Water Retention Messin' With Your Head?
Rigid dieters often face emotional problems when they don't see positive results every time they step on a scale. Always weighing themselves for instant confidence boost after a long workout or in the morning. This is particularily true in many of my female clients who are lean but needs to be leaner.
When the number doesn't go their way, they go crazy and begin to doubt whether their diet is clean enough or if their 2hr/day cardio is enough. It usually end up with giving up on their diet, feeling like a loser, and unleash the inner piggy at the buffet line.
Rigid dieters often face emotional problems when they don't see positive results every time they step on a scale. Always weighing themselves for instant confidence boost after a long workout or in the morning. This is particularily true in many of my female clients who are lean but needs to be leaner.
When the number doesn't go their way, they go crazy and begin to doubt whether their diet is clean enough or if their 2hr/day cardio is enough. It usually end up with giving up on their diet, feeling like a loser, and unleash the inner piggy at the buffet line.
This post is dedicated to those who experienced such breakdowns recently and I thought I'd share one of my clients story to demostrate how to move forward. I've included some good articles to supplement on the topic of flexible dieting, water retention, and the importance of weight training.
Before I begin, here's the back story.
She's always been overweight but started a regular exercise program a few years back and has finally reached a healthy weight she was comfortable in. Her program consist of mostly light circuit training. She has conditioned herself to snack more frequently due to misguided conventional wisdoms while making restrictive portion control a big part of her diet routine. She often face with hunger issues when she go on a diet but since discovering intermittent fasting with me, she become more in control of how many calories she eat. Now, she enjoys eating bigger and more satisfying meals.
Since she leaned out and won a local pageant recently, she decided to step up her game to compete in the miss texas pageant this coming feb (2012). For the swimsuit portion of the event, she would like to be at at least 15% bodyfat or lower to have definitions on her upper back and abs. the problem is, she has reached a plateau in her current workout regimen that prevents her from losing anymore fat.
In my previous corrospondance with her, I told her that the bootcamp isn't helping with her fat loss, nor for muscle gain since the movements weren't chellenging. All she's achieved were glycogen depletion instead of actually stimulating muscle fibers for growth. To look tone, you need muscle.
Her workouts consist of 1hr morning bootcamps (intervals) mon-thur, cycling and abs mon/wed later in the evening, sporadic intervals on the weekend. She is finally learning some barbell basics with me 1x a week now. Her diet is basically your tyipcal ADA low fat, clean eating approach.
This was my email reply to her mental breadown while I'm on vacation
"when you're at your bodyfat % (pretty low for an average female), your bodyweight will go up and down much more drastically than male or bigger females. Same with how you look in the mirror, water retention will mask any fat loss/body definition you've accomplished up to 4 weeks or longer if you never let your body to take a break and recover. You could be at a state of 'overreaching'. The masking of fat loss is possibly water retention.
One possible explaination is that the fat content (fatty acids) has emptied from your fat cells (via caloric restriction/expenditure) but your body is under chronic stress due to excessive cardio and lack of refeeds and your fat cells wants fill itself up with water and hold out as long as they can until you (over)feed them w/ calories/carbs before they reach death.
like the good ol' days when human had to starve periodically to survive winter (much like dieting) and were forced to migrate constantly in order to forage food (much like cardio). When they do find food, they feast and the cortisol (one of many hormones that make your body hold on to water) goes away and the body release the excess water weight and they wake up lean and happy the next day.
To get rid of this water problem, you need a massive carbs refeed post workout best on monday and wednesday since those are your highest volume training days. Then relax next day. When i say relax, i mean not even light cardio! Uunderstand the whoosh effect and how relaxing for a couple of days or up to a week (get off training completely) and add a little carbs/alcohol in the mix can help with getting rid of excess water in the system.
How to deal with water retention
Listen to these two podcasts. They are about making your diet flexible so you don't go mental next time you see your weight go up.
From now on, we will train on monday and/or wednesday then you will eat whatever you crave. they will be your cheat meals of the week. About your diet. Rest days would be like the first diet program I wrote you. Plenty lean protein and veggies ONLY, couple pieces fruits, and no snacks. I want you to drink tea/coffee/water when you're hungry. You will only eat 1-2 meals a day (hopefully have them before bed instead of during the day).
Other than mon/wed. Have your first meal around noon, second at usual dinner time, fruits before bed. If you MUST snack throughout the day, snack on fibrous fruits - apples, grapefruit, plum, peaches, strawberry. don't go overboard with bananas and grapes.
Get this at walgreen for your hunger issues.
and caffeine. http://www.bodybuilding.com/store/pl/caffeine.html
how to apply the E/C stack.
For training, I want you to scale down your bootcamps as much as you can, use diet to achieve negative calorie balance, not strictly via exercise. Chronic exercise stressor is much more catabolic (muscle wasting) than calorie restriction when you're at a caloric deficit. This is why marathon runners looks like aneroxics. Try not to go all out (max effort) when you're asked to perform their exercises. Focus on strength training only while dieting.
Two weeks before your competition. you will drop bootcamp completely if you wish to step on stage lean. seriously."
That's basically what I told her and now she's got her sanity back and training properly again.
If you're going through the same thing like her, hollar at me on facebook and I'll help you troubleshoot your struggles
If you're going through the same thing like her, hollar at me on facebook and I'll help you troubleshoot your struggles
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