Posts by leiela

I got great tone from lifting heavy weights the heavier the better and i havn't bulked up at all..

It's very very difficult to gain muscle you need to be eating a surplus and it's not something that happen's over night, lift lift lift and when you are happy with the muscle you've gained then stop the surplus.

Looking "toned" (i hate that word) is gained though good muscle and looooow fat.

My first attempt at looking toned resulted in a really toned looking stick insect .. ewww.

My second attempt came after spending MONTHS eating an insane amount of food while lifting big weights... then dropping the fat.

And i still think i look too skinny.. better than the first time but gaining muscle is HARD!!! so im back to eating almost constently ... *sigh* yes it is possible to get sick of eating. 

i'd be hungry eating that..... is that really 2500cals?

it really doens't look like it

2500cals isn't enough if your working out the way you say you are unless you are looking to lose weight, im a 5ft girl and i just about maintain on that.

Try and have something more substantial in the morning, having a good breakfast with really help set you up for the day. atm your breakfast consist's of protien and suger, the protien is great i have no problem with egg whites but the fruit is just gonna spike you insulin and MAKE you hungry try some nice complex carbs instead. Oatmeal is good.

Major downfall i see with your diet is where the hell are the FATS!!! seriously your body needs them the lack of fat is whats making you hungry, add some good fats .. nuts, seeds, fish oil (mackrel, salmon etc), avocado, olive oil, add some to every meal that will help no-end with the hunger.

Seriously though unless your looking to lose weight up the cals.

Original Post by dirktwolf:

Original Post by indiabutler:

Well "bigbityy" you can "suck on it" because as Dirktwolf said he had lines of visible muscle in this area when he had 22% body fat, which is quite healthy, so think you could be offending quite a few people with your nasty attitude towards these forums.

Don't quote me exactly on this but if I remember what I've kinda read lately 18% body fat or lower is the desireable range for female figure athletes.  As I said I had 22% and could see the line- not as pronounced as some models have but I did get it.  I know men can have a lower body fat percentage than women and be alright.

And I really only know the female side of things because that's what I am.  But generally workouts are the same regardless of gender. :)

Female Figure Althletes at comp time usually walk on stage with about 7-8% body fat, in the off season some go quite high but most sit at about 14-15% all year around.  Im currently at about 17% and my pelvic bone show's when im as high as 20%.

Depending on what charts you look at anything as low as 12% is concidered healthy for a female althlete, the reason it's not generally recomended for "most normal" women to get that low is because most normal women eat normal diets. 

My Personal Trainer explained that the reason Althetes can get away with a much lower body fat % than the average woman and still remain healthy, is because they pay very special attention to thier diet making sure that their body is WELL NURISHED and there bodys arn't lacking anything.

I plan eventually to hover at about 14-15% all year round, but right now i need to build alittle muscle on my arms so they don't look scrawny and my trainer assures me i'll be perfectly healthy that low.

Currently im eating about 2500-3000cals per day atm as a 5ft3 female so i really don't think an ED is required to get pelvic bones and flat ab's, infact the lowest i EVER let my cals go is 1600 because anything below that im a nightmare to live with and i get grouchie if im hungry.

Original Post by ching12:

As a beginner the previous post was pretty much right on. Dont get caught up in lifting too heavy will make you too "overdone" as you say.

 UGH!! Lifting heavy won't make you "over done"

Building muscle is a gradual process that takes a combination of lifting weights and eating more food than you need.

"Toning" is the process of stripping fat of your already existing muscle so you can see it hence looking more "toned" 

firstly you have to decide which to do first if you have good muscle already you might be able to get right to the dieting so you can strip of the fat, however if your sort of skinny fat or don't have much muscle then you might want to start with gaining alittle muscle.

Best way to do this as a begining is to start with something in the 6-12 rep range but lift HEAVY lift as HEAVY as you possibly can.

Building muscle is gradual, if it were an over night thing i've look like arnie... you lift as heavy as you can, then when you have gained "enough" muscle to suit your needs you then cut your calories back to maintainence to prevent you gaining more.

Muscles don't blow up over night, body builders, figure athletes train for YEARS to get the muscle they have got, as a woman genetic's are against you anyway as we don't gain muscle quickly.

building enough muscle to look toned and fit is a gradual thing, just build up till your happy with what you have then make sure you cut back your food intake so you don't gain more and keep lifting the same weights to maintain it. 

It depends on the type of body fat reading your taking weather or not your breasts will come into the equasion. They'll count for immersion, and electrical impulse where the sensor is hand held, and a 7 point caliper test. However they won't be read my the scales you stand on or a 3 point caliper test.

Personally i find tht if i do a test that DOESN't take my boobsa into account i read at about 17-18% body fat, while if i do one that DOES take them into account i read at about 22-23%.

Everyone lose's fat in different ways to is just genetic's and while your body may have a tendancy to store fat in the breasts which is why they don't seem to go down as you lose weight.

However eventually if you lose enough weight they will decrease in size (unless thier fake haha) how much you have to lose before that happen's though is dependent on your body and you might not want to get go that low.

I know alot of girls with sub 20% body fat and not one of them has any bigger than a b-c cup and of those i know with sub 12% not one of those has anything much resembling boobs at all, well unless they'er fake. Youll never see an ultra skinny girl with big boobs that are natural, however it is possible for your bodys the hang on to that fat till the very last possible minute.

Personally i've discovered i don' fit into any bracket that any online calc can give me, im an office worker and i class myself as pretty much as sedatary as they come bar my workouts which i use a HMR to record,

by CC that means i should eat about 1,600 + workout cals (usually about 300-400 per day) so a total of about 1900-2000 cals depending on my workout, however if i actually eat that amount i continue to lose and in fact i have to eat closer to 2,500 to maintain.

Personally if i where you i'd take the lower number eat that for a few weeks and see what happens (watch the scales) if you continue to lose which i suspect you might (as you think you might be somewhere inbettween) , raise it by 100 cals per day for a week and watch it, rinse and repeat till you start maintaining.

i don't care how young you are 110lbs is not overwieght at 5ft 2, sounds to me a good weight. I'm 5ft 3 and 112lb im not even slightly chubby certainly not over weight and i can't imagine you are either.

Perhaps your a prime example of skinny fat ... very petite and a good weight but no muscle tone which makes you look flabby?? perhaps you need to gain alittle muscle in order to firm up rather than think about loosing more.

Some people just don't like chicken skin, i love it but neither of my kids nor my husband will touch it.

I wouldn't be offended, everyone likes different things i guess.

What type of food are you eating?? sounds dumb but sometimes food quality can make a huge difference. Can you give me an idea of an average days food?? maybe i can spot something.  

Are you weighing EVERYTHING, EVERYTIME?? my wieght loss stalled for ages because i wasn't counting the little things like condiments but soon found they really add up and can really hinder your progress these days im almost obsessive about wieghing stuff but my loss hasn't stalled since.

Also 600 cals of cardio is alot!! the trouble with cardio is the more you do the more your body adapts to it and the more you need to do for the same effect, sounds to me like your body's adapted to the cardio. Have you tried adding in some weight training for a change, you'd probabally get much better results with 2 days of cardio and 3 days of lifting.

Hmmm they are actually pretty darn spot on my stats atm im 5ft3 at 112lbs and i hardly class myself as perfect my ribcage is waaay to big.. and im sort of wide and square.

tbh i just can't even imagine a taller girl with such a tiny waist would look good... i mean surely your stats should be proportionate with your height??

I don't think there are "perfect stats" i think there is simply looking as good as you can for your build and body shape, i mean not everyone would look good with my stats, hell im not sure i look good with my stats haha.  

Original Post by kellylredman:

Original Post by leiela:

Original Post by kellylredman:

My goal is 700-900 a day, but if I hit 1,000 that is still ok.  My day is something like this:

B - Bananna (120)

L - Lean Cuisine (200-250)

D - Chicken and veg and glass of wine. (150+60+150)

Snacks - Quaker minis and/or carrots (100-150)

This all adds up to about 800.  If I eat much more than this I would never lose weight, because I'm only 5'2'' with a small frame. 

 

im 5ft 3 with a Very small frame i am losing on 1400-1600 easily (though i am quite active).. if you gain on more than 1000 it means you killed your metabalism and you need to fix it ASAP before the problem gets worse.

I eat about 400cals for breakfast then 200-250cals for the meals after that eating 6 meals a day every day.

 

 Yeah, my metabalism sucks.  I work an office job (7am-4pm), have an hour commute (eats breakfast while driving) and don't exercise.  I probably burn about 1,700 a day on a good day, which means that if I eat 1,000 cal, there is only a loss of 700.  My activity level is 0... and I'm not really interested in changing that.  There are too many video games to play and not enough time in my day..... Thanks for the advice though.  You look great in your pics!

 Unfortunatly the problem you are going to have is that your metabalism is slowing down as we speak in a few months you need to eat 800cals to lose, then 700 etc .... it sounds silly but you have to feed your body enough to furnace burning on full heat.

atm your metabalism isn't running at full efficiency and when you finally reach your goal and start raising your cals to a normal level you'll find that the weight piles back on and unless you want to live the rest of your life on a diet thats not a good thing.

Trust me 18 month's ago i ate maybe 700-800 cals a day and i found out the hard way what happens when you trash your metabalism, i got stuck and nothing i did made that needle on the scales go down, heck i even resorted to some pretty drastic cals like 500cals some days... nothing worked.

To fix it i had to allow my body to GAIN 14lbs by eating like a horse for 3 months which mentally killed me... watching the scale go up is heart breaking ... and i had to do this just so i could re-start my diet normally in a healthy manner im only now just starting to getting back to where i actually wanted to be, but its funny now im eating a normal amount the weight is flying off.

You don't need to do exercise to loose weight, but you do need to eat to lose weight. Im not saying you should exercise the way i do... but please if you value your body AT ALL eat at least 1,200-1,300 after all you only get one body and if you screw it up then you really are buggered.

it's harsh but it's sort of right, 1600cals is NOT ALOT, you need to eat more your body needs it, and you need to SEE THAT.

You Can eat more you just won't it's in your mind you panic about gaining weight you won't gain on 2000cals hell i'd be suprised if you gained on 2500cals you need to see passed the mental barrier and EAT!!!!

trying to diet on too little food is as hard as trying to diet while eating too much.  someone once said to me that dieting on too little calories is like planning a cross state roadtrip with only 1/2 a tank of fuel.

Your working hard in the gym so you need to FUEL that work, the more you eat the hotter you metabalism burns and the better your body burns off fat, the trick is to give it ENOUGH, that its burning hot but not so much your giving it 100% or more than it needs.

Right now you arn't eating enough and your body is shuting down none-vital systems, and slowing down others, the combination of which means your body isn't burning through cals as fast or as effectively as it could/should be.  you need all systems running at full power THEN you'll see effective weightloss.

I used to eat 1200cals a day and couldn't lose a lb now im eating 1600-2000per day and im losing fat quickly and ive lost 12lb in about 4 weeks.  

trust me your body will thankyou for it.

if it was a set of scales that took the test i would pay it no attention what so ever.

Im 113lb's 5ft3, and about 20% atm according to a caliper test (26% according to my gyms scales haha, and 22% by my home scales) I have a reasonable amount of muscle and my upper half is looking pretty lean all my fat is on my tummy and thighs.

Personally i think 101lbs is a nice weight for your height and unless your packing a decent amount of muscle i'd be very suprised at 13%.

13% at your weight would put you in the the 6 pack buff girl look .. muscle visable even relaxed look... if you live in a gym and have great muscle tone it's possible, but if your pretty soft looking then it's likely to be much higher.  

Women with alot of muscle and alot of fat may look bulky .... but the problem there is the fat not the muscle.

Some women gain muscle easier than other's it's true, but i've never seen a lean woman not on seroids get really bulky, besides getting bulky is a choice even for men with ALOT of testerone it takes months and years of dedicated hard work to get big!!!

what you might see happening it water retention in the first few weeks you can retain alot of water, and there is the whole "newbie gains" issue ... but trust me what might seem like rapid gains in the first few months slow's down to an unbarable crawl far too quickly.

Besides you can lift till you get as "big" as you want, then focus on "maintaining it" making muscle gains requires WORK ... you need the right food, the right workout it doens't happen by accident.  People don't "stop" lifiting when they get to the size they want, they just feed and train differently.

I have a similar problem in that im faily bottom heavy, however iv'e been with a persoan trainer who is also a competion winning figure althlete.

As some of the guys have said you can't spot reduce, when you lose weight you lose it from where ever your pobdy chooses to take it from, for me this means i lose it from my upper body first.

This created an obsticale for me and my trainer luckily for me she's trained hundred's of pear shaped women in the past, what we are doing to "combat" he pear shaped look is.  : -

We are adding so much muscle to my upper body as possible, while concentrating on trying to add thickness to my shoulders (i also have the disadvantage of a wide rib cage which means i don't naturally have much of a waist) so we are trying to create the illusion of one.

While we are doing this i am doing limited training on my legs, so that they are gaining muscle just not to the same degree as my upper body, so in other words instead of trying to bring down the legs, we are bringing up the upper body to meet them to even me out.

This way when i lose the fat (and it leaves my upper body more than my lower body) my upper body will remain in proportion and it won't look skinny.

which tbh has always been my problem in the past ... i've lost the weight off my thigh's before though just diet my i always looked sick from the waist up once my weight get's low enough that my thihg's are a resonable size.