Letro, clen, T3 questions

[JL1913]

I am currently 5'2 and 143lbs and wear size 4 jeans. I usually weigh around 130 but after going through the police academy I put on 10lbs. I am considering doing a figure competition and need to get the extra weight off. I have tried a really strict diet and amped up my exercise routine and only have put more weight on. I decided to start taking clenbuterol and have been taking it 2 days on 2 days off for about 4 weeks now and have not noticed any weight loss but have become "harder.'" A body building friend said I am carrying a lot of water weight so I just ordered liquid letro to help lower my estrogen hence dropping the water weight. I also ordered T3 in case the letro does not work.

I am curious about the dosage for liquid letro and if it will react negatively with my birth control. Furthermore would it be too much to stack the Clen with letro and T3?

Any help is greatly appericiated!!!

 

[nefertiti]

Hi there and welcome to the forums!

I don't know enough about liquid letro to answer your question, but there are some ladies here who will be able to help you there.

I would say to avoid focusing too much on what the scale says. Have you gotten your body fat tested?

Can you give us some details about what your diet and workouts are like? We may be able to offer some help in fine tuning those as well. Do you have specific competiton you want to enter, and if so, how far into the future is it?

Stick around

I'm going to give you free plat for a week as well so you can make use to the search function.

 

[JL1913]

A friend of mine is suppose to be measuring my body fat but keeps putting it off. I know better than to get on the scale and usually only do so maybe once per month.

Right now my workout routine is this (I am a spin instructor and teach 2-3 classes per week)
Mondays and Wednesdays: 5 mile run in the morn, 45 minutes lap swimming and 10 minutes core work in the afternoon, 45 min. spin class at night
Tuesdays and Thursdays: 5 mile run in the morn, 45 minutes high intensity lifting hitting all muscle groups.
Fridays: distance run from 8-13 miles (more if training for a marathon) in the morn, 30 minutes lap swimming in the afternoon
Sat and Sun: usually rest but will occasionally due light cardio and lifting on Sundays. Since I was really over trained coming out the the academy I haven't been doing anything either day.

Diet is as follows:
Breakfast- 2 eggs with 1/3 cup liquid egg whites scrambled, 1/2 cup oatmeal with about 1/4 soy milk, green tea with steiva
Snack 1- apple or pear with handful almonds
Lunch- Protein shake (made with eggwhite protein powder, water, splash of soy milk), rice cake w/ 1 tblspn peanut butter, 1 banana
Snack 2- soy yougurt or whole grain cereal or couple slices of turkey rolled with soy cheese
Dinner- steamed chicken with either 1/2 yam, 1/2 cup brown rice, some kind of green or lettuce with olive oil and vinegar
Snack 3-1/2 chocolate pudding (have a sweet tooth)
Please note I have crohns disease which I keep under control by eating a gluten and dairy free diet as well as no red meat, and can only do small amounts of vegetables due to the fiber.

I do feel as though my body is in starvation mode to some extent but not sure. I've counted the calories and usually I take in about 1,800-2,000 but with what I end up burning off my net calories is almost always under 1,000. I am possibly aiming for a show in late spring, early summer, depending on my work schedule. Hope this helps give you a better idea about whats going on. Thanks again!

 

[nefertiti]

Oh my goodness! Your body is definitely in starvation.

Some suggestions (and ladies, I won't be offended if you disagree with me on anything here)

Workout:

Mondays and Wednesdays: 5 mile run in the morn, 45 minutes lap swimming and 10 minutes core work in the afternoon, 45 min. spin class at night
Tuesdays and Thursdays: 5 mile run in the morn, 45 minutes high intensity lifting hitting all muscle groups.
Fridays: distance run from 8-13 miles (more if training for a marathon) in the morn, 30 minutes lap swimming in the afternoon
Sat and Sun: usually rest but will occasionally due light cardio and lifting on Sundays. Since I was really over trained coming out the the academy I haven't been doing anything either day.

Mon and wed - You are doing a LOT on these days. Morning cardio is good, but that's a bit much IMO unless you are adding a ton of calories to your diet on those days. Have you though of doing something like running monday and swimming on wednesday? What time is your spin class and are you eating your dinner after?

Tues and thurs - By high intensity....are you lifting heavy, or lifting high volume? I would suggest heavy lifting over volume personally. Instead of doing every muscle group, focus on two or three one day, two or three the other, and maybe hitting the weights on friday as well to further break it down and allow you to focus on certain muscle groups. With as much cardio as you're doing I think lifting is really important so you don't lose muscle mass and reduce your resting BMR. Would you consider swapping out the five mile morning run for some sort of High intensity interval training? You could still do this running, but instead of a steady pace for five miles, 10 minute warm up run with 8-12 intervals of sprinting and moderate effort jogging, followed by a 5 minute cool down. This will burn more fat and will help with some muscle retention.

Fri - as mentioned, I'd suggest looking up a good three day split training program (or one of the ladies or sponsors can make suggestions) and adding weights here, and cutting the 30 minute lap swim.

Sat/sun - Rest is good. Not much else to add here haha. You could throw the extra training day on sunday instead of friday, or do your swim on sunday if you cut that out of friday.

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Diet suggestions coming up in a minute.

 

[nefertiti]

Diet is as follows:
Breakfast- 2 eggs with 1/3 cup liquid egg whites scrambled, 1/2 cup oatmeal with about 1/4 soy milk, green tea with steiva
Snack 1- apple or pear with handful almonds
Lunch- Protein shake (made with eggwhite Protein powder, water, splash of soy milk), rice Cake w/ 1 tblspn Peanut Butter, 1 banana
Snack 2- soy yougurt or whole grain cereal or couple slices of turkey rolled with soy cheese
Dinner- steamed chicken with either 1/2 yam, 1/2 cup brown rice, some kind of green or lettuce with olive oil and vinegar
Snack 3-1/2 Chocolate pudding (have a sweet tooth)
Please note I have crohns disease which I keep under control by eating a gluten and dairy free diet as well as no red meat, and can only do small amounts of vegetables due to the fiber.

First things first - you need to eat more. You seem to have some good focus and discipline here but no chance are you feeding your body enough for what you are doing. It's a concept I've had a hard time with too! Another thing I'd suggest is getting familiar with fitday.com. Plug in what you're eating and find out how much of your calories are coming from protien, fat, and carbs.

Breakfast - seems pretty good....are you eating this before or after your morning cardio? I would suggest a good way to add in some calories here would be to drink some sort of zero carb protien shake before your morning cardio, and eat this after.

Snack 1 - No comments on this....I'm still on the fence about fruits and the sugars involved, and I'll let someone else with firm beliefs on one side or the other comment. Almonds are good though.

Lunch - I would recoomend getting your lunch protien from a whole foods source, like chicken breast, or Tuna. Add in some complex carbs here too. Brown rice, yams, something of that nature, in addition to the PB (are you using all natural? If not, switch to that)

snack 2 - I'd tack that protien shake you were having at lunch here, before the spin class on those days, and before lifting on those (counter intuitive, but this way the protien is reaching your muscles in a closer time span after lifting and your body doesn't have to wait for digestion. My opinion anyway). This is an area where you can add calories on those days to compensate the extra work by toying around with what you throw into it, and another area you can get some extra calories. I've done things like thrown in some ANPB, eggs, oatmeal, wheat germ, vitamin supplements, etc to balance out my macros (not all at the same time haha).

Dinner (post spin class)- Looks good. It's sad you can't do more than this one serving of veggies a day, I'd usually advocate drifting away from complex carbs after 5:00PM and hoarding up on green leafy carbs, but that won't work for you. I assume you're taking some kind of vitamin supplement in the morning? Turkey and fish are also good sources of whole protien and some fish are good sources of omega 3's (tuna, mahi mahi, salmon)

Snack 3 - lol at the sweet tooth. I really don't see the harm in this small indulgence. I'd consider adding something slow digesting here though to help prevent overnight starvation mode. Usually I tell people to do something like 2% cottage cheese because of it's cassein protien content, but obviously that's out bc of your dietary concerns. maybe a third protien shake with cassein powder? Hopefully someone else can make a suggestion here.

I'd throw in a cheat meal once a week or once every two weeks as well to throw off the monotony and keep your metabolism from getting too used to your diet.


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final notes: Your current daily routine reads like you're training for a triathalon. Nothing wrong with that, but for your current goals that won't get you the results you seem to want. if you decide to run a marathon or race of another nature, you can always go back to this.

Peruse some of the workout logs we've got going on the front page, several of these girls compete and you can see the kinds of training and diets that have worked for them.

Feel free to comment on my suggestions too and follow up with any questions you might have about anything I said.

 

[nefertiti]

One more suggestion, just from a standpoint of someone who is a habitual overtrainer:

Should you decide to take my advice about shifting around your training, could you stand to take four or five days off and then start it up? Others might not agree with me on this, but it looks to me like you're WAY overtrained and your body is hitting a wall. If that's the case, it would do your body a LOT of good to have some time to reset a little bit before starting up a new schedule. Altering what you're doing, eating more, cutting back on some of the massive amounts of cardio will help, but i've always found with my body that once I hit that point of being overtrained I really need to just hit the pause button and let my body recover and heal. After doing so, I usually come back stronger and with much more energy than before. As one of the other women posted in another thread....gains happen in that time in between training sessions, training merely spurs on the process.

Rotten Willow talks about backcycling in my thread asking about training chest - I'd read what she has to say there and consider implimenting that kind of thing in the future to prevent burning yourself out.

 

[musclemom]

I don't know where to start.

1. I can't figure out how you're getting 1800 to 2000 calories unless you're eating a heck of a lot of peanut butter and just eyeballing portions and not measuring them. That doesn't look like 1800 calories, and even if it is, what are your macros?

2. You're overtraining, but part of training is your job. You need cardio for police work. You teach spinning. There's virtually no way you can put on decent muscle with that much cardio. To start with, on days when you teach spin, I wouldn't do any other cardio.

3. You have Crohn's and are avoiding gluten, which means you already have compromised digestion (even if your Crohn's is quiescent, there is usually some impairment of digestion). You need to make sure you're getting super high quality nutrition (I.e., don't waste calories on fluff like rice cakes and pudding).

Frankly, without a solid commitment to dial in your diet and revise your workout routine you're kind of wasting your time messing around with supplements, it's sort of self defeating. As you have already discovered, you're not going to get satisfactory results unless you have those two foundational pieces in place and have maximized your potentially naturally there, first.

 

[JL1913]

Nefertiti- first and foremost thank you so much for taking the time to read my diet and exercise routine and giving a lot of great feedback. My condition does complicate things but the doctors are always amazed at how good I look all things considered, which I credit to the diet and exercise. I think I forgot to mention that I do take a mult-vitamin as well as biotin (which is to help my hair grow back out as I had to chop just about all of it off for the academy). And the only thing I drink besides the green tea is water, occasionally some crystal light or vitamin water zero for taste. I realize I need to take a break which is going to be a lot tougher mentally...even though I know it is the absolute rational thing to do, that irrational side pokes its ugly head in too often. I also use Sundays as my "eat whatever I fee like day" for the exact reasons you mentioned.

When I lift I superset and at the moment am going a little bit lighter with the weights, but rotate with a couple weeks of heavy weights as well. I did gain some muscle while in the academy...doing an average of 200 pushups per day will have that effect. And seeing as I put on a little more afterwards but still fit in the same size jeans leads me to believe these last few pounds I put on is water weight.

I guess I just have to figure out what to add into my diet for more calories that won't cause my condition to flare up. Would it be ok just to have some hard boiled eggs minus the yolks to throw in there? Also I can usually tolerate celery and carrots so maybe add them in there as well. To clarify...I eat breakfast after my run because of a hiatal hernia, eating before I run is just bad! And dinner is always after my last workout of the day. I guess I will just play around with what you gave me and see what works.

Musclemom- I got my calorie count by using an application on my phone called lose it and do measure stuff out. Although sometimes I would oversestimate the food and underestimate the exercise because I'm stupid like that. My friend who is a male bodybuilder who also has helped girls get ready for figure competitions says I don't need to put on any more muscle...especially after the academy. However I just need some work on getting more definitionin in certain spots and feels that because you can see the lines in my upper abdominals but not the lower that I am just carrying a lot of water weight. He suggested the clen and T3 stack and if that does not work using the letro to block estrogen hence blocking water weight. But being female I know things work differently.

Last question: how is birth control effecting all of this? I recently switched brands, but thinking I should go back to my old one. I have a few gynocological issues which is why I am on it in the first place.

 

[nefertiti]

To be honest I always balk a litte when I hear about guys suggesting girls use Clen or T3. It irks me. Not because they can't be useful, but the choice to use either should come after a lot of personal research and a basically perfected diet and training routine, which I can tell he didn't get into with you.

Throwing in hard boiled egg whites will not be enough. You need at least 500 more calories in your diet, if not more, for the level of work you are doing even if you follow my suggestions. You need more protien from whole food sources. You need more complex carbs at lunch. When you starve your body it is going to cling to every single calorie for dear life and you will stay at this wall indefinitely. You may be carrying some water weight, but I doubt that's the main concern. It's common for women to carry stubborn fat in the lower abdomen.

You wont be gaining any muscle if you lift heavy with these amounts of cardio....you'll just be retaining what you have. I strongly suggest you take on a high weight/low volume routine split at least over three days.

Not sure about BC..do a search, there have been some threads on that recently.

 

[RottenWillow]

JL, on an intellectual level I'm sure you understand the fallacy "more is better", but that philosophy does underpin your current diet and training program. More dieting, more cardio, more diet, more cardio.

The very best caloric deficit approach to effect fat loss is a slight and a unpredictable one. A big deficit and/or the same exact deficit amount every day will cease to encourage body recomposition. At a minimum fat loss will stall and can even reverse if the deficit is too large.

Every time you run you should thoroughly replenish the glycogen you just exhausted from the supply in your liver and your skeletal muscles. That could certainly require as much as 100 (low GI) carbs. After your bodybuilding workouts you could take some relatively high GI carbs to get a bit of an insulin spike to aid in the nutrient shutting. Some iso-leucine right after the workout can reduce the amount of carbs you need to get that necessary insulin spike. Search the net for "carbless" PWO drinks to find out more about that. The after cardio carbs are mandatory though.

As for GF eating, there are plenty carbs you can enjoy that are GF and provide a nice low to moderate GF. I make myself GF cupcakes for carb replenishing with Bob's Red Mill GF pancake mix. The mix only has 3g of sugar per 42g serving. I add stevia, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg to the mix to make them sweet and tasty. Whole organic pintos have a fantastic GI. Also, try Bob's GF rolled oats.

Also, buy a cheap (but reliable) digital scale for your food counts. Good ones can be had for as little as $30 off Amazon.