Wait, that doesn’t make sense…you don’t feel deprived, but you do know that there are negative body comp changes, feel weaker, yet still have a hard time justifying having to eat more?
welcome to my fucked up mind.
I think you’ve misread that one I’m afraid. If I’m correct, she believes the “negative” body comp changes come with “eating more”
@anna_5588, the reason I’ve put the above words in quote marks is that I question the validity of both of them.
Just to expand: I don’t believe the body comp changes you talked about were negative and the feedback you received when you posted them on this fitness focussed site back me on that.
I also don’t believe you’ve consistently eaten more high quality food in order to know what effect it will have. The few pounds you gained over the course of BtM are not indicative of consistent heavy eating.
Ahh makes sense. Yeah, most likely misread that one.
@anna_5588 why do you wanna stay that “lean” btw? What look are you trying to achieve and why?
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Unfortunately it’s hard to give good, accurate or meaningful advice over the internet, but I’ve definitely struggled with the mindset you are currently in, and still do to a large though lesser extent.
The problem is that there are so many ways to double guess yourself and also convince yourself of false truths. One I pointed out to you before is that undereating can actually make you look ‘fatter’ when actually you are just flatter, meaning less muscle glycogen.
Another is that increasing your calories can cause increased water retention for a period. This may make you appear less lean but certainly doesn’t mean fat gain. The probelm here is that if you keep going back down in calories as a response every time you see this, you never stabilise at the higher calorie intake. It’s counter intuitive but you have to stick with the diet for a while, and let your body stabilise, to see what is actually happening. I experienced this a lot because I used low carb / keto to get lean. As a result I was very sensitive to carbohydrates. Every time I tried to up my carbs (or include any whatsoever in my diet) I’d see a load of water retention and immediately go back to 0 carb. Only when I stuck it out for a while did the water retention go and I looked better than before with full muscle glycogen.
Finally any manipulation of oestrogen and other female sex hormones can cause pretty pronounced water retention if oestrogen in men has any correlation to the impact of oestrogen in women.
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Lean… I honestly don’t know why
Too much conditioning, not enough food.
Re-quoted for emphasis:
Yeah, but you did this:
You might not have “overtraining syndrome”, which is an actual clinical condition that typically only affects endurance athletes, but you are almost certainly in a chronically overreached state. Cardio, and especially hard cardio like what you, actually causes MORE CNS fatigue than lifting (this is according to sports scientists such as Chris Beardsley). So if you are pushing cardio on deload weeks when you are supposed to be recovering, you are fucking yourself over. If you do cardio after every training session then you are adding extra stress that you need to recover from, and will reduce the positive training effects from lifting. And if you do cardio the day before a heavy squat session then you can expect your squat performance to suck.You are basically shooting yourself in the foot, over and over and over.
On top of that, on of the easiest way to get stronger is by increasing muscle mass, but that requires a caloric surplus. If you don’t do that then you are limiting your potential, and if your lifts are going nowhere and you are very slim then likely you aren’t eating enough just to maintain and stay healthy.
This is what I have been saying since Anna started posting here.
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Are you suggesting I give up conditioning? I also value my conditioning, and really enjoy it
I did not read all this tread. But this is just like me in my 20s. At one point I was use to eat not much and felt good. But I did harder work out I looked like shit and got weaker but my body weight was just the same. I force feed myself to get use to more food. And I got more muscles and less fat. My weight also went up. Now in my 40s it is still the same game. I am not driven by food. I would be happy to eat the same thing over and over. But when my strenght leave now I know that I have to eat more.
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I’m not @chris_ottawa, but it strikes me there’s a lot of grey area to play with between “crossfit style metcon every day” and “giving up conditioning”. Maybe explore this grey area and find where the balance lies for you?
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You can eat more food to recover better.
But the fundamental problem is this- you seem confused about your goals. You keep mentioning Powerlifting goals while virtually nothing you do helps you go towards said Powerlifting goals.
It looks closer to Crossfit, which I think most everyone here will agree is not a good thing to do while you’re cutting down on calories.
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That’s how I started,old habits die very hard. I get your point, it’s the implementation that’s hard- it’s like when overweight ppl have a hard time committing to a healthy lifestyle
Thanks for the resources. I’ll check out the videos- I hope they help me figure my shit out
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Nailed it!
That and the internet showcasing these athletes after a cut. They don’t like to show the offseason puffy photos.
I think most of these “strong” chicks have lost their abs at some point, to get stronger. THEN, melt some fat off. I don’t think this concept hasn’t sunk in yet.
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Sure thing. But more than the videos, I think it’s more important to answer for yourself why you want to stay that lean. Well… “lean”…
And don’t worry, those things take time to figure out. Body image issues are tricky. Don’t rush - as long as you honestly are trying to figure things out.
You have difficult issies, dear. As I said before, I don’t know why are you hurry so much. You are 19 yo. You have whole life ahead and 40 years of active powerlifting at least if this is your choise. If you push this hard you’ll injure yourself almost inevitable next couple of years. Human body has its own limits. Female body has its own. If you want to stay really lean - under 12-15% BF (% depends on your personal response) and visible abs all the time you have to say goodbye to your hormone balance, your period, your active immune sistem, good skin and hair and even sex life (I know some bikini fitness girls in-season has no sex drives and they are constantly in pain).
In other hand if you want to be shredded you have to give up on heavy and intensive trainings as powerlifting and crossfit (if you’re a natty). These increase stress levels to the max so body responses to cortisol with gaining weight and water retention. With time you will train harder but will look worse. I have a friend of mine who tried to compete in crossfit and experienced this.
Well, if you wish to be strong, most of the time you won’t have 6pac most of the year and surely have to choose a coach and follow a strict training program , not to do what you wish like now.
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From where you’ve tagged me to here, I’ve identified 3 priorities.
1: Squat more weight in the maximal range
2: Be lean
3: Continue to engage in challenging conditioning exercises
I will tell you that I have flat out never done these 3 things at once. If I really have things dialed in well, I can do 2 of them, which is what you’re doing right now. In truth, whenever I get particularly lean, my ability declines and typically I find that it’s when I get my worst injuries. My ACL blowout occurred when I had dropped to 8.4% bodyfat measured on a BODPOD.
Meanwhile, right now I’m seeing some of the best growth I’ve ever seen in my life in terms of static strength on the deadlift and press AND I’m training for a half marathon on top of all that: and I’m significantly less lean compared to when I did all of that.
Something J.M. Blakely said in a table talk with Dave Tate made a lot of sense to me, and paraphrasing it, it’s essentially that the tip to gaining weight in support of strength is having the confidence that you can lose the fat when you need to.
You’re clearly VERY good at losing fat. If you were to gain weight in pursuit of a bigger squat, I imagine you’d be able to drop the excess weight once you’re satisfied with your strength.
And if that’s not something you want to do, that’s cool too: being lean and in great conditioning shape is an awesome accomplishment. We just have to be at peace with the decisions we make and the results they have. Once again, with my current training, I don’t foresee myself having a particularly fast half marathon time out of all of this, and I took 4th place in my most recent strongman competition, knowing full well that, if I had actually dedicated myself to it, I could have placed and gotten an invite to nationals. I don’t want either of those things as much as I want to train the way I wanna train and eat the way I wanna eat.
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You quoting that does reveal to me that I should clarify that the way I REALLY want to eat is a primarily nacho-based diet, but this how I wanna eat as it suits my training goals, haha.
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Nah, I just really love to eat too. Good thing I’m not into lifting for physique. Whatever lets us reach our goals, right? It’s not stupid if it works lol