T Nation

Need a Better Training and Diet Plan

#1

Quick profile: 18 years old girl.

Overall I’m slim despite a bit of a belly.

I weightlift.

Been doing a 40/40/20 diet for two/three months from the beginning of this year. Lost a slight bit
of fat on hips but nothing significant. Made great improvements at the gym and I was dedicated to my diet until I went through painful stomach issues (it was related to low stomach acid which was solved by taking HCL with pepsin pills - perhaps the sudden, extreme change in my diet led was too much of a shock for my body) for months which, along with exams, led to me letting go of my plan. But now exams are over and I’ve solved my stomach issues I’m determined to get back to reaching my goals.

But 40/40/20 along with impressive weightlifting didn’t give me results as fast as I wanted, should I go back to it or should I try reevaluate my diet and exercise (perhaps give more focus to cardio)?

#2

Details please:

Height
Weight

What you eat, in detail - not idealised, actually what goes in your mouth

How you train

#3

Impressive to you or to the rest of the lifting community? Diet is usually the key to getting lean or gaining mass but your work out is what gets those muscles. So more details is definitely needed to give some solid feedback.

#4

Height: 5ft3
Weight: approx 55.8kg

Currently I’m eating:

Breakfast (the only part I would consider consistently clean): eggs, porridge with milk

Lunch: (I’m asian so curry - my mum makes it from vegetable oil despite us trying to push her to do otherwise) which typically goes with rice or “roti” (a carby food, made from flour and water) or pasta/pizza/burgers etc… (today I had a healthy salad with roast chicken but this happens every now and then)

—snacks— varies, between lunch and dinner I may have green tea, yorkshire tea, fruit

Dinner: could be curry as described in lunch or pasta/burgers/pizza etc… tend to consume a lot of protein (chicken wings etc)

Dessert: tea with biscuit/ice creams/cake whatever is given in all honestly

How I used to train: from memory it varied a lot depending on what my brother had set but we’d work arms, upper body (pull ups/dips), legs (squats, deadlifts, leg press), chest (chest press) bit of cardio if I can persuade him etc - I apologise we do a huge range but I’m really bad at remembering the names of the exercise

#5

Probably not impressive in regards to the lifting community but for someone of my age, yes. I improved quite quickly and the weights I was lifting would have been given a thumbs up so nothing pansy (I’m sorry I would give proper figures but this was months ago and I can’t recall or find any of my recorded stats). I know that’s not much help but if you do recommend any exercises at least there’s a high chance that I’d know the correct form having had experience in performing them for months.

#6

I just remembered a few stats:

Glute bridges, deadlights, squats - above body weight
Walking lunges with weights with 12kg

Glute work was the part that I excelled the most at; upper body being my weakest.

So I guess impressive wasn’t the best word to use but I was improving fast and to hit bodyweight level is a good level to reach bearing in mind my goal isn’t to max muscle and become a bodybuilder but lose fast and get toned (think Jennifer Aniston’s figure if I were to give you my ideal end result - so a toned, proportionate figure is what I like the most) and get a perkier bum

#7

Thats alright, no biggie, everyone starts from somewhere. So what is your goal? You might have already stated it but its been a long day and I might be missing it.

Edit: I found it after rereading everything 57398 times, that was a struggle. I’ve read good reviews from females from using CT’s Hard Body training. Link is posted below.

#8

This is something you’ll need to work on. IMO curry is fine, just be very aware of what it’s made up of. Ditto the roti. Generally, awareness=control=higher chance of success. Diet is the major factor here.

Pick any program, follow it consistently and you’ll get results.

#9

I think this is an issue that comes up with IIFYM approach. Yes, you might hit your macros, but shit food that hits your macros is still shit food.

Secondly, 2-3 months is nothing. I know it feels like a long time, but if you want to make substantial changes, 2-3 months is not going to cut it, sorry. If you walk 10 miles into a wood, you’ll have to walk 10 miles back. You’ve had 18 year plus of eating and living one way, 2-3 months isn’t going to have a massive impact on that.

Lastly: what is your goal? I’ve reread it several times and missed it everytime.

#10

I had a look and I have two questions:

  1. There’s no mention of a recommended diet so what would you advise?
  2. I know this is the most dreaded question to answer but I just want to make this clear to give me peace of mind but the pictures of all the girls in the article were, imo, quite “muscular” and as stated before I was opting for a figure which resembled the lights of Jennifer Aniston/Megan Fox etc so “toned but not muscular”. So to ensure that I don’t reach that muscular level of definition would I just train less or would I need a new training programme all together?
#11

If any programme would work why didn’t 40/40/20?

And about the roti issue are you advising a temporary complete cut of roti from my diet and then slowly introduce it back in or would you just advise eat half the amount that you already do? The latter is something that I’m more likely to stick with in the long term because, realistically, it’s one of those staple foods that my mum has bought me up on.

#12

That is a very fair point but if you’ve heard of the saying, ,so I was under the conception that by a month I should have a “noticeable” difference. Having said that I wasn’t taking picture proof from the beginning, instead I was relying on the scale which I realised gave me misleading results because the increase in weight could’ve been due to muscle gain as opposed to fat loss. I then reverted to taking pictures which was more motivated but by then I started experiencing severe stomach issues so the bloating wasn’t an accurate representation of how much fat was there.

I’ll just paste it: My goal isn’t to max muscle and become a bodybuilder but lose fast and get toned (think Jennifer Aniston’s figure if I were to give you my ideal end result - so a toned, proportionate figure is what I like the most) and get a perkier bum

#13

*This was the saying I was under the concept of.

#14

The good news is you are eating regularly and have some quality whole foods already in there.

The bad news is outside of breakfast, this is a pretty good impression of a junkie’s diet.

I’d start with dessert. Either kill it or swap out with nuts/yoghurt/something else

After 2 weeks of successfully dealing with dessert Id tackle dinner. Follow these guidelines: https://www.t-nation.com/diet-fat-loss/simple-diet

After a month or two of successfully eating dinner as per the diet, address lunch, then add veggies to breakfast.

As for training, pick a program from a successful coach.

#15

You remind me of many of the young women I knew when I was teaching ESL in China and Vietnam, so I don’t know if you will believe my advice more than they did, but I will give it a try.

1: Less rice, pasta, and bread, more vegetables and proteins. Rice and bread have a lot of carbs that can easily turn to fat. I just got on a low carb diet and am steadily losing weight.

2: Based upon your described goals, squats should be the center piece of your workout program. They burn a lot of calories and will build the muscles you want. Exercising all your muscles is important for heath and balance, but squats are important for your specific goals.

#16

That sounds a lot better. The mistake I made with my last attempt was I changed everything suddenly - more exercise and a completely new diet all from one day and onwards which led to a extreme rise in fibre levels etc etc…

So tackling a new habit every 2 weeks sounds more reasonable.

The one issue I have is, take dinner for example, I was bought up eating curry with roti (basically flour and water so high in carbs), and realistically speaking (as I’m on a gap year so I’ll be spending a whole year eating foods made by my mum) I will be continue to eat it. Now I’ve thought out 3 solutions to this (but let me know if any of them a pointless)

Solution 1) Completely cut out roti etc on a temporary basis and then slowly reintroduce after losing fat.

Solution 2) Half the amount of roti consumed. This I can keep up with on a long term basis compared to a complete cut.

Solution 3) Carb cycle. So compensate for eating roti by an intense training session. Again, fairly straightforward to keep up with on a long term basis.

I appreciate that in order to reach goals you need to make sacrifices. But the end figure doesn’t require the same level of strictness or discipline as an athlete or a bodybuilder so surely I can work around the roti, no?

I want to work hard and I’m willing to make sacrifices but there is a level to which you have to be honest to what your lifestyle is set to be and how you can maintain that in a long run (I hope that makes sense)

#18

Haha, as in I share the same “end goal” as the women you taught in China and Vietnam?

As for cutting down carbs I mentioned this to tsantos but I’ll just paste my response here:

The one issue I have is, take dinner for example, I was bought up eating curry with roti (basically flour and water so high in carbs), and realistically speaking (as I’m on a gap year so I’ll be spending a whole year eating foods made by my mum) I will be continue to eat it. Now I’ve thought out 3 solutions to this (but let me know if any of them a pointless)

Solution 1) Completely cut out roti etc on a temporary basis and then slowly reintroduce after losing fat. (like I presume you are doing on your low carb diet as that’s what most people tend to do)

Solution 2) Half the amount of roti consumed. This I can keep up with on a long term basis compared to a complete cut.

Solution 3) Carb cycle. So compensate for eating roti by an intense training session. Again, fairly straightforward to keep up with on a long term basis.

I appreciate that in order to reach goals you need to make sacrifices. But the end figure doesn’t require the same level of strictness or discipline as an athlete or a bodybuilder so surely I can work around the roti, no?

I want to work hard and I’m willing to make sacrifices but there is a level to which you have to be honest to what your lifestyle is set to be and how you can maintain that in a long run (I hope that makes sense)

  1. Squats were always one of my best. Anything else in specific?
#19

just one person’s opinion, i think you’re over thinking it big time. Even this Roti, which im being honest ive never had, doesnt seem as bad as pizza and burgers you mentioned. You honestly cant say you’ve been “following a diet” for 2-3 months if you’re consistently eating garbage.

Like the person above me said, veggies, fruit, protein, rice. boom. Just eat smaller portions of that starting at 4 times a day. Get used to eating like that and trying to have minimal cheat meals for a few months, and see how you look and feel.

As for the appearance factor Megan Fox and Jennifer Anniston are both beautiful people, but you are falling into the trap when you say “the women on that program look too muscular”. It may not be your goal right now, but honestly, would you consider those “muscular” women in better shape than you? Would you rather look closer to them, or like you are now? Quite honestly you will not end up looking like them unless you intentionally train to look like them for a very long time, years even. So don’t worry about that happening. Follow that program for 6 to 8 weeks and see what happens. If you like the direction continue on it. If you don’t than maybe move on to something different. But if you’re new to the fitness and diet side of things, might as well get some good experience from a proven program like that one and at least get a head start in the right direction.

Just my two cents. Good luck on your journey!

#20

Your diet really isn’t very good for losing weight.

Pizza, burgers, biscuits, cake, ice cream… It’s like you’re at a 5 year old’s birthday party every day.

Change that, and the results will come much faster.

#21

I would like to clarify that the “food diary” I described above is not me on my diet :stuck_out_tongue: In the first post I mentioned how I went on a diet for about 2-3 months at the beginning of this year but developed stomach issues and combined with exams I decided to give the whole gym thing a break, hence I put this post up so I could start again but with a more suitable plan as I was clearly doing something wrong when I was on the diet. So the food I was describing wasn’t me trying to be healthy by any means, it was me on a normal day and is an honest description of what I’ve been eating most my life.

The reason why I raised the whole roti thing as an issue is that I’m 18 so the food being cooked is being cooked by my mum. I could try and make alternatives but I would be doing that on a daily basis. Like mentioned earlier I appreciate that I have to make sacrifices and I am willing to do that but I’m also trying to be realistic with what I can keep up in the long run.

If I truly believed that going to the gym made me muscular I wouldn’t have step foot in there in the first place. I know it takes more than just lifting weights to reach that level of definition but I wanted to clarify whether this programme was suited towards someone who aimed to achieve a figure such as Megan Fox as opposed to a women wishing to go into bodybuilding and considering the website it’s understandable why I would want to clarify that. Not only that but the workouts regimes followed by Megan Fox and Jennifer Aniston tend to be high in cardio which this programme put a restriction on. So yeah, it’s understandable why I would want to be clear on that front.