is some information to make that decision
straightforward:
• Eating more protein than needed (above what is required for maintenance)
does NOT have any special effect on muscle growth beyond what any extra
calories will.
• Eating more carbs is ok, but doesn’t improve performance or body
composition any more than the extra calories would. Eating tons of carbs may
also reduce insulin sensitivity by a small margin, making muscle gain harder
than it should be.
• Eating extra fats is cheap, easy, and tasty (adding fats to most anything makes it
taste better, as evidenced by American Southern food or French cuisine). In the
case of monounsaturated fats, fat surplus is also the healthiest and best option
for body composition.
So we will carry over macros and protein amounts from our maintenance plan and
our primary source of calorie increases during most of the muscle gain phase will
be via the addition of healthy fats.
When beginning our calorie surplus, we now know what macros to start with.
Let’s use our lovely 150lb woman example at 20% body fat who wants to gain
at a 1lb per week pace (~0.7% body weight per week), and let’s again use her
“moderate” training day as an example.
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Base Calories: 2435
Base Protein:
120g (1g of protein multiplied by 120lbs as her LBM)
Base Carbs:
180g (1.5g of carbs multiplied by 120lbs as her LBM)
Base Fats:137g (2435 total calories minus 1200 calories from protein
and carbs, divided by 9 calories per gram of fats)
We know that she needs to increase her calories by about 500 per day if she wants
to gain a pound of tissue a week, so our new base calories are 2965. And because
we’re going to add all of those in the form of fat, we’re going to leave our protein
and carbs the same at first:
Starting Mass Calories: 2965
Starting Mass Protein: 120g
Starting Mass Carbs:
180g
Starting Mass Fats:190g (2965 total calories minus 1200 calories from
protein and carbs, divided by 9 calories per gram of fats)
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Is there a problem in the math somewhere?! 190 grams of fat per day?!?!
Nope, that’s totally fine. There is a lot of very tasty food that can be eaten to get
in that much fat. And for most women in most circumstances, more carbs can be
eaten too if the fats get to be a bit much. But hey, if you’re complaining about the
high fats… do a fat loss phase to remind yourself of how awesome they are!
The human body can absorb almost any quantity of nutrients thrown at it,
so don’t worry too much about “having to eat too much fat.” If you’re more
comfortable eating higher levels of protein or carbs to make up the calories,
that’s totally fine for most healthy women, although in most cases fats will simply
be the easiest way to take in a surplus. (That whole having 9 calories per gram
thing comes in handy here – smaller masses of fat have more calories than other
macronutrients and so they tend to be easier to eat when you are having trouble
getting all the extra calories down).
APP LY IN G T H E L AST T HR E E P R I NC I P LE S F R O M C HA P TE R 1
When programming your muscle gain diet, sensible timing is still important.
Make sure you eat at least every 5 hours and make sure you have a post (or even
intra/post) workout shake with weight training. Eat most of your carbs around
training and keep the heavier fat meals farther away from weight training. Have
a relatively even amount of protein in each meal. Spreading out your calories can
make them a lot easier to take in. Intermittent fasting sounds great until you have
3000 calories and only 4 hours in which to eat them.
While you’re slowly, but surely adding in all of these fats, don’t forget to keep
in mind the food composition rules from the 4th principle of scientific dieting.
Stick to mainly whole foods, including lean animal proteins, whole grains, fruits,
veggies and healthy monounsaturated fats. At night, have your casein or milkprotein to keep amino acids levels in your blood high while you sleep.
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Cheat meals are just fine to get your calories up. Easing in to several gigantic
cheat meals per week is a fine strategy for most people, though most of your
surplus should come from planned high-nutrient-dense foods.
Keep your supplement intake consistent and intelligent. Creatine is also a fine
supplement to try when massing, but remember that you will gain some water
weight during the first week of creatine supplementation, so keep this in mind
when tracking your weight and don’t be fooled into thinking you are gaining
additional tissue.
4) Tra ck you r b o dywe i g h t t o ma ke s u re progress is
on t he r i g ht t rack.
So our example woman increased her calories by 500 per day with the intention
of gaining about a pound of tissue per week. How much muscle will she gain per
week if she’s gaining a pound of weight? That’s a complicated question, but not
an unanswerable one. Muscle-to-fat gain ratios depend on numerous factors, the
most impactful of which are:
• Training “age” (beginners gain more muscle and less fat)
• Dieting “age” (those new to proper dieting will gain more muscle and less fat)
• Genetics (various mechanisms allow some to gain lots of muscle while others
gain more fat)
• Training volume (the more you train up to the point of maximal recoverable
volume, the more muscle and less fat you’ll gain)
• Dietary precision (the better your diet is and the more consistent it is, the more
muscle and less fat you’ll gain)
• Body fat level (leaner people gain more muscle and less fat when they eat a
hypercaloric diet – another good reason to cut after maintenance before a
second gain cycle)
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• The rate at which weight is gained (remember, at a rate of 0.7% or more
bodyweight increase per week, much more fat is gained and much less muscle
gained)
• The single-stretch duration of a muscle gain phase (the longer a gain phase
stretches, especially after 2-3 months of continuous weight gain, the higher the
percentage fat gain and lower the percentage muscle gain)
• Supplement use (those amazing before and after photos of physique women
on Instagram where they seem to gain almost pure muscle on a gaining phase
sometimes involve the use of anabolic steroids and other powerful supplements
with other side effects that need to be carefully considered, especially for
women)
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If all of the above factors are perfectly aligned in your favor, you can gain muscle
so fast that you’ll lose fat at the same time in order to feed the muscle growth! It
must be mentioned and emphasized that this situation is incredibly RARE. IN
most cases, there is a certain amount of muscle and fat gained at the same time.
For the average athlete or fitness enthusiast, a ratio of 1/3 muscle to 2/3 fat is
possible if the dieting and training process is done right. For individuals that have
been training and dieting consistently for longer than 5 years and have gained
plenty of muscle, 1/4,1/6 or even 1/8 muscle to fat ratios are not uncommon.
One of the most important implications of these trends is that a fat loss phase will
eventually have to be done after every muscle gain phase in order to maintain a
given body fat percentage and not just get increasingly fatter with each muscle
gain phase. Also, this fat loss phase will optimize subsequent muscle gain phases as
mentioned. We’ll look into this implication much deeper towards the end of this
chapter. Another important implication is that because muscle and fat are gained
at the same time, we have to figure out a way to track how much muscle gain
we’re actually experiencing so that we can adjust the diet if needed.
The very first part of the answer is to track bodyweight. Because weight gain is so
important to muscle gain, the only insurance we have that muscle gain is at least
fairly well on track is weight gain. As per the guidelines for measurement on a fat
loss phase, bodyweight should be taken 2-3 times per week and tracked so that
expected rates (1lb per week, for example) are occurring.
Secondly, since we don’t generally have the imaging technology readily available
to check weekly to see if muscle is being gained, our additional measurement will
be of strength endurance. Strength endurance is the measurement of how much
weight you can lift (any lift… squat, bench, deadlift, rows, etc…) for reps of 8-12.
This single measure correlates the best to muscle gains. Thus if you’re training
normally and your 10RM squat and bench are moving up as you gain weight,
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plenty of that weight is likely muscle. The more the lifts go up, the better, and
the higher percentage of your total lifts go up, the better. For example, if only
your bench went up but everything else is about the same, you may or may not
be gaining adequate amounts of muscle. But if all of your lifts except your deadlift
have steadily improved, you’re almost certainly on the right track.
If you’re not gaining much strength endurance as a muscle gain phase progresses,
you’ll need to reassess to make sure you’re doing everything right, just the same
way you’d reassess if bodyweight wasn’t also climbing.
Increase your calories by strategically adding in healthy fats, weigh yourself 2-3
times per week, and you’re well on your way. Usually this will result in a couple
of weeks of well-paced weight gain. OK, so what is the procedure for getting
weight back on track if weight gains slow after several weeks?
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5) Ad j u s t ca l o r i e a n d ma cro i nt a ke t o keep
b od y we i g ht gai n o n t ra ck.
As you’re gaining weight, similar to losing weight, there are three possible
scenarios:
a. You are gaining weight at approximately the rate you want
b. You are gaining weight too quickly
c.You are either gaining weight too slowly for your planned rate of gain, not
gaining any weight, or even losing weight
Let’s take a look at each of these scenarios and talk about how to adjust when
needed:
A. O N - T RAC K W EIGH T GA I N
Obviously this is a great place to be and requires no adjustment. However, there
are associated pitfalls just as there were when weight loss was on track in our fat
loss phase:
• The temptation to try to gain faster. Because you should already be on track
to make good progress, this move can cause two problems. The first would be
that you burn out on eating excessively, thus the rest of your diet becomes less
effective as you become more and more uncomfortable taking in the additional
food. The second and perhaps more detrimental effect is that you end up
increasing fat gain without any additional muscle gain. This just gives you
more work later during the fat cutting phase. If its not broken, don’t fix it, as
they say.
If you’re gaining at the right pace, stay calm and enjoy your food and your
strength gains!
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B. RA P ID W EIGH T GA I N
Body composition will be negatively impacted if weight gain proceeds much
faster than 0.7% per week, so we’ll want to have strategies to deal with this
possibility. If you gain faster than this, you’re just going to be adding that much
more fat and in most cases no more muscle. That’s just fat you’ll have to get rid
of later, which is bad for health, appearance (depending on your personal values,
of course) and muscle retention when you have to diet hard to get rid of it. That
being said, some leaner women might want the extra fat, and even benefit from
it health-wise. If this is the case for you, then gaining a bit above the 0.7% per
week might be a fine option.
If you’ve only added fats, and not additional proteins and carbs, subtracting fats
from the diet until weight gain returns to an acceptable pace is best. If you have
added extra carbs in addition to adding fats, then subtracting some carbs from
your intake is the first step in getting back to a good pace of gain.
Again, the question arises: how many calories are we talking about changing?
That can depend on the rate of weight gain, but generally, subtracting around 250
calories per day from the diet will be a good start. You can raise the subtracted
calories to 500 if you continue to gain excessively after a week of taking away 250
per day.
C. SLOW O R N O W EIG HT GA I N
Though it is a problem to have slow weight gain, no weight gain, or even weight
loss, the solution is fun – more food. In this situation, you want to follow the
opposite advice of situation b and increase calories once a week by 250 per day in
order to get weight to move up at the right pace.
Even with the best designed diet, weight gain will begin to slow eventually for
the following reasons:
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• The longer you stay in a hyercaloric diet, the more your metabolism will ramp
up. As it ramps up, you will need to eat more to keep your weight gain pace
on track.
• As your metabolism elevates, you’ll unconsciously move and fidget more
throughout the day, causing an increase in total calories burned.
• The more weight you gain, the more tissue you have that is metabolically
active and burning calories. This is in addition to the ramping up of your
metabolism via hypercaloric eating.
To keep your caloric surplus you can reduce activity or add food. Physical activity
is almost always healthy and generally leads to better body composition, so you
probably don’t want to reduce this too much. Food on the other hand is awesome
(ask someone on a hypocaloric diet, they will tell you in detail HOW awesome),
so you’ll almost always generate a surplus by adding in food rather than reducing
activity or training.
So add your 250 calories per day in fats to get weight moving up, weigh in 2-3
times a week and continue to increase as needed. If you cannot stomach any more
fats, start filling in the extra calories with carbs. By following this procedure,
you’ll be insured of continual weight gain for the duration of the diet.
Speaking of duration, just how long, exactly, should a diet be?
6 ) P L AN YO UR D IET D U R ATI O N F O R B E S T R E S U LTS
Similar to the rules for diet duration when losing weight, gaining weight requires
adherence to 3 basic rules:
a. Create a weight gain goal
b. Limit to a maximum pace of 0.7% weight gain per week
c. Diet for no longer than 12 weeks at a time
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Le t’s exa mi ne 2 exa m ple sc en a r io s:
Woman X wants to gain 5lbs by her next Powerlifting competition. The
competition is two months away. She weighs 160lbs. She’s got 8 weeks and
5lbs to gain, which gives her a desired weight gain of 0.625lbs per week. Her
maximum allowable pace is 1.07lbs per week, so her goal is completely realistic
and attainable within the 2 months she has allotted.
Woman Y wants to gain 20lbs and she doesn’t quite care when, she just wants
to be stronger and have a bigger booty ASAP! She currently weighs 110lbs. If
she diets for the maximum duration of 12 weeks, she’s limited to gaining around
0.73lbs per week at a max pace. This means that 12 weeks of diet at the fastest
pace will yield her just under 9lbs of weight gain.
Woman Y must take a diet break and come back and gain the remaining 11lbs in
another stretch of hypercaloric dieting.
Why the need to pause the diet and come back later? Let’s take a look in the next
section.
7) R e - E s t a b l i shi ng P s ych o l o g i ca l a nd Phy siologica l
S ta t e s
After a single stretch of gaining, its best to take time to maintain the new
weight and then cut the excess fat gained during the hypercaloric phase before
trying to gain more muscle. Why the need for this approach? Prolonged (12 or
more weeks) hypercaloric dieting has the following effects on physiology and
psychology:
a. Increase of general fatigue via high workloads used to build muscle
b. Decreased muscle gain rate due to higher body fat levels
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c. Retention of set point at historically low body weight values
d. Decreased hunger and desire to keep gaining
e. Decreased motivation via change in appearance
Let’s take a look at each one of these effects and explore what sorts of constraints
they place on the duration of a diet.
a. Inc re a s e o f ge ne ra l fa t ig ue via h ig h wo r k lo a d s used to bu i l d mu s cl e
As the relentless damage of high training volumes continues to accumulate,
fatigue will eventually rise to unsustainable levels that increase the likelihood
of poor technique, poor performance, likelihood of injury and lower rates or a
cessation of muscle gain.
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Temporary fatigue can be managed and tolerated, but at some point it must be
reduced - and that means training volume has to be brought down. Low training
volumes don’t support muscle growth (though they do help to maintain existing
muscle) so switching to lower training as we switch to an isocaloric diet for
maintenance work double time for an effective maintenance phase. Each reduce
fatigue and lower training volumes has the added benefit of helping us keep the
muscle we earned. Once we have trained with low volumes for some time, our
fatigue has dropped and our growth machinery is back to full function, we can
once again train hard and begin to lose the fat we’ve gained over the course of
massing. But why can’t we just keep gaining instead? Exactly the topic of the next
point.
b. D e c re a s e d mu s cl e g a in ra te d ue to h ig h er b o d y fa t l evel s
For reasons probably closely related to insulin sensitivity, leaner individuals gain
a higher percentage of muscle when they train hard and eat a hypercaloric diet
than do less lean individuals. That is, all else being equal, a leaner person can gain
maybe 1/2 lbs of muscle per week where the same individual, if 10% higher in
body fat, might only be able to put on 1/3lbs of muscle per week. While the exact
mechanism of this effect is as yet unclear, the implications are very clear. If you try
to gain mass for too long (over 12 weeks or so in most cases of appropriate gain
rates), the fraction of the mass gained that is muscle starts to dip quite low, and
the fraction of mass that is fat starts to rise. If this were not the case, you could be
absolutely jacked by next year by gaining tons of weight and then trimming the
fat off in a series of cutting phases. Alas, in real life, most of the gains in muscle
would be at the very early stages of that mega-bulk, and most of the latter stages
would be spent gaining fat with little or no muscle gain at all. Thus, once a
gaining phase reaches the point of very low muscle growth per pound of tissue
gained, the gaining phase is best stopped, with cutting phase done later to reduce
the individual’s body fat levels.
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c. Re te nt i o n o f s e t p o in t a t h isto r ic a lly low b o d y wei ght va l u es
As mentioned in chapter 2, the body has a way of getting used to a certain weight
after a few months of being at that weight. It will generally try desperate to keep
you at this set point, unless you carefully change that set point by cutting or
massing and then carefully maintaining for a few months afterwards.
The effect of this for fat loss is very straightforward; the more weight you gain,
the more the body pulls you back down to your old weight. In the case of
massing, if you’ve gone from 150lbs to 160lbs in 12 weeks, your body will try
to pull your weight back down to your set point of 150lbs via various factors
including metabolic increases and hunger level decreases.
As with maintenance following a cut phase, you will have to carefully watch
your weight upon completion of a mass cycle in order to maintain. After several
months of maintenance at your new weight, your body will have a new set point
at your new weight and will help you stabilize there instead of dragging you back
down.
In the figure below, the dieter starts out at 170lbs at month 0, and begins dieting
around month 1 (point A). While her bodyweight (the thick blue arrows) falls at
a predicted and linear pace down to her short term goal of 155lbs by month 3, her
set point weight (dashed blue line) has not yet caught up and is still close to the
initial 170 value. If she kept dieting, at this point (point A) it would be harder and
harder to get lower. This is because her set point is still so high above her new
body weight. By running a weight maintenance phase until point B, she allows
time for her set point to get down and match her new weight of 155lbs. At that
point (point B), her metabolism is ready for another round of hypocaloric dieting
to get down to her goal weight of 140 without her body continuing to fight to
get back to the 170ish set point.
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d. D e c re a s e d hu nge r a n d d esire to keep g a in in g
One of your body’s most effective strategies, in its attempt to keep you at your
set point weight, is the reduction of hunger levels as weight gain proceeds. The
more weight you gain in one continuous streak, the less hungry you will feel.
Interestingly, in contrast to a cutting diet, you will probably find yourself put
off by the thought of high calorie foods like pizza and cupcakes while massing.
People actually tend to find themselves craving diet foods like chicken and
veggies! Your body is set on losing and getting back to its usual weight, so it is
signaling you to consume lower calorie foods as a means to this end. At some
point, eating turns into such a chore that motivation to continue can measurably
suffer. Motivation can also suffer for other more conscious reasons as described
next:
e . D e c re a s e d mot i va t io n via ch a n g e in a p p ea ra n c e
Let’s be honest. Even if we are dieting solely for performance gain and nothing
to do with appearance, very few of us love getting fatter. During a muscle gain
phase, the majority of actual weight gained even in optimal conditions is fat. This
will inevitably start to change our appearance. We don’t want to make any value
judgements in this book about how much body fat is preferable or not, solely for
the sake of appearance, so we’ll let each reader decide for themselves. However,
it’s simply a statement of statistical fact that most women (and men, while where
at it) prefer to be leaner for the sake of appearance. Watching abs and muscle
definition fade while pants get tighter can be mentally difficult to deal with leading to less enthusiasm to eat the extra calories to keep the gains coming.
Luckily, mass phase is temporary and you have already learned how to take that
fat back off at a later cut phase. So, take heed in the strength gains, ice cream
treats and the comforting fact that you have acquired the knowledge to achieve
leanness again later.
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Taking some time to eat at maintenance (neither gaining nor losing weight)
reverses many of these compensatory effects. Taking the time to run a fat loss
diet after the maintenance phase reverses the rest of them and allows the dieter to
come back later and continue to gain more weight if desired or needed.
After 3 months of gaining, you’ll start your maintenance phase. The purpose
of this phase is to re-set every single one of the problems encountered in the
discussion above (aside from those requiring actual fat loss).
SOME GUIDELINES FOR DESIGNING A MAINTENANCE PHASE
a. Subtracting initial calories
b. Choosing the duration of the maintenance phase
c. Subtracting calories at the needed pace
a. Su bt ra c t i ng i ni t i a l c a lo r ies
When you cease trying to gain weight and switch into weight maintenance
mode, calories will have to drop for two reasons. Initially because of the direct
need for lower calories, and in multiple later steps, due to metabolic decreases.
The same rules used for initiating maintenance after a cut are instituted after a
mass, but obviously in the opposite direction. You will need to reduce calories
after the mass phase is complete in order to enter into an isocaloric diet. Start by
subtracting between 250 and 750 calories per day for women weighing 100-200
lbs. To be more precise, you can subtract the same number of calories that your
weight gain suggests you are in excess. So if you were gaining 1lb per week, you
will need to remove approximately 3500 calories per week, or 500 calories per
day.
The macronutrients to reduce in order to bring the diet back to isocaloric should
be the opposite of the ones you most recently added in order to generate a surplus.
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You will likely initially lose 3-6 lbs in the first week or so, but this is not actual
tissue loss; it’s just the bloat of the high calories and carbs coming off. Your
weight will stabilize after a week or so.
b. C ho o s i ng t he du ra t io n o f t h e m a in ten a n c e ph a se
This phase should always run anywhere from 1-3 months, depending on how
long and how aggressive your mass was. Smaller gains over shorter periods will
require less maintenance time.
c. Su bt ra c t i ng c a l o r ies a t t h e n eed ed p a c e
Following a mass, decreasing calories to maintain an isocaloric state will require
updating, just as it did following a cut. Only this time, you will progressively
decrease caloric intake in order to stay in the isocaloric zone as your metabolism
slows back down from its ramped up mass cycle state.
Every week that you register as overweight, subtract 250 calories from your daily
intake, starting with any extra carbs you added, then moving to fat reductions
after that. The process of calorie subtraction may last between several weeks and 3
months and is the symptom of your slowing “back to normal” metabolism. Now
that your set point is re-established to prevent needless muscle loss on a fat loss
diet, you’re ready to go back into another phase of hypocaloric fat loss dieting if
you so choose. Continuing along with this gain-maintenance-loss pattern is the
most promising method of consistent and long term fat loss of which the authors
are aware.
To recap, you gain the muscle you want and gain some fat as well, re-normalize
your metabolism and psychology with a maintenance phase, and then lose
the fat gained during your muscle gain phase. Once you’re at a lower body
fat level again, you can either head into another muscle gain phase, or begin a
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maintenance phase if you just want to either stay at that bodyweight or prepare
for yet another fat loss phase.
References
DIETIN G F O R W EIGH T GA I N
• Nutritional interventions to augment resistance training induced skeletal
muscle hypertrophy
• Gaining weight: the scientific basis of increasing skeletal muscle mass
• A brief review of Critical Processes in Exercise Induced Muscular
Hypertrophy
• Physiologic and molecular bases of muscle hypertrophy and atrophy: impact
of resistance exercise on human skeletal muscle (protein and exercise dose
effects)
• Nutritional Strategies to promote post exercise recovery
• Body fat content influences the body composition response to nutrition and
exercise
• Lean body mass-body fat interrelationships in humans
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P. 1 0 4
04
Performance Dieting Strategies
Most of this Chapter focuses on the nutritional challenges and demands
of twice daily training. We will go over strategies to maximize both
training performance during such days and the resulting adaptations. The
second section of this chapter will describe the right way to cut water for a
competition weigh-in and offer some day of competition eating guidelines.
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Chapter Four
This chapter was designed for those of us who compete in sport or are looking
to do so in the future. Competitive athletes train and eat to get the edge, which
can mean many things including twice daily training, cutting water weight for
weight class sports and eating in special ways on the day of competition itself.
For those of us crazy enough to train twice a day, we’ve set aside an entire
section of this chapter. For most of this chapter, we’ll focus on the nutritional
challenges and demands of twice daily training and we’ll come up with strategies
to maximize both training performance during such days and the adaptations
to that performance. The second section of this chapter will describe the right
way to cut water for a competition weigh-in and the last section will give some
brief guidelines on eating on the day of a competition. Because women today
are involved in so many types of sports, we can’t do justice to the discussion of
specifics for any particular sport, at the expense of leaving out others. However,
the basic guidelines we’ll lay out will set you on the path toward a sound
foundation of twice a day training, water weight cutting, and competition day
eating strategies for just about any sport.
Twice Daily Training: Nutritional Strategies
While most of us are content just training hard once per day (and then possibly
doing some light cardio at another time of the day, which isn’t impactful enough
to change nutritional needs), some of us are after the kind of body composition
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and performance results that demand more frequent training. For those that
regularly train hard twice per day, some unique nutritional challenges arise.
The two primary challenges are those of recovering from and adapting to
training. When you train just once a day and after you’ve eaten a couple of
meals, you have plenty of energy with which to train hard and elicit adaptations.
If you have already trained earlier on a given day, however, you might face an
uphill battle in producing the needed intensity and volume of work in the second
session to stimulate the needed adaptations that make that session a productive
one. There’s no point in training twice a day if you’re just going to be wrecked
from your first session and zombie your way through the second. If you cannot
work hard during the second session, it will contribute almost nothing to your
improvement.
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On the other end of adaptation, we know that once you train, certain adaptive
processes begin to accelerate in your muscle, nerve, and other body cells. These
are the processes that actually cause the beneficial changes from training, but they
don’t start right away. Many of them take minutes, hours and sometimes days to
get started and produce the changes you are looking for. Where the complication
comes in is that with any hard training during this time of “adaptive initiation”
the adaptive magnitude from the first session tends to reduce. That is, training
hard after you’ve trained hard earlier that day can somewhat limit the positive
effects the first session has on your physique and performance.
Thus, our problem is twofold; we need to make sure we recover the most that
we can after our first session so that our second can be productive, and we need
to make sure that our second session minimally interferes with the adaptive
momentum of the first session. Luckily, the way in which we eat and drink after
the first session and before the second can have a meaningful effect on the net
result of both sessions. Let’s take a look at some particular recommendations, but
keep in mind that all of the same principles from earlier chapters (in which we
assumed 1x per day training) still apply, even if they are not explicitly mentioned
here.
S prea d i n g t he S e s s i o ns A p a r t
When we train, we want to both stimulate the physiology with an overloading
workout (be it overloaded in weight, sets, reps, time, distance, speed, or whatever)
and make sure that that overload is put to good use in stimulating adaptations. If
we’re really going to be on our A-game and fully capable of the tough workouts
that make us better, we had better be well rested. Thus, just from this insight
alone, we’re going to recommend doing the second workout as far after the first as
realistically possible. The longer we rest after the first workout, the more fatigue
from the first workout will dissipate, the more we can eat and drink to refuel, and
the better that second workout will be.
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In addition to giving us plenty of time to rest for the second workout, this big gap
will allow many of the adaptive processes set in motion by the first workout to
run their course, which ensures that the more of the benefits of the first workout
will be realized. So, do we do our first workout at 5am and our last workout at
10pm? Not exactly. In a smaller but still meaningful sense, we have to consider
the energy we have to do our first workout and the adaptive gains initiated by
our second workout. If we don’t have any time in the morning to eat a meal or
two (or to even wake up fully), we could be limiting how productive that first
workout is. Secondly, we could be limiting the recovery and adaptation realized
after the second workout if we just get home right after it ends and fall asleep face
down with our workout clothes still on. In addition to being a poor choice for
personal hygiene, just going to sleep after a second workout without eating can
cut off the most opportune time for recovery nutrition and may have a small effect
in limiting the adaptive magnitude stimulated by that session.
From those constraints, we arrive at a likely recommendation. If you’re training
twice in the same day and have large scheduling freedom, it’s probably best to
do your first workout after a meal or two in the morning, and then your second
workout in the early evening, with one or two meals or so to spare for after the
second workout. This means that in an ideal setting, 6 to 8 hours will separate
your first and second workouts.
Of course we don’t live in a perfect world and we can’t get our schedules to
accommodate such patterns all the time. But we can try to do our very best. How
do we do our best in the real world? Just follow these three simple tips when
scheduling your twice daily sessions:
a. Give as much time as you can between AM and PM workouts.
b. Give at least one meal in the AM before your first workout.
c. Give at least one meal in the PM after your second workout, but two meals is
even better.
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These recommendations are numbered by how important they are, so if you can
do any one of them, do the first recommendation. If you can do any two, do the
first two, and if you can do all three, great! Just remember to keep it simple and
stress free. Just doing your best is your only goal.
O rga n i z i n g S e s s i o n Di ffi cu l t y
In most training program designs, you’re not going to have workout sessions of
the EXACT same difficulty on the same day. Usually one of the sessions will be
tougher than the other, though both may be quite taxing. If you have the freedom
to do so, we recommend the following choice of session difficulty:
Above all else, intensity should come before volume. If you have to hit heavy
doubles in the clean and snatch at one workout and do high rep squats, pullups,
and handstand walks in another workout the same day, it’s almost always best to
do the intense (heavy and low rep) workout first and save the volume workout
(lots of sets, reps, or distance) for the second workout. If you’re tired, you may
experience technique breakdown and sheer lack of energy to hit the heavy high
intensity work, but you can usually still crank out high reps, sets, and distances.
And luckily, volume tends to fatigue much more than intensity, so you’ll barely
feel those heavy cleans on your run, but you would feel every step of that run on
your cleans.
a. If you have the choice, make the first session the hardest one of the
day. You’re rested after a full night of sleep and your last workout was
yesterday. When that session really fatigues you, it’s ok because your
next one will be the easier of the two.
b. T
he second best option if you can’t help it is to have the harder session
later. Yeah, you won’t be fully rested for it, but at least the session
preceding it in the day was an easier one, so you won’t be super beat up
going into the second.
c. T
he worst option is to have a day with two equally difficult sessions
(as far as volume is concerned, especially). If you have to hit a certain
number of tough sessions in a week so that you can progress, it’s not a
very good idea to put two of the hardest ones on the same day. This will
limit both the energy you can put into the second one and the benefit
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you get from the first. When designing a training plan, placing easier
sessions with harder sessions should be the goal if 2x per day training is
needed. If you can’t accommodate that and must train super hard twice
on the same day, the world won’t end, it just isn’t the most optimal
option.
Just like with session timing above, the options for session difficulty are rankordered. You should always strive to make the top recommendations happen
and use the bottom ones if your schedule simply doesn’t accommodate anything
better.
Th e Imp o r t a n c e o f I n t ra / Po s t Wo r kou t Sha kes
If you’re training twice a day, the first session is likely going to utilize quite a bit
of glycogen. Glycogen is the form of glucose stored in the muscles (and the liver
to a much smaller extent) and provides you with the lion’s share of your workout
energy. If effective workouts are the goal, maximum glycogen availability in the
muscles is a big factor.
If you consume a shake containing simple and high glycemic carbohydrates
during and after training in the first session, you’ll not only spare some glycogen
(especially that stored in the liver), but you’ll have the glucose in your blood to
immediately begin repleting glycogen that was used up during that first workout.
In the first-to-second workout interval, glycogen repletion is both very important
and very time-constrained. We need to do our best to replete glycogen as fast as
we can and as much as we can, since it’s likely to be a limiting factor if we don’t.
Intra and immediately post-workout carbs for the first workout are a great start to
this process.
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Hig h Ca r b In t a ke s B e t we e n S e s s i o ns
Not only do we need to take in carbs during and right after we train in the first
session, we need to make sure that those carbs are as high on the glycemic index
as possible. High GI carbs digest quickly and appear quickly in the blood, raising
insulin levels rapidly and leading to faster glycogen loading into the muscles and
liver than lower GI carbs. In the research literature, high GI carbs have shown a
more complete repletion of glycogen between repeat training sessions than low
GI carbs, even when matched for carb amount.
We need to replete glycogen as fast as
we can and as much as we can, since it’s
likely to be a limiting factor if we don’t.
Thus, especially in the meal right after training, higher GI carbs are a very good
idea to make sure glycogen repletion is occurring at the fastest pace. In addition,
we know that fat, fiber, and very high levels of protein intake with carbs lower the
glycemic index of those carbs and make their deposit into glycogen slower. We
also know that moderate amounts of protein likely speed up glycogen repletion.
So our best advice, especially in that first meal post first workout, is to consume
moderate to high GI carbs (like low fat baked goods or sugary kids cereals)
with minimal levels of fat and fiber, and some protein (just your usual amount
of protein for one meal – in other words protein grams total needed for the day
divided my meal number).
Not only are our carbs going to be glycemic, but they’re also going to be eaten
in large quantities. No matter how high the GI of a carb is, you’re going to need
a lot of it to replenish first session glycogen loss. If you’ve got around 6 hours
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between workouts, 1.5g of carbs for every pound of your lean body mass is a very
good place to start, and much less is not recommended. That means a woman
with 130lbs of LBM will be consuming around 195g of carbs in 6 hours, with
most of that consumed by 2 hours before the second workout.
During this inter-workout repletion period, re-establishing good hydration is
also important. It’s even more important considering that each gram of stored
glycogen requires around 3g of water to enter the muscle or liver cell with it.
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If you just drink your normal amounts of water and eat such high carb amounts,
you’ll be lucky to not get dehydrated. Make sure you drink frequently and
consider adding electrolytes to your water so that you’re peeing a lot and peeing
clear within an hour of your second workout.
Tot a l Ca r b In t a ke s
Outside of the inter-workout period that occurs between the first and second
sessions of the day, you’re still going to want to take in the carbs needed to give
you energy for the first workout and begin your recovery from the second.
Taking those needs into consideration, two hard workouts (as rated on the
activity scale in earlier chapters) will require 2.5g of carbs per pound LBM per
day, if not more in some cases. We recommend starting with 2.5g per pound of
LBM and going from there.
What does a day of eating for twice daily hard training look like? Here’s one
example:
Meal 1 7am: Egg whites, 2 pieces of fruit, 2 tablespoons nut butter
Meal 2 10am: Lean turkey, brown rice, broccoli, 1 tbsp olive oil
Meal 3 12pm: (intra/post workout shake): 25g whey protein, 75g Gatorade
Meal 4 2pm: (right after first workout): whey protein, skim milk, two
bowls of lucky charms cereal
Meal 5 4pm: Lean turkey, brown rice, broccoli, 1 tbsp olive oil
Meal 6 7pm: (post workout shake after workout 2): 25g whey protein, 50g
Gatorade
Meal 7 8pm: Grilled salmon, whole grain pasta, two tablespoons of nut
butter
Meal 8 Bedtime: One scoop casein protein, two tablespoons of nut butter
blended to make pudding.
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Water cutting for various events
When sports have weight classes, it often pays to weigh in at the top of the class.
In other words, if you have to compete against women that weigh somewhere
between 148 and 132lbs, it usually pays to carry as much muscle as possible and
thus weigh as close to 148 as possible when fairly lean.
If you want to compete at your best, have the most muscle and weigh in at the top
of your class. The complexities emerge when the timing of weigh-ins becomes
a factor. For various federations in various sports, the actual weigh-in time isn’t
always right at the time of the event. In fact, sports can weigh their athletes for
competition in 3 distinct temporal classes:
• “Matside” weigh-ins, when the athlete is weighed in right before competition
begins
• 2 hour weigh-ins, when the athlete is weighed in two hours before
competition begins
• 12 hour weigh-ins, occurring 12 hours before the start of the competition
(quite rare and usually the night before)
• 24 hour weigh-ins, which are very common, especially in powerlifting and
strongwoman
As the weigh-in times are distanced further and further away from the
competition time, an opportunity becomes incrementally more open; the ability
to cut water weight and put it back on in time to by hydrated for competition.
This ability makes sense because of one fundamental reality: the amount of
body water (total water making up and being stored in the human body at one
time) it takes to facilitate peak athletic performances is significantly higher than
the amount of total body water it takes to keep you alive and well. If an athlete
is euhydrated (optimally hydrated for peak athletic performance), they can
typically lose up to 5% of their bodyweight in water (by urinating, sweating, and
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breathing) and still be at minimal or no risk of any serious health effects. While
anything over 5% is a gamble and anything over 7% is downright dangerous,
most athletes can handle a 5% loss from euhydration and still be ok, so long as
they don’t stay that dehydrated for longer than needed.
If you can drop 5% of your water and still be ok, an interesting implication
emerges. An athlete who is normally too heavy to compete in the 132-148 weight
class, and weighs as much as 155lbs can drop around 7lbs of water and weigh in at
148, giving them an improved muscle per pound of body weight benefit. That’s
a huge advantage, but ONLY if the water weight is regained before competition
begins so that optimal athletic performance can be exhibited. This regain of water
weight is critical, and leads us into our discussion of the complexities of cutting
water for competition, because other than the total amount cut, it’s going to be
our limiting step in how much weight we can successfully cut and still perform
our best.
The biggest limiting factors with weight cutting are the total weight cut (a
maximum of 5% of the athlete’s bodyweight) and the amount of time they have to
put that water weight back on in order to ensure best performances. With some
of the best strategies for rehydration, returning to normal body water takes the
following times, depending on the initial degree of dehydration:
• 24 hours: 5% rehydration possible
• 12 hours: 3% rehydration possible
• 2 hours: 2% rehydration possible
• Matside: no rehydration possible
As you can see, the degree of rehydration possible depends highly on the available
time to rehydrate. Additionally, the total amount of dietary and water intake
manipulation that’s required to achieve a certain level of dehydration properly also
varies based on the total dehydration amount:
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• Dropping 5% body water requires around 1 week of setup
• Dropping 3% body water requires around 4 days of setup
• Dropping 2% body water requires around 1 day of setup
The following table allows us to visualize these parameters more easily:
WEIGH-IN TIME
% BODYWEIGHT DROP
SETUP TIME REQUIRED
24 hour
5%
Approx. 1 Week
12 hour
3%
Approx. 3-4 days
2 hour
2%
Approx. one day
MATSIDE
BLOAT PREVENTION
Night before/day- of
Figure 6. Setup time required for various water cut strategies
Now that we have our goals and constraints in place, let’s take a deeper look at
the actual strategies involved in dropping water weight and then re-gaining it
to successfully bring as much muscle per bodyweight to the competitive arena as
possible.
***We first want to stress that cutting water weight can be dangerous if
done incorrectly, or when there are pre-existing conditions involved. Please
consult your physician before attempting any of the below dehydration
techniques. Once you have your Dr.’s approval, follow the directions
carefully and proceed with caution.
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24 Hour Weigh-In
The 24 hour weigh-in involves, by far, the most intricate and detailed
manipulations of food, water and body temperature. These manipulations are
performed so as to successfully lose the most water possible, in the safest manner
possible, and with the least fatigue incurred to the athlete so that they can
successfully peak for performance shortly thereafter. Let’s begin at the beginning
of the week and go step-by-step to see what changes we need to make. After the
weigh-in, we’ll take a look at rehydration strategies, and then move on to the
specifics of a 12-hour weigh-in.
De p l e t i o n
a. C a r bohydra te re d uc t io n
One of the biggest reserves of body water lies bound up with the storage of
glycogen. Glycogen, which is the complex carb stored in muscle and liver, is only
constructed with the help of integrated water molecules. In fact, glycogen can
store up to 3g of water for every gram of actual carbohydrate, and because females
around 150lbs can store up to 500g of glycogen, they are essentially carrying
another 1.5kg of water. If 75% of that glycogen-water total is dropped (500g
glycogen plus 1.5kg water = 2kg total), that’s 1.5kg already, or 3.3lbs. With a
3.3lb drop at 150lbs, that’s already over 2% bodyweight right there!
Glycogen reserves are burned off during both exercise and general daily tasks, so
it will take around 5 days or so of special eating to drop glycogen to its lowest
levels and thus lose body water. What kind of special eating? Well, a diet almost
completely devoid (or as close as possible) of carbohydrates. The same calories as
usual, but with close to no carbs means that more fats will have to be consumed.
This low-carb diet starts a week out from the weigh-in and lasts all the way up to
the time you step on the scale.
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b. Wa te r l o a di ng
In order to set up for easy water loss later in the week, we have to make sure the
hormonal axes that control water retention in the body are tilted towards diuresis
(water expulsion). If they are tilted towards antidiuresis (water retention), water
loss will be much more difficult, more extreme strategies will be required to drop
it and these strategies cause much more fatigue.
The most straightforward way to allow for diuresis to occur is to consume lots of
fluids. Since none of the fluids can contain carbs, water and diet drinks are the best
choice here.
How much water? 1 gallon of water for
100lbs of body weight per day.
Thus, a 130lb woman would consume 1.3 gallons of water each day, spread over
the day in even amounts. This should be a good starting point for water intake
during water loading, but the best indication of sufficient hyper-hydration is the
frequent urination of clear urine.
Remember that foods and even coffee also contain water, so you might not
need to chug a full gallon of water daily to water load sufficiently – that is just a
suggested starting point per 100 lbs. Hyponatremia (over-hydration) is extremely
dangerous. To be safe, drink enough extra water so that you are urinating
frequently (every few hours) and your urine is clear, but do not aggressively drink
much more than a gallon per 100lbs. Watch for symptoms like nausea, headache,
confusion, and muscle spasms or just in general, if you feel weird, consult your
doctor and stop chugging. Getting to a state of hyponatremia is unlikely from
drinking the recommended water amounts across a day for water loading, but it
is important to be aware. It is also important to spread your water drinking out
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across the day. Don’t blast through the gallon in one sitting. This will decrease
absorption and can be dangerous.
The water loading process begins at the start of the week and will continue
through the fifth day. Thus if your weigh-in is on Friday morning, you’ll start
loading water on the previous Friday and continue to drink the same ample
amount until Wednesday night.
c. S a l t re s t r i c t i o n
Salt attracts more water into your cells than even glycogen. Thus, restricting salt
intake is eventually going to be a strategy for eliminating body water. However,
the hormonal regulators of salt concentration in the human body are incredibly
sensitive, and will create an antidiuretic effect within hours of salt restriction.
Thus, we’re going to wait until 2 days out from our weigh-in to cut salt. If the
weigh-in is on Friday morning, this means that we’ll reduce our foods to as
low-salt as we can on Wednesday morning but no sooner. Reducing salt intake
any sooner will lead to an overcompensation by the rapid hormonal antidiuretic
pathways and will make the last bit of water drop more difficult than it needs to
be, thus requiring you to be dehydrated for longer.
A big implication of this late cut of salt is that you must continue to eat normal
amounts of salt all week beforehand. When you’re drinking all of that water until
the last day of the water load, you need to be consuming your normal amount of
salt if you want to prevent antidiuretic processes from switching on too soon. An
easy way to do this is to continue to salt foods normally and drink some Powerade
Zero (or comparable flavored beverage containing electrolytes but no carbs) to
make up some of the fluid intake requirements.
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THUS FAR, OUR PLAN CONSISTS OF THE FOLLOWING
• Restrict carbohydrate intake as low as possible until weigh-ins have occurred
• Drink approximately a gallon of water, per 100lbs of bodyweight, per day from
1 week out until one day in advance of the weigh-in
• Take in normal levels of salt until 2 days before the weigh-in, then, reduce salt
intake to that which is naturally available in low-salt foods and no higher
During the water loading, your weight will actually rise for the first several days
as you hyper-hydrate. As your water regulation pathways adjust to the higher
water intakes and induce diuresis and as glycogen depletion from your low carb
diet occurs, your weight will fall around 3% by the 24hour-out mark. Great!
Almost all the way there.
d. Wa te r re s t r i c t i o n
At 24 hours before the weigh-ins (in simpler terms, the morning of the day
before), we begin our water cut. The task is simple; we only consume enough
water to be able to swallow our food and nothing more. Because of the built up
diuretic drive of the last week or so of water loading and the release of water from
glycogen stores and lowered salt intakes, the first half of the day will continue to
be (as the whole week has been) punctuated by heavy urination of clear urine.
Because you’re taking in almost no water to replace this lost urine, your weight
will start to fall considerably, and you’ll likely lose another 1% or so during the
first half of this day. That’s great, cause now we’re approaching 4% of our total
body weight in water lost!
e . Fo o d re s t r i c t i o n
In the final day before the weigh-in, we want to make sure we’re as light as
possible. This means we can even make sure to have very little food in our
digestive tracts! Yes, poop does weigh a bit, and the less of it we can be “full of,”
on the competition scale the next morning, the lighter we will be.
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Reducing GI tract material and fecal weight is accomplished by eating very low
volume foods and those low in fiber, since fiber tends to attract water. The usual
fare of chicken, olive oil and broccoli is replaced with eggs or protein powder.
Our best in-house recommendation is casein pudding. Casein protein is perfect
for preventing muscle loss during this time as it provides a steady stream of anticatabolic amino acids, as well as being very low in volume. Just two scoops of
casein protein mixed with 2-4 oz of water provides a low-volume pudding that
has 50g of high quality protein and not much else.
f. H y pe r t he r mi a
Our final piece of the puzzle is put in place in the last 12 hours or so before
the weigh-in itself. We’ve dropped just about all the water we can without
actually increasing sweat rates, so it’s time to turn up the heat. By increasing our
body temperature, we can initiate sweating and drop a considerable amount of
weight very quickly. The big negative is that hyperthermia (an elevated body
temperature) is very fatiguing and not safe for long periods, so we must use 3
precautions here:
• Already be very dehydrated from the previously mentioned means so as to limit
the need for hyperthermia
• Not overheat to an extreme (sauna, for example) for longer than 20 minutes at
a time without cooling off
• Be observant of our physical and mental state and back off and cool down if
vision starts to blur, coordination reduces, or muscle weakness presents
For that last 1% or so of bodyweight, hyperthermia can be used safely and
effectively in two main ways:
• Wearing warmer-than-needed clothes for the last 12 hours before a weigh-in.
This will cause low-grade sweating at a safe body temperature for the whole 12
hours. If you’re ok sleeping and relaxing while a bit hot, this is a great choice.
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• Using a sauna or hot shower/tub within the last several hours (morning of
weigh-in)
This process needs to occur first thing the morning of the weigh-in, around 4
hours before the meet weigh-in starts. 20 minute bouts of intentional overheating
can be broken up with 10 minute bouts of cooling back down to be both safe and
effective. These bouts of overheating can be accomplished in a number of ways,
all of which work comparably well:
• Take a hot shower
• Wear warm clothes into your bathroom, run the hot shower behind the curtain
as you sit on the toilet with the lid closed and the door shut
• Go to a formal sauna at a gym
• Use a hot tub at a gym
• Sit in your own bath tub with the hot water running. DO NOT DO THIS
WITHOUT SUPERVISION (and in fact the whole process of hyperthermia
would benefit greatly from supervision)
• Have a friend drive you to the meet in their car (if it’s several hours away) and
wear winter clothes while they wear summer clothes and blast the car’s heat
into your direction
Be very careful with hyperthermic methods and always make sure to stay safe.
Sports are nothing to get into health trouble about.
After you’ve cut your water and weighed in, you’re on target and ready to rehydrate and refill your glycogen and salt stores! Up next, the repletion section!
(You are about to feel much better – the below strategy is incredibly effective
but not a whole lot of fun, especially on the final hungry, thirsty, weak day of the
weigh in).
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To summarize, here is a timeline table of the ‘24 hour weigh in’ guidelines for
dropping approximately 5% body weight:
S T R AT E GY
BEGINS
END
Car b Depletion
7 days ou t
At weigh-in
Wa ter Loading
7 days ou t
24 hour s ou t
S a lt Depletion
48 hour s ou t
At weigh-in
Wa ter Depletion
24 hour s ou t
At weigh-in
Food Volume Reduction
24 hour s ou t
At weigh-in
Hyper ther mia
12-4 hour s ou t
At weigh-in
Figure 7. Twenty-four hour weigh in water cut timeline
R e p l et i o n
The replacement of the lost bodyweight after the weigh-in has occurred is as
important as the weight cut itself, because only with full hydration can we expect
our best performances. We know we’ve replaced adequately when our weight
is at a stable weight equivalent to or even slightly above our starting weight
a week earlier, before the water cut started. If morning weight on the day of
the competition is still lower than usual, aggressive repletion methods need to
continue until normal daily training weight is reached.
Why are the repletion methods after a water cut termed “aggressive?” This is
because, during a repletion, we’re fighting against the clock. Every hour takes us
closer to the need to be fully repleted at competition, and every one of those hours
must be spent on the serious business of re-establishing bodyweight. What are
those aggressive repletion methods? Essentially, they are just the consumption of
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the lost substances en masse; namely water, salt, and carbohydrates. In addition,
we’ll be making sure that we do our best to reverse the fatigue accumulation of
the water cut, and for that, we’ll need high calories as well. Let’s go through the
list of substances which need repletion and discuss the specific recommendations
of their intake after a 24hour-out weigh-in.
a. Wa te r
As almost all of the actual weight dropped during the cut is itself water, the
most critical component of repleting after the cut is getting back a sufficient
level of water. The minimum amount is around 1 gallon / 128 oz per 100lbs of
bodyweight. Thus a 150lb woman needs to get in 1.5 gallons over the next 12
hours. Since this is a minimum amount, in reality more will often need to be
taken in. We give you this value of 1 gallon per 100lbs to guide you to at least
getting a good start on water repletion. You shouldn’t need much more than that,
but the best indicator is urine color on the morning of your competition. Shoot
for a gallon per 100lbs the day before you compete (first 12 hours of repletion),
and then drink plenty of fluids overnight if you wake up for whatever reason.
If, by the morning, your urine is very clear, you’re good to go and can resume
normal hydration practices. If you’re still peeing yellow or darker, continue to
consume more fluids than usual to bring yourself up to normal hydration by the
start of the competition.
A big help to the rehydration process is to remember that almost any fluids
can count towards your intake goal. Gatorade, fruit juice, and most any other
beverage work. If they have too much sugar, they will make you thirstier and
you’ll drink more water just out of thirst. We recommend going about half plain
water and half carb-heavy beverages to make sure you add a sufficient amount of
fluids.
The last tip on water intake is very similar to the process of water loading during
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the cut; consistency and moderation are the key. If you chug a gallon of water
right after you weigh in, most of that water will get peed out anyway, as it’s
usually too much for your muscle and other cells to absorb. In addition, you’ll be
risking hyponatremia. But if you have 32oz of water with every meal and you sip
on sugary beverages and water in between meals and with snacks throughout the
day, you’ll absorb and replete much more of that water, and be less uncomfortable
doing so.
b. C a r b ohydra te s
Just as with water, carb repletion needs to be slow and steady, and most of it done
within the first 12 hours of the repletion. In that timeframe, you need to consume
around 5g of carbohydrate per pound of bodyweight. That’s right, which means
women who weigh 150lbs will be eating 750g of carbs during the 12 hour period
after the weigh-in! If that sounds like a lot, you’re right! The depleted physique
will need all of that carbohydrate to replete glycogen stores completely to help
you perform your absolute best on the next day. On the upside, it’s a rare instance
where such massive carb intake is recommended, so enjoy!
Just like with water, there is a limit to the absorption and glycogen assimilation
rate of carbs. Eat any faster, and you’ll either get sick to your stomach or you’ll
add more fat and less glycogen than you could have. In general, 1g per 2 hours
per pound of bodyweight is a good working limit. Thus if you weigh 125lbs,
you’ll want to limit your carb intake to around 125g every 2 hours. But that
means after 4 hours you can consume 250g total, and after 8 hours you can be up
to 500g total, and 10 hours after weigh-ins you can meet your minimum goal of
625g. In the case of carbs, the minimum and the usual are pretty close together,
so there’s not much need to stuff far beyond that. However, getting any less carbs
than 5g per pound bodyweight is not recommended.
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The carbs you get in should be tasty, relatively low in fiber (to enhance absorption
and prevent feeling full too early in the day), moderate-to-high glycemic (to
enhance absorptions speed, glycogen loading rate, and total amount loaded),
and a combination of solid and liquid sources. Say goodbye to brown rice and
fruits because the fun carbs have their day today, with the following sources
recommended:
• Low fat cookies, cakes, snack crackers
• Kids cereal
• Low fat “baked” potato chips
• Skim chocolate or lowfat chocolate milk (lactose free for the intolerant)
• White bread and white rice
• Sub sandwiches, sushi and burritos
• Non-caffeinated soda (to prevent diuresis) that is NOT DIET
• Fruit juices of any kind
• Frozen yogurt
c. C a l o r i e s
High calories must be consumed in at least the first 12 hours of repletion for
two reasons. First, a hypercaloric diet is one of the best fatigue fighters, and the
depletion process can have a noticeable effect on raising fatigue just when it needs
to be as low as possible. High calories in the day before competition will ensure
that everything has been done for minimal fatigue and thus maximal preparedness.
Second, if recommended carb amounts are eaten with inadequate calories, much
of the carb intake will go to fueling normal body activities and thus not get
incorporated into glycogen reserves as needed. In this case, calories become our
energy buffer so that as many consumed carbs as possible can be used to rebuild
the glycogen we need them for.
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The rough recommendation for the first 12 hours after weigh-ins is around 30
calories per pound of bodyweight. This means that a 100lb woman will eat 3000
calories in that time period and a 180lb woman will eat 5400 calories. That’s a
heck of a lot, but hey, someone’s gotta do it!
Protein should be consumed at around 0.6g per pound of bodyweight in that 12
hours and not much more. Protein is highly filling, which will make the eating
process harder than needed. In case you’re worried, 0.6g of protein in 12 hour is
more than enough to stave off muscle catabolism.
Fats should be consumed to round out the remaining calories, so a target of
0.85g per pound of bodyweight is a rough guide. Be careful not to overeat on
the fats and keep fiber low as both of those nutrients will delay nutrient digestion
and absorption, which will make getting in the much needed carbs harder than
otherwise.
You don’t have to stuff yourself far beyond these listed values for calories, carbs
and fats, but getting in at least these values, especially for carbs, is going to be a
very good start.
d. S a l t
You’ll need plenty of salt to help you reset sodium levels and retain water in
order to rehydrate, but too much salt can leave you too bloated to eat the most
you can, and can even make you sick. Don’t over-salt your foods, but make sure
your repletion day diet contains salty items like low fat chips, burritos, sushi (with
soy sauce) or sub sandwiches. If you feel like salting your food for taste, that’s
great, but don’t just do it because you feel you have to. Most people will have no
problem getting in enough salt with their normal repletion diet.
To help you visualize a resulting structure to these recommendations, below is
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a sample meal plan for the first 12 hours of repletion as well as the next morning
(the morning of the competition):
Right After Weigh-Ins:
– 48oz water mixed with 90g of Gatorade powder and 20g of whey protein
30 Minutes Later: (Meal)
–A
Subway deli meat sandwich with a bag of Baked Lays potato chips and
water
2 Hours Later (Meal):
– A burrito with 2 glasses of regular Sprite
In-between meal snack:
– A Bag of low fat cookies with chocolate skim milk
3 Hours after last meal (Meal):
– A Panera bread sandwich with a bag of low fat potato chips and water
In-between meal snack:
– ¼ of a light devil’s food cake with a glass of skim chocolate milk
3 Hours after last meal (Meal):
– Sushi, and lots of it, with water
In-between meal snack:
– Round 2 of the Devil’s food cake and chocolate milk
3 Hours after last meal (Meal):
– Chinese food until you’re too tired to eat to finish out the night
If all goes well, you’ll wake up the next day feeling nice and full, you’ll be peeing
clear, and you’ll be ready to perform. For breakfast that day, have a meal similar to
one of your main meals the day before and be sure to hydrate plenty. Once you’re
into the competition, eat as is outlined later in this chapter in the section about
competition-day eating!
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12 Hour Weigh-In
The 12 hour depletion and repletion guide is very similar to the 24 hour guide,
but with a couple of notable exceptions. Thus in this section (and the following
ones on 2 hour and Matside weigh-ins) we’ll keep things simple and just focus on
the important differences between these approaches and the 24 hour cut.
The biggest difference in the depletion of the 12 hour cut is that without as much
time to replete, our ambitions of water weight loss must be lowered from the
5% cut of the 24 hour weigh-in to a 3% cut. This presents us with a bit of good
news regarding the difficulty of the cut. We can now entirely axe one of two
processes; either the water loading at the front end or hyperthermia at the tail end.
Whichever you decide you don’t want to do, just make sure to leave the other and
its associated steps and do it well.
If we really had to take a precise look at it, the hyperthermia is probably the
best process to leave out, mostly because it’s significantly more stressful and thus
fatiguing than the water load. But, the water loading is time consuming and
annoying, so we leave the decision to you. Rest assured that from a performance
standpoint, which one you choose is splitting hairs.
After you remove either the hyperthermia or the water loading, just run the cut
exactly like the 24 hour weigh-in depletion. Easy!
Once you’ve weighed in, the biggest factor to consider for the repletion of the 12
hour condition is that only half the time as the 24 hour weigh-in is available for
repleting lost water, salt, carbs, and calories/energy. But the good news is that this
is balanced out by the more limited 3% weight loss.
We’ll take the water, carbs, protein, fat, and calorie recommendations from the
24 hour weigh-in and multiply them by 3/5’s. That’s what we’ll be consuming
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during our 12 hour repletion period.
This means:
• Water should be consumed at a minimum of 0.6 gallons / ~77oz per 100lbs
bodyweight
• Carbs should be consumed at 3g per pound bodyweight
• Protein at 0.35g per pound body weight
• Fats at 0.5g per pound
• Calories at 20 per 100lbs
Most of that should be consumed in the first 4-6 hours, as adequate sleep is
required and 12 hour weigh-ins are usually done the night before a competition.
A very good idea is to set aside a couple of snacks for when you wake to
urinate at night. Some low-fat cookies and low-fat chocolate milk makes for
a great midnight munch that will help you fill back out completely overnight
(annoying to eat and probably r-brush teeth throughout the night, but if you
are interested in being competitive, you are probably already used to doing
uncomfortable things to prepare and get an edge). An extra glass of water to wash
that concoction down might not hurt either. If you’re one of those people that
simply doesn’t wake up at night to urinate even if your bladder is on the verge of
exploding, an alarm for the middle of the night might be a good idea to remind
you to consume your set-aside snack.
2 Hour Weigh-In
The two hour weigh-in recommendations are radically different from the 24 and
12 hour weigh-ins. With such a short time to replete lost water and substrates, a
much simpler and less aggressive depletion and repletion strategy must be used.
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The day before the weigh-in (as well as the morning-of, before the weigh-in has
occurred) must be:
• Low food volume
• Trace carbs
• Low/no salt
• No water only in the last half of the day
You can water load for a 2 hour weigh-in, but that’s usually not required. Just eat
and drink normally until the day before, and then follow the guidelines above.
The morning-of has the same guidelines, with no water (and minimal food of low
volume) being consumed until the weigh-in has occurred.
Once the weigh-in is over and 2 hours are left, the repletion guidelines are just as
simple as the ones for the depletion:
• Water should be consumed at a minimum of 0.25 gallons / 32 oz per 100lbs
bodyweight, probably erring closer to 40oz
• Carbs should be consumed at 1-1.4g per pound bodyweight
• Protein at 0.2g per pound body weight
• Fats at 0.25g per pound
There is no calorie recommendations here, as 2 hours out it’s much more
important to go by fullness and feel. A very important recommendation however
is to consume all of these nutrients AS SOON AS POSSIBLE after the weigh-in.
This gives the carbs and water time to find their proper storage areas and forms in
the body. After an hour or so, you can begin sipping water, energy drinks, and/or
sports drinks as-needed to get ready for the event.
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The kinds of meals that fit well in this scheme are typically subs, sandwiches,
sushi, rice, pasta, or any other sources of carbs and lean protein paired with soft
drinks, sports, drinks, and/or low fat chips.
Matside Weigh-In
Matside weigh-in strategies come with more restrictions than they do
recommendations. Because you have to be hydrated right there and then, water
dropping of almost any kind will tend to decrease potential performance.
Almost of any kind. There are two loopholes we can potentially exploit. The
first is that for strength/power sports (weightlifting, powerlifting, strongman),
1% dehydration is unlikely to negatively affect performance. Competitions
with a higher endurance component do not hold the same benefit and thus full
hydration is the only option for them. Second, while euhydration (full hydration
that promotes best performance) is the best approach, hyperhydration (more
body water than needed) is not usually helpful, and in sports in which your own
bodyweight must be moved, even mild bloating can be a negative.
Our Matside weigh-in recommendations and restrictions reflect these realities.
For all Matside weighins in which making weight is a concern, overly salty
foods should be avoided the day before and morning-of. That’s right, if you are
competing with friends on the same weekend and you’re doing Matside while
they are doing 24 or 12-hour weigh-ins, no Chinese food or sushi fun for you.
For strength/power sports, athletes just 1% heavier than their target Matside
weight can make sure to follow low food volumes on the day of the event, as well
as drink the minimal amount of water during that whole pre-event morning that
will keep them from being thirsty.
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Other than those simple tips, if it comes down to a Matside weigh in, using the
earlier chapters of this book on slowly and steadily losing fat is the best way to
make sure you’re on weight and ready to perform.
And as always, no matter the kind of depletion you do… be safe!
Competition Day Eating
Because there is such a wide range of sporting events that the modern fit woman
enjoys, we’d have to dedicate an entirely new book to the many classes of sport
and the many detailed kinds of eating for maximum competition day performance
in those sports. So we can’t give much detailed advice here, but we can give you a
short list of strategies to use no matter what sort of competition you engage in.
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TIPS FOR COMPETITION-DAY EATING:
1) Make sure to eat plenty of carbs and calories in the days leading up to
competition day
Every sport requires fatigue to be minimized for top preparedness and nearly
every sport benefits from maxed-out glycogen levels. Unless weight cutting
modifies this process, your goal in the 3-4 days before competition should be to
consume adequate calories to maintain your weight, and plenty of carbs, to the
tune of 2.5g per pound of lean mass per day, in most cases.
2) Eat and drink regularly throughout the competition day
During competition day, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the competition itself,
watching teammates or competitors, meeting new friends, or the emotions of
excitement or nervousness. Do what it takes and eat regularly through the day
to make sure you’re properly fueled, and drink water and electrolyte beverages
to make sure you’re hydrated.
3) Eat foods you’re used to
The last thing you want to have happen to you on competition day (short of
injury) is an upset stomach. Not only can this adversely affect performance,
but the reduced ability to consume or absorb nutrients further worsens the
problem. By sticking to your usual foods, you reduce the risk of having an
adverse reaction to a food you’ve never tried or haven’t eaten in a while. This
is especially important advice during a competition day because your stomach
is already likely to be sensitive from nerves alone.
4) Eat and drink as soon as one event is finished
If you’re in a sport like powerlifting, strongwoman, or the many other sports
that have multiple events throughout the day, spread by hours of intervals,
you’re in luck. This gives you the chance to replete lots of fluid, glycogen and
calories between events so that you can do your very best in each one. Make
sure you capitalize on this type of timing. Because food takes time to digest and
fluid takes time to hydrate, eating and drinking as soon as your event is over is
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critical. The last thing you want to do is to eat too late and risk being sluggish,
getting sick or puking during the next event, or worse, missing the meal
entirely and zombie-walking your way through that next event.
5) Avoid super high protein, fat, or fiber foods
When you’re performing multiple events per day and taxing your body to its
limits, the resources (mostly in the form of blood supply) it will make available
to aid in digestion and absorption are already scant. Your blood is busy feeding
your muscles and won’t be directed to your stomach and digestive system as
much as usual. Couple this with the ‘fight or flight’ state in which you’ll likely
be spending most of the day, and digestion and absorption are even more
limited. Add on top of this the demand of having to exert yourself every 1 to 3
hours and there’s even less time to digest or absorb anything.
Foods high in protein, fat and fiber require more energy and take longer to
digest than foods higher in carbs and lower in fiber. Stick to white breads,
smaller portions of lean meats, less fatty condiments and plenty of liquid foods
in order to ensure your chances of success. Yeah, it’s a weird way to eat, but
hey, you’ll be back to eating normally the night of the competition, after it’s all
said and done. Well, maybe the next day, cause what’s a competition without a
ridiculous meal of high carbs and calories afterwards?!
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References
T RA IN IN G & D IET IN G F O R P E R F O R M A NC E
• Sport Nutrition. An Introduction to Energy Production and Performance.
2nd ed.
• Periodization 5th Edition: Theory and Methodology of Training
• Principles and Practice of Resistance Training
• Glycemic Index in Sport Nutrition
• Hydration and muscular performance: does fluid balance affect strength,
power and high intensity endurance?
• Development of hydration strategies to optimize performance for athletes in
high intensity sports and in sports with repeated intense efforts
• Nutritional Strategies to promote postexercise recovery
• The use of carbohydrates during exercise as an ergogenic aid
• Advanced Sports Nutrition
• Practical Sports Nutrition
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05
The Psychology of Dieting
Success at both dieting and sports performance is very dependent on a good
mind set. Perspective and psychological habits can profoundly affect success
in any endeavor.This chapter will outline the design of a successful diet from
a psychological perspective, to help you increase your chances of getting the
results you want from the diet you have designed using the earlier chapters.
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Chapter Five
If dieting was all about the physiology of eating and training, we could stop this
book right here. You could simply eat for your goals like a machine and fitness
would be just around the corner. Fortunately or unfortunately, human beings
are not robots. We are not only physiologically complex, but psychologically
complex as well. Psychological differences between people, and even differences
in mental state within the same person over different periods of time can have
a great impact on their dieting success. While we’re busy learning about the
physiological details of successful performance and fat loss dieting, we had better
take a good look at the psychological side as well.
Within this chapter, we will outline the design of a successful diet from a
psychological perspective, to help you increase your chances of getting the results
you want from the diet you have designed using the earlier chapters.
The Psychologically-Informed Dieting Process
There are 5 main organizing guidelines that are worth our special attention.
There are other important guidelines to be sure, and this is not an inclusive list,
but considering these 5 guidelines and following them is very likely to help with
the process of successfully sticking to a dietary intervention.
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1) Cl e a r L ong Ter m
Goals
If you don’t know where you’re going
on your next vacation, how do you
know what to pack? How do you
know what plane tickets and hotels
to look at? How do you know what
languages to brush up on? How do you
know which of your friends to ask for
recommendations? How do you know
if you can afford the trip? How do you
know if the trip is somewhere you
want to go? How do you know if it’s
even worth it to go?
Everyone knows that the very first
order of planning a trip, is deciding
where to go!
So if we’re all in agreement that a
trip to nowhere is not a great idea,
then we can acknowledge a very
related concept; beginning a diet
without a long term goal is similarly
silly. It sounds obvious, but many
clients come in for diet coaching with
questionnaires listing goals as “gain
muscle”, “lose weight”, “maximize
strength”, “get lean” all listed as goals
for a single 3 month diet. Perhaps this
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is a side effect of not having read this book yet and not realizing that phases of
muscle gain and fat loss happen independently. It can however also be evidence of
a state of being unsure ‘where’ they want to go in their diet endeavor.
A long term goal can mean many things, but to be sure “I have no idea” is not one
of them. Long term goals can include:
• What you want to perform like in 3 months
• What PR’s you want to set in 6 months
• What you’d like to look like within a year
We could plan longer than a year at a time, but then we risk taking our “goal”
and turning it into more of a “wish.” If we plan too far ahead, we’re left with “just
train eat and keep getting better” as our plan, which isn’t really a plan at all and
something we were going to do anyway. It’s our sincere advice to you to keep
most of your goals within the one-year time horizon. And hey, if you achieve
those goals, you can plan your next year accordingly.
Not only should goals exist, they should also be clear.
If you want to be better at bodybuilding, that’s just fine. If your crossfit
performance is the big focus, great. If you wanna put pounds on your total within
the next three months, cool. If you just want to see your abs and look like the
athlete that you are, also great; we all love to look good. But make sure you
understand that goals come with tradeoffs. “I just wanna get better” is NOT a
goal. Do you mean leaner? Lighter? Stronger? More muscular? Better at the squat,
bench, and deadlift? Even a combination of those goals is just fine, so long as you
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understand that the combination is your goal and you’re willing to accept slower
progress in all of those sub-goals if they cannot be worked toward simultaneously.
What happens if you don’t have a clear goal? There are 4 negative possibilities
that come to mind:
a. L o s s o f mot i va t i o n
When you have no goal and times get tough in the gym or on the diet, what do
you tell yourself? Well, we’re not sure, which is one of the reasons we recommend
having a goal! It’s tough to cheat on your diet with that piece of cheesecake if
you’ve got a meet coming up for which you’re on track to make a weightclass. It’s
unlikely that you’re going to stand in front of figure judges and know that you
could have looked better had you not fallen off the wagon multiple times during
the diet.
There will be many times on a tough diet during which you will ask yourself
“why am I even doing this?” Your long term goal is the answer to that question
and has a very big effect on your motivation and consistency. If you have no
answer to that question and your goal is “just trying to lean out a bit” (which
is not remotely clear), having that extra piece of cake you know you shouldn’t
doesn’t seem like such a big deal, so you wind up derailing any progress towards
your vague goal.
While many women find the process of fat and weight loss rewarding and
motivating in and of itself, many of those same women struggle mightily with
attempts at gaining muscle. The uptick of the scale, the increase in dress size
and the disappearance of your favorite muscle definition can wreak havoc on
motivation for muscle gain. When gaining weight, many females are fighting
one or more of the following - their personal preferences for appearance, most of
society’s norms (often reflected in the mildly rude comments from grandparents or
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parents as to recent weight gain), a lifetime of cultural indoctrination, and, most
powerful of them all, genetic programming designed to encourage them to be
smaller, not bigger.
Gaining muscle requires at least a temporary gain in weight, especially if you’re
leaner to start with, so the motivation to do this must be the highest we can
engineer so as to maximize the chances of successfully pulling off a mass gaining
phase. If you have a clear goal of “I’m very focused on gaining muscle,” and not
just “I want to look better,” you’ll be able to better resist the temptation to scrap
your muscle gain phase halfway through and revert back to fat loss for no good
reason.
b. L o s i ng a s e ns e o f t im e -to -ta rg et
If your long-term goal has been to lose 50lbs and you’re down 25, you’re halfway
there! Yay! Blow up the balloons and invite the clowns; it’s you’re ‘halfway-there’
party! Comparatively, if your long-term goal barely exists, or is the ill-defined
“I’d like to get leaner,” how do you even remotely know where you are in the
process? If you don’t even know how long your journey will take, you might
find yourself pretty disparaged and under-motivated. (Think back a situation like
this in some cardio class you might have taken…..if you are told to do 25 sit ups,
you have a definite end point and can probably blast through 25 - no problem. If,
however, the instructor just yells “Do sit ups until I say stop!”, you might take a
break after 15; you have no idea if the end is in sight or how much to conserve or
exert energy in order to make it to the unknown end.)
Knowing how far you’ve come and how much further you have to go can allow
you to prepare for reality, expend your psychological energy wisely, and push
hard when you know the goal is close (and save the hard pushes for later if the
goal is still further away). Successful dieters don’t cheat a week out from their
bikini show, and they don’t cut out all the fun foods on week 1 of 16 in their
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show diet. But if you have no idea how long the road to “getting leaner” is, your
strategy and motivation will suffer.
c. P robl e ms de te r min in g rewa rd a n d c o m plet io n
If you don’t know where you’re going, how do you know when you’ve arrived?
Do Olympic sprinters continue to run past the finish line, Forrest-Gump-Style,
around the track until officials restrain them? Of course not, because they know
that celebration of their victory and planning for the next race begin right as soon
as they cross that line. And in a big sense, your long term goal is that finish line.
If we don’t diet to enjoy at least the results, then why the hell do we diet at all? If
you don’t have a long term goal, when is your party? Never? When you finally
give up and break down? What kind of party is that? And if you don’t have a goal
to finish, when are you supposed to choose a new goal and make further strides?
Having a clear long term goal, along with progressive mini goals that support
it, will go a long way towards motivating you to succeed. This strategy will
allow you to reward yourself for your accomplishments, hopefully to enjoy them
fully, and to intelligently plan your next goal, even if that next goal is “establish a
healthy and balanced eating pattern at this bodyweight, forever.”
d. P robl e ms wi t h c o n sisten t p ro g ra m m in g
Internet diet and training authority Martin Berkhan once coined a less than-PC,
but phenomenal and hilarious term; “Fuckarounditis.” Martin defined this state of
affairs based on fickleness often seen in lifter/dieters. When someone changes their
focus of training once a week, changes their diet goals once every two to three
weeks, and starts using new exercises they saw someone else recommending on
Facebook the very same day they saw them, that person can be diagnosed with
Fuckarounditis. The problem with this state of affairs is that when you give your
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body too much variation in stimulus, it tends not to adapt to any of those stimuli
very well, so the net results tend not to be anything that could be described as
successful.
If you have no clear long-term goals for your dieting process, you might end up
switching directions so often that you go nowhere. One week you’re cutting,
and the next week you’re cheating a bit too much and oh well, you might as well
add some muscle by massing. In two weeks, you’re feeling a bit bloated from the
massing so you start cutting again. 4 days into that, your CrossFit competition
comes up, which means you carb load the night before and party the night of, so
there goes your cutting phase.
At the end of that month or so, where are you in terms of progress? Probably
where you started or close to it. But if you began a well programmed fat loss
phase at the start of that same month instead and stuck to it from the get-go, you
could have been down 5-7 pounds already and seeing visible changes in your
appearance along with improvements in your performance.
We don’t recommend having long term goals just because it sounds nice or
because everyone else says so. We recommend them because they work. They
work to make dieting easier, simpler, more straightforward, more effective, and
more rewarding. If you start dieting for either fat loss or muscle gain and you
don’t know why or where you’re headed, or when you need to get there, consider
stopping and thinking it through before you proceed. Ten minutes of planning
can save you months of time and effort.
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2) S p eci fi c S ho r t Te r m G o a l s
While long term goals anchor the outline of our motivation and direction, short
term goals allow us to steer the ship and keep it pointed in the right direction.
Short term goals can be between a month and a week in length, and allow us to
make the adjustments we need to keep on track.
For example, imagine that your goal was to lose 15lbs in 3 months (long term).
How would you go about making sure you were on track? If you want to be
maximally effective, you cut up the 15lbs into weekly chunks. 15 divided by 12
is 1.25, which is the average amount of weight you’re going to have to lose per
week if you want to reach your longer-term goal of 15lbs in 3 months.
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Now you don’t just have a hazy goal off in the horizon somewhere, you have a
map with which to plan out your every step. If your initial diet keeps you losing
at about 1.25lbs per week, you don’t change a thing and just coast along! If your
initial diet is too slow and you only lose .5lbs per week, you need to cut calories,
increase expenditure, or maybe even do both so that you can meet your short
term goals weekly. If your diet is too aggressive and you lose 2lbs per week at the
start, you can eat more food to slow the process down and prevent muscle loss.
Of course, in order to have the kind of short term weight goals that help you
tremendously with staying on track and achieving your long term goals, you need
to use your mortal enemy… THE SCALE. If scientists tried to design a machine
that makes women question their very self-esteem and value, they’d have to work
long and hard to better the common bathroom scale. To many women, the scale
is a value-laden instrument designed to make them feel guilty about how skinny
they could be and shame them for how skinny they’re not.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Let’s step out of teenage insecurity and dependence
on a number for our self-worth. You’re a goal-oriented mature adult on a mission.
An adult who understands that athletes move, and this movement requires
muscles. These athletes come in a wide variety of body sizes and shapes, but all
have the similar goals of gaining muscle, losing fat, and improving performance to
different extents. The scale comes to this arrangement only as a tool and nothing
more. If you calmly and logically decided to drop from 155lbs to 140lbs over
3 months to improve your performance and appearance, the scale will help you
tremendously with staying on track for those goals.
If you weigh yourself with no goals or no healthy and stable lifestyle in mind, you
won’t find any magic in the number of protons and neutrons that compose your
body, which is fundamentally what the scale really measures. It tells you little to
nothing about your goals, appearance, health, or performance.
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Short term goals, especially those of body weight change, are very helpful in
keeping you sane and on track for accomplishing your goals. The next question is
the effect of the speed of weight loss and gain on psychology.
3) Op t i ma l Bo dywe i g h t Ch a n ge Ra t e
How fast or how slow dieters attempt to lose weight during their fat loss phases
seems to impact not just physiology (how much fat they lose and the amount of
muscle they spare), but psychology as well. It turns out that the recommended
weight loss rate we discussed in Chapter 2 is also psychologically beneficial.
SUP ER SLOW W EIGH T LO S S
From a physiological perspective, there is not too much wrong with losing
weight very slowly. If you’re able to keep very close track of your food intake and
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your activity, it’s quite possible to detect and replicate a loss of around 0.25% of
your body mass per week. For a 150lb woman, that translates to about 1.5lbs of
tissue lost per month, which is very tough to detect, but perhaps not impossible.
One thing we can say for sure about this fat loss rate is that it’s definitely safe for
muscle retention. Speeds of loss that slow present only a tiny catabolic risk to
muscle that’s easily overcome with proper diet and training. Simply speaking, risk
of muscle loss is minimal.
There is, however, a non-physiological problem with such a slow weight loss. It’s
been shown in well-controlled studies that those dieters whom attempt needlessly
slow weigh loss rates (under 0.5% per week and perhaps even as high as under
0.75% per week) experience greater dropout rates and weight re-gain after the
conclusion of the diet. The top hypothesis is that super-slow weight loss rates
are destructive to motivation. Seeing steady noticeable results is a very powerful
motivator, and super slow diets just don’t deliver the goods in that regard.
A very related approach to going super slow is the looser approach of “just eating
healthy.” Eating healthy is fine, but there is no good reason to think that just
healthy eating will result in noticeable and meaningful fat loss. You can eat just
the same number of calories healthy or not, so if your goal is weight loss, you
need a more precise plan.
It seems from both the literature and our extensive work with clients through RP
that most people do best with faster rates of weight loss, between 0.5% and 1%
bodyweight per week. What about the alternative? How does super-fast weight
loss affect psychology?
SUP ER- FAST W EIGH T LO S S
From a strictly physiological perspective, we can say that weight loss paces past
1% weight loss per week (especially 1.5% and above) are bad news. The caloric
deficit is so great that fatigue skyrockets, training suffers, hunger and cravings
become disproportionately intense, and muscle loss is likely.
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This hunger and performance loss ends up impacting the psychological side as
well. How hard is it to stay motivated when you’re constantly exhausted, with
all aspects of your athletic performance going downhill? How hard is it to stay
motivated when you’re starving day and night and your mind is telling you to eat
everything in sight? Super-fast loss rates look appealing because they can make
even daunting weight loss goals seem less out of reach. Even the most willful of
dieters however, can be worn down and overwhelmed with the monotonous
brutality of an overly aggressive diet. This can result in cheating on the diet (with
the equally brutal accompanying guilt), a change of diet goals during the middle
of the process (tell yourself 155lbs is an ok place to stop the diet instead of the
150lbs you originally planned), or an even worse result -a complete cessation of
the diet itself. Now, you’ve expended a ton of effort, reached no goal, and to top
it all off, now likely have a super negative feeling about dieting.
Between the extremely slow and the overly aggressive rate is our sort of golden
band of weight loss pace. Weight loss rates between 0.5% and 1% of body mass
per week seem to be not only comfortably within the physiological constraints,
but psychologically sustainable as well. Are they sustainable indefinitely? Not a
chance, which brings us to our next section.
4) Ma i n t e n a n ce P h a s e s
So, we’ve got our optimal dieting pace and we’re good to go, now, let’s start
dieting for a whole year and reach our goals! Wait, wait… we can remember that
in earlier chapters there was mention of a limit to individual stretches of dieting,
especially for fat loss. The limits already mentioned were physiological, but it
turns out there are psychological ones as well.
As mentioned earlier, diets exceeding much more than 3 months in duration
tend to run into some physiological difficulties. After several months, high
fatigue levels become unsustainable and training volume and intensity begin to
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drop, muscle growth mechanisms give way to muscle-burning mechanisms, and
rebound, muscle loss and injury become much more likely.
In addition, the body moves further and further away from its set point. Metabolic
rates fall, requiring even deeper cuts to calories in order to sustain progress. The
brain responds to these trends mostly by raising hunger levels and by dropping
unplanned activity levels. Diet for too long and you’re super hungry and super
lazy, not nearly the kind of environment that sustains fat loss, but most certainly
one that greatly promotes cheating on the diet or worse, ceasing it completely.
After every 2-3 month period of dieting, a maintenance phase can allow the dieter
to not only re-set physiological mechanisms, but psychological ones as well. 2-3
months of maintaining the achieved weight while eating more and more food to
accommodate an increasingly re-accelerating metabolism can be a psychological
godsend to promote recovery from the stresses of dieting and prime the dieter for
another bout of fat loss.
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Because of the isocaloric environment of the maintenance phase, the intense
hunger of the preceding fat loss phase is quickly relegated to minimal or entirely
non-existent. As plentiful food is consumed, normal energy levels are returned
and daily activities become much easier again. Training feels fresh and new and
your body feels recovered and strong. After 2-3 months of maintenance eating,
the hardships of dieting seem distant and the motivation to tackle them anew is
back to normal. Now you’re ready, both physiologically and psychologically, for a
new round of fat loss dieting.
So do we just diet infinitely with maintenance phases? When do we get to live
life? What about balance?
5) T he R i g ht Ti m e fo r B a l a nce
If you’re always dieting or re-establishing your physiology and psychology for
another round of dieting, when is the time for balance? Isn’t there room for eating
the foods you love AND getting the body and performance you want?
There is, but the process is sequential rather than concomitant. FIRST you get
the body you want, and THEN you enjoy the foods you love. To be clearer,
there is quite a bit of enjoyment of the foods you love during each maintenance
phase. We can’t just diet with no end, so periodic maintenance phases are a
temporary return to balance, both physiological and psychological. Do we need
maintenance phases for balance? Can’t we just diet with balance built in?
By definition, no. The very act of creating a hypocaloric environment is what
leads to weight and fat loss, and it is by definition throwing the body and mind
out of balance. You must eat less than you burn, which is the opposite of balance.
In fact, the more efforts you make to “live a normal life” (by eating tasty foods
high in calories), the slower your weight loss is – you need the temporary
imbalance to facilitate the change. Thus, the more you try to mix balance and fat
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loss, the worse the results for fat loss and the longer you have to diet and remain
out of balance. The good news is, diets, as discussed extensively, are temporary.
To achieve almost any goal, work is required and the work needed for fat loss is
temporary imbalance.
Taking all of these concepts together, the psychological dieting landscape seems
to have 3 recommended states, with two of them being temporary and one of
them being indefinite in length:
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State 1:
Dieting for Weight Change (temporary)
State 2:
Maintenance/Recovery Phase (temporary)
State 3:
Balance of Fun, Eating, and Training (indefinite)
The first psychological state that seems best in the short term is that of focused,
quick (but not too quick), and diligent dieting, whether for fat loss or muscle
gain. This state is very effective for body composition changes, but not sustainable
for periods longer than about 3 months at a time. In addition, diet phases
shorter than about 1 month at a time tend not to accomplish very much body
composition change, especially not when traded off against the restrictions typical
of such a phase. Thus, for psychological and physiological purposes, we typically
recommend diet phases to last between 1 and 3 months.
The second possible state is the maintenance phase. When the focused diet state
comes to its inevitable end, a maintenance phase must be initiated to recover the
individual from the physiological and psychological disruptions of the diet state.
Within 2-3 months (sometimes shorter or longer), the maintenance phase has
returned the dieter back into dieting form, and at that point another focused diet
can occur if needed. This initial phase following a weight change diet requires
more attention to weight than subsequent periods of maintaining when your set
point is established and you can relax a bit in terms of your eating precision.
Once the dieter has achieved the body composition they find at least temporarily
satisfying, they can enter into the third state; balance. The state of balance
(otherwise known as a balanced lifestyle) is really just a maintenance phase
that’s been indefinitely extended. In this state, the dieter continues to eat a
fundamentally healthy and sport-oriented diet. The dieter continues to be
active and train hard, but can also enjoy many of her favorite foods in satisfying
amounts. By eating just a bit less “clean” and continuing to train hard, the dieter
can rely on the body’s proclivity to remain in homeostasis, thus holding a stable
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bodyweight for months and years on end. If the occasional extended holiday
produces 5lbs of weight gain, a period of several weeks of lighter eating can and
will return the body back into its normal weight range.
The dieter can remain in this healthy and enriching state of balance for as long as
she chooses, and this is where some big misconceptions about the relationship of
dieting and balanced lifestyles lie…
The key is choice, and the big question to the dieter is “what do you want to do?”
Sit down, relax, and do an honest self- assessment. Think about how you’d like
to look in an ideal world and think about how much you enjoy your balanced
lifestyle of food, friends and fun. Remind yourself that if you are going to diet,
you’ll be giving up a lot of that food and fun for a few months straight. If your
balanced lifestyle is more important than an ideal body, stop self-criticizing
IMMEDIATELY and ENJOY YOUR LIFE; you only have one, and spending it
in a state of purgatory is just no way to live. If you calmly give it some thought
and decide that changing your body is more important than being balanced
for the next 3 months, it’s time to diet - and with no ‘if’s, ‘and’s or ‘but’s. Once
you’re dieting, focus and be diligent, and do what it takes. Commit to those 3
months fully or don’t do it all. Halfhearted dieting does not achieve goals, AND
has the added pain of making you feel guilty. It’s the worst of all scenarios; you
are neither changing your appearance nor enjoying your life! Don’t do this to
yourself. All or nothing is the way to go.
Once you’re done with a bout of dieting, you really must enter the maintenance
phase - none of this “I want to lose 5 more pounds while I’m in maintenance”
crap… that’s not maintenance then, is it? When you’ve been in maintenance
for 2-3 months and your metabolism and psychology have re-set, you’re ready
to make your next decision. Don’t make any decisions on an empty stomach,
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and don’t make any decisions on a post-diet metabolism and mindset; only
decide your next move when you’re well into the maintenance phase and feel
recovered. Take another look at your body and go through the same calculus
again… what’s more important to you for the next several months: balance, or
further enhancements? Remember that you can’t have both at the same time and
that there is NO RIGHT ANSWER, only YOUR answer. Once again, whatever
decision you make, dive in completely and don’t torture yourself with doubts.
If you’re honest with yourself during this decision making process, you’re going
to be both effective at dieting when you need to be, and happy and balanced
when you choose, instead of trying to do it all at once or choosing a different
option every other day. Make decisions and stick to them and you’ll not only be
in great shape, but you’ll be happier too. What’s the point of a great body if you
don’t ever enjoy living in it?
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THE MAIN IDEAS OF DIETING AND BALANCED LIVING ARE AS FOLLOWS:
a. Choose the phase you want to be in. The choice is really between dieting to
change your bodyweight (up or down) or continuing to live in balance at your
current weight.
When in balance, it is highly recommended that you make plans for selfassessment no more often than once every 2 months, and preferably once every
3 months or longer. That way you don’t get into the habit of judging and
evaluating your body all the time, and you can be much more objective when
you do sit down to decide your next move.
b. C
hoose your phase based on two considerations; desire for appearance/
performance and desire for the benefits of a balanced lifestyle.
For example, let’s say you want to be leaner for the start of the summer, and
it’s currently March. Yu look at your calendar and find that you’ve got no
wedding or special events for the next 2 months. You’ve kind of had your fill
of going out to eat, and you’re super pumped to get to work and make some
serious body changes. You know you’ll be missing out on some tasty foods
and nights out for the next 2 months, but you’re totally ok with that because
you have a super fun summer planned and want to look fantastic in your new
bikini. This is a good example of when the choice to diet is the rational one.
On the other hand, imagine that it’s mid-October. You’re pretty lean on
account of your last diet, and your maintenance phase from that diet ends
in a week. You could totally diet again, but you’re going to your significant
other’s hometown for thanksgiving this year and his sister makes the best
pumpkin pie you’ve ever had. You have a ton of holiday parties and you’ll even
been cooking for a few of them. You’re already booked for an all-inclusive
vacation in the Caribbean in early January. You’d like to do a regional CrossFit
competition in May, but that leaves you with Feb-April to seriously diet. In this
case it’s probably worth more to you to live a balanced lifestyle of hard training,
healthy eating, and the occasional wild party and food coma through the
holidays than it is to grind a fat loss diet through this time and alienate yourself
from all the fun.
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c. M
ake the choice as a commitment for the whole duration, which is specified in
advance. This means that extenuating circumstances aside, when you start an
8-week diet, you do it 100% for all 8 weeks. If you have chosen to be in a state
of balance, relax and don’t look in the mirror and judge yourself and consider
every other day whether or not to start a cut, just enjoy and plan another
evaluation session at 3 months.
An evaluation session is when you calmly sit down (having arranged it months
ahead of time, not in the heat of the moment after you felt fat at that wedding
last weekend) and plan your next move. You carefully go through step b above
and decide what you want to do for the next 2-3 months.
Whatever it is that you decide, you will stick to it.
d. You make a full psychological commitment to your chosen state. This
recommendation is pretty obvious when it comes to fat loss and maintenance
dieting, but the importance of this step may be less obvious when you’re
considering a commitment to muscle gain dieting, and especially to a balanced
lifestyle.
FAT LO SS
When you’re making a serious commitment to the fat loss diet state, you are
clearly understanding that hunger is likely to pester you with cravings and that
your energy might be low at times. These annoying symptoms are indicators that
the diet is working! We have a motto at RP – assuming your weight loss is within
the target pace – hunger is fat dying! Savor it. Only by cranking hard and being
tough about hunger pangs and not-so-great workouts can you be consistent
enough to see the diet work.
If you choose to indulge in off-diet treats too often, you won’t see the results you
want in fat loss, and losing the same amount of fat will take much longer than
needed. You’ll finish the diet without meeting your goals, and what did you get
out of it? You still suffered plenty, but you also didn’t quite meet your goals and
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you topped it all off with a layer
of added guilt. Not the best state
of affairs… food doesn’t taste
the same when it’s seasoned
with your own guilt anyway.
Save your cravings for the
maintenance phase when you
can enjoy the food guilt free.
M A I NTE NAN CE
By committing to the diet
phase, you have by necessity
committed to the maintenance
phase.
There is a big temptation on
maintenance phases to do one
of two things: eat everything in
sight or continue dieting a little
to lose more weight. The first
will just erase all of your hard
work and the second will mess
up your mind and your body.
Not only will you lose muscle,
but you could risk developing
an unhealthy relationship with
food, which, as we’ll detail later,
can take many months from
which to recover.
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M US C L E GA IN
The commitment of the muscle gain phase seems easy at first… any woman
can eat a bunch more food and gain weight! Bring it on! Well, not always. One
morning, you’ll wake up and see some temporary bulging, or find you cannot
button your favorite pair of jeans without the dreaded muffin top effect. Your
once-prized abs and shoulders are fading away and you feel like people don’t
see you as a serious athlete because you don’t look shredded in your tank top
anymore. Maybe your significant other made an innocent compliment about how
s/he thinks your “new belly is cute”. It might be cute to some but you hate it…
why not stop the diet right then and there and begin cutting again?
Because then you will never gain the muscle you want. It’s imperative to
understand that the muscle gain phase almost always comes with plenty of fat
gain, but, and this is an important ‘but’, fat is super easy to diet off after the
upcoming maintenance phase, revealing your new muscle and high performance.
Focus on how strong you are getting and how much control you have over your
weight, appearance and performance, thanks to your knowledge about dieting
and your mental fortitude. Going through a muscle gain and maintenance phase
is extremely healthy for women. Let’s pour our self-worth into what we can
accomplish, rather than into how we (temporarily) look! (And then, subsequently
also look awesome as well! Double win.)
BAL A N C E
This one is not always obvious but it’s very simple. You make a commitment to
the balanced state because you’re not a teenager anymore. Commit to enjoying
this phase and not self-judging. During this time, you can schedule your sit
downs every three months and consider whether or not you want to change your
body, but as long as you are in it, enjoy it and don’t stress about the next step.
There will be enough stress when you take that step. You started your fitness
journey to be happier, not more neurotic. The balance phase must have built-in
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checkpoints for self-evaluation every 3 months or so because if you don’t restrict
your self-judgment to a single time and place, it will pester you relentlessly and
ruin a whole lot of fun. At the end of the day, your choice isn’t really between
commitment to the phase or not.
Your choice is about what kind of woman you want to be.
You can be the kind of woman that always criticizes her own body and hates the
way she looks, but doesn’t have the follow-through to commit to a diet and stick
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to making the changes she wants to see. Or you can be the kind of woman that
sticks to the plan, loses the fat or gains the muscle, and spends the rest of her time
sampling delicious foods, drinking with friends, and living the life she wants in
the body she built.
The choice is yours.
Psychological Resetting for the Diet Process
Properly followed, the psychological approach to dieting described in the last
section will yield great results both physically and emotionally. More often than
not, you’ll feel calm, cool and collected, and even through the hardships you
won’t be likely to lose touch with your deep motivation.
Above is our ideal case, but let’s take a moment to talk about what to do if you
have made some mistakes before reading this book or learning about proper
dieting. If you’ve run a diet for far too long, too harshly, or in too rapid a
succession with other diets, your motivation can go south. The result, in some
relatively rare cases, can be a development of an unhealthy relationship with food.
To be VERY clear, we are NOT talking about the development of formal eating
disorders. Orthorexia and Binge Eating Disorder (or the lower probabilities
of Anorexia and Bulimia) are very serious medical conditions and require the
personal intervention of a psychologist or psychiatrist. If you have symptoms of
such disorders and you’re concerned, schedule an appointment with a licensed
therapist in your area as soon as you can. Not all eating problems are formal
disorders, however, and most are milder and can be dealt with on your own with
proper understanding.
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If you’ve been over-dieted, you may be noticing the following characteristics:
• Dread of further dieting
• Aversion to traditional diet foods like chicken and rice
• Intense cravings for junk food that don’t go away much even when you
indulge them
• A growing hatred for the practice of counting, measuring, and restriction of
food
• Recurring fantasies of eating everything you want and never having to diet
again
• All of the above symptoms starting at the beginning of a new diet rather than at
the end (a few of these feelings at the end of a diet can just be normal feelings
that will resolve quickly during the maintenance phase)
The last point is very important to consider before moving forward. All of
the above symptoms are not entirely uncommon at the end of a grueling diet,
especially if you’ve made big changes to your body or you’re down to an alltime low body fat. However, when they occur to a high extent in the middle or
even the beginning of a diet, you might need to step back and deal with this issue
before moving forward.
Ideally, you just need a longer maintenance phase or even a maintenance phase
(of roughly 3 months) followed by a balance phase of another 3 months. But
since those phases still require at least the rough counting of macronutrients and/
or calories, even this kind of loose diet may be too much for some when they’ve
really burnt out on dieting.
In extreme cases, we encourage you to seek personal help via a professional
therapist, in addition to resetting (described below), but sometimes the rest
described below can be enough to get you back into a healthy state and ready to
start manipulating your diet again.
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The 4-Step Reset
The diet resetting process we describe here is based on a combination of
psychology and nutrition science. It’s a 4-step process that can help many people
progress from a total aversion to dieting back to a normal relationship with eating
and goal-directed dieting.
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The big caveat is this: each phase, especially the earlier phases, can last months.
Each journey is personal, but the maximum reasonable speed with which you can
get through the whole process and still benefit is unlikely to be much less than 6
months.
If you’re going to do this resetting, you’re
going to have to take your time and do it
right.
If you’re truly fed up with dieting and on your last nerve with restricted eating,
then getting back into a normal relationship with food can very much be
worth between 6 months and a year of commitment. Looked at it from another
perspective, half a year or a year of your life is pocket change compared to the
decades that can be spent in needlessly miserable avoidance of the very tools with
which you can craft the body and performance you want. As mentioned, because
this is a long process and sometimes terrifying to those who have done a lot of
dieting, the assistance of a therapist can be very valuable to help you through the
process.
Without further ado, here is a list of the resetting phases with a brief description
of each one:
PHASE 1: UNATTACHED EATING
•
Goal:Eating freely with zero concern over food choices whatsoever
• Purpose: Easing the psychological burden of dieting and greatly reducing
negative relationships/habits with food and eating
•
Typical Duration: 2-4 months
• Completion: When you can honestly look forward to cleaning up your
diet again
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PHASE 2: NUTRITIOUS CHOICES
• Goal: Eating with no calorie or nutrient requirements, but focusing a bit
more on healthy food intake. Eating minimally processed foods that are
high in protein, fiber, and vitamins and minerals
• Purpose: To re-establish healthy habits without the pressures of counting
and tracking
• Typical Duration: 2-3 months
• Completion: When you no longer have any fears or doubts about gently
controlling your food intake
PHA SE 3 : R O UGH MAC R O S
• Goal: Eating nutritious foods and adding in the goal of getting rough (via
eyeballing or handfuls) intakes of protein, veggies, and healthy carbs with
each meal
• Purpose: To get you back in the habit of eating well-rounded meals and
some semblance of structure
•
Typical Duration: 1-3 months
• Completion: When you are making sure to get the roughly correct amount
of protein, veggies, and healthy carbs in each meal with no stress, out of
sheer habit
PHA SE 4 : C O UN T IN G A ND M E A S U R I NG
• Goal: Beginning to count macronutrient amounts either daily or in each
meal
• Purpose: Getting used to the idea and process of counting your intake,
WITHOUT yet having a goal number to hit
• Typical Duration: 1-3 months
• Completion: When you’re in the painless habit of counting macros and/or
calories, either per meal or per day, with most of your food choices being
nutritious and balanced
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Let’s go through each phase and describe what’s going on in a bit more detail.
P h a se 1 : U n a t ta ch e d Ea t i ng
Unattached eating is the first of the phases, and arguably the most important.
The big problem that we’re trying to deal with here is fundamentally one of
attachment to food. Yes, attachment in the Buddhist sense of the word, but also
in the modern psychological sense. Too long in the hard dieting mode can start
to paint food choices as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as opposed to numbers. We become
attached to eating ‘good’ foods in ‘good’ amounts at ‘good’ times, and avoiding
all ’bad’ foods in ’bad’ amounts, at ’bad’ times. Instead of simply being an exercise
in calculation, the eating process becomes one of fear of bad foods, salvation and
guilt by cheat foods, and a whole lot of other emotions that are best kept to the
religious scriptures and away from dieting. This giant emotional roller coaster is
highly stressful, and it begins to take a toll of its own outside of the physiological
toll of the restricted food intake.
The issue here is that you’re too attached to food, to both its good and bad effects.
You become addicted to its positive qualities and suffer by its negative qualities.
You can imagine that this does not bode well for maintenance or balance phases
and results in prolonged dieting. How do we bring this suffering and addiction
to an end? The first step is to let the attachment to food recede altogether. The
only truly effective way of doing this is to stop thinking about food. Now, there’s
nothing wrong with thinking about food (or thinking, in general). But before we
can exhibit positive ways of thought, we have to let the negative voices die down
to a whisper. Stop thinking about food? How do you mean?
We mean exactly that. For the duration of this phase, you eat only what you
want, only when you want it REGARDLESS of what you want and when you
want it. No more counting anything, including meals. No more guilt, no more
deals with yourself, no more plans. What should you eat? We literally have no
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advice for you. Whatever you want. Chances are that for the first while it will be
what you’ve been craving. And that’s fine, enjoy! (It will be difficult, of course, to
enjoy at first because of the psychological state that brought on your need for this
phase, but eventually you will - and that’s good! It means progress is being made).
For a lot of us that are very process- and perfection-oriented, this phase will be
the biggest challenge. But remember, you don’t run this reset for fun… you do
it because you’re at the end of your rope and the alternative is further suffering.
You will likely gain some weight and some fat during this phase, but it will
almost never be a huge amount, and the following months are sure to reverse the
changes.
During this entire phase (and in fact during every phase of this reset), you will
NOT be using the scale. That’s right, no bodyweight measurements AT ALL
during this whole reset. When you’re emotionally ready to make sense of the
numbers on the scale, it will make its return into proper use, but for the whole
reset, you’ll have no idea what you weigh and more importantly, you shouldn’t
care. When you’re psychologically well, losing gained weight is super easy and
straightforward. All of the science earlier in this book has given you the step by
step guide. If you care about your weight during the reset, not only will you just
be disappointed, you won’t accomplish the goal of the reset and it will have been
largely in vain.
Keep training and keep living your normal life during this phase, but don’t
constrain your eating. How much should you eat? Enough to quell your hunger
whenever it comes up! Don’t intentionally stuff yourself, but don’t deny yourself
anything either. The more you let go and eat like a kid again, the better the
chances that this needed reset will work and will get you back on track. This
temporary eating style (which can get pretty interesting if you really let go) will
NOT, we repeat, NOT “mess you up” and make you fat forever or anything else
that your brain might be telling you.
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At some point, usually between 2 and 4 months into this phase, you’re going to
get quite tired of just eating by your cravings. You’ll truly feel deep down that
you’ve had your fill of all of your favorites several times over, and plans for the
next tasty meal won’t be nearly as exciting as they used to be. You might even
watch other people order salads or eat fruit and whole grains with lean protein
and think “man, they must feel so good after eating that.” -Not morally good, but
physically good. You know, the way fresh and healthy food makes you feel; light
and free. Satiated, but not stuffed. You are likely to even begin to have cravings
for healthy and lighter fare. All of your Instagram friends are posting about
cookies, but you just want a cold, crisp apple! When you’re pretty much junkfooded out, it’s probably time for phase 2 to begin.
P h a se 2 : N u t r i ti ou s Ch o i ce s
After phase 1 has run its course, you’re going to be ready for some healthy and
nutritious eating. After a diet has jaded you to the extreme, it’s certainly possible
to subsist exclusively on dark chocolate ice cream and thin crust pizza for a week
at a time. But after a while, you will start to feel the desire to eat well.
Phase 2 is just that; beginning to eat well again. The goal of phase 2 is to begin
to focus the core of your diet on nutritious choices. The great news is that this
transition is very often going to feel completely natural, and in fact anticipated,
after your phase 1 indulgences. Now, the very important idea as mentioned earlier
is that you HAVE to indulge in phase 1, or else you’ll still want to eat mostly
crappy craving food in phase 2. But if you really let go and indulged in phase 1,
you’re very likely going to welcome phase 2 with open arms.
What does making ‘nutritious choices’ mean, exactly? It means that when it’s not
too inconvenient or driving you nuts, you choose the following foods for your
meals:
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• Foods that are minimally processed and preferably fresh
• Foods high in protein such as lean meats and dairy products
• Foods high in fiber and vitamins and minerals such as fresh fruits and veggies
• Healthy fat sources such as nuts, natural nut butters, avocado, and olive oils
Instead of having a burger, you get a whole grain burrito with brown rice and
steak, with plenty of veggies. Instead of snacking on potato chips, you have fresh
fruit. Instead of dipping your chicken fingers in ranch dressing, dip some carrots
and celery in almond butter.
By focusing on nutritious choices, you’ll be eating much healthier (which is good
for you as soon as you start doing it) and you’ll be easing into the great habits that
will serve you so well in formal dieting down the road. Do this easing in with no
pressure. Just do your best to try to make healthy and nutritious choices, but don’t
sweat it. If there’s a burger here and there, awesome. You DON’T have to be
perfect, just choose, on average, more of the nutritious foods and less of the junk
foods. One nearly instant benefit is that you’ll start to feel better. Eating well is
going to make you feel lighter and more energetic, pretty much right away.
Enjoy this phase for 2-3 months, until nutritious choices are pretty much
automatic and especially stress-free. You’ll know you’re well on your way when
you no longer harbor intense fears about controlling your food intake. You know
that when placed in most any situation, you can, and usually do, choose to make
nutritious choices, and that it’s ok if you don’t always make those choices. Once
eating well is second nature again, you’ll likely be ready to begin phase 3.
P h a se 3 : R ou g h M a cro s
Coming out of phase 2, you’ll honestly be able to say that you have a pretty good
relationship with food. Painfully restricting your own food intake seems in the
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distance hazy past, and your outlook on eating is calm and optimistic. Every now and again you might panic a bit, but hey, we all do that!
In phase 3, you’re going to make just a very small change to your eating habits.
Over the course of 1-3 months of this phase, you’re going to get into the habit of
getting most meals that you eat through the day to conform to a pattern. Here’s
the pattern:
• With EVERY meal where you can reasonably accommodate, you’ll try to get a
good source of protein. We’re not gonna count anything yet, but a lean piece
of meat about the size of 2/3 of your palm is a good place to start, or a protein
drink or skim milk the size of an average coffee cup or medium glass.
• In most meals that aren’t shakes or for which it’s not too inconvenient, you’ll
try to have a large handful of mostly green veggies. What kinds? All kinds are
fine, as are mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, and so on.
• If you’re about to train within 3 hours or you’ve trained within 6 hours, you’ll
add a small handful of whole grain carbs (brown rice, oats, whole grain pasta,
sweet potato, etc…) or 1-2 pieces of fresh fruit to each meal. If not, you can
either have about half that amount of these carb sources or none at all.
• Based on how hungry you are, you can choose an amount of healthy fat from
nuts, natural nut butters, avocado, or healthy oils like olive oil and possibly
coconut oil. If you’re super hungry, finish your proteins, veggies and carbs first
and then have whatever amount of healthy fats you want to get full. If you mix
in your healthy fats, that’s fine too! If you’re not very hungry or have to train
soon after the meal and don’t want to get nauseous, limit your intake of fats
somewhat or altogether.
As you follow these guidelines for most meals, most of the time, you’ll be
establishing the habit of structure that’s going to be so very helpful for fueling
you right away and for the dieting phases down the line. Once you’re in the habit
of having lean proteins, veggies, healthy carbs and fats with most meals, you’ve
pretty much made automatic some of the biggest difficulties people find with the
dieting process.
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You can move onto phase 4 when you’re in the habit of getting in the correct (as
described above) amounts of protein and the other foods with most every meal. As
usual, a funky meal here and there is totally fine, but if most meals are balanced,
and it doesn’t seem to you like a lot of work to be balanced, you’re well on your
way and almost ready to kick butt again.
P h a se 4 : Cou n t i ng & M e a s u r i ng
After phase 3, you’re very likely to have re-established some very healthy and
sustainable eating practices. You’re now eating mostly nutritious food, and doing
so in balanced and structured multiple meals per day. The last step in this recovery
process is to get you eased into the process of counting once again.
You’re going to count only 3 aspects: protein, carbs, and fat. You’ll count them
to the best of your ability (there are popular apps that can help greatly), and try to
spread out their intake over the course of 4-6 balanced meals per day. THAT’S IT.
No goal numbers, no crazy precision, no worrying… just count. You can eyeball
food and you don’t have to weigh and measure everything, though you certainly
can IF you feel comfortable and not anxious doing so.
Get on the scale, record the number, and get off.
If you’re the kind of person that needs SOME guidance on nutrient amounts, just
follow the numbers you calculate from a maintenance diet earlier in this book.
How do you get those numbers? Well, you’ll have to weigh yourself on your
scale. Count up how much daily protein, carb, and fat content you’ll need and
that’s it, shoot for those numbers. No worries, no nerves, no danger.
\
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How closely should you follow the numbers if you chose to calculate them?
Within 30g per day on all macros (protein, carbs, fats) is fine. That means if your
weight implies you should eat 150g of protein but you ate 180, no worries! This
way you can even count in your occasional junk foods and alcoholic drinks and
not worry about a thing.
Once you’re well into this phase, you’ll notice that counting and measuring
food is not very complicated; neither physically nor emotionally. You just make
nutritious choices, count up the numbers, eat great food, train hard, and enjoy
life! You don’t have to be perfect, so just do your best!
As you do these phases, please don’t rush. If you rush through them, you have
wasted several months. By rushing, you get neither the impressive changes of a
hard diet nor the psychological recovery you need. It’s like taking the afternoon
off of work when you really need a week’s vacation; you don’t feel any more
rested, and you’ve accumulated half a day of missed work to make up. The
typical durations listed here are just recommendations for your expectations, not
guidelines. If you need more time, take more time. Ultimately the “Completion”
guidelines in the list of phases above are the only markers of progress and
justification for moving forward to the next phase. If you’re not sure if you’ve met
the completion guidelines, always err on the side of taking another few weeks in
that same phase to decide.
Mov i n g Fo r wa rd
Once you’ve completed phase 4, and assuming you didn’t rush, you’ll very
likely to have quite a different outlook on the dieting process as compared to the
outlook you had when you began this recovery process. You’ll be looking at food
with pleasure and anticipation, with an underlying sense of calm, and without
desperation.
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When you’ve reached this point, you’re pretty much ready to pick a goal (fat loss,
for example), set up your diet (or purchase your diet online or hire the services of
a qualified diet coach), and calmly and willfully begin to execute the plan. Get in
your meals, train hard, stick to the plan, do what it takes, and you’ll be much more
likely to get the great results you want. Keep the diets goal oriented and follow
the 2-3 month diet-to-maintenance structure, and you’ll be very likely to prevent
another fall into unfortunate relationships with food and dieting in the future.
S ta y i n g Mo t i va t e d
Our motivations mostly come from our valued goals (how we want to look
and perform) and our pride in meeting them. For most people, the right goals
along with a logical and intelligent structure in achieving them (the scientific
dieting process as described so far in this book) form the basis for a very strong
motivation. But there are just a couple of strategies you can use to make sure that
your motivation for dieting is as high as it can be. We’ve chosen the six we think
are a must-mention, and described them below for your benefit.
1) Dieting for the Right Reasons
2) Shame and Accountability
3) Keeping Goals Realistic
4) Using the Food Palatability-Reward Hypothesis to your Advantage
5) Recognizing Progress
6) Health and Happiness Come First
1 ) D IET IN G FO R T H E R I G HT R E A S O NS
When the calories get low and the scale starts to stall out a bit, motivation comes
into play in a big way. At this point, the more of it you have, the better, and
there’s no such thing as too much. Likewise, when you’re waking up a bit fluffier
each week on your muscle gain diet… you’ll need all the motivation you can find
in order to push on and make it through.
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The single most important factor in motivation is having valued goals. Put
another way, you’ve gotta be dieting for some end-goal you actually want, and
not just dieting with no end in sight. When times get tough, there needs to be a
bright beacon on the horizon to lead you along on your path.
How bright the beacon is depends on how good your reason for dieting is. The
better the reason is FOR YOU, the more likely that you’ll see this beacon in storm
after storm and stay the course.
Are you dieting for the right reasons? There are many reasons to diet, and they
fall into 3 categories:
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• Bad reasons for pretty much everyone
• Good reasons for some people that are not good reasons for you
• Good reasons for you
The “bad reasons for most’ category includes dieting to make someone else happy
(a former, current, or future significant other or lover), dieting because you
hate the body you’re in, dieting because you think a lean or muscular physique
will make you MUCH happier, dieting out of spite “for the haters,” and about
a million other reasons. The two biggest commonalities between all of the bad
reasons to diet are that they come from a negative emotional place (running from
something about yourself) and/or that they come with expectations of a radical
quality of life and happiness change.
Dieting out of negative emotional reasons will drain you like nothing else. Even
if you achieve your goals, you’ll look back and see not much but pain, and you’ll
look forward and see not much but emptiness. Dieting out of an expectation of
enormous benefits can be done once, but pretty much only once. You’ll never do
two diets for the purpose of a new and happy life because the first diet will make it
crystal clear to you that not much changes other than your weight.
Are we going to sit here and tell you that being leaner and more muscular won’t
make you ANY happier? Absolutely not. We’re all adults and we’re not here to
prop up frail teenage self-esteems. Being leaner and more muscular can make
you feel better, let you fit better into the clothes you love, and bring you mostly
extra positive attention from the opposite and same sex. That is all great, but
overall, your general life happiness relies on a great deal more than looking hot
in yoga pants. It helps at the margins, but only at the margins. You get used to
how your lean body feels, new clothes lose their appeal, and compliments from
people other than the ones you deeply love and respect don’t mean much after just
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a short while. Happy people come in all shapes and sizes, and the biggest factors
in happiness (genetic predispositions, having a career you love, and surrounding
yourself with the intimate relationships that make you the happiest) have little
to do with your appearance or fitness level. If you’re dieting because you think
your life will be a totally unrecognizable and wonderful state once your goals are
reached, you’ll be in for a rude awakening when your diet ends.
Alright, so we don’t want to diet for the bad reasons, but there are in fact plenty
of good reasons to diet. Some good reasons include:
• Slight increase in baseline happiness above your current level
• The pleasure of the deep perseverance it takes to accomplish your fitness goals
• The self-actualizing experience of inhabiting the body YOU built
• The pleasure of the journey and end-goal of fitness
• Enhancing your health
• The aesthetic pursuit of turning your body into a magnificent piece of art
Those are all very good reasons, and to be sure, there are countless more. The very
important point we are making here is that you should diet for the reasons in that
list or otherwise – reasons that are good reasons for YOU. Sure, many people like
to commit themselves to diet because just the process brings order to their lives.
That might not be enough for you. You might find inspiration and motivation
in toiling in obscurity to engineer your best; a physique or performance that will
stun and engender awe, most importantly your own. If you choose the reason that
is meaningful to you, it can and will help greatly in motivating you through even
some of the toughest of times.
When calories are being cut or your jeans are getting tighter and the training
feels like it’s killing you slowly, your own personal good reasons for dieting will
be what carry you through. Not the bad reasons, and certainly not someone else’s
good reasons.
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Thus any time you begin a diet, or if you’re reading this during a diet, ask
yourself just two simple questions: “Why am I dieting,” and “Will this make me
happy?” The rest is easy to figure out.
2 ) S H A ME AN D AC C OU NTA B I LI T Y
It is currently accepted and even applauded for women to be strong, athletic,
and involved in sports. This is, sadly, a relatively new aspect of Western society.
Nonetheless it is here now, so we should enjoy. With this has come what we
would like to call an improvement in beauty ideals. Of course, as we have
mentioned in this book already, it is healthiest to set your own standard of beauty,
have it depend on your capabilities in addition to your appearance, and most
importantly, be based on YOUR preference alone. That being said, none of us
is entirely immune to wanting to achieve something resembling current beauty
standards; its natural. Luckily, for the 21st century woman, those standards no
longer involve Twiggy or anorexic looking ideals. Current standards of beauty
are much healthier, and involve muscles and curves. Achieving this generally also
means achieving good health and great performance in physical activities, so who
could argue that it is terrible to work towards this ideal in a healthy, balanced
manner?
There is another issue though. It is very common, especially for women who
have tried fad diet after fad diet and failed, to feel ashamed to try yet another
diet. There is pressure for them to accept themselves the way they are, even
if their current state is physically unhealthy. This shame and fear of falling off
another wagon leads women to HIDE the fact that they are trying to lose fat.
This presents a huge problem. The woman who is hiding her diet will have
trouble sticking to it in front of friends and family, leading to cheat meals and
inconsistency and an ironically higher likelihood of failure. Hiding your diet
presents another issue. You lose the accountability factor of having supportive
friends and family nudge you or remind you of your goals. If you have healthy,
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reasonable weight management goals, the people in your life should be supportive
and act as a great tool to help you stay on track and progress. If they are not,
perhaps it is your friends you should consider losing before those pounds! In any
case, if you are conducting your body composition changes in a healthy, well
informed manner with healthy, personally derived goals, you should not feel
any shame. The more supportive people you tell about it, the more you will feel
motivated to be consistent and succeed.
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3 ) K EEP IN G GOA L S R E A LI S TI C
All goals can be split into 4 basic categories:
a. Goals that are so easy you can get them done no problem
b. Goals that are challenging, but possible to accomplish
c. Goals that are incredibly unlikely
d. Goals that are almost certainly impossible
Goals in category a. are not worth your time. In fact, you might not even
accomplish them if you try, because they are so easy you’ll get bored before you
do. If your goal is to lose 1lb per week for 1 week and then stop, you might as
well stop before you start. If high motivation is something you’re after, category a.
goals are not going to work.
Goals in category b. are where most of your goals should lie. They are within
the realm of possibility and even likelihood, but they don’t require you to quit
your day job or accept an outside chance of accomplishing them. Losing 15lbs in
12 weeks is a challenging goal for a 160lb woman, but it’s not impossible. It will
require lots of work and focused effort, but it can and very likely will be done if
you do what it takes.
Category c. goals are ok to make every now and again, but they should be
optional secondary goals. They are so tough that while they are possible, often
they won’t bear fruit. Winning your first ever figure or physique show is certainly
not impossible. But when you show up for the first time, you’ll meet competitors
often 10 years older than you… with 15 more years of training. These women
have been taking 2nd and 3rd at shows for the last five years. They’ve put so much
effort into their prep that trying that level of sacrifice on your first run is likely
to overwhelm you and make you quit the sport. Should you give up on winning
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your first powerlifting meet, CrossFit competition, or strongwoman show for
those reasons? No, but your primary goal should be to do as well as you can, and
maybe your secondary goal, the one you don’t think about too much, can be to
win the whole damn thing. Also keep in mind - does anyone (aside from maybe
sport historians) even care how you placed at your first show? Not even by a long
shot. It’s how steadily you can improve that most determines how great you can
become.
If the advice for category c. goals is largely to avoid them or make them
secondary, the advice for category d. goals is to abstain from making them
completely. If you start out at 345lbs and your goal is to be a fit, healthy and
happy sustainable 100lbs, you should re-think your goals. Almost no one who
can comfortably stay around 100lbs without being chronically hungry and out of
energy even has the genetics to gain an extra 245lbs. Yes, yes, we all think we can
gain an infinity of pounds if we were only to eat enough dark chocolate almond
butter and pizza, but after less than 100lbs gained, most people simply won’t
be able to keep up the sheer daily calories is takes to get that big. If you do find
yourself at 345lbs, then you almost certainly have the genetics to be larger than
100 lbs at a healthy weight. Now, do you have to stay at 345lbs? Certainly not.
You can choose to be much lighter. A realistic goal of a long term (3-5 years from
first diet start) stable 190lbs is within the distant reach of many 345lb’ers. Now,
190 isn’t your average Italian fashion model, but with the muscle mass you’re sure
to put on during proper training on your fitness journey, you can look, feel and
be in very, very good shape. Shape that both makes you a performance machine in
the gym, and in competition, and one that gives you the sexy curves most people
can’t walk by without double-taking.
Unfortunately, Hollywood and social media are often of little help in setting up
realistic goal choices. Almost every viral post and every inspirational movie or
documentary is about someone who did the damn-near impossible. And that gets
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many of us thinking; what if we can do the near-impossible too? To counter this
perspective, it’s useful to look at your body as an investment (we’ll pretend this is
just a perspective… in fact it’s reality). When you invest your finances properly,
you do it with a great deal of care. You make sure to find the investments that
carry the biggest payoff, and ones that are still not very risky. In this analogy,
choosing a category d. goal is like taking your last 5 years of savings and heading
down to the local casino to bet it all on red 11. If you want to most likely
squander a ton of effort and almost guarantee disappointment, category d. goals
are right up your alley.
Stick to mostly category b. goals and you’ll slowly build a physique and
performance level over longer periods that may allow you to achieve goals that
would have initially been in category c or even d. But you don’t get to such
results with one big 15-year plan of a goal… you get there with many category b.
goals in a row that each take weeks and months at a time to fulfil.
4 ) USIN G T H E F O O D PA L ATA B I LI T Y -R E WA R D HY P OTHE S I S (F PRH) TO YO U R
ADVA N TAGE
What is the FPRH?
FPRH is actually quite easy to define in simple terms, even with such an
intimidating name. In essence, the FPRH claims that the more tasty the food
you’re eating, the more of it you’re going to be able to eat at any one time and
the more of it you’ll crave later. In addition, high volume and low calorie foods
that tend to be less indulgently tasty (like veggies and fruits) are much more filling
than processed and energy-dense foods like that tend to be more tempting. For
a detailed definition and in-depth information on the FPRH, please see here,
and for an academic discussion, here. The reality of the FPRH leaves us with
both good and bad news, and some choices as to how to make things easier on
ourselves during dieting.
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How can you use FPRH to your advantage, to make dieting easier and less
demotivating?
Because foods that don’t taste amazing don’t lead to nearly as many cravings as the
tasty ones, it’s a good idea for many to restrict the percent of tasty foods they eat
the deeper they get into a fat loss diet. Less tasty foods, on average, mean fewer
cravings, and combined with eating filling, high volume foods, can lead to a much
easier diet. Do you scarf down all of your food towards the end of a fat loss phase?
Do you look forward to eating any time you’re not eating? The FPRH can make
these nuisances much less powerful. It’s gonna take you a whole lot of chewing
to get through a salad with dry chicken than a sautéed and juicy chicken breast,
while both have identical calories. The high volume of food will fill you up more
and for longer, and the next time you’ll have to eat, things won’t be nearly as
exciting and your cravings will be much lower. I mean, who the hell craves dry
chicken breast that much?!
When your food is more filling and not a culinary whirlwind of taste, it starts
to be more of a chore to eat and isn’t something you look forward to as much.
Sounds pretty bad, but it’s a blessing in disguise when you are cutting. Because
food is slowly being reduced on a fat loss diet, you can count on two things; less
of it than you would like at any one time and less and less of it with each passing
period of several weeks. Is it a good idea to take pleasure from and attach your
emotions to something that is so rare and so in decline?
If you focus on high volume foods (lots of fiber and water… usually fresh fruits
and veggies) that are not the fat and sugar-laden treats you’d usually crave, your
cravings actually subside considerably and you can use your mind for the dozens
of other things you’d rather be thinking about during the day. This last point
brings up some potential problems with a special category of tasty meal: the cheat
meal.
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Why are occasional cheats meals often a bad idea on a hard diet?
While some people handle giant cheat meals just fine, many are better off without
them during a fat loss diet. “Cheat meals” or “free meals” are programmed intakes
of food in which you’re basically allowed to eat whatever you want, which usually
means super-tasty food like pizza, burgers, ice cream, etc. When many people eat
their cheat meal, they greatly enjoy the experience. The next day or even later
that day, however, they have to go back to bland diet food, and much less of it.
Once back on their diet, they will notice that they crave more cheat foods. Tasty
food is addicting! Not necessarily in any really bad way like drug addiction, but
in the sense that the more you get (to a point), the more you want. Now, “to a
point” is important to note as getting enough cheat meals (like on the diet reset
program in the last section) goes a long way to making you no longer want to
cheat. But the big problem is, on a hypocaloric fat loss diet you, by definition, don’t
ever reach that point. If you ate enough cheat meals on your diet to be satiated,
you would be eating so many that you wouldn’t be hypocaloric and no fat loss
would even occur.
So if you’re eating a cheat meal a week, you’re not eating enough to really squash
any cravings. In fact, you’re basically engineering even more cravings by giving
yourself just enough of the good life to stay addicted. When various intelligence
agencies teach their staff how to extract information from captured spies,
they don’t just teach them to beat, deprive, and torture the captives. They do
something much more effective; they teach them to do plenty of the deprivation
and torture, followed by a restful night’s sleep or a good meal in exchange for
even the slightest bit of cooperation by the spy. Every time the spy cooperates
even a bit, they reward him/her with a bit of the good life. Not enough of the
good life to satiate, but just enough to create further cravings. After some weeks,
most spies will have an incredibly hard time resisting an offer to give up important
information. Their cravings for the good life and their behavior of looking
forward to the next release are incredibly powerful. This is human psychology.
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If you have the choice, why do this to yourself? You can spend a big chunk of
your fat loss diet hating every minute of it as your mind looks only forward to
the upcoming cheat meal. You can scarf down the cheat meal knowing that
every bite brings you closer to the much longer period of deprivation that is to
follow. After a while, the whole experience can be miserable. If you use the FPRH
and make your food voluminous and mostly lacking in taste (sugars, fats, spices,
sauces…) and you stay away from cheat meals, you’ll see food much more as fuel
and you won’t tragically hinge your happiness on this dwindling resource.
Does this idea apply to literally everyone? No. Do you have to give up all tasty
foods as soon as you start dieting? No way. But if you start getting cravings, and
find that looking forward to your foods starts to make you a bit more miserable
than you’d like, give the low-palatability foods a try. You can always go back to
tasty foods if it doesn’t work out after a couple of weeks!
5 ) REC O GN IZ IN G P R O G R E S S
Pride, one of the seven deadly sins of antiquity. Is pride really a sin? Certainly,
pride can be taken too far. In the world of diet results, getting too big of a head
about your progress can lead to more slip-ups. You look in the mirror and say
“woah, I’m super lean!” Later that day your friends invite you to the Chinese allyou-can-eat buffet, and you think, “well, being that I’m in great shape already,
why not?” You end up doing this more than once during a diet and you don’t lose
as much fat as you had planned. If only you had managed to stay humble!
While keeping your pride in check is a good thing, going too far on the other
end of the spectrum can be a bad thing as well. Some fitness folks (and most of
us will know a few of these people off hand) don’t recognize and bask in their
accomplishments enough or even at all. Some of the best powerlifters in the world
will respond to sincere complements with “I ain’t shit.” If you get rowdy and press
them a little as to what they could possibly mean by that, some of them will insist
that because they are not “the best,” then they’ve got no right to be proud.
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Well, even those who are the best at any given time are not the greatest of all
time. And even the greatest of all time might just be biding their time… the great
champion that will eclipse their streak of dominance might already be training,
and winning, somewhere in the world of fitness.
If you’re not willing to admit even to yourself how far you’ve come, what the hell
is the purpose of training and dieting? Seriously. If you’re training and dieting
in the search for self-actualization and a sense of accomplishment, how are you
supposed to succeed if you’re not going to allow yourself to feel accomplished?
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If you survive a hard weekend of tempting
food and drinks without swerving, admit it
— you’re a fucking warrior!
After accomplishing muscle gain and or fat loss, women often line up those before
and after pictures and post on Instagram – the place where all great success is
highlighted. This can be a fantastic way for you to celebrate your achievement
and inspire others. It can be a healthy means of self-reward. On the other end of
the spectrum, it can be a tool for some women to generate self-approval via the
approval of others. When you embark on your fitness journey, it is best for your
overall happiness that the journey and the outcome occur to make YOU happy. If
you are putting in hard work solely for the approval of others, you will enjoy the
flood of likes and compliments in response to your progress pic, but as the posting
day gets farther away, and the excitement of the attention fades, you will be left
with how you actually feel about yourself. Before you post your pic, pause and ask
yourself if you are doing so for healthy reasons. You SHOULD be proud and you
SHOULD be able to share your success with others, but only if it is your personal
success, not if the expected approval defines your success.
If you recognize only progress that’s impressive to YOU and mentally reward
yourself for it, you’ll only reinforce your desire to succeed; you’ll get that
much mentally stronger and become even more motivated for harder and more
productive dieting down the road.
As with many (but not all) things, the middle road seems to be a good starting
point for recognizing your own progress and complimenting yourself. Right
between too much coddling and not enough credit is where you usually want to
be.
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6 ) H EA LT H AN D H A P P I NE S S C O M E F I R S T
In our fitness journeys, we sometimes get so caught up in our goals of progress
that we get all of our priorities out of whack. Sometimes we’re not even sure what
steps took us to thinking this way, but we want those abs to come out more than
we want anything else in the world. And we sometimes start acting like it. We
push aside our healthy relationships, we start dieting to the extreme and training
more than we can recover from, and we might even mess with some drugs
without proper knowledge or consideration of side effects.
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Unless you’ve been kidnapped by terrorists and forced to get into contest shape
to save your family, you’ve got to keep two ideas in the back of your mind at all
times in your fitness journey. The first idea is that this journey is voluntary. It’s a
choice, every hour, day, week, month and year as to how much time and energy
you want to put into this. If your training and dieting is making you miserable
with no end in sight, remember that you are the only person pushing yourself.
That’s it. You can change course any time you like. Of course you don’t want
to change course compulsively and mess up a good plan, but if your plan is bad
and not making you happy in at least the long term, rethinking your approach is
always and everywhere YOUR choice.
Secondly, this journey is about health and happiness. You may have to work
longer hours than you want so that you can keep your job and provide for your
family. You may have to take care of other people simply because they’re related
to you and can’t care for themselves, even if your relationship with them has
long been sour or was never good to begin with. That’s stuff you HAVE to do
in some sense. This fitness journey? It’s just to keep you healthy and make you
happy! Can you restrict your body too much for short periods and be miserable
during that time so that you can be happier in the long term? You bet, and that’s
a reality of dieting. But if the whole process and even the destination isn’t making
you BOTH healthier and happier, why are you doing this? If you’re reading this
right now and can’t answer that question for your own fitness journey, some deep
thinking might be in order.
The only question to ask yourself is: Does
the benefit of these goals outweigh the
costs in discomfort?
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Getting ripped is not mandatory. Having abs is not mandatory. Weighing 132 is
not mandatory. All of these things are voluntary goals that only YOU can make.
They all require some bit of discomfort to attain. You’re a healthy, beautiful and
valuable person to yourself and to many others. You never NEED to get ripped or
ultra-strong, so please, make sure it’s worth it to you. Because if it’s not worth it
to you, it’s not worth it to the only person that matters.
References
FOOD PAL ATAB IL IT Y
• The case for the Food Reward Hypothesis of Obesity, Part I
• The case for the Food Reward Hypothesis of Obesity, Part II
• Food Reward: Approaching a scientific consensus
• Effect of sensory perception of foods on appetite and food intake: a review of
studies on humans
PSYC H O LO GY O F W EI G HT LO S S
• Self-set dieting rules: adherence and prediction of weight loss success
• Psychological symptoms in individuals successful at long term maintenance
of weight loss
• The Sporting Body: Body Image and Eating Disorder Symptomatology
Among Female Athletes from Leanness Focused and Nonleanness Focused
Sports
• Long term weight loss maintenance
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• Who succeeds in maintaining weight loss? A conceptual review of factors
associated with weight loss maintenance and weight regain
• Is your brain to blame for weight regain?
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06
Female Health
Issues Across the Lifespan
This chapter will go over some aspects of nutrition across the female lifespan,
including dietary needs of teenaged girls and pregnant and nursing mothers.
It will also cover disordered eating and its detrimental effect on health.
Chapter Six
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Chapter Six
Nutrition for Children & Teens
While this is a diet book for females, half of all children and teens are female,
and many of the women reading this are mothers themselves. For your benefit,
we’ve included a short discussion of the basics on child and teen nutrition. The
following are some of the more pertinent points, often bulleted and listed for your
ease of reading.
One of the biggest insights on nutritional approaches for children and teens
(unlike those of adults), is the recommendation to avoid focusing on bodyweight
as the central outcome measure and data point for progress tracking. As opposed
to focusing on weight (which can lead to poor physical development, poor body
image, declining food relationships, and damage to parent-child relationships),
focusing on healthy eating for better nourishment and strong athletic and
academic performance is paramount.
Children have a much higher weight variability during their developmental years
than they do as adults. Thus, an adult of healthy weight will often have previously
been a child of both lower and higher weight compared to her peers as she
grew up through the various developmental stages of childhood. It seems better
for parents to gently encourage healthy eating practices (and lead by example)
rather than focusing on a child or teen’s weight at a particular time during their
development. As children grow and make healthy choices, their weight will most
often normalize to the healthy range.
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Many of the same rules of healthy eating that apply to adults apply to children
as well. Average meals should be eaten every 3-6 hours (or at longer intervals
with healthy snacks in between), with most meals containing a base of fruits,
vegetables, whole grains, and lean meats. High intakes of sugar and saturated fats
should be limited within the general approach to the diet, but balance is critical
for both physiological and psychological development. Fast food and junk are
totally ok for kids to eat every now and again, so long as MOST of their meals are
composed of healthier options
Calories should be targeted towards hunger and not strictly controlled in most
circumstances, and macronutrients need to be relatively evenly distributed
between protein, carbs and fats.
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Carbs: Most children of all
ages should consume between
45% and 60% of their calories
as carbs. This of course means
that low-carb diets are almost
exclusively out of the question
for children and teens. Carbs
are the most important fuel for
both the highly active nature of
childhood and the developing
brain (especially for academic
abilities).
Fats: For children between 1
and 3 years of age, fats should
compose between 30% and
40% of the diet, including
plenty of saturated fats for
growth and development. For
children and teens between 4
and 18 years of age, fats should
compose between 25% and
35% of total calories.
Protein: For young children
(under age 10), protein can
compose between 10% and
20% of calories, and that upper
limit can go as high as 30%
for older children and teens.
The lower intake of protein for
younger children isn’t so much
a health concern (extra protein
is not toxic), but is lower to
make more room in the diet for
the fats and carbs they need.
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If you’re interested in more diet information for your child or teen, MyPlate.gov
is an excellent resource for age-specific nutritional information.
The Female Athlete Triad & Bone Loss
With the likely unintentional but unfortunate acronym of “FAT,” the Female
Athlete Triad is a relatively uncommon but deleterious condition that can affect
some women in the fitness community, and especially those that take hypocaloric
dieting and high volume training too far. The FAT is based on the low end of a
continuum of the following:
• Energy Intake (low calorie intake)
• Menstrual Function (intermittent menstrual function or lack of menses)
• Bone Mineral Density (low density)
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In a situation of complete health, energy intake is high enough to sustain all
normal sport and reproductive function, menstruation occurs normally, and bone
mineral density (BMD) is within the normal range. This situation places the
athlete completely out of the FAT spectrum. On the other hand, the worst case
scenario is when all of the negatives line up, and have been lining up for long
enough to do serious damage, especially to BDM. Thus, in the worst case of FAT,
an athlete displays chronically low energy intake (not enough to support athletic
and reproductive functions for months and years at a time), they no longer
have menstrual cycles (hypothalamic amenorrhea), and they have developed
osteoporosis largely because of the previous two factors over months and years.
Most fitness females will not meet the criteria for full-effect FAT, but many can
have some of the components. This is especially true for distinct durations during
hypocaloric dieting that gets a woman below roughly 15% body fat.
So what does bodyweight have to do with it? In essence, when hypocaloric
dieting is pronounced and longer term, or if the female becomes very lean (usually
below 15% body fat) and stays there, the reproductive system can essentially pause
most of its functions. The evolutionary logic for this is very straightforward. Your
body basically makes the calculation that you are in a starvation environment,
or in an environment in which you’re not getting in enough calories to bear
children. Thus, it shuts down menstrual production so that energy can be used
more for survival and less for reproduction. When times are good again (sufficient
food intake is present), your menstrual systems becomes active once again and
normal hormonal and reproductive activities resume.
So far that sounds pretty innocuous, and it would be if not for associated
hormonal production. The big problem arises because the female reproductive
system activity supports estrogen production. Once reproductive activity slows
or largely shuts down, estrogen production goes with it. Estrogen is a very
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big player in bone growth and repair. Bones are composed of living cells and
inorganic minerals in a united complex. The whole complex is under a constant
state of flux, being degraded and rebuilt all of the time. Estrogen is an important
hormone that signals bone growth and repair to occur, largely through its effects
on the Osteoblasts, which are the bone-building cells of the body. Once estrogen
is greatly lowered, bone growth and repair slows significantly. Since bone
breakdown and turnover is always occurring, the net result of low estrogen can
mean chronic bone loss. Not in days or week or months, but years.
Taken together, the process of FAT expression occurs in the following way in
worst case scenarios:
a. Chronic hypocaloric dieting occurs, especially without maintenance phases used
to re-establish metabolism OR body fat is chronically kept well under 15% or
so.
b. M
enstrual cycles are interrupted and become intermittent or cease altogether,
lowering estrogen production for long periods at a time
c. C
hronic low estrogen levels AND the low calories which have in part caused
them to contribute to bone loss (calories and the nutrients foods carry, such as
calcium, also play a large role in bone dynamics)
Does it always happen in this precise of a pattern? No, and here are some of the
reasons why it might not.
• Most females will not diet so hard and for so long so as to accumulate
enough periods of amenorrhea (lack of menses) to make a big dent in lifetime
menstruation times
• Most females will not remain in a sub-15% body fat environment for extended
periods of time
• Many females will not have genetics that put them at serious risk of bone loss
even with common amenorrhea
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• Many females will only notice the symptoms of bone loss much later in life
(55+) due to the sheer time that bone loss must occur in many cases before it
becomes full-blown osteoporosis
Even still, most women are at some risk for osteoporosis at some point in their
lives, and this is not good news. The porous and brittle bones of osteoporosis
fracture easily, even under the strain of normally active muscles. In its more
serious incantations, osteoporosis can make even mildly strenuous daily tasks a
huge risk for bone fracture, and can render an otherwise healthy individual mostly
inactive.
The news about osteoporosis gets a bit worse before it gets better. It turns out that
most research indicates that the bone loss that leads (first to osteopenia and then
osteoporosis) is not reversible. That is, even if the causative factors of bone loss
are eliminated, there doesn’t seem to be much we can do to re-build what was
lost, if at all. So with bone loss, what you have is what you’re stuck with, and in
reality, most measures to fight bone loss are just able to slow it down, not stop or
reverse it. This means that if you have good genetics for bone mass and you take
good care of yourself most of your life and avoid conditions such as those of FAT,
you might be on track to develop debilitating osteoporosis only by 140 years old.
Since you’re unlikely to make it to that age for a host of other reasons, you may
not ever see osteoporosis in your lifetime. On the other hand, most of us have to
deal with the reality of likely living long enough to see osteoporosis. Most women
in the U.S., especially those of Caucasian and Asian ancestry, will have some
osteopenia in their late years and many will suffer from osteoporosis as well.
Because most of us will eventually develop osteoporosis, and because bone loss
is not currently possible to reverse on any large scale, it’s likely a very good idea
to do something about preventing as much bone loss as possible for as long as
possible. Which means that if you’re reading this, possibly starting right now! But
what to do? Here’s a list of the most effective strategies:
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• Avoid prolonged periods of hypocaloric dieting. Following our advice of 3
months maximum before maintenance phases should be a great start.
• When dieting, don’t allow greater than a 1000 calorie per day deficit. A 1000
calorie per day deficit roughly translates into a 2lb per week rate of weight loss,
which for most women is faster than the earlier guideline of 1% anyway.
• If you have to be at body fat levels of under 15% (or lower than that), try to
only be that low in body weight for the time that you need to be. Staying very
lean after a figure show is great for your ego, but might not be the greatest for
your long term health. Though if your figure body fat is around 10% and you
weigh around 150lbs, just 15lbs or so separates you from contest body fat and
20% fat, which is lean yet healthy. A 15lb drop during a 12 week diet prep is a
breeze in most cases, so as this advice is quite realistic without much hassle.
• Expect to have normal menstruation during most of the year, with spotty
or missing activity during very hard endings of diets or very lean body
compositions that are inherently temporary. If you haven’t had a period in over
3 months at a time, it’s a good idea to evaluate your diet and training goals.
• Manage fatigue in your training plan. Train hard but sustainably, with planned
recovery workouts, rest days, deloads, and active rest periods.
• Consume a diet high in vitamins and minerals, especially calcium. Calcium is a
component of bone construction and is found in abundance in dairy. If you’re
not getting enough calcium per day (at least 1200mg per day) and you’re
having trouble getting enough from food, a supplement may help. The good
news is that most whey and casein powders are rich in calcium.
• Continue to train hard and heavy. Running, jumping, tumbling, and heavy
weight training literally stimulates bone growth and preservation. Because
bone loss mostly occurs after age 30 and bone growth is possible until 30,
training heavy at all adult ages can both add bone density for later (before age
30) and greatly slow bone loss (after age 30).
If too much hypocaloric dieting or hard training occurs at younger ages, late
menarche (onset of menstruation) may result. Late menarche is defined as the
occurrence of the female’s first period after age 16. This is a big problem, as it is
linked to a huge miss in opportunity for bone building in the teen years and is
greatly associated with osteoporosis later in life. If you’re younger or you’ve got
young female children, late menarche is definitely something to watch out for.
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Disordered Eating
Eating disorders are a very big deal. Every year, numerous women (who are
at vastly greater risk for eating disorders compared to men) literally die from
eating disorders gone too far. Because eating disorders are in almost every
case psychologically caused, the best we can do is recommend that you see a
psychologist or psychiatrist if you feel you could be at high risk for disordered
eating. Below we will outline some of the basics of common eating disorders, but
we greatly urge you to seek professional guidance if you catch many of the signs
in yourself (or direct a friend to professional help if she seems to be at risk) instead
of trying to deal with the problem yourself or, worse, hiding the issue.
There are three categories of disordered eating that are of pertinence to us here,
and they are ordered by seriousness of health and life risk to the female:
• Anorexia Nervosa
• Bulimia Nervosa
• Anorexia Athletica
Anorexia Nervosa is far and away the most serious eating disorder that affects
females (in fact, which affects either gender).
The most fundamental feature of anorexia is food avoidance; willfully trying to
eat much less than is either necessary to safely and effectively lose weight. Though
Anorexia mostly affects non-athletes, those athletes that are in sports which
emphasize lean physiques (gymnastics, endurance sports) tend to have higher
numbers of anorexic athletes than sports in which lean physiques are not quite as
prized (basketball, volleyball).
The critical component of anorexia is that it is primarily (and many would argue
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almost exclusively) a psychological condition. That is, the woman’s drive to lose
more and more weight is not nearly as much related to sport performance or
health as it is to an obsessive psychological condition. Though anyone of any size
can be anorexic, those with a BMI at 17.5 or lower are considered at risk, because
prolonged weight loss below that body size is actually life-threatening, and many
people per year kill themselves via being underweight due to anorexia.
If you suspect that you or someone you know has anorexia, DO NOT try to give
them food advice or send them to a nutritionist. They are not simply confused
about how to diet, and accidentally eating to lose weight through their errors…
they are willfully trying to get as small as possible with almost total disregard for
any negative repercussions. Anorexics should only be referred to psychologists,
psychiatrists, or medical doctors (the latter of whom will refer to the former two
professionals).
Bulimia Nervosa is a disorder related to anorexia, but unlike the food avoidance
that constitutes the central feature of anorexia, bulimia is characterized primarily
by purging behaviors. Many bulimics will eat a relatively normal diet, but will
purge some of their meals in one of several ways, including vomiting and laxative
use. A third lesser recognized bulimic purging method is exercise, usually in great
excess. Thus, eating a pizza and then going on a 1000 calorie cardio binge right
after can be considered a bulimic and thus disordered behavior.
Unlike anorexia, in which low bodyweight is both a telltale sign and a serious
concern, bulimics are not always underweight. Unfortunately, they can still do
serious health damage by missing out on nutrients from the food they purged,
overtraining due to exercise addiction, or causing damage to their esophageal and
oral tissue (teeth included) via excessive vomiting.
Just as with anorexia, bulimics should best be referred to psychological and
psychiatric professionals and not nutritionists.
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The last category of common female eating disorders is a controversial one.
Anorexia Athletica is different from Anorexia Nervosa in that those exhibiting
it are losing weight for a distinct and logical sport-related purpose. Though their
end-goal is logical and usually healthy and safe, the obsession with their weight,
body shape, and food that they can display sometimes ranges into the disordered
spectrum.
Sometimes, the kinds of obsessive tendencies, body relationships, and eating
habits that an athlete develops during their competition phases can carry over to
the rest of her life and present as Anorexia Nervosa, with the discussed serious
consequences.
The reason that the diagnosis and even term of anorexia athletica is controversial
is that very rarely do weight-controlling athletes that exhibit it turn into nervosaclass anorexics. In fact, the vast majority of athletes that exhibit anorexia athletica
normalize their weight in the offseason and/or upon retirement. It’s not quite clear
whether the weight control sport and dieting practices helped to cause the later
anorexia nervosa, or that weight control sports simply attract more of the kind of
people that are at risk of eventually developing anorexia nervosa in any case.
With athletes that exhibit an obsession with eating, weight class, and exercise/
training, it’s best to make sure that the lines of communication are open and
that positive food and body relationships are being emphasized. Athletes that
express this condition should be monitored for warning signs of anorexia nervosa
development (such as a dwindling commitment to their competition weight and a
rising commitment to an ever-lowering weight).
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Modifications & Expectations for Menstruation
& Birth Control
Sport performance changes in predictable ways during menstruation. On the
whole, it’s not clear whether menstruation impairs peak performances. While it
might, in some women, due to pain and fatigue, other women seem unaffected.
In fact, some women report improved performances during menstruation, and
the individual response variation seems very large. If you’re experiencing high
fatigue levels during this process, your reaction time may also be impaired, and
with it, your general athletic ability. If this is the case, you may want to take a
few easier training days so as to reduce the unlikely, but slightly elevated chance
of injury as a result of this disrupted coordination. If you’re one of the lucky ones
that exhibits increased performance, the boost will usually occur in the immediate
postmenstrual period.
Some weight gain may occur for several days during the menstrual cycle,
usually due to the effect of estrogen increases on the kidneys’ proclivity for
water retention via the hormone ADH. This is a very transient effect, is selfcorrecting, and does not require any remediation on your part. All you have to do
is remember that it’s water weight, stick to whatever plan you’ve been following,
and watch the water weight come off just as easily as it came on.
If you’re taking an oral contraceptive, some other predictable changes and
responses may occur. Any recommendations regarding oral contraceptives are still
in early stages, as the body of research on other methods is not sufficiently large
and unanimous, such that we can draw any confident conclusions.
While data on oral contraceptives and sport performance does exist, it’s important
to mention that the study number and breadth is rather limited. The sample sizes
(number of women who participated in each study) are not very high, and the
individuals studied tended to be relatively untrained, which makes it difficult to
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draw conclusions that apply to well-trained athletes.
With all these limitations in mind, we can, however, draw some tentative
conclusions:
• Oral contraceptives do not appear to have a large impact on strength
• Oral contraceptives may increase cardiac output, but this does not seem to
increase VO2 Max, and thus may not improve performance
• Max heart rate does not seem to be increased during contraceptive use
• By decreasing menstrual blood loss, oral contraceptives may decrease the risk of
iron deficiency
• While some individuals experience some weight gain on oral contraceptives,
many others do not experience this reaction
Based on this, contraceptive choices are probably best made based on individual
experience. If you personally experience weight gain or other effects not
beneficial to your performance for your sport, a non-hormonal option might be
best for you. In terms of dealing with menstruation with reference to competition,
and dieting, tracking is a great idea. There are phone apps that can help you
track and predict when you will be menstruating. Coupling this with your own
tracking of body weight changes across your cycle and logging of perceptions
of performance and fatigue around menstruation can help you anticipate the
potential effect during competition preparation. For example, let’s say you are a
150 lb woman who fights in a combat sport with a mat side weigh in (recall from
the earlier chapter that this type of weigh in does not allow for any water weight
manipulation without sacrificing performance). Let’s say your next competition
is in a month and your desired weight class is 140-150 lbs. If you know you
gain two pounds of water weight before your period, and the weight doesn’t
generally drop back off until the end of your period (which you know from
tracking is on average 6 days long) and you see from your period tracker that
you will be two days into your period at your competition, you can now plan for
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this inconvenience in a simple and smart manner. You can do a quick diet over
the next weeks to lose a couple pounds by the time of competition so that you
don’t risk getting pushed into the next weight class or disqualified because of that
predictable weight increase.
Nutrition & Activity During Pregnancy
Dieting during pregnancy is a very serious matter. If you do some horrible fad
dieting (and we all have at some point or another) as an adult, almost all the
negatives are reversible, and few of them are even acutely serious. However,
during pregnancy you’re responsible for not only your own wellbeing but the
wellbeing of another life. In fact, the way you eat during pregnancy can affect
your child’s entire life.
Scare tactics aside, you really have to mess up your diet for anything very serious
to happen to the growth and development of your child. However, there are some
important concepts and general recommendations to keep in mind to ensure the
supply of nutrients to the fetus is nurturing and uninterrupted.
Perhaps the most important take-home point of this section is that hypocaloric
dieting during pregnancy SHOULD NOT OCCUR. Pregnancy is a time for
supplying adequate nutrients to keep the baby developing on track and to keep
yourself healthy and nourished, not a time for beach bodies. Weight SHOULD be
gained during pregnancy in every case, and even those starting pregnancy in the
obese weight range should look to gain (a little less weight than average maybe,
but STILL gain). If you happen to be overweight or obese, the best course of
action on weight gain recommendations is to speak to a healthcare professional
(your doctor is source #1 in this case) to determine the proper amount of weight
gain in your particular case.
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WEIGHT GAIN DURING
PREGNANCY SHOULD ROUGHLY
OCCUR AS FOLLOWS:
• 3.5lbs during the first
trimester
• 1lb per week from the
second trimester onwards
to delivery
• 25-35lbs over 9 months
for a single baby
• 35-45lbs for twins
THE BREAKDOWN OF THE 2535LB AVERAGE WEIGHT GAIN IS,
ROUGHLY:
• 7.5 lbs: average baby’s
weight
• 7 lbs : extra stored
protein, fat, and other
nutrients
• 4 lbs : extra blood
• 4 lbs : additional body
fluids
• 2 lbs : increased breast
size (woohoo for some of
us!)
• 2 lbs : increased size of
uterus & supporting
muscles
• 2 lbs : amniotic fluid
surrounding the fetus
• 1.5 lbs: placenta
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As you go through pregnancy and gain weight, calorie demands change. Within
the first trimester, calorie intakes should not change noticeably. During the second
trimester, calories should be roughly 350 higher per day than your pre-pregnancy
intake, and they should increase to roughly 450 calories per day above baseline
for the third trimester. This is fine advice if you want to use it to help design your
weekly batch-cooked meals, but don’t take it as religion. Eating to hunger should
always take precedence, even if that’s sometimes over or under the amount of
recommended food.
Other than adequate calories, a diverse and complete diet should be the goal
during pregnancy. Whole grains, fruits and veggies, lean proteins and healthy
fats should form the basis of your diet during all trimesters. Consuming plenty
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of dairy as well and avoiding excessive sugars and trans- and saturated fats is also
good advice.
By eating a well-balanced diet as described above, you’ll be likely to get in all of
the micronutrients you need during pregnancy. Here is a brief list of some of the
more important nutrients of focus during this time:
• Folic Acid
• Reduces risk of neural tube defects
• Goal: 600 mg/day
• Available in: fortified cereals, breads and pastas, and folic acid
supplements
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• Iron
• Most common nutrient deficiency during pregnancy
• Can result in iron deficient anemia
• Pica is a sign of iron deficiency (craving or consumption of non-food
items like chalk or dirt)
• Goal: 27 mg/day
• Available in: Meat, fish, poultry, leafy greens, fortified cereals, and
beans
• Supplement if needed but absorption is lower than through food
• Calcium
• Allows for healthy development of fetal teeth, bones, heart, nerves, &
muscles
• Calcium will be leached from the mother’s bones if intake is not high
enough → increases mother’s risk for osteopenia or osteoporosis
• Goal: 1000 mg/day (3 servings of calcium rich food daily is a start)
• Available in: Low fat/fat free dairy (milk, cheese yogurt), calcium
fortified cereals & juices
• Vitamin D enhances calcium absorption
• Choline
• Required for proper fetal brain development
• Goal: 450mg/day
• Found in many foods, but most pregnant women do not consume
enough (may need to supplement)
• Iodine
• Required for fetal brain growth and development
• Goal: 220 micrograms/day
B e n e fi t s o f E xe rci s e du r i ng P re gna ncy
Yes, pregnancy is a time for nourishment and care, but that does not mean you
have to become sedentary. In fact, exercise during pregnancy is vastly considered
to be a net-positive for many of the following reasons:
• Improves circulation
• Prevents painful & uncomfortable swelling
• Improves efficiency of lymphatic system
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• Enhances nutrient delivery to maternal and fetal tissues
• Reduces overall discomfort
• Low back pain
• Edema in legs
• Stiff joints
• Constipation
• Bloating
• Insomnia
• Significantly lowers risk of hyperglycemia
• Reduces risk of gestational diabetes
• Reduces excess weight gain during pregnancy
• Reduces postpartum weight retention
If you become pregnant, the best advice is to continue activity at a reduced
intensity level, with the intensity reduction proportional to the time course of the
pregnancy (intensity should fall as pregnancy proceeds). Frequent water breaks
for adequate hydration are highly recommended, and the following should be
avoided most of the time:
• Exercising to fatigue
• Maximal exertion or high intensity activity
• Activity that has a high fall risk
• Contact sports
• Full sit-ups throughout pregnancy
• Prone position exercises
• Avoid supine position after 3rd month of pregnancy
• Isometric contractions
• Exercising in hot, humid environment
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Speak with your healthcare professional before beginning any new exercise
program when pregnant, and do your best to stay healthy, nourished and happy!
N u t r i t i o n & Acti v i t y du r i ng B re a s t fe e ding
Breastfeeding offers some special nutritional and activity recommendations of its
own, presented here in a bulleted list for your convenience.
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Calories:
• 670cal/day extra are required to generate milk when an infant is exclusively
breastfed
• Closer to 450 calories once the infant is 9 months old
When dieting during breastfeeding:
• No more than 500 calorie deficit daily
• Resting metabolic rate (RMR) plus physical activity energy needs (from earlier
chapters on calorie intakes) +670 calories for breastfeeding, minus 500 calories
= recommended calories for weight loss
• 670 calorie increase actually comes from an increased RMR since milk
production is a continuous process
• Moderate reduction in calories should not cause a decrease in milk production
• Only lose 0.5-1.0lbs per week
• True fat loss typically does not occur until 2 wks postpartum
• Initial weight loss is fluid loss
Protein needs:
• 15-20g per day above normal/recommended intakes
• 15g → Amount based on protein concentration of milk
• 20g → based on nitrogen balance studies
Carbs & Fats:
• Same as peers (normal recommendations from earlier chapters)
Physical activity during breastfeeding:
• Usually not released to full activity for 6-8 weeks postpartum
• Follow doctor’s recommendations regarding resistance activity
• Moderate physical activity is recommended
• Consult with your physician and agree on a plan for when you can begin or
resume strenuous physical activity
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Menopause
Usually occurring between ages 45 and 55 for most women, menopause offers
some special nutritional and physical activity recommendations of its own.
Studies on the subject of menopause have revealed an average of 1lb gained per
year by women over 55 years of age. While some of that is menopause related,
some is due to other factors. Several of these other factors may be responsible for
the average weight gain for older women, including:
• Age-based decrease in Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) solely for genetic factors
• Further decreases in RMR due to muscle loss
• Gain due to decrease in physical activity
• Gain due to disruption of normal sleeping patterns via shift work and other
lifestyle factors that cause sleep deprivation
• Improper size of meals (large portions)
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Not only does weight gain occur after menopause, during menopause itself, some
female body changes occur that on net balance may result in poorer health. As
estrogen production declines, body fat stores can increase, but a redistribution of
fat can also occur. During menopause, many women see a greater accumulation
of intraabdominal fat (fat lining the organs, located under the abdominal muscles)
as well as subcutaneous fat (fat under the skin… the floppy stuff) in the abdominal
areas. At the same time, fat around the hips, thighs, and glutes tends to decline
in amount. The result is the development of a more “android” (apple-like) shape
from the usual and more typically feminine “gynoid” (pear-like) shape.
The very hormonal changes that contribute to this redistribution also increase
the risk for cardiovascular disease. Part of this change is due to a decrease in
Sex Hormone Binding Globulin (SHGB), which can also lead to an increase in
chances for insulin resistance.
How do we combat such negative changes? A focus on high levels of activity and
healthy eating are the best weapon by far. If you stay active through the years
and continue to eat a diet high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean meats and
healthy fats, most of the weight gain of menopause is much less likely to occur.
Unfortunately, the perimenopause period (the time right before, during, and after
menopause) comes with a slight increase of depression, which in some individuals
can lead to an increased reliance on food for emotional support, as well as a
decrease in physical activity. Of course, this additive effect of more eating and less
activity (combined with hormonal changes of menopause) increases the risk for
obesity. Obesity itself is very strongly correlated with depression, so the situation
is nothing to sneeze at.
This turn of events by no means affects everyone, and most women find a
healthy balance and don’t so much as see a blip in their continued healthy
lifestyle. However, being vigilant for the potential risks of this nature is likely
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wise, especially for the woman about to enter menopause. If depression signs
are detected, speaking to supportive family, friends, or healthcare professionals is
almost always a good idea.
As was discussed in the section on the Female Athlete Triad, lower levels of
estrogen are associated with an increased risk of bone loss. Estrogen declines lead
to the osteoblasts (bone-building cells) becoming less active and bone loss can
increase in rate. Especially important at this time are sufficient intakes of calcium,
vitamin D, phosphorus, and protein which are the main building blocks and
helpers of bone building. A recommendation of at least 3 servings of calciumrich food per day is a good start for post-menopausal women, with lean dairy
products topping the list of such foods. Vitamin D can be taken in by food and
supplements, but it’s also synthesized by sunlight that hits your skin. If you don’t
make it out to the sun much or live in relatively cloudier or less sun-drenched
areas (much of the northern states of the U.S., most of the U.K. and Nordic
countries), a vitamin D supplement is likely a wise choice.
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References
• The American College of Sports Medicine position stand: The female athlete
triad
• Choose MyPlate
• Female Athlete Triad: Past, Present, and Future.
• Understanding weight gain at menopause
• Energy and protein requirements during lactation
• Healthy Weight during Pregnancy
• Exercise for Special Populations
• Dietary reference intakes : the essential guide to nutrient requirements
• Lifestyle interventions targeting body weight changes during the
menopause transition: a systematic review
• Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: Nutrition Guidance for
Healthy Children Ages 2 to 11 Years
• Advising women on the menopause and diet
• Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: Nutrition and Lifestyle
for a Healthy Pregnancy Outcome
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P. 2 1 7
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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P. 2 3 4
08
Fads & Fallacies
In the Female Diet World
This chapter, though failing to fully categorize the massive amount of fads,
fallacies, and myths in the landscape of female dieting, attempts to walk
through some common ones and clear the air. Science is stronger, after all,
so let’s throw out the pseudoscience.
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Chapter Eight
No matter how long this chapter is, it will never be long enough to include all of
the myths, fads, gimmicks and misunderstandings that pervade the diet world.
For this final chapter, we’ve included a short list of fallacies that includes a
combination of ones that tend to continually reoccur and ones that seem to be
gaining popularity at the time of this writing.
She wants it all
Wouldn’t being a high-performing CrossFit athlete be great? Of course it would,
so please do work towards that and make it so! Now that you’re in great shape for
CrossFit, you’re looking pretty damn good. Maybe good enough to do a short
diet for a figure show and have fun competing? Ok, ok, that will take some work
but it can definitely be worthwhile.
Now a powerlifting meet is coming up and you wanna do it. Totally cool. You
specialize your training for powerlifting for a month and compete and have fun.
Now what? Now you want to be the best CrossFitter, powerlifter, AND figure
competitor you can be. Is that possible?
In a word; no. But hold on, so many women on social media seem to be doing
a whole bunch of sports and are amazing at all of them! Some of these women
even seem to have junk food all the time as well. AND they post pictures of their
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families all the time, so you know they have a balanced lifestyle. How do these
women have it all? Why can’t I have it all too?
The reason you can’t have it all begins with the very structure of time itself. For us
humans with mortal bodies, time is finite. Can you pick several major things you
want to prioritize and fit them in? Can you do your work well, train for bikini
and CrossFit, and still have family time? Totally. But if you add weightlifting and
being a soccer coach and training for a marathon to that, you’ll find that one of
two things happens; either you run out of time to meaningfully fulfill one of those
categories (you can’t coach soccer for 5 minutes a week and expect results), or
you’ll overreach, which will eat into your recovery time. If you want to do things
well, a finite day prevents you from doing too many of them well. In addition,
things like training for both a marathon AND a powerlifting meet simultaneously
can retard your progress toward BOTH.
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One important variable that comes into play, even if you can squeeze in all
the training hours for everything, and your goals are not mutually exclusive,
is recovery. Even if you do have time in the day to train for CrossFit and
Powerlifting and Bikini, do you have that kind of potential to recover? Yes, you
might be able to recover from all of those training sessions, but imagine if you
cut one of them out and were left with just 2 sports. Could you recover better?
Absolutely. Any time spent doing another sport is time that could have been used
either to train more for the first sport or to recover more for the next training
session for the first sport. ANY training outside of one sport interferes at least
somewhat with any other sports for that same reason. This is why it’s nearly
impossible to be the best you can be at more than one sport at a time.
If you go way far off into the multisport
and multi-hobby direction, you end up
having so much cross-interference that
the performance and enjoyment level
of EACH of your sports and hobbies
dips so low as to no longer make them
worthwhile.
So when you’re choosing your sports, hobbies and priorities for any slice of future
time in your life, choose the several (at most) that matter most to you.
The same fundamental reality of constraints applies to diet choices. Can you eat
donuts and look great? Yes. Can you eat donuts and look your BEST POSSIBLE?
No. Calories eaten through donuts could have been eaten through foods that
provide healthier fats, more fiber, higher micronutrients and foods that are more
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filling. This will make your dieting results better and the decreased hunger will
keep you saner for longer in a hypocaloric state. Is there a logical tradeoff that
everyone can make personally between how many tasty foods they get to eat and
how they look and perform? Definitely. There is also a time factor whereby you
can choose to have several months of balanced fun and enjoy donuts and other
foods more often, and several other months of more restrictive dieting to sharpen
up your physique and your performance, most of which you’ll keep even after
returning to balance again.
What we want to make clear is that you can have those donuts or those other
sports BUT you must accept that there will some tradeoff or sacrifice. You can’t
have it all at the same time. You can have a lot at the same time, or almost all of it
spread over different times to be sure. Our best advice is to pick your top choices
of activities and priorities and do well at those. You don’t have to stick to one
thing but you don’t have to do 500 things either. In dieting, be comfortable with
restrictions during a goal-oriented diet phase and enjoy delicious foods during
your balance phase, but understand that mixing those two approaches at the same
time yields less results and pleasure from both.
Dieting without a precise goal
“I just wanna keep losing weight until I like how I look.”
Nothing wrong with that, but as we have discussed in depth, if you run a diet
much longer than about 3 months, you risk ruining your look by losing muscle
and ruining your diet by burning out. So, fine, we’ll watch the calendar and the
scale, but we’re still not going to make a weight loss goal.
With no goal, at the end of the 3 months, you might have only lost 2-3 pounds.
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All the dieting time and for what? Basically some water weight? Or, you could
find that you’ve lost 20lbs. Great, 5lbs of muscle tissue down the drain, and now
you don’t look nearly like you wanted. The purpose of a weight goal isn’t just
to motivate you (you can have that without a scale) or to tell you when the diet
is over (a calendar can do that just fine). A weight goal should primarily be used
to pick a logical amount of tissue to lose. An amount that doesn’t undercut your
potential or lead to overwhelming fatigue and muscle loss. Once that logical
amount is decided, the weight goal can keep you on track to make sure your rate
of loss is not too quick and not too slow.
You don’t have to have a super long term mega goal to take over the planet
with your new robot warrior body. But to make the dieting process much more
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effective, at least short term scale weight goals are highly recommended. Wait…
using the scale is scary and bad! Right?
Scale Phobia
To many women, scales are scary. Like the ravens of centuries past, today’s
bathroom scales seem only to carry omens of future despair. If you weigh in,
there’s a good chance you’ll be pissed about the resulting number and it will
ruin at least your minute, if not your morning or your whole day. On the other
hand, the scale can make you happy. If you see a lower number (or for those of
us gaining intentionally, a higher number) than you were expecting, you can
experience a great deal of joy. But this is the joy of meth addicts and compulsive
gamblers. One day it’s great news and the songbirds are singing your tune, and
the next day it’s terrible news again as ravens fill the sky with their incessant
squawking.
Is the scale truly this evil? Should we do
away with scales altogether?
Almost certainly not. Scales are simply tools, powerful tools that can be used with
a productive, calm, and measured attitude - just as they can be abused. Some
thoughts on scales:
Only use the scale with a purpose.
The scale cannot decide your goals for you, you need to decide them in advance.
The scale is not a moral compass.
You are not good or bad depending on what you weigh.
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The scale does not punish nor reward.
Having ice cream or lowering your carbs has to do with your goal, not just the
number on the scale.
The scale is not a perfect measure of health.
There are many healthy bodyweights, especially if you’re active.
The scale is not a measure of how attractive you are to other people.
People care about how you look and act, not how much you weigh. There are
many great looks at many bodyweights.
The scale is not a measure of how attractive you are to yourself.
Are you really the kind of person that derives their worth from one number?
The scale is not evil, don’t throw the scale away, burn it, punish it, anthropomorphize it,
hate it.
It can be a great tool when used with purpose and calm. There are times to use the
scale and times to put it away.
If you find yourself weighing in at random times of the day for no good reason,
stop! Only weigh in when you need to record your weight for diet tracking
purposes, which might just be 2 or 3 times per week. Remember that weight
fluctuations can be several pounds in magnitude. The multi-week trend is what
matters for your weight, not the fact that you were heavier today compared to
two days ago.
Do you have to weigh in on a balance phase? Maybe once a week or every 2
weeks, sure. If you’re addicted to weighing in every day for no data-driven diet
reason, it might be a good idea to stop that behavior. Always view the scale as a
tool that gives you a cold, logical number. The less emotional you choose to make
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the ‘weighing-in’ process, the less negative power the scale will have and the more
useful it will become to you.
Understanding variability in weight fluctuation
When you’re on a fat loss diet and your weight does not drop on a particular
morning when you weigh in, what’s the likely cause?
Here’s how we split up the probabilities:
• 50% chance: water fluctuation from different food containing different
amounts of salt, carbs, volumes, or differences in timing, and water intake from
the day before
• 30%: water fluctuation from differences in body processes and hormones,
including digestion time differences, sex hormones like estrogen, progesterone
and testosterone, diuretic hormones like ADH and aldosterone, and cortisol
• 20%: actual tissue loss from burned or added fat and/or muscle
Any time your weight doesn’t drop when it’s supposed to or rise when it’s
supposed to (assuming you are following your diet plan precisely), it’s very, very
often (80% of the time or so) going to be due to factors OTHER THAN your
tissue loss or gain progress, which is the only variable we really care about.
This is one of the big reasons why we recommend weighing in between 2 and
3 times per week. If you only weigh in once a week, just one day of unusual
hydration or stress before the weigh in day can make the entire preceding week
seem to have you thrown off of your goals. On the other hand, if you weigh in
every day, most of what you’ll be detecting is the noise of water fluctuations.
Thus, by weighing in every 2-3 days, we get the best signal-to-noise ratio and we
can see our weight trends more clearly and make faster and more accurate food
intake and activity adjustments to stay on course.
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That being said, even with 2-3 weigh-ins per week, tissue changes can still be
obscured by other factors, especially during menstruation cycles that at certain
periods can bloat you up by over 5lbs for a week at a time. This is why we
make the strong recommendation that you write down and possibly graph your
weights and look at the trend over days and weeks (and with reference to your
menstruation cycle), rather than by individual daily weights.
Here’s where the fallacy comes into play. If you attach yourself psychologically
to the idea that you should lose, gain or maintain weight in a linear and steady
fashion, you’re betting right around 20-80 odds on NOT being satisfied with
any particular weigh-in number. Ok, the exaggeration here is that tissue weight
IS changing over time in most cases, so it’s not quite 20-80 odds, but even with
relatively rapid weight loss, around half of the daily weigh-ins will either be
upward (gain) or about the same as the number yesterday.
Are there any other situations in your life where you put strong emotional
attachment into a 50/50 situation? Is your significant other cheating on you 50%
of the time when you expect 100% faithfulness? Does your boss punish you for
good work done half the time even though you almost always do good work? Do
your kids only show up home from school half the time even if you expect them
to show up every day? Of course not, that’s just plain insanity.
And guess what, mathematically, it’s the identical insanity you’re setting up for
yourself when you get hung up on a single scale number not going the way you
like during a single day. What’s the better approach? Be as emotionless as you can
be with the number that pops up, do a great job on your diet, and then feel free
to be emotional with the resulting trend line of average weights when you plot it
into a graph with weeks of data. The resulting emotion will be the soothing chill
of cold, hard science easing the weight off of your body over time if you’re losing
fat, putting weight on slowly if you’re gaining muscle, or keeping it vibrating at a
single weight, if you’re maintaining or living in balance.
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We i g ht Va r i a b i l i t y: M u s cl e G a i n
We i g ht Va r i a b i l i t y: M a i n t e n a nce
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We i g ht Va r i a b i l i t y: Fa t l o s s
Figure 8: Typical Weight Variability Patterns on Muscle Gain, Maintenance, and Fat Loss Phases.
It’s ok to be hungry – it’s temporary.
The most powerful and central strategy of a fat loss diet is the hypocaloric
condition: fewer calories in than out. While hypocaloric dieting is indispensably
powerful, it’s also homeostatically disruptive. It’s literally, in no uncertain terms,
throwing your body off balance. When you breathe out on a hypocaloric diet, the
very carbon, hydrogen and oxygen that used to compose your fat cells is blown
out.
When a spaceship is losing fuel or parts of it are falling off after a laser gun battle,
is it normal for some indicator lights and sounds to be flashing and beeping in the
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cockpit to alert the crew? Of course it is! Because our bodies largely evolved in an
ancestral environment of common periods of starvation, our brains have become
very good at telling us when we’re losing our precious fat cargo.
The signals come in hunger, restlessness, cravings, and low energy. You live in
the modern era however, and you can have food any time. You are not in real
danger of starvation (though your body’s response is the same as if you were).
You’re going hypocaloric for a purpose, and there is no fear of you becoming
malnutritioned or risking your life or health. Your conscious mind knows this
because it learned so within its lifetime. Your body, on the other hand, has
programs that developed before the modern age to keep humans alive. So it’s just
going to keep bugging you, telling you that you are hungry and tired in an effort
to get you to hold still and eat more and stop losing weight.
What is the best strategy for dealing with the unpleasant nature of dieting?
Firstly, have your diet bases covered with a sound approach, and sleep to manage
fatigue well. If this is all on point, you’ll have to do what the first sentence in this
paragraph mentions; deal.
Caffeine, meal time, lots of fruits and veggies and maybe even carbonated
beverages can help with some elements of hunger and fatigue, but a fat loss diet
just won’t ever feel like maintenance. There will always be some degree of
suffering involved. If you understand that this is just a part of the process and do
your best, success will be just around the corner and so will the end of feeling
hungry and tired. If you get shocked into thinking something is wrong every
time you feel low in energy or a hunger pang hits, you’re going to do exactly
what your brain is programmed to get you to do: fall off the diet and overeat food.
If you want to look or perform only like your genetics intended, it’s totally fine
to give in. But if you’re trying to look or perform like something else, something
you want more, then stay the course and except the discomfort.
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Th e ha z a rd s o f wa n t i ng t o pus h t o o far for too long
We’ve all been there or will be at some point, and it’s a great place to be. You’re
at the tail end of a diet in which you’re meeting your weight goals on time, every
time, and you’re sometimes even a bit ahead. You’ve worked your butt off, but
the results are so good, you’re motivated as can be. Then you turn your calendar
to the day the diet is over. Turns out it’s been 12 weeks and it’s time to switch
gears into maintenance.
Ugh! Why maintenance now when you’re on such a hot streak! Why not keep
going while the going is good and lose even more fat or gain even more muscle?
To be sure, sometimes it’s ok to do that, but for only perhaps several weeks at a
time. And the choice to keep going has to be made when you feel VERY good to
keep going and you’ve either added very little food in for muscle gain or so far cut
very little food out for fat loss.
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In general, the advice has to be to stick to the plan and make the needed change
into maintenance mode (or if long term muscle is the goal, muscle gain mode
after a fat loss phase). This advice was not chosen at random, but because it
represents the safe limits of both psychological and physiological sustainability.
If you choose to go further than needed on a fat loss phase, you risk burning out
psychologically at the end, which might make you more prone to binge and gain
back weight instead of maintaining your end weight. It can even negatively tint
your perceptions of dieting for the future and make you needlessly diet-averse.
Physiologically, pushing a fat loss phase to far may result in lost muscle that can
take quite a while to get back… time you could have spent gaining new muscle.
Going too far on a muscle gain phase can psychologically backfire by making
you fatter than you wanted to be. This can leave you with a sour taste for muscle
gain phases for a long time to come, leading you to avoid them too often and pay
the cost in lost opportunities to gain muscle. Physiologically, going too far on
a muscle gain phase can lead to a situation where you’re scrapping for a measly
pound of muscle by gaining 5 or more pounds of fat… fat you’ll have to work
hard to diet off later.
If you’re excited about going further on a fat loss or a muscle gain phase as the
phase comes to an end, that’s great! Switch gears on time like you’re supposed
to do and walk away with a psychologically and physiologically awesome
experience. Save that excitement for the next time you diet… you’ll need it.
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FAD D IET S AN D SC IENC E
The super fast new fad diet worked for my
friend! Should I try it?
If it worked, it probably worked because it followed at least some of the dieting
principles described earlier in this book. Most fad diets feature lower calories or a
form of creating lower calories (low carb foods are hard to eat in amounts that will
make you fat, for example, so many diets greatly restrict carbs). Many fad diets are
high in protein to keep you fuller longer, or have you supplement with various
stimulants to help control hunger while promoting energy levels.
You can certainly try your friend’s fad diet and get the effect of some of the
underlying principles of diet that make all diets that are effective work. On the
other hand, if you design your own diet based on the principles described in this
book, you can get ALL of the principles to work for you and produce even better
results. And more often than not, you don’t even have to do anything crazy and
needlessly restrictive like most fad diets have you do.
A bonus to doing it this way is that the same patterns you establish during your
diet (plenty of protein at each meal, fruits, veggies, and grains often and tracking
your intake) translate incredibly well into healthy maintenance and balance. What
do you do if the PsychoDietXL you ran comes to an end? You’ll have to establish
healthy, performance-promoting and sustainable eating practices from scratch
anyway.
ALC O H O L AN D D IET ING
Alcohol has several predictable effects on your body composition and
performance.
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When consumed, alcohol:
• Increases fatigue and interferes with fatigue dissipation after hard training
• Creates a hormonal environment which makes fat storage more likely for the
next several hours (while the alcohol is in your system)
• Creates a hormonal environment which makes muscle loss more likely for the
next several hours (while the alcohol is in your system)
• Adds 7 calories per gram consumed, NOT counting the added calories from
sugars present in mixers, wine, and beer
• Disinhibits you and makes you more likely to go off-plan on your diet
• Makes your cravings for junk food shoot up
That sounds pretty nasty! The bad news is that it’s true. The good news is that it’s
proportional to the amount of alcohol consumed. Thus,
a.) If you have a couple of drinks a week, pretty much close to nothing will be
negatively affected except for the obvious calorie increase
b.) I f you have from one to a couple of drinks every night or so, the negatives on
body composition and performance will be slight but meaningful
c.) I f you have 4-6 drinks a night on many nights, you’re taking a huge chunk of
effect out of your body composition and performance improvements
d.) If you get drunk several times per week, you’re severely inhibiting your
progress
Thus, like many of the insights in this book, the result is a tradeoff and a choice
to you, the dieter. If you want the best possible results, save your drinking for a
maintenance or balance phase. If you need a glass of red wine or a beer now and
again to relax, don’t sweat it. But if you’re a steady drinker, understand that you’re
leaving some results on the table and choose accordingly.
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T H E FAL L ACY O F “ EATI NG M O R E TO LO S E W E I G HT ”
What an odd question, on the face of it. Isn’t food intake supposed to be at some
minimally low level and not at a high level for weight loss to occur? Yes, and
under normal circumstances (90+) percent of the time, you have to eat LESS to
lose more weight, not more.
So just to explain why this question is considered fallacious and included in this
chapter, we have to say that for most people, the answer is a resounding “yes.”
As a matter of fact, a follow-up answer should be “and you might even be eating
TOO MUCH to lose weight,” which is much, much more common than not
eating enough.
Under some very special and rare circumstances, however, eating more food
might lead to losing more weight in the long term. Here’s how it happens, step by
step:
1) Woman diets for longer than 3 months, diets much faster than 1% bodyweight
lost per week, or both.
2) Woman’s metabolism begins to slow down, forcing her to eat even less than
otherwise to keep losing weight, making her diet even more extreme
3) Woman’s unconscious behavior begins to bias her in the direction of less
movement and more idle tasks or total rest. Her training at the gym becomes
less voluminous and heavy, burning fewer calories. Instead of walking her dogs
like she usually does, maybe she’ll have her significant other do it. Instead of
walking up the 4 flights of stairs at work to deliver her report to the board of
directors, she might take the elevator. When speaking to the Board, she might
use fewer hand gestures and body motions to help accentuate her delivery, and
so on
4) Her weight begins to stall out because her slower metabolism and lower energy
demand close the calorie deficit originally created by lowering food intake.
Food intake must be lowered again
5) In frustration at her slowing weight loss and in accordance with her hunger
pangs, she begins to cheat on her diet a couple of times per week. All of these
factors combined and she’s now fully stalled in weight loss
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Now, she reads online that eating more food can help her lose more weight, so
she tries it out.
6) She starts eating more good food every day
7) Her metabolism starts to climb back up because of the higher calorie intake
8) Her hunger levels begin to subside and her cheat meals stop or lower in size
and frequency
9) She’s got energy again, and she begins training hard and moving around a ton!
The extra food she’s eating is only about as many calories as the cheat meals
were (per week), but because she’s moving more than she was when she was
alternating starving and cheating, she begins to lose weight again
Is there some magic violation of the laws of thermodynamics by which she’s now
losing weight faster on more calories? No! She’s just expending more calories
and no longer cheating as much and taking in extras. Is there some other, better
way to go about the process of using this advantage than she did in the example?
Of course there is… that’s what the maintenance phase after a fat loss diet is for!
One of the big purposes of this phase is to slowly reduce hunger cravings, raise
unconscious activity levels, and raise food intakes to stabilize weight. Thus, the
only real time that ‘eating more to lose more weight’ works in any sense is if
you’re not properly putting maintenance phases into your plan.
If you diet in a proper sequence and take maintenance phases every 2-3 months
of hypocaloric dieting, you’ll only need to be concerned with one type of diet
modification when you’re in the fat loss phase: cutting calories, not adding them.
DETOX ES , C L EAN SES , B O DY W R A P S , M AG I C P I LLS , D R I N KS , AN D T HE
NATURA L IST IC FA L L ACY
There is usually something to every single type of fad product that hits the market
that makes it SEEM to work to some extent.
• Detoxes and cleanses restrict you to very few foods or only certain fluids,
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so your body water drops and your calories drop as well, leading to several
pounds of water loss and possibly a couple pounds of tissue loss
• Body Wraps may change the distribution of water in your body away from
the wrapped area, which for several hours or even days can make them look
slimmer
• Diet pills and drinks often have copious amounts of caffeine, which helps
combat hunger and gives you daily energy to function on lower calories
But as you may begin to notice, water weight drops and the effects of just one
supplement (caffeine) are a long shot from producing real, lasting results. This
is more than just conjecture. Every time the light of formal scientific laboratory
research is shined on these kinds of gimmicks, their effects simply don’t measure
up or aren’t detectable at all.
Our best advice; save your money and invest in proper diet and training instead.
Use that money to buy yourself something you’ll actually like, unless you plan on
wearing body wraps to your next social outing.
I Want to Gain Muscle, but I Don’t Want to
Gain Any Weight
Beginner and even some intermediate women can just train, eat, stay the same
weight, and gain muscle. For the more experienced women, however, temporary
gains in bodyweight are the best ways to gain muscle. By going through a muscle
gain phase of slow and steady weight gain, the power of a hypercaloric diet is put
to work on building muscle, and it’s the most powerful of the muscle-building
diet principles, so it pays off big.
For the advanced trainers, going into hypercaloric eating mode is the only way
to keep gaining appreciable amounts of muscle. YES, you’ll gain some fat in the
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short term. The good news is that you can always burn the fat off later and keep
the muscle. If you’re never willing to gain even a little bit of slow and steady
temporary weight, you will not be gaining much muscle, especially as you are
involved in fitness for longer and longer.
If you NEVER want to gain any weight but still want to be muscular, you’ll be
making the process both needlessly hard and needlessly fruitless. You don’t have
to gain much… just 5 pounds spread over 8 weeks is a very good start. Doing that
2 times a year can have an impressive long term impact on your muscle size and
thus your physical appearance and performance.
Finally as discussed in the original Renaissance Periodization diet book in detail,
natural does not always mean better. It sounds nice and it feels good, and in some
cases it is great. Just keep in mind that there are plenty of natural things (hemlock,
tetrodotoxin) that will literally kill you and unnatural things (Gatorade powder
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intra workout, vitamin supplements) that are great for you. Determining whether
something is natural does not give you any idea whatsoever if it is good for you.
Closing Thoughts
If you have read this book in its entirety, you now have the scientifically based
knowledge and tools to build your own diet for healthy and sustainable body
composition changes and maximum athletic performance. Your first task in
putting this information to good use is to decide what your long-term goals are
for the next 3 months to a year. Remember that changes in physique require
periods of imbalance. The upside is that subsequent periods of balance are more
enjoyable when your goals are reached and you have the body you want. The
choice to make the change is yours. If you do it, do it with all of your effort, and
then enjoy the results.
As you endeavor to write your first diet, do not get overwhelmed by the
abundance of details in this book. As suggested earlier, start slow. Drop back in to
Chapter 1, and start playing with the top two dieting principles. Take your time
and work your way up to a detailed diet implementation; you don’t want to get
burned out or frustrated. There is a lot of information to assimilate and it will take
time to make it second nature.
The women pictured in this book are RP clients of different sizes and ages and at
different places in their fitness journeys. They are pictured in various aspects of
their lives. We wanted to portray the fullness of a woman’s life for two reasons.
First, fitness and health have a huge impact on all aspects of life at every age
and stage of athletic development. Secondly, the fitness and body composition
changes you make are only a very small portion of all the aspects of your
wonderful life. We strongly encourage you to make decisions in this arena with
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full consideration of the temporary sacrifices you will have to make to other parts
of your life in order to achieve these types of changes. The choice to change must
be one that you want to make, and are willing to fully commit to. If the sacrifices
outweigh the benefit to you, then simply use the nutrition guides in this book for
healthy maintenance and balance and don’t look back.
Finally we would like to say that in writing this book we hope to contribute a
bit to the glue binding a newly mounting congregation of women. Intelligent,
informed women making the choice to be strong and in control of their own
destinies- women finding purpose and self-actualization through sports and
performance. We are not just talking about top-level athletes or even moderate
level competitors. We are also talking about the woman with the busy life, family,
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and other obligations, who shows up at the gym dead tired because being better
than she was yesterday matters to her.
Gone is the era in which we were told that
we were too fragile for sports.
Now is the time when the mother of high school students might be in the garage
with an Olympic bar busting out deadlifts after dropping her kids off at school,
shooting for that PR with bloody shins and cold hard determination. Gone is the
era in which a woman’s self worth was more likely to be determined by how she
looked, now is the time for us to value ourselves and other women for what we
can do and achieve. It is a powerful paradigm shift and we can only hope that we
contribute in some way by providing accurate scientifically based information to
women seeking to constantly grow and progress.
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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