Not Just a Man's World

Having recently got back from a cycle touring holiday in France, I’ve already started counting down the weeks until my next holiday.  Only 6 weeks away, and it is my annual week spent lying on a beach.

While my holiday mind is occupied with thoughts of wetsuits and bikinis that are still buried at the bottom of the wardrobe gathering dust, my feminine mind is pre-occupied with the thought of how I might look in those bikinis.

I’ve just spent the last couple of months trying to build up some muscle, and while I’ve tried my hardest not to build up too much fat in the process I’ve not been entirely successful.  My backside has definitely regained the minor love-handles that my partner does not love to handle, and even though I can still see my top two sets of abs (if I lean back far enough), the lower sets have been missing again for at least 4 weeks (to be honest, I’m not sure I could honestly say I’ve ever seen the bottom set properly yet).

Like all women, I would like to have an attractive, non-sagging bottom when I next put on my bikini and since nutrition makes up most of the body composition equation, working out what to do with my diet for the next 6 weeks is crucial.

What have I tried before?

For my last weight loss cycle I followed an anabolic diet, the original cycling ketogenic diet.  I ate low-carb (i.e. net carbs at 30g or less) for 6 days a week and on one day a week I consumed plenty of carbs to replenish my muscles with glycogen. 

The carb day was an exercise in massive eating and I would eat somewhere in the region of 3,500 calories in any carb-form I could get (mostly potatoes, fruit, beans, peas, flapjacks but even the odd doughnut if they were on special offer).  The rest of the week, on my non-carb days, I was on reduced calories.

At the start of the cutting phase I was on 1,700 calories a day (having previously been on a maintenance diet of 1,900 calories) and by the end of the cutting cycle I was on 1,100 calories a day for a couple of weeks.

Does the anabolic diet work?

I had already been on the anabolic diet for some time and for maintenance I had found it really reliable. For this cutting phase I had also had a reasonable level of success on this diet.  At the time I didn’t own any callipers, but I certainly lost 2 inches off my waist and 4 inches from my resilient backside, which for someone who is 5’6” and was only weighing in at 54kg at the start of the process could probably be called a success.  However, there were two problems:

1. I hit a plateau in the last 3 weeks.
2. I lost muscle, in particular some of the glute muscles I had become very proud of.

As muscle is used to burn fat, there’s a significant chance that number two was one of the causes of number one.  My workout choices may also have had an impact.

But I’m also suspicious that having one really big day replenishing glycogen wasn’t helping.  After all, in the last few weeks my daily calorie intake across the week still averaged out at 1,450 calories a day, whatever my actual daily calorie intake was for 6 of those days.

So what will I try this time?

Once I went back onto a muscle-building phase I tried something new with the diet, leaving out the big carbs day and instead only having carbs directly before and after a workout. 

I became even more rigorous about keeping the rest of the time “non-carb” (maximum 25g net carbs a day, so only the most fibrous vegetables) and I’ve been keeping the carbs as “clean” as possible.  Fruit and yoghurt only.  Nothing else.

Blackberries: clean carbs.  Just add yoghurt.

For building muscle I think I’ve had good success with this approach.  I’ve kept reasonably lean (apart from the missing abs and glutes, lost to me under a layer of stubborn fat) and I certainly feel like I’ve had some muscle development.

So I will be sticking to this approach and simply cutting my calories.  My maintenance calories since the last cutting phase have been at 1,450, so I’ll be cutting them down to 1,100 for the six weeks.  The 1,100 is calculated based on my lean body mass (LBM) multiplied by 12, a formula recommended by Chad Waterbury.

Will it work?

I hope so.  I’ll keep you posted!

Related posts:

1. Impact of diet on the menstrual cycle
2. Top ten tips for writing a weight loss diet
3. What exercise is best for losing weight? – Part 2
4. Transitioning to the Paleo diet