22 Yr Old Female- Stuck at 20% BF

[quote]Davinci.v2 wrote:
Your diet sucks for getting lean. Do you know exactly how many calories per day you’re consuming or burning? Do you have any idea where your macros are at? If you answered no to either of those questions, then that’s why you’re stuck at 20% BF.

You can’t just half ass it and expect results. Getting lean is all about the work you put in the kitchen. I hear you about carbs, my fiance is Italian but you need to prioritize. Time your carbs around your training and then go protein + fat combo’s the rest of the day. Don’t let “I’m Italian” become your excuse as to why you have to eat fuckin pasta for dinner everynight.

Hope that wasn’t too harsh for ya.[/quote]

What calorie calculator do you use (to figure out where you’re at)?

To the OP, I’d seriously follow the advice above about carbs. I’m “carb tolerant” too, as in, I was able to drink a six-pack+ a day for four years in college (maybe not everyday), and maintain around that 20% b/f you’re at (I’m male, sure it’s being carried differently), but to get under that, I really had to clean up my eating, and really track carbs. I really think carbs are the key. Cut them… low-fat chips? Cut them.

You will instantly see results if you change your diet. Chips, cream, tons of sugar, pasta, etc, is what is slowing you down.

I can’t sum up a healthy diet in a few sentences, you can look to the articles on this site for help, but I will give a few pointers.

Try to limit your carbs to your first two or three meals only. I keep my carbs under 100g’s on training days and under 60g’s on rest days. It may be hard at first, but that’s why we do what we do.

Replace carbs with healthy fats (avocado, olive oil, almond butter, etc,), eat more chicken and turkey, and stay away from sugar (eliminate it if possible). Also, dinner should not be your biggest meal, breakfast should.

Also, digestive problems could be causing the fluctuations in weight, try adding a complete enzyme and see if it helps. I use one with every meal containing meat.

PM me if you have any more questions, but there a ton of useful articles here already and plenty of good threads on diet.

Re: Italian…you can eat a healthy (no pasta!) Mediterranean diet with lots of greens, olive oil, homemade tomato sauce, meat and fish…lots of times it’s that sauce-on-food thing that hits the spot.

If you “can eat a lot” then why are you “stuck at 20% BF?”

100 calorie packs = a smaller amount of crap is still crap.

www.nutritiondata.com has detailed breakdowns of food macros.

I think y’all scared the OP off…

Hi all,

Ok so, I have been slacking, and not as serious as I should because I haven’t picked a date to compete. I am thinking the end of summer, maybe July or August, which will give me plenty of time to workout and get some better builds where I am lacking. As for my cardio, I have decided to switch it up after a fabulous article on here about different types of cardio. I will add in cabatas (sp?) with most workouts, right before, and I will sprint 3x per week with this spread I have been doing before:

3 min warmup
45 sec sprint/1:15 walk (repeat 7x)
3 min cooldown

I have seen good results from this.
Does anyone reccommend a calorie scale? I don’t have any effective method, and it’s preventing me from creating any deficit.

Does anyone have suggestions for an example workout cutting? I don’t have much seperation within my muscles, and that is what I am looking for.

Thanks all- I reall do want this, that’s why I came on here and posted, so I can change what I am currently doing, so I can walk at 15% BF and compete at 10% or so. I need an effective off season diet, that will drop me to that 15%, and then I can chat with figure competitors about competition eating, I mean anyone who has competited can tell me that.

It is hard for me to take fat burners because it bothers my heart pretty badly on some days. Iused to take Lipo6 which worked well, HOT-ROX was too extreme for me. Also, I have a day job and am sitting all day, so I need to time my carbs, more towards the afternoon I suppose because I workout around 6pm, other than that I am sitting all day.

[quote]debraD wrote:
Good lord.[/quote]

DebraD- Can you give me a break down of your diet? I am not sure, when to modify it for a competition. I know that before, I pretty much was eating nothing- no diary, no fruit, no carbs, which left me with very little,2 months before competition.

Does anybody know what is wrong with fat free dairy? I have read here that I should stay away from carbs, and switch to fats, fats have 9 calories of energy per gram consumes, while carbs only have 4 calories of energy, which means, I have to eat half the amount, or double my workload to burn that off. The math isn’t making sense. I also read I shouldn’t eat carbs and fat, I should choose one or the other because they counteract in your body and make it a struggle to lose weight. I feel lost in this.

Has any figure competitor gotten rid of carbs and ate fats instead? And when you say fats, you say get rid of diary? That leaves me with almonds, olive oil, guacamole, and a few other handfuls.

My head is spinning.

Carbs help you with gains in your muscle growth correct? And getting rid of carbs cuts your fat. What to do! I can’t justify eating fats over carbs. So, mayonaise should be good to eat your telling me? eggs and olive oil?

Maybe I should just switch to healthy, non processed carbs like potatoes, rice, oats.

You’re really not cut out for this are you? I honestly don’t know how you got close to doing a show last time. You seem like someone that needs every little thing laid out for you.

Are you able to follow a plan without questioning it? If it were all laid out in front of your eyes, workouts and diet, would you be able to go through it all without confusing yourself?

This is what you need;

Read through it, follow the diet guidelines for women, the workout is also laid out for you, it is as easy as can be, and if you have any questions, read through the article discussion first and see if they’re answered in there before starting a new thread.

If your still lost after reading that article and the article discussion, then you need to find a new hobby, because this isn’t for you. Sorry to be so blunt.

LR

LR-

Yes I can do this, I was 3% BF away from competition. In two weeks, i dropped 2% BF, gained 5 lbs of muscle and lost 10 lounds of fats, I was working out like a maniac, eating so clean, sprinting, and on a perfect regimin. But since then, I have been reading articles, and it is getting confusing to me. I will post pics soon, and have my measurements, but I will do this. BTW- Here is an article I read about bread. I gotta ditch it…

Testosterone Bread
Bread â?? yes, even bread containing whole grains â??is a physique wrecking-ball for many bodybuilders. (And in this context, I’m defining “bodybuilder” as someone who wants to gain a lot of muscle without unnecessary fat gain.)

As many of us learned during the fat-free diet crazes of yesteryear, getting rid of dietary fats and replacing them with junk carbs from breads not only lead to fat gain, but the lack of dietary fats even caused Testosterone levels to plummet. Mike Roussell even notes that we should embrace saturated fat as part of our diets because it likely helps support healthy Testosterone levels.

The lesson? To get big and V-shaped, ditch the bread and embrace the whole eggs.

Sadly, tell most people to dump bread and they’ll look at you like you just gave their favorite grandma a purple nurple. During church.

Hmm, maybe you need to get back to basics, yeah.
Seems you pick up a lot of small parts of advice or articles (like the bread thing…) while losing sight of the bigger picture… grasp those concepts first and then look at the details.

I’m sure people here will help you along the way, there’s a lot of info on this site, however, I wouldn’t know where to have you start… seeing that the way you work out as well as the way you look at food is very different from what most of the people on here do.

Oh, and also, a lot of us are curious about pics as you seemingly did get some results from doing what you do now? : )

I never thought I’d have to say this to someone, because the articles that are posted on here are pure gold, But, YOU NEED TO STOP READING EVERY DAMN ARTICLE. You’re just confusing yourself.

Read this article + discussion, and THIS ONE ONLY;

Read it 10 times, 100 times if you have to. DO NOT READ ANYTHING BUT THIS ARTICLE, until you have fully understood it and can implement it. That does not mean read the article and do something similar, it means READ THE ARTICLE AND DO IT!

I don’t get why you’re making this so hard!? Seriously. I written countless diets for myself, and I’m sure all the people who’ve posted in this thread have done the same.

In the above article, and just in case you get lost and decide to read something else, I’ll post it again for you;

all of the work is done for you. All you have to do is FOLLOW IT!

LR

[quote]selina0617 wrote:
In two weeks, i dropped 2% BF, gained 5 lbs of muscle and lost 10 lounds of fats, I was working out like a maniac, eating so clean, sprinting, and on a perfect regimin.
[/quote]

Anyone who gains 5 pounds of muscle while losing 10 pounds of fat in 2 weeks doesn’t have to ask anyone for advice. Maybe you should write a book.

I may be able to get pics up tonight.

The article about total body transformation is great, and probably exactly what I needed. When I compete, I plan to win, and that’s why I take everything so critically. I think I have a guideline of a plan I want to follow. I will build/bulk for one month then begin my deiting to compete the end of July.

I don’t think I will lose track of my goals, and I will post on here my progress, however, my body is pretty stubborn, no matter what I do, I can only lose probably about 10 lbs more of body fat.

Thanks for the advice. I know that I will switch out my carbs for fat, healthy fats, and prepare my meals, instead of just grabbing whatever, and I will get a scale. I KNOW I am eating too much, I am full after my meals, and oftern never hungry. If I want to see results, I gotta cut back my caloric intake by at least 300 cals per day. I will go grab a scale to weigh out my meat, and limit the rest of my food by looking at the calories.

I did the calculations with my PT book for the way things were working out for me, and I changed my body composition drastically, it may have been three weeks. Or, maybe before the previous calculation for weight was off, my weight fluctuates around 5-7 pounds per day, and that could have had some significance of it.

[quote]Yo Momma wrote:

[quote]selina0617 wrote:
In two weeks, i dropped 2% BF, gained 5 lbs of muscle and lost 10 lounds of fats, I was working out like a maniac, eating so clean, sprinting, and on a perfect regimin.
[/quote]

Anyone who gains 5 pounds of muscle while losing 10 pounds of fat in 2 weeks doesn’t have to ask anyone for advice. Maybe you should write a book.

[/quote]

Ha! For real.

OP, I think you should post over in figure athlete the ladies there will most certainly help you out. Most here have given you sound advice but you choose not to hear it. Perhaps this information will be better received if you hear it from like-minded females. Not everyone over there is a pro by the way so don’t feel intimidated.

On the other hand, if it is male attention that you crave just post some pics and you will be told everything that you want to hear! :wink:

No that’s not what I am looking for, but this used to be figure too, I guess not anymore. It’s not that I dont choose to listen, I just started this thread two days ago! I have already started. I’m getting beat on like a dead horse though.

I don’t treat nutrition nor lifting different between males or females, the only thing that should be different is the weight, and the calories. Period. I was looking for some advice on what others do, and what they have read through research, just as I have. I was stuck in a rut.

[quote]selina0617 wrote:
I don’t think I will lose track of my goals, and I will post on here my progress, however, my body is pretty stubborn, no matter what I do, I can only lose probably about 10 lbs more of body fat. [/quote]

Jesus there’s a lot of excuses in this thread.

OP, check it out, 20% is pretty darn lean for a woman. For general healthfulness, there’s no reason to try to cut bodyfat much lower. Let’s face it, competition-level bodyfat is approaching the lower levels of aliveness for humans. Add in that you’re faily small already 5’4", which will lead to a fairly small daily calorie burn, and you may not have a lot of “wiggle room” in your diet to create a significant deficit.

  • You’ll need to track your calories for at least a few days to see what level you’re operating at. fitday, dalyplate, calorieking, etc, will help.
  • You’ll need to measure food in order to track this. You can make some progress by just measuring into cups and oz’s and tablespoons and such, but you might need to break out the kitchen scale.
  • You’ll need to eat more meat.
  • Barring catastrophic metabolic crash (like before your last contest try), you’ll probably need to simply eat less calories. In the extreme, this may take something like Lyle McDonald’s Rapid Fat Loss book, where you cut out both carbs and fat (basically lean protein and veggies only). But if you consider that, for god’s sake buy his book and read it.

London Runner’s advice to simply pick one solid plan (any plan, really) and stick with it religiously, may be great advice, if that sort of thing works for you.

Eureka!, I think she’s got it!

So you know what you have to and you have an exact plan to follow, and trust me, it is an exact plan. 100s of CT’s clients and 100s of members on this site have made massive progress using the eating and training program from the article I posted above.

It’s easy to follow, but the training can be brutal. As you’ve seen there’s diet guidelines for females of different BF%s, and training guidelines for Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced Trainees.

Follow it exactly to the letter and you will have tremendous results.

Another thing I recommend is that you PM a Mod to get this thread moved to the Training Logs section, because it’s strayed far away from Supplements and Nutrition topic, and you can carry it on there.

LR

[quote]selina0617 wrote:
No that’s not what I am looking for, but this used to be figure too, I guess not anymore. It’s not that I dont choose to listen, I just started this thread two days ago! I have already started. I’m getting beat on like a dead horse though.

I don’t treat nutrition nor lifting different between males or females, the only thing that should be different is the weight, and the calories. Period. I was looking for some advice on what others do, and what they have read through research, just as I have. I was stuck in a rut.[/quote]

Listen, you seem like a nice girl but I think you are looking in the wrong place. First off there are differences in training and nutrition that are related to your GOALS. Your goal is to compete as a figure athlete so you need to be dialed in for a contest. Therefore you need to consult with those that DO THIS ALL THE TIME!! www.figureathlete.com <------click here.

The majority of the people on T-Nation do not compete in figure. Most of the ladies here are powerlifters or train for personal satisfaction. Therefore, these are people who will give you very good general advice, or excellent detailed advice regarding what they do, but not advice specific to YOUR goal.

Good luck!

Yeah, I am looking into figureathelete.com That’s more of where I want to be. I will draw out a plan tonight after work, and I will stick with that.

Thanks for the help.