Supplementation advice for female

Bigger Stronger Leaner Competitive Bodybuilding
1

I am confused about what I need to do in the way of supplements. I am
a 28 y/o female, 5’6", 148# (no idea on BF%) and my goals are to lose
anywhere from 10-20#s. More importantly, I am looking to drop BF %,
and the old saying, “look great naked.” I am more after a fitness
model-esque physique than a Hollywood toothpick. I love the gym, and
more importantly I like the lifestyle. Eating well, staying active- I
look better and I’ve never felt as good as I do when fully on the
“program.”

Background information on me: former fatty who finished college in
excess of 235#, 4 years ago I changed all that by joining Weight Watchers and a
gym. Midway through dropped out of WW, but took the principles I
learned there and continued to lose weight. 2002, I really got
motivated, singed up for a sprint triathlon (which I completed in
under an hour!) and then after that really hit the weights. I got
into pretty good shape, following a 3-day split my BF put together for
me, and accompanied that with 5-6 weekly cardio sessions, approx. 2 of
those being HIIT. A year ago today I was pretty buff, and kept with
the gym up through the summer. Then summer came; I got a fun summer
house, plus I moved, was super-busy with work, blah, blah, blah . . .
stupid excuses! The long and short of it is that since about May I
had slacked on the gym, making 20-30 appearances the whole time. In
addition, some poor habits slipped back into my diet, and I put on
about 10# of fat and lost some muscle as well. Before the holidays I
got pretty fed up with myself and started hitting the gym again and
also reigning in my poor eating habits.

A New Year, and calling out the old/new me. I signed up for the Max-OT 12 week program.
I’m on week 2, and I really, really like it. The program is tough,
similar to what I’ve done before, and I can see how I would get some
serious results. I want to take things to the “next level,” which I
haven’t fully defined yet (though I am working on it.) I really like
the Max-OT cardio, those 16 minutes are arduous! I am doing 6-10
sessions of those per week. (Want to shed fat as fast as possible,
but also safely and in a manner that will KEEP it off.) I also don’t
mind becoming more muscular; I miss hearing “WOW, you’re in really
great shape” “Look at those pipes!” “What, do you live in the gym?”

As far as diet goes, I have been consistently using Fitday for the
last monthish. (Minus the week between Christmas and New Years) I
eat approx. 1600 cals/day, usually 40-60g/fat, 100-200g/carbs, and
120-150g/protein. Nutritionally, I am pretty solid. Lots of lean
meats, proteins, heavy on veggies, allow myself a wee bit of fruit and
keep my carbs on the whole complex. My biggest weak area is alcohol.
I’m a young single chick who lives in a big city, summers in Newport,
RI and winters in Killington, VT. Friday and Saturday nights
typically include booze. I drink either vodka and club soda or light
beer; even still I know I’m not doing myself any real favors there. I
need to cut it to one night a week, I’m working on it, I’m working on
it. I do also roll my own EC stacks, I’m doing 2-3 stacks a day
during the week, cycling off weekends.

So I have a solid workout program, my diet is good. Overall, I know
most of the principles surrounding eating right and working out for
results. The natural progression and my questions are all about
supplements.

-What supplements should I take?
-Should I start paying closer attention to timing
nutrition/supplements with my workouts?
-Opinions on protein shakes? (I just ordered AST VP2 Whey Isolate,
not from their site.)
-Best ways to prepate protein shakes?
-Should I consider creatine, or is that just for people looking to
bulk-up? (I know that my diet and being a woman will not allow me to
really bulk-up, which I why I am doing the Max-OT program, plus I like
lifting heavy things!)
-I read somewhere recently that the protein in protein bars is not as
good as powder or food forms of protein, opinions on that?
-With this much working out, should I up my calories?
-What else might I be missing?

TIA,
Carrie

2

For Women, Berardi’s said it best and I agree. Basically, you can’t drop your calories too low, because then you’ll lose metabolic power.

I’ve had success with a few female clients having them take Thyroid-Stimulating supplements in order ot combat this problem. I can still get the original T2 so that’s often the first place I go. Hot Rox seemed to be a more than adequate substitute when I tried it, but I haven’t had any clients/females try it because of the cost.

Outside that, Fish Oil is what Poliquin uses. There’s a great article on Site specific fat storage on his site. Maybe have a look at that and you’ll get a few more ideas.

Good Luck.

3

If you want to lean out, the alcohol has to go. If you can save the alcohol in moderation for your “cheat day” that is probably going to be best. Alcohol cannot be stored as glycogen so while your body is burning it off, it halts any fat burning until its all gone. If you are drinking a fair amount of alcohol, it takes a while for your liver and body to process it all and if this a regular occurrence, clearly you won’t be burning fat very often (and perhaps adding it). A binge will also make you feel like schnizzit (hehe, I’m sure you already know this) and will probably bloat you out somewhat until your body equalizes. This can be more discouraging than the actual damage done to your program.

Nutritionally I guess you sound pretty good; sticking with lean protein, lots of veggies and watching your fruit intake.

Also, here’s a bennie; muscle memory! For the muscles you had before in your buff state also came with everything to feed the muscles. That doesn’t go away so getting back what you had is a lot easier than building it from scratch!

I’m currently “cutting” and I’m making progress and sometimes I have a beer or two on the weekends but I don’t really like to even do that. I guess its a question of cost/benefit in this regard. I know its the worst thing ever given a goal of fatloss (or any goal for that matter :)) so I just stay away from it.

Good luck!

4

I’m going to tell you stuff you don’t want to hear, single or not, you need to drop the alcohol if you want to meet your goals in as fast a time as possible. I personally would be pissed at myself if I was working as hard as you are and then sabotaging it with drinking. When I got down to very low bf% last summer, I didn’t touch a drop of alcohol for 4 months. Do I like alcohol, hell yeah! But I was working way to hard to sabotage myself with it. If you absolutely feel you need to drink once/week. Cap your limit at a couple of drinks and make them last a long time throughout the evening. Drink a bunch of water in between and after.

5

Control your drinking. Don’t be pathetic and pretend you can’t, or think that being drunk is more valuable than being fit and healthy.

Then try Hot-Rox. Covers all the bases. Wait til you quit boozing though!

6

Read Chris Shugart’s “Hierarchy of Needs” before you consider supplementation.

Get more consistent in your training and diet first. Find out where you are in terms of BF% and begin to maintain a log.

There’s no magic pill: there’s only consistency in diet and training. Which are more important.

7

I’d cut the alcohol to one day a week and go with hard alcohol. If you have to mix it use noncaloric mixers. They make diet tonic and club soda. Limit it to a couple of drinks. I’d make that day a cheat day. I go lower in carbs for most of the week and carb up one day a week when I’m really trying to burn fat. I’d do the drinking on that day.

You could factor in the drinks and reduce your carb consumption that day to offset it if you aren’t doing a CKD type diet.

You’ll surely make better progress with less or no drinking so I guess you have to decide the trade offs in progress you’re willing to make.

One woman I know did pretty well on her fat loss program and she drinks a few days a week, usually one or two drinks. She switched from beer to red wine and made noticeably better progress. She’s not hard core in any way, shape, or form and hates to exercise. If she can make progress without exercising and just modifying her diet and drinking I think it can be done with exercising too. It might not be as dramatic or rapid but that’s a choice for you to make.

8

carrieleigh, I think you have come to the right place. You want to be leaner, but you like having muscle and being strong. There are great resources on this site to help you.

It sounds like you accomplished what you wanted to before, and are on track to get there again with your a workout plan and your diet planned and logged. You know about the alcohol, so I won’t go there.

So it seems to me that what you need next is to set a definitive goal. You said:

[quote]I want to take things to the “next level,” which I
haven’t fully defined yet (though I am working on it.)[/quote]

It’s impossible to answer some of your questions until you define clearly what that “next level” is.

You probably don’t need any other supplements at all to get back to where you were in terms of body weight. You were successful before, right?

[quote]-Should I start paying closer attention to timing
nutrition/supplements with my workouts?[/quote]

Post-workout nutrition is very popular. Biotest Surge has a lot of fans (myself included). Read John Berardi’s “Solving the Post-Workout Puzzle” and see if you think this would make a difference in helping you achieve your goals.

[quote]-Opinions on protein shakes? (I just ordered AST VP2 Whey Isolate,
not from their site.)[/quote]
I don’t know anything about AST. I used to use EAS, but abandoned those shakes when Biotest came out with Grow. I find it important, though, not to over-rely on protein shakes and to get most of my protein from meat, poultry, and fish. I use shakes only occasionally for convenience and variety.

I add water per directions and blend on high for a good long time (2 minutes). Sometimes, for a low-carb protein+fat meal, I add some nut butter to Low-Carb Grow.

[quote]-Should I consider creatine, or is that just for people looking to
bulk-up? (I know that my diet and being a woman will not allow me to
really bulk-up, which I why I am doing the Max-OT program, plus I like
lifting heavy things!)[/quote]
I’m not sure if creatine is right for your goals, but it certainly won’t pack 20 pounds of muscle on you overnight. Even if it did, I bet you would love the results.

[quote]-I read somewhere recently that the protein in protein bars is not as
good as powder or food forms of protein, opinions on that?[/quote]
I am not a big fan of bars. Most of them have lots of sugar. I don’t do as well in my dietary goals if I eat a lot of bars for my meals. I consider them glorified candy bars for emergencies only (like long flights after my mouth is raw from eating too much jerky).

I don’t know what Max-OT training is like. You mentioned 6-10 cardio sessions a week. 10 definitely sounds like a lot to me. On 1600 calories a day, you may lose muscle.

What I advise is to track your body composition. I use a cheap caliper to calculate a body fat % estimate and track a bunch of variables in an Excel spreadsheet. I measure weight and BF each week at the same time. When dieting, if I see fat loss slow down, or if I lose LBM, I look to my food and workout logs to see what might be responsible. In the past, I have learned that I lose muscle with too much high-rep weight training; too much cardio; not enough post-workout nutrition; and not enough calories. Also, by tracking body comp, I learned that when my calories were too low, I actually gained a bit of fat and lost muscle. Not good! I don’t see how I could know how many calories to eat if I didn’t track all this. Even so, I feel like it’s a tricky guessing game sometimes.

Good luck! If you decide on a particular goal for that next level, let us know. There are some awesome experts here who will tell you exactly what you need, supplement or otherwise, to reach your goals.

9

“If you want to lean out, the alcohol has to go. If you can save the alcohol in moderation for your “cheat day” that is probably going to be best. Alcohol cannot be stored as glycogen so while your body is burning it off, it halts any fat burning until its all gone. If you are drinking a fair amount of alcohol, it takes a while for your liver and body to process it all and if this a regular occurrence, clearly you won’t be burning fat very often (and perhaps adding it). A binge will also make you feel like schnizzit (hehe, I’m sure you already know this) and will probably bloat you out somewhat until your body equalizes. This can be more discouraging than the actual damage done to your program.”

Lucid, that is very well said…

10

Bars are ok, but I try to keep them to a minimum. Many companies use low quality proteins, or even proteins that are biologically unavailable such as collagen or gelatin. If you’re trying to eat clean, then I would stay away from them for the most part. Even the “low carb” bars have a decent amount of calories from sugar alcohols. Yeah yeah, I know, they don’t affect insulin secretion as much, which is good, but you still can’t go crazy on the things.

Another problem with bars is the fraudulent labeling claims of the nutritional content. Don’t trust what the wrapper says. I’d just stick to an MRP or whey myself, but I know this isn’t always a practical option, so here are a few of my favorite high protein/low-moderate carb bars:

Premier Protein 8
Odyssey
Chef Jay’s Tri O Plex - label is way off, do a search for the lab assay
ABB Pure Pro - taste like sugar alcohol
Worldwide Pure Protein - most taste like cardboard, some decent
EAS Carb Sense - good taste
Optimum Nutrition Protein Diet - many people like these, but I can’t eat them
Met-Rx has a lo carb but I don’t like the taste

If you’re not worried about having carbs with your bar, such as with breakfast or morning snack, there are many more options that taste much better. To name a few:

Opti Pro Meal - awesome taste
Detour/U Turn/One Way - innacurate label
Meso-Tech
EAS Myoplex - high carb, good for PWO
Promax - same as above

And my all time favorite as far as taste and price: Twinlab Ironman Creamy Peanut. For a buck, you get around 15 g P w/some C and P.

11

WOW! Thank you guys so much for the very imformative advice. I was curious about trying some thyroid boosters, I’m also going to read up on Hot Rox (I think that was what it was called.)

I know the drinking has to go, and probably for more reasons that just my fitness goals.

I’m going to buy some calipers with my next supplement purchase, and get more diligent with logging my progress in that manner. I try to keep from weighing myself too much, as it can sometimes make me a wee bit mental. However, I do find I get the greatest results with such stringent monitoring of my progress. I am going to baseline my BF%, and then put into place short-term and long-term goals. It is a little hard to define them; it’s more a case of I look good now, but I know that with consistent training and proper nutrition I can look really great. Flip side, I have zero aspirations to compete or anything like that. Maybe being a fromer fatty, I get an extra special joy out of just looking amazing.

Thanks again, it really looks like I’ve come to the right place!

12

With no plans on competing, you should be monitoring your performance in the gym. How well is your training going? How consistent is it or has it been? Are your lifts going up or have you been at a plateau?

Also, overall health is another way to monitor. Don’t relegate yourself to whatever the scale says. Look at the broader picture.

13

Just another thought about setting goals. I was involved in teaching a class in which undergrads had to set fitness/athletic goals and write about their progress every 2 weeks. It was mind-numbing to read 200 of these reports every 2 weeks, but I noticed that people with performance-based goals (i.e., focused on what their bodies could DO) made progress and maintained motivation about 100X better than people who only wanted to “look good in a bikini.” Goals are very individual, and a few people ARE highly motivated to look as good as possible, but it seems that’s not enough motivation for most.

So, with that evidence I second what Patricia said. Consider setting goals for your lifts. It is so satisfying to increase what you can do, not just what you look like.

And I would personally recommend holding off on any thyroid boosters. Many of these supps are probably worthless (e.g., basically iodine). Also, the thyroid is too important to mess with. If you read about it extensively and think you have low thyroid, you should consult with a good doctor. Also, exercise increases thyroid production over time.

14

Again, more excellent advice, and on the mark. I mentioned following the Max-OT program, and being on merely week 2. (Having been “back” prior to beginning this) Well, the gains I am seeing in my lifts already are getting me very excited. This morning I was quite proud to be using the 20#ers for my alternate BB curls. I really got a rush from it! I know just saying “looking good” isn’t enough, and I don’t want to focus on the scale too much. I honestly could care less what I weigh, my mere gravitational pull doesn’t matter to me.

I think combining improvements in lifts and dropping BF% is the best approach for me in goal setting. Golly gee, I like it here so much already . . .