ashley2212 said:
You might want to consider answering the question in the same thread that it was asked instead of starting an entirely new one...
Just a thought...
Generally if you have questions that are along the same train of thought, its easier to keep them all & all the responses in the same thread - this helps keep it all together & also helps reduce confusion from people askign the same questions over or getting the same responses or not having all the details even if they may have been stated in a different thread.
I think Daisy's comment in another thread is spot on - you need to set your expectations. The fitness & figure girls that you are talking about are first, people who have been doing this for several years, and second are cycling steroids. AAS or AS = anabolic steroids. If you looked at competitors in a natural / "tested" (competitors are tested for steroid use) and non-tested bodybuilding organizations, you will see that the natural people are not generally going to be as lean & hard & muscle-built as the steroid people. It is extremely hard to build muscle & be very, very lean without the help of testosterone supplementation.
Your next question is probably going to be "Where can I get some of that AS?" The answer is, if you dont' know what it is, don't go there. The more relevant answer is, even if you don't know what it is, the thing you need to really keep in mind is that there is NO MAGIC PILL for building muscle - these are strictly SUPPLEMENTS. If your diet & training are not consistent & consistent, the supplements will not get you the results you are looking for. Also AS is not a diet pill. People like your figure girls get leaner & tighter because they are dieting down. The steroids basically help them lift harder, help them develop muscles that don't normally develop & harden that way naturally, train longer & recover faster. But they are not diet pills.
OK, on to the other part of training. You have to set appropriate expectations. You cannot change your body overnight. Nov-Dec is not enough time to look like the figure girls. To give you some time frame comparisons, a typical body building competitor will give themselves 4 months to prepare for a show. Here you are only giving yourself 4-8 weeks. It generally takes 3 weeks just to see a consistent result from any sort of change in your diet or training. You hear stories about these 1 week diets people losign 10 lbs in the first 1-2 weeks of an Atkins diet - this is from water weight - NOT fat. You can just as easily gain that water weight back during "that time of the month", eating a heavy salty meal, etc. Water weight is not somethign to consider as good "weight loss". It still takes about 3 weeks for your body to adapt to the change in diet or training that you have introduced & for it to "embrace it". The body is amazingly resiliant, but if you hit it with a quick change like say doing a starvation diet for a week, sure you will lose water weight. But then once your body realizes that this starvation diet is somethign that is happening more than a few days, it will activate its own protection mode & hold onto all the resources (fat) it has. So you might drop 5-10 lbs in water in the week, but then if you continued that way of eating, you might see yourself gaining that weight back.
If you took the same approach of training like a maniac to gain as much mucle as possible in 4 weeks, you would probably get some of the pumped look, drop a little bit of water weight and then you might end up hurting yourself by lifting too much weight, losing your form & pulling something, or your body may just decide it needs a break because you haven't allowed appropriate recovery time, and just MAKE you take a break. So its all about the consistency & moderation.
OK, so hopefully I'm not preaching to the choir if you already know all this. So to help set your expectations for a 4-8 week time frame, you aren't going to build that much muscle in this time, however you can keep training as you, focusing on tight form & intensity. Do cardio & watch your diet so that you will at least have gotten the water weight off & gotten your muscles invigorated to approach the look of leaner, more muscle.
Does that help? I'm not trying to bum you out or dissuade you - it just simply takes time & if you try to speed it up, 9 times out of 10, you may get the look you are going for for a short period of time, but your body will rebound & you will pay later. Consistency, moderation, intensity & recovery. So do what you are doing & keep your eye on the target further out, knowing that the smaller accomplishments you make in the short term will stay & you can continue to build towards the longer term goal. And also keep in mind, along the way you need to get to know your body better so you can tweak your diet & training when you stop getting the results you are pursuing.
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