The Female Guide to Getting Lean

So many times women ask me, "How can I lose this?" while they're pinching whatever area they want gone. While no one is exactly the same, there are a few general tips that I can throw out there for you that do the trick whether you're leaning up for aesthetic or performance reason.

Calorie Intake

If you weigh 200lbs and are only eating 1,200 calories, you are not eating enough. That doesn't mean break out the donuts, that means increase your protein consumption – to start. A general guide for calorie intake is your bodyweight times ten to twelve. Example: 200lbs x 10 = 2000 cal.

You may be thinking this is a lot of food, but it is not. Women have been taught that starving themselves will make them lose weight. In reality, we don't just want to be smaller do we? Don't we want to be leaner, too? I'm not saying bodybuilding lean, but enough to see a little definition in your arms and/or abs. Most women would answer me with a very loud, “Yes!”

Calorie intake is just one component of many that go into this machine we call our body. The body is much smarter than the average person. You may trick it once or twice, but it will learn how to overcome what you are trying to do to it. The body will combat under eating by hording everything you feed it. Then you jump on a piece of cardio equipment and pedal your little heart out for extensive amounts of time, and still - nothing. Why is that? Keep reading!

Drop the Carbs Down

You don't have to completely eliminate them; doing so would only set you up for failure. Do you even know how many you get in a day? Do you have a food log? Are you logging on a site like Fitday.com or MyFitnessPal.com? Do you know what foods are considered high in carbohydrates?
          
The foods to reduce in this category would be sugar, which includes candy, cakes, pies, etc. But it also includes fruit. I hear so many people say how healthy they eat and then proceed to tell me they load up on fruit. Fruit is mostly sugar. Natural sugar is still sugar, and it still makes you fat if you eat too much of it. Okay, so we have sugar clarified. More foods that are sugary: pasta, potatoes, some other veggies - research those. Don’t forget rice and bread are sugary, too.

Another misconception is that brown rice and pasta and whole grain breads don't do the same thing as their regular white counterparts. Truth is - they do. They just have a little more fiber and digest more slowly, so you don't get quite the same insulin spike, but they are still a carb and they can still cause fat gain if you overeat them.

So what we have learned is to drop carbs down. In general, I start people out at 25-30% carbohydrates in their diet and assess from there. How are you going to do that if you don't know how many sugars and carbohydrates are in what you're eating? Start logging your food on one of the sites I mentioned above. Take responsibility for what goes in your mouth.

Increase Your Protein and Don’t Fear Fat

Beef, chicken, turkey, fish, etc. There are studies out now that are proving our governments “lean meat only” consumption isn't necessary.

For example:

• CLA is a substance that accumulates in the fat of grass-fed ruminant animals-fats like butter and tallow-that has anti-cancer effects.
• Industry apologists have now done an about-face and are campaigning against the trans in favor of the liquid oils - while using this opportunity of heightened public interest to continue demonizing the fats we should all be using, the natural saturated animal fats in animal foods and tropical oils.

Increased protein helps maintain the lean mass (muscle) you already have. You want to keep this, as it increases your metabolism. Adding a little more lean mass is usually a good thing. As a general starting point, I think 40% of daily food intake should be protein. I have seen great results with this.

Resistance Training

Ladies, listen very closely: you will not bulk up from resistance training. If you start getting bigger, it is most likely because you are also eating more. You may put on a little lean mass, but it should not cause you to outgrow your pants. In fact, if you clearly know what foods are acceptable, watching your nutrition, and doing resistance training, you should be getting smaller and leaner.

Just because you workout doesn't mean it's time to go get a pizza because you “just worked off the calories.” It's simple, if you have a high body fat percentage, you are eating too much, unless there are medical reasons surrounding your weight in which case you should be even more attentive to your food intake.

Resistance training has some proven benefits:

• Improved muscle strength and tone
• Weight management
• Prevention and control of health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and arthritis
• Pain management
• Improved mobility and balance
• Improved posture
• Decreased risk of injury
• Increased bone density and strength
• Reduced body fat
• Boosted metabolism
• Improved sleep patterns
• Increased self-esteem
• Enhanced performance of everyday tasks

A Little Cardio Goes a Long Way

Women today go way overboard with cardio. I have a simple explanation for what this does to your body. It is well known to those of us in the industry that excessive cardio (meaning more than 45 minutes steady state or 30 minutes of high intensity interval training) is too much for the average person. After this amount of time, your body will start to become catabolic, which means it starts to eat muscle for fuel instead of food recently eaten and fat stores. All those ladies you see on the cardio equipment day after day, who always look the same, are actually eating up their muscle.

Do you realize what this means? They are lowering their metabolism because now they have less lean mass. Basically, if you would give them a body composition test, they would be fatter.

Becoming catabolic also happens when we don't eat enough. Starving yourself will only make you carry more fat. When you can't stand starving yourself anymore and go back to “normal” eating, don't expect a positive result. All the scam diets that tell you to drink nothing but shakes or eat only five hundred calories a day, they make you catabolic and set you up for failure. Don't be lazy. Take control of your body.

All of it comes back to being balanced and approaching your health and fitness from a variety of angles. While these guidelines are general, they work and they are a great place to start whether your goals are athletic or aesthetic. Cardio, strength, and nutrition are all important and all build upon each other. Focusing too much on any one aspect while leaving others at the wayside won’t have you be the best athlete you can be

The 5 Training Mistakes You Need to Avoid After 35

Aging, if done correctly, is full of beauty, comedy, wisdom and enlightenment. It’s a great ride with plenty of ups and downs. You can save yourself years of trouble, pain, and calamity by accepting that successful people adapt to aging, that the rules of biology apply to you, and that education is your best friend.

 

By all means, do not go gently into that good night, just make sure you rage against the dying of the light with the one thing we all forget to use in the beginning: our heads. Here’s are the top five training mistakes made after turning 35 and how you can avoid them.

 

1. You Still Believe You Can Do It Like You’re 25

We all know that the personal record days coming off a pizza-and-beer all-nighter are over. But even when we clean up our diet and lifestyle, we still want to train like we did when we were in our twenties. With all the same volumes, rep schemes, intervals, and non-recovery days, and all the sexy programs we see in the magazines and on the Internet.

 

This makes no sense. And you know it because you feel like shit and can’t “keep up” with “those damn kids” anymore.

 

 

Science tells us our metabolism is slowing down, it takes longer to recover (recovery is the unsexy place where growth happens in training) and changes in sleep patterns and circadian rhythms occur, which means you will probably sleep less at night and not sleep as deeply. All bad news for training.

 

So what do you do during this transitional period? Easy. Grow up.

 

2. You Still Think More Is Better

More training is not better. Smarter training and more recovery is better. Understanding this is vital to your continuous improvement.

 

Your training program must be a progression toward your goal, whatever that goal may be. Yes, training can absolutely have the appearance of randomness, but it absolutely cannot be randomly programmed. 

 

"More training is not better. Smarter training and more recovery is better."

Periodization in an intelligent must-have. Your program must allow for the proper rebuilding of broken-down tissue between sessions. This takes longer as you age, and you’re best off seeking the help of a professional when it comes to programming. Programming is as much art as it is science.

 

Mechanics and body alignment (i.e. mobility), as well as technique, play a huge role in your training sessions as joints age. Joint pain is not okay and is, in fact, a biomarker for injury. Don’t be afraid to seek out new strategies and new techniques. Play. Experiment. Adapt. Overcome.

 

Remember, abundance and complications are the way of youth. Quality and simplification are the challenge of adulthood. Think on this. Apply it to your training.

 

3. You Have No Respect for the Most Insidious Device Invented

This piece of equipment drives sedentary behavior, is practically unavoidable for most of us; is a major cause of those tight sensations in our hips and hamstrings; weakens our stabilizing muscles; ruins posture; increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity; and has been linked to cancer, depression and a shorter life expectancy.

 

It is most likely right under your ass right now. It’s called a chair. How’s your posture right now?

 

Want to blow your own mind? Take a random day in your workweek and time yourself. How many hours did you spend sitting? Include your relaxation time at home. Now, before you decide to run out and be that treadmill-desk person, try a little management of the problem instead.

 

 

Start by getting up and moving around a little more throughout your day. Walk down to your coworker’s office instead of shooting an email. Cut your TV time down by a third. Have a team meeting with everyone standing or go for a walk and talk.

 

"Start by getting up and moving around a little more throughout your day." 

Your legs are the big movers. The contractions of these muscles increase fuel consumption and will mediate the collection of high levels of blood sugar in the bloodstream due to inactivity. This is a good thing. Move your big movers.

 

4. You Have Yet to Grasp Situational Awareness

Remember in college when you were so busy? What’s your reaction now when a twenty-something tells you how busy he or she is? Exactly.

 

There are many factors in your life that did not exist before now: children, bills, unexpected bills due to children, a job with increased responsibility and leadership roles, more stress, more relationships to manage, more creative and innovative opportunities, more responsibilities at home, more decisions to make each day and less time to make them, more stress, less sleep, and fewer hours in the day to be selfish.

 

This all must be accounted for in your training. Your training log should include a record of your stress level, how much sleep you got, and if you stayed on track with your diet. It doesn’t have to be a complicated log. Record them all on a scale of 0 to 3. Zero is horrible. Three is excellent.

 

The truth is there are no bad days training if you just accept that sometimes life is going to get in your way. Do what you can with what you have where you are.

 

Only have time for a quick warm up and 3 x 5 on the back squat today? Own it. Only have thirty minutes for your run? Do a light five-minute warm up and four sets of hard running for three minutes, rest for three minutes.

 

5. What and Who You Compare Yourself to Is All Wrong

It is dangerous when you compare your numbers and your look to the professionals who do it for a living or the person next to you in the gym who is ten to twenty years younger. These people do not have the same life as you. They don’t have the same responsibilities, complications, or genetic traits as you. You are not comparing apples to apples. You are being a juvenile idiot.

 

 

By all means, have goals, but respect that you’re not “who you were back then.” You’re not even who you were yesterday. You are you, right now, and the only person you should compare yourself to is you. Period.

 

Have Fun With Your Fitness

You must acknowledge that immediate gratification plays no role in your evolution, so enjoy the pursuit of a disciplined practice in the art of fitness. Have fun! Eliminate pressure. If you do this, you will learn that fitness can offer a lot more than just aesthetics and statistics.

 

And it will be these lessons that ensure your life will be full of grace, beauty, comedy, wisdom, and enlightenment. Avoid all five of these mistakes and you can get to the good stuff much more quickly.