Lean Bodies Consulting Newsletter

Volume 3, April 18, 2007

Welcome to another addition of the Lean Bodies Consulting Newsletter!

What's New At Lean Bodies Consulting?

Competition season has started with a big bang! I recently traveled to Detroit, MI to see three of my figure girls compete in a nationally qualifying NPC show along with several other clients and friends who were in attendance to show their support. Ali Swanson, who some of you might be following along with at leanbodiesconsulting.com/alis, placed 2nd in both Short and Masters, losing out by one point in both classes to the eventual winner of Short, Masters and Overall. It was a very, very close show and given the fact that only one point separated them, it could have gone either way. But onto bigger things now as she's qualified to compete at the National level and will be on stage in Chicago at Junior Nationals this June. I also wanted to congratulate both Terri Bracali and Blondell Dalton on their showings as well; Terri for placing in the top 5 of the Tall class and Blondell for sticking to her guns and getting up on stage for her first ever show. First of more to come that is ...

Anyway, I arrived in Detroit mid afternoon on Friday and met up with several of my clients. Before heading to dinner a few of us decided to hit the gym for a workout. We found a local Balley's near by and we were off. I think all in all there were about six or seven of us - myself and six buff ladies. I don't think the weight room knew what hit them with all these heavy lifting girls in there - push presses, squats, deadlifts, pull ups, etc. I even had a guy come up to me and ask me if I could get him a autographed 8x10 of one of them.

Myself, I had every intention of doing a full workout but to be honest, the free weight room just sucked. I couldn't get into it, so I did some random stuff. I then worked with a couple people on some technique for a few exercises and we called it a day.

Later that night we headed to dinner at a local steakhouse. Sounds good right? However, much to our dismay, our group was split into two tables. But that wasn't the problem. The problem was that I'm pretty sure they had a No Talking policy in effect at this restaurant. I mean seriously, it was so quiet. I was whispering so as to not get in trouble. After waiting for what seemed like forever, we ate and headed back to the hotel.

You can read more about this recent competition and trip in Ali's blog as well as Noel's blog at leanbodiesconsulting.com/noelc

I'd like to also add that Ali went on to compete the following week at another NPC show in Kalamazoo, MI where she steam rolled the competition and took home the top prize in both the Short and Overall categories. Congratulations Ali!

Keep checking out the blogs created by some of my competitive clients and join them on their road to competition. Ali and Noel are closing in on their next competitions.

Ali: leanbodiesconsulting.com/alis
Noel: leanbodiesconsulting.com/noelc
Jen: leanbodiesconsulting.com/jenh

And we've got two more to add to the group now - National-level figure competitor Neely Tartaglia who is presently getting ready for Junior Nationals. You can catch her here:

Neely: leanbodiesconsulting.com/neelyt

As well as Lean Bodies Consulting client, Patricia Dees who is just days out from her first ever show - The Ronnie Coleman Classic. You can catch her here:

Patricia: leanbodiesconsulting.com/patriciad

Volume III Q & A

Question:

I've been dieting for several months now and at first things were great but it seems like I'm not losing any more weight. I keep my calories pretty low, I'm doing lots of cardio, I'm eating clean foods still and yet, my progress seems to have stopped altogether. Someone told me I might have messed up my metabolism with all my dieting, and they know a lot more about this than I do. If that's true, how do I fix it?

Answer:

Damage to one's metabolism is a very real phenomenon ... and these days extremely common place. The relieving thing is that it's generally repairable. First off, you need to lose the short term thinking and adopt a longer term mindset.

Even though this might go against 'common wisdom', you're going to have to eat more, at least for a little while. You might find it hard to wrap your head around this concept, but trust me, it's necessary. However, just ramping right up to an appropriate caloric intake isn't necessarily the right approach for everyone. There is more than one way to approach the repair but I'd suggest you do it in steps - systematic and regular increases. This has the benefit of one, allowing you to gradually get used to eating more food, two, potentially preventing some fat regain, and three, maybe even causing some fat loss. So one approach is to take your present intake and just add 10-15% or so to it every week until you hit maintenance intake. Then you need to stay at maintenance for a couple of weeks before even considering going back into a caloric deficit. Might you gain some weight at maintenance? Maybe, but some will surely be water, muscle glycogen, etc. Again, long term versus short term thinking. You need to correct the problem before you can move past it. Two weeks at maintenance will make further fat loss much more likely when you return to a caloric deficit. Planned diet breaks are one of the most underrated dieting strategies out there.

With a depressed metabolism you can generally assume somewhere in the neighbourhood of 14x bodyweight is going to be around maintenance. It might be a bit lower depending on how severe your caloric deficit has been and for how long, but keep in mind that metabolism is only going to slow so much. It doesn't shut off. The generic numbers are 14-16x BW depending on metabolic issues. So, take the low number for yourself. Even if it's still slightly low it's a big increase from your current intake. It's an approximation, but so are the more complicated equations.

When you return to dieting, take a moderate approach and shoot for approximately 12X bodyweight which is close to a 20% caloric deficit. Stay there for a couple weeks, assess your progress, and make adjustments as needed. If you're getting leaner and your measurements have decreased, stay there. If you're not, try decreasing calories by another 10% and reassess again two weeks later. Remember, all these general caloric recommendations are just approximations; they're starting points. Everyone's a bit different, so the key to long term success is being able to trouble shoot your program.

Question:

My first competition is in two weeks. I read about all these disastrous post-contest rebounds and I'd really like to avoid that. But I'm not sure how. Should I go to maintenance? Go back to a deficit and work up to maintenance? Straight into bulking calories? How slowly should it be done?

Answer:

Ah, the post-contest/diet rebound, a phenomenon that plagues many people. Months of saying no to the foods you want the most, coupled with an increased desire for those same foods the longer you say no can make it really tough to not overdo it as soon as your competition is over. But, unless you want a big weight/fat rebound, that's really what you need to do. Your best bet is to treat the few weeks after your contest like you're still on your diet ... with some modifications. You need to have a strategy as after months of dieting and low bodyfat, you're primed for fat gain. Don't believe me? Either try it at your own peril, or ask some other competitors. A friend of mine went through this a few years ago. He dieted down from about 300lbs to 225lbs and took home the Heavyweight and Overall titles at a show. He looked incredible. Within a week he was 285lbs and I couldn't tell he dieted at all. He was huge, water logged, and to say he wasn't feeling well would be an understatement. He said it felt like he was walking on pillows. All those months of hard work, and it was gone in a week. Sure a lot was water, but he packed on a lot of fat in those subsequent weeks.

It should be common sense to not binge for days upon days after a contest. Eating junk food, and a lot of it, day after day at any time, contest or not, is obviously a bad idea. That's a recipe for fat gain for all of us.

So what to do? First consider what happens on a diet, which by definition (assuming it was a successful one) means you were eating in a caloric deficit. Add to that the fact that chances are, towards the end of your diet, you were following a lower carbohydrate diet as well. First off, metabolic rate and sympathetic nervous system activity decreases. Along with this metabolic decrease. thyroid hormone activity and other anabolic hormones decrease, appetite goes way up and if carbs were restricted for long enough, insulin sensitivity drops resulting in a larger-than-normal insulin response to the reintroduction of carbohydrates. Add to that the fact that the further away you are from your pre-diet or 'normal' bodyweight the more some of these issues are magnified. Consider two people. The first diets down from 225 to 175 and hits 6%. The second, diets down from a normal bodyweight of 190 to 175 and hits 6%. The first guy's body is going to be more out whack than the second guy's.

I believe that the first couple days (note: 'couple' means two) that you can pretty much eat up and satisfy your cravings with little negative effect. Muscle and liver glycogen levels are likely lower than normal and they'll act like a sponge and you'll fill out nicely. As fluid balance normalizes and glycogen levels get topped up, you'll gain a few pounds. It's normal.

After these first two days, get back to a reduced carbohydrate plan. Remember, if your carbs have been low, your body's ability to deal with them, is somewhat impaired so you want to reintroduce them strategically. If not, watch the fat come, but don't say I didn't warn you. So in terms of carbohydrate intake, I'd keep them at 100g on a daily basis and would start adding in higher carb days at a progressively increasing frequency; a bit of a carb cycle if you will. And of course, you'd add them to your training days. Now, there are a many ways to do this, but you might consider having two higher carb days in the first couple weeks, and then adding a day each week, topping out at four. Assuming a four-day training week, this works out nicely. And it'd be a good idea to still pay attention to the rules of nutrient timing and eat the bulk of these carbohydrates during periods of heightened insulin sensitivity - namely, the early part of the day and the exercise and post-exercise periods.

You'll also want to systematically increase your caloric intake as well. Take the amount of calories you were eating in your final couple weeks of dieting and start slowly adding calories back each week. If you've been dieting for a long time, have lost a lot of fat and your calories were low, I'd caution you from going immediately to maintenance or worse yet, above maintenance (ie. Right into a bulk). How much you add is variable, and there really isn't just one way. The important point is that you're systematically reintroducing calories. You can do this making smaller jumps and adding calories every 3-4 days or by making slightly larger jumps and adding calories every week. You'll be back to maintenance within a couple weeks most likely. From there you can decide what's next for you. Maintain? Keep doing what you're doing. Transitioning into a bulk? Keep systematically adding more calories until the gains start to come. If you're not gaining, you need to eat more. If you're gaining more fat than you're comfortable with, scale back your calories a bit and continue on.

It might not be as fun as just going hog wild after you're done dieting, but it's also not fun to see all your hard work disappear. So take my advice and have a post-diet plan in place.

Do You Want The Physique or Not?

The following was written by a client of mine. Enjoy ...

That title sounds harsh, but there has been a lot of talk on forums, with family, with friends about not being able to obtain a certain physique. What I have come to find out this past year is that the key to a desired look is your nutrition. I think I always knew this, but never wanted to accept it! I would rather have worked out a million times a week than to have to give up some splurge I might be taking. I finally got to the point where I WANTED to look different. I was never what you would consider fat, but I wanted to have a body that looked different, looked like 'hey, that girl works out.' I didn't want to look good for being a mommy, I wanted to look good period. After that decision, it was all down hill from there. I got a hold of my diet and started tracking what I was eating ... holy cow ... no wonder I wasn't where I wanted to be. I think that is the first step in understanding why you look the way you do, actually writing down your calories (and being honest about it!) and seeing it in black and white - you get a grip of what you are actually doing to yourself. I also think that after I hired Erik and received actual meal plans and paid attention to what I was eating and why I was eating it, I understood better. This brings me back to my original thought. Do you want the physique or not? I see many people, family, friends - that say - I don't get it, I ate really well, I only cheated a tiny tiny bit. What I think that we do is that we cheat a tiny bit here, a tiny bit there and those tiny bits add up. For me, when I get a plan from Erik, I follow it...to a T. If I start adding or substituting here and there it defeats the purpose of the diet. When something says 1/2 oz of almonds, I eat a 1/2 oz. Do I want to eat the can - well, yes but I know that in the end, that will not get me where I want to be and I will just end up frustrated and disappointed with myself. If you are cheating all the time ... you can't possibly expect to get the body you are looking for. Wanting to have a physique that is different, elite, above average, whatever you want to call it, takes WORK and EFFORT and DISCIPLINE and SELF-CONTROL. It is not easy. Not for me, not for anyone. Like we have all heard 100 times, if it was easy, everyone would look that way. But, in the end, that is what is going to set you apart from others, that is what is going to make you shine, that is what is going to make you look good for being you ... not just good for a mommy.

'Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy.'

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Until next time, thanks for reading.

Erik Ledin
http://www.leanbodiesconsulting.com

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