So I am in the mood to write today, so I thought I would bring this up. EDIT: I just went off on a tangent in regards to female dieting, not intentional but hey. Some of it has been anecdotal findings so don't shoot me if my examples are off, but I am basing on case studying and being married to a bikini competitor and dealing with that hormonal and emotional fuck up.
How many times have you used a Calorie counter or calorie measuring tool and you end up getting your calorie intake all wrong and you see no result?
The reason for this is they are general caloric intake calculators based on a few variables that are forever changing, meaning that they are more caloric estimators than anything else, in other words, calorie calculators can suck a big bag of dicks generally.
The issue comes in with making general assumptions in regards to activity levels, and genetics, etc. So now we all think are calorie counter is the be-all and end of dieting but it isn't the most accurate at all.
The best way to calculate caloric intake :
Step 1 is to track your calories for 2 weeks, every day, to figure out what is going on. If it goes in your mouth and it contains calories then you need to track it, which probably leaves the only thing that you don't track is water.
Sorry ladies and gents, that means your bcaa, your sweeteners, your pre-workouts, etc all need to be tracked to give you the most accurate figures possible. Remember you are tracking what you are currently doing SO MAKE NO CHANGES TO THE DIET YOU ARE FOLLOWING JUST TRACK IT!
You will then need to take your daily caloric intake and each day up to get a total number, And then take that total amount and divide by the number of days you have been tracking.
so lets take the example of step 1 :
day 1 2200 day 8 2021
day 2 2150 day 9 1898
day 3 2400 day 10 2249
day 4 2350 day 11 2210
day 5 2133 day 12 2642
day 6 3100 day 13 3323
day 7 3489 day 14 2875
Total calories: 35040. Divided by 14 days: caloric average: 2502 calories.
Step 2:
you will need to track your weight daily for the duration of the 14 days to see what happens to that, then after 14 days, you total it all up and divide by 14. the best time to weight yourself is first thing in the morning, after going for your daily bathroom duties.
so lets take the example of step 2 :
day 1 90.1 day 8 91.4
day 2 90.3 day 9 90.4
day 3 90.3 day 10 90.2
day 4 90.6 day 11 90.7
day 5 90.3 day 12 90.7
day 6 90.3 day 13 90.9
day 7 91.2 day 14 91.4
total weight: 1268.8kgs Divide that by 14 days: average weight: 90.62
so you now know that your average caloric intake is 2502 calories to maintain your weight around 90.6kgs.
Now if we look at a calorie calculator, the calorie counter says that for someone to maintain 90.62kgs is roughly 2990 calories, so this is why people Gain weight when using calculators because you will now you will throw yourself into a diet that is +/- 2990 calories daily which is a 480 calorie surplus and you now start putting on weight, which means the calorie calculator has FAILED YOU AND YOU WANT TO THROW YOURSELF OFF OF A CLIFF......AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. OK, yes a little dramatic, however, this is why DIETS FAIL, and no one sticks to them, and women end up doing the "starvation, Binge diet".
So now lets use that starvation binge cycle diet that many of us decide is going to be the best thing out there.
so using the 14 day period to track calories, we know that we are going to come out with a rough average over 14 days, and we know that the average bikini girl prep coach loves that 800-1000 calorie mark with tons of cardio etc, and we know a cheat meal becomes a binge day for these girls.
so lets take the example of step 1 :
day 1 770 day 8 770
day 2 820 day 9 820
day 3 745 day 10 745
day 4 880 day 11 880
day 5 695 day 12 695
day 6 3746 day 13 3846
day 7 3489 day 14 3764
total calorie intake: 22665 calories average intake: 1618.21
Trust me, I have worked with enough bikini girls to know that those are easily attainable binge numbers, and I can tell you now that after a show, 2 weeks of that is going to be havoc, and I will explain shortly. So we can see that there is about an 800 calories difference between DIET numbers and binge numbers over a weekend.
So Jolene bikini girl that is 58kgs @ 20% bf usually has a maintenance caloric intake of around 1400 calorie intake (remember bikini girls like to starve themselves as always.) and now has these binge days and then water weight comes into effect, and then they flip out and repeat the vicious cycle and wonder why she is gaining weight, etc whilst dieting.
well if she was to take her calorie intake of 1400 and was to reduce it to 1100 calories, she would be eating a calorie deficit, but wouldn't be so low that she needed to binge eat. She wouldn't need to do cardio at this level, buuuuut that doesn't happen.
So during a dieting phase, we see a massive drop in thyroid hormones and other hormones in general, and also a massive rise in insulin sensitivity. So if bikini competitor Jolene Has been with one of those NAZI coaches, and stuck to 800 calories a day for 8 weeks, she would have crashed her hormone levels drastically, and now she has kind of set her bodies maintenance calories to around 1000 calories a day, but she is only eating 800 calories and burning 1200 calories putting her in a negative energy balance.
Energy balance is the number of calories consumed minus the number of calories burned. SO for this example
Jolene is eating 800 calories but is burning 1200 calories daily in the gym and during cardio so she is actually in a negative balance of negative 400 calories, which is basically the same as anorexia.
Now let's look at the rebound because Jolene has lowered thyroid levels, and heightened insulin sensitivity she is bound to be a fat-storing machine when she overeats drastically. SO let's say she takes the week off the diet and training.
This means she is no longer doing hour cardio and 1.5 hours of weights, so she is no longer burning the additional 1200 calories daily, But binges for the week. let says she averages 3500 calories daily, for that week, and she is no longer exercising putting her into a positive energy balance now, which means she is basically eating 3700 calories above her current daily caloric intake. That means she will gain 2.87kgs of fat (25900 calories divide by 9000 calories in a kg of fat) during the week, and because we know that carbs latch on to water, probably the best part of 4.5kgs of water, making the rebound close 7.5kgs in a week!
This is why Bikini prep coaches fuck with girls' hormones so badly.
So what happens to the female body when you are in a negative hormone balance:
Their hormone system shuts down because they are not getting in enough calories to survive themselves, let alone produce a new human life this is called Amenorrhea. Amenorrhea (uh-men-o-REE-uh) is the absence of menstruation.
Now that tanks their estrogen levels (which is actually a fat mobilizing hormone in females) and progesterone levels and their testosterone levels from what I have seen stay slightly elevated. thyroid levels diminish and being so insulin sensitive they are really on the path to being a fat-storing machine, and women, in general, are carbivores so when they eat tons of carbs post-diet, insulin levels are going to be peaked and with taking in a positive energy balance, they now just store everything.
So how do you stop this? you need to properly reverse diet the girl.
From doing 1.5 hours training, and 1-hour cardio daily, on 800 calories, you reduce cardio by 20%, reduce the training by 10%, and add 200 calories to their diet and then you judge from there :
week 1: 1.5 hours training 1-hour cardio 800 calories
week 2: 1.2 hours training 45 mins cardio 1000 calories
week 3: 1-hour training 30 mins cardio, 1100 calories
week 4: 1-hour training 20mins cardio, 1200 calories
week 5: 1-hour training, 15 mins cardio 1300 calories
week 6: 1-hour training, 15min cardio Every 2nd day, and 1300 calories.
week 7: 1-hour training, no cardio, and 1300 calories.
if they have been using t3, reduce t3 dosage by 5-10mcg ever 5-10 days. And rather slowly than fast to allow for the thyroid to recover. so if she used 40mcg of t3, reducing by 5mcg every 5 days is perfect, or reducing by 10mcg every 10 days will also work.
When figuring out the caloric intake, make fat intake higher at roughly 35% of calories, and make sure that carbs are kept to starchy carbs, fruits and vegetables, rather stay away from sugars. Protein intake at roughly 2.5g per kg too.
start your off-season by increasing calories from 1300 as needed, probably 50 calories per week from there on in.
Men suffer the same consequences when coming off a show prep, even worse actually.
so now guys drop testosterone going into the final weeks, and start with the anti-estrogens which means come post-show, they get a massive spike in estrogen, which if anyone has done a show is the cause of post comp blues, and with the spike in estrogen and low test levels, you become insulin resistant. So combine that with lowered thyroid levels from the dieting, and massive eating post-show you are in for a world of trouble for fat gain.
Men also go into a negative energy balance but due to having more muscle mass than females, the rebound isn't as bad, but it is still bad never the less.
so what should men do post-show? reintroduce some form of testosterone at low levels, 100mg a week is perfect, to try and balance the hormones again, taper off any anti-estrogens being used. And add in some form of glucose disposal agent. As above for the females' example, tapering off cardio and reintroducing food at a slow rate will be better too.
ok, so I am done now, hopefully people have questions.
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