New To Posting Long Time Reader

[shortstuff]

Ok Ladies I have been reading this board for about 8 months now and finally sucked it up and decided to post my own thoughts and questions. I am currently a college student with a year to go before I get my accounting degree. I also work two jobs and am getting ready for my first show, figure, in August. I have a question though for everyone here because I have loved to read and here all your thoughts and opinions for so long. In September I got to about 16% and now am starting to work with a trainer to get ready for the show. But I wanted to run my diet and training by you gals to see what your thoughts and ideas are. Plus I am all natural and plan on staying that way.

OK I am 5'2" and about 130lbs at about 20%. Right now I am training five days a week with two days of just cardio. I do

M-Arms
T-Legs
W-Off
Th-Shoulders
F-Back
SA-Chest
Su-Off

Diet wise I am doing

7am-1/3c oatmeal, 6 egg whites and 1 whole egg

10am- 3 oz chicken or can tuna and lettuce and 1tsp flax

Preworkout on leg and back days- 1 red potato, some veggies and 3oz chicken

4-5pm- 3oz chicken or lean turkey, 1tsp flax and veggies

7-8pm- 3oz chicken or turkey, 1 tsp flax and veggies

10-11pm-30g protein shake


And when I do cardio in the AM except for T, Sa, Su I have to be at work @ 6:30am so I do it post workout, I do long duration on either the eliptical or an incline treadmill keeping my heart rate around 140bpm. Ok I am ready to hear your opinions and why can I not seem to make progress???

 

[MsBeverlyHills]

are you taking any suppliments??? like fat-burners...ECA stack???

your diet looks clean...you said "long duration" for cardio-- how long??? I had better fat burning results when I switched to interval training (fast sprints for 400s/ 800s- less distance running).

oh yeah-- welcome to the boards (just watch out for guys named Frackel..LOL)

 

[shortstuff]

I am off any kind of fat burner right now and am taking the usual multi, calcium, vitamin C, and Calicium with ALA at every meal. For long duration I usually try and do 5 days a week at 45 minutes and 2 days a week at intervals on the stepmill at 30 minutes.

And I will have to make sure to look for that guy LOL

 

[shortstuff]

oh and that 250mg of ALA

 

[SouthernBell]

Welcome!!

You will find great information here.

SB

 

[shortstuff]

ok i don't know if anyone is looking at this thread still but i have an add on question. I am at a stagnant point and i am wondering what I can do to change things up. I worry about cutting down on calories since I average around 1200-1300 calories. I am going back to 1/2 a grapefruit and starwberries along with veggies for my carb intake and on leg day I am upping my carbs to some preworkout potatoes. And what is everyone's opinion on cardio in terms of fat burning? HIIT versus long duration and interval cardio? Just trying to see what I can do to get past this point.

 

[spatts]

How do you define HIIT vs interval?

Personally, I do HIIT. It spares muscle, elevates metabolism long after you're done, burns alot of cals in a short time, etc....

Get some more protein and drop the fruit, maybe?

Do you KNOW your body fat % for sure? I mean you're going to have to drop like 10% of your body fat in the next 12 weeks if that's true. That's 13 pounds of pure fat that has to go, and you're at a standstill? Something needs to get changed up. Maybe try eating more for a few weeks, then switch back to a lower carb with refeeds to shock your body. If you've been eating 1200-1300 for a long time, your body may just need a nice shock.

 

[shortstuff]

When I do HIIT I do the 5 minute warm up then do 30 sec at apx 100rpm on the recumbant or regualr bike and then 1.5 minutes at lower and down and up for 10 sprints and then 5 minute cool down. I just know that I am trying to get my trainer who is helping me to answer some questions but she is very into the just eat clean and eat apx this and it is not working i need a bit more info then that. So I am trying to see what I can do. Really you think more food? I can see eating more rptein what about carbs? I am 5'2" and very strong and at least I can say with not having the diet for cutting exactly on in the last 6 months I have gained a ton of muscle. But it is time to get to business. I am just so lost it feels like.

 

[JJFigure]

Here's the process I go through to break plateaus. First, I clean up my diet and start gradually dropping kcals until I get to my cutting level of kcals (1500 kcals/day). I fluctuate my kcals though, so some days I may eat 1200 and some days I may eat 1800; it averages out to 1500/day. I eat very low carb during the week at this stage, and high carb/low fat/low pro on the weekend. I also increase my kcals 25% on the weekend, so Sat I eat 2000 kcals and Sun I eat 1750. I also cut out supplemental protein; I try to eat all my protein, not drink it. By fluctuating my kcals and changing my macronutrient breakdown, I can get by with lifting 3-4xweek and 2 days of HIIT cardio. Once the fat loss starts to plateau, I start increasing my cardio. By the time I hit competition, I'm doing at least 8 sessions/week - usually 40 min or so in duration (less for sprints). When I hit about 12% bodyfat, I plateau'ed again, and actually had to increase my kcals to break it. Instead of carb loading on the weekend, I do a refeed (1.5xmaintenance kcals with high GI carbs) every 3-4 days. By doing this, I've managed to drop to 9% bodyfat, with two weeks to go until comp. Hopefully, I'll drop one more percent in the next two weeks.

Unfortunately, you can't do the same thing all the way through your cutting cycle; you have to keep changing it up. You need to do things like change your macronutrient breakdown, increase your cardio, fluctuate your kcals, etc.

 

[shortstuff]

JJ Thank you so much and I know this sounds totally dumb and for what I thought I knew but this is making more sense but I had been told to not count the carbs form vegetables and I have not been, but now am going to start there also. So I am going to switch things up a bit and see how that works and do some carb and calorie rotation, maxing out at 75g carbs on high days and then keeping protein up around 170g. High carbs = leg days. Thank you so much JJ and spatts and please I love all the input I can get to keep learning and keep things rolling.