Monday’s are devoted to helping the female begin or continue to train. The concepts in this post are also relevant to males.
Usually the hard part is getting a female into “training” instead of just “working out” (here’s some help for the transition: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). However, we know that optimal success isn’t solely dependent on the training in the gym, but attention to detail outside of it. When a female experiences lingering soreness or even stalled progress, it’s probably more than just the program; her nutrition is likely to blame.
Nutrition can be looked at in two fundamental ways: total calories and macro nutrients. Solely looking at calories is relevant, but it doesn’t paint the whole picture. Macro nutrients — which include proteins, fats, and carbohydrates — can be more descriptive in describing food’s effect on the body’s hormones. In the case of a sore or stalled female trainee, we’re going to focus on protein intake and meal strategy while also addressing some minor food quality issues.
I bet Hope Solo eats breakfast
Protein Requirements
I’ve done various posts on protein in the past. This post cited some of Dr. Di Pasquale’s work in saying that power athletes should get 1.2 to 1.6g of protein per pound of body weight. That’s an impressive amount, yet not exactly relevant to the average training female. Instead, a good guideline is aiming for 1g of protein per pound of body weight. If a female weighs 130 pounds, she should aim for 130g of protein. Simple.
I’ll take this time to remind under-eating females why protein is so helpful and healthy (an excerpt from this post):
Protein won’t make a
girlfemale bulky, especially since she not only hasn’t had a history of accidentally becoming bulky but more importantly females only have 5 to 10% of the testosterone that a male has. Instead, protein is the most abundant molecule in the body that is a major structural component of all cells — muscle, organs, hair, and skin — and helps regulate metabolism, form blood cells, and supports the immune system. The average woman is deficient in protein intake, and she will significantly improve her health by consuming more if it…even without exercise.
CONTINUE READING
The source of the protein also matters. When Courtney Modecki works with female clients, she stresses protein quality. She teaches clients to get the majority of their daily protein from something that “had a soul”. In my opinion, animals don’t have souls, and if they did, they would gladly offer it up for someone like me to devour it (this Dovah would eat souls instead of worlds). Get protein from animal sources; if it ran, swam, flew, fell out of it’s mom’s butt, or walked around clucking like an asshole, then eat it. Personally I hate non-egged chickens; you get fined for killing them with your sword!
Meal Strategy
The first order of business to quality meal strategy is eating breakfast. If it’s not happening, then make it happen. The best analogy I’ve heard and use is that your metabolism is akin to a fire. In the morning you build that fire by eating breakfast. Every few hours the fire will start to die down so you rekindle the fire with your next snack or meal. Keeping the fire burning hot and bright will keep the metabolism humming.
Breakfast doesn’t have to be an exaggerated endeavor. Fry a couple eggs with some fruit. If you’re smart, you’ll add bacon. If timing is an issue, then cook it the previous night and warm it up in the morning. A person, male or female, who doesn’t eat breakfast isn’t serious about their life. Period. It’s saying, “I’m okay with being a sluggish piece of shit today,” or “I’m okay with not getting stronger, losing body fat, or increasing muscle.”
The second component of meal strategy is to make sure and eat. It can be a habit for some females to, for whatever reason, not eat. Typically females who begin lifting or doing conditioning will find that they get a voracious appetite, but it may take some time for this to occur. Aim for three meals with an additional snack or two. If you’re simply not hungry, just aim for one snack evenly spaced between meals. But do so with one very important qualification: Plan all snacks or meals around a quality protein source. “Quality” means that whole “my food used to have a beating heart” thing.
Even if the rest of the diet sucks, emphasizing protein as the primary part of each meal will improve the macros significantly. If you’re not eating enough, it can help increase the calories. If you ate shitty before, it will help clean the diet up since you’ll eat meat first and not have enough room for lower quality foods. All of the above will have a positive impact on insulin resistance and also improve training. I’ve never had a girl gain fat when using this strategy (and those girls weren’t even conditioning, just lifting).
Marginally Improve Quality
Everything above is very simple and general; the strategies will have the greatest impact on overall nutrition with the least amount of change. However, females should learn what “quality” actually means. Quality means to stop eating the convenient, processed crap that the idiotic feminist magazines spit out. Courtney is big on getting females to “drop the bullshit”: yogurt, granola, lara bars, and whatever else society deems as “healthy”. If your food wasn’t directly involved in the circle of life, then avoid it.
Hydration can also have a positive effect on training and soreness. I wrote about the importance of water in this post, but women often under-hydrate, especially during winter. Colder weather usually means you aren’t sweating, so you don’t think to drink water. Make it a point to hydrate, especially when something negative is happening. Feeling sore? Sick? Light headed? Hungry? Headache? Can’t concentrate? Unless you just chugged some water, do so when you feel bad; it’ll help.
Summary
Some females may be new to this whole “training” thing. Others may be training veterans, but have ignored paying close attention to their diet. Nutrition knowledge and practice is mutually exclusive from training, yet it will dictate the success of training. First, ensure you’re getting enough protein. Second, plan all the meals around quality protein sources. Third, start cleaning up the quality of food bit b bit. Remember, nutrition is habitual and difficult to alter, so let’s keep it simple. Taking little baby steps over time will work better than trying to overhaul it over night. Your training will thank you. So will the animals who donated their soul to you.
Thanks to Courtney for some ideas for this post.
$$$: “A person, male or female, who doesn’t eat breakfast isn’t serious about their life. Period.”
Thanks, Justin. This answers some questions about protein that I mentioned a few weeks ago.
Unrelated, but I need to share: I sprained my ankle yesterday. Not by doing a “dangerous exercise”, but by WALKING. I’m super bummed about this. I’m trying to look on the bright side and focus on curls and delt raises until I can squat again. But this is seriously depressing, you guys.
fruit am dumb.
@karibot
Somene correct me if I’m wrong, but in my experience squatting on a sprained ankle never irritated it. The only thing I needed to be careful with was anything that involved impact. As long as I’d walk the bar out of the rack CAREFULLY I usually never had problems squatting with a sprained ankle. I say give it a try with light weight (bar) and see how it feels.
Larabars are actually a pretty decent on the go snack option.
Peanut Butter Cookie bar ingredients: dates, peanuts, sea salt.
@Michael Loucas
In my experience it depends on the severity of the sprain. Some sprains aren’t that bad and only produce minor pain or discomfort and slightly reduced mobility. Others result in partially or fully torn ligaments and make it impossible to bear weight on that leg, leaving you on crutches for a month and a walking boot for another month (this was me). Most fall somewhere in between.
“A person, male or female, who doesn’t eat breakfast isn’t serious about their life. Period.” Fantastic. This is the best food line since the one in the food faq about how if you don’t have a food story worthy of telling over bears from time to time you’ll be putting from the rough for a while.
Speaking of hydration and sluggishness, do you know much about caffeine affects hydration, or anything else negatively? I normally have a small (6oz) cup of coffee up arriving at work and then one again before training at around 4:30. But sometimes after lunch I get that “2:30 feeling” of sluggishness. That corresponds with the cyrcadian clock you posted last week. That feeling isn’t as pronounced if I don’t eat any simple carbs with lunch but it still happens. Drinking coffee after lunch improves my productivity. Is there any downside to drinking that much coffee?
Good stuff and very relevant to the men too, especially planning all snacks around protein. I see so many guys at my office slurping down high-sugar processed yogurt. Not Fage mind you, but Oreo Yo Crunch.
@lefty Larabars are the shit and one of the least processed, most “primal” types of packaged snack foods out there. I think Justin even admitted to liking them once upon awhile ago. Not a bad option assuming that you’re gettin’ dat protein in dere.
Your posts are so timely it’s like you’re reading my mind! I am two months in as a novice and am now getting concerned with the nutrition part, as my weight is going up, but measurements are not going down. Not gonna lie, by the time summer comes around I’d like to be able to have something to show for all this work I’m putting in. I don’t expect to be ripped or anything, just would like my little extra around the middle to go away. After reading this post I’m sure I’m not getting enough protein. I know what to eat, just not how much and I effin’ HATE counting calories and macronutrients. Looks like there’s no way out of it.
lol @ Stroup.
“Walked around clucking like an asshole” killed me
Great info though, but I would like to question why one (female or everyone?) shouldn’t eat yogurt or Granola, are they not healthy sources of Carbs?
@kelly try just putting all of your food into fitday.com for a couple of weeks. It’s annoying but it picks up steam pretty quickly and before long you’ll be able to have a feel for what you’re eating without tracking it anymore.
Is there a guideline of protein needs based on lean body mass instead of just mass in general?
Yogurt’s fine if it’s a plain Greek or Lebanese type with no added shit to it. That and if it’s consumed in moderation, like most things. The stuff that most people horse down that’s full off sugar and additives is probably something to steer clear of though. I get tubs of the real stuff from an ethnic supermarket near my house, there’s a Lebanese full fat one that’s godly.
To second Dave, just compare Fage Greek yougurt with Yoplait. (http://www.fageusa.com/products/fage-total-classic/) versus (http://yoplait.com/products/yoplait-original-style-yogurt). Tons of protein versus added sugar.
Totally off topic, but Max Aita squatting 705lbs, at the second attempt.
also Larabars are for hippies.
Questions about the Arnold: Where and when are the boys competing?
Speaking of food –
Does anyone have any medium-to-high protein coconut milk eggnog recipes/links?
Totally off topic but I wanted to ask while it was fresh. When switching over to a 3×3 ascending from a 1×5 for intensity day what sort of weight should I try to use? I attempted to just to ascending sets with 10 lbs jumps to my previous x5 weight and the squats were okay, bench was a bit shaky and when I went for my 1×3 on the dead I ended up with terrible form possibly from fatigue. Did I overshoot or is this a normal part of transitioning to this format?
@icanmakeyouaman, I played around with a ketogenic diet for awhile and would often blend coconut milk, ice, and whey protein together. You could probably use vanilla protein and some nutmeg to approximate eggnog. Lately I’ve been hitting up whey protein blended with steel cut oats post-workout as a carb source.
Are we seriously still promoting the “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” thing? I thought that broscience had been debunked already.
Other than that, good post as always.
first… larabars are the shit, so no hating on this and second… the us men are lifting on Friday, yes folks friday and the women are lifting on Saturday- seems as though those days should be switched, but it is what it is.
Following up on my post from earlier denouncing the “breakfast is a must” thing, I will admit that typically those who eat a solid breakfast are much healthier than those who don’t.
Perhaps this fact alone should be reason enough for all those beginning training to eat their first meal after waking. Still, there’s not much behind it scientifically, just saying.
I agree with most of this post, especially in how easy and obvious most of it is once said (eg the granola bars/yogurt and such), but the breakfast thing is definitely not fact. The stoking a metabolic fire thing is biased bro-science promoted by breakfast companies.
Intermittent Fasting has a LOT of credible research behind it, with incredible results. Not to mention a lot of people here follow a paleo diet…Cavemen didn’t eat right upon waking; they had to catch/gather their food first. Don’t knock it until you try it. Meal timing comes down to a lot of preference rather than science. I feel like shit if I eat breakfast, no matter what macros or quantities I eat, and I’m hungry all day long. If I fast and wait until 2-4pm to eat, I have far more energy the entire day, and have a huge appetite later in the day, and still end up getting my daily caloric intake anyways, but in fewer meals.
Martin Berkhan, Alan Aragon (somewhat) and John Berardi have very positive reviews about IF with a shitload of research and experience with them.
K I’m done.
@reidj and willey – The strongest argument for breakfast, IMO, is diet triage. I think we can all agree that the first priority for fixing a strength athlete’s diet is getting adequate protein. And if someone is low on protein, breakfast is just another opportunity to get some in. Now, if your diet is 98% squared away, maybe you can skip breakfast, but that’s not most trainees.
Justin, no offense, but you change your mind like a woman. You ate a Lara bar in your last food video. WTF?
I mindlessly follow everything you say, so what am I to do with a pantry full of Lara bars?
I like this post. Not eating breakfast is for chumps.
Not because of any scientific reason, but because I’m ravenously hungry first thing in the morning and I have an irrational hatred of anyone who isn’t.
i eat cake for breakfast.
I didn’t think you’d stop using “girl” but i was wondering if grammar police would get to you, i.e., the comment about female being an adjective.
I found this awesome article on the subject. And ironically, she calls herself the grammar *girl*. And even has a paragraph about that too:
http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/woman-versus-female.aspx
As for the breakfast debate, I have found skipping breakfast the easiest way to lean out a little bit. Just not on VD and ID. That said, I usually eat TWO breakfasts.
PS: my new favorite thing is unsweetened yogurt with a scoop of chocolate whey powder mixed in. It’s like chocolate pudding with 30g of protein and barely any sugar.
And that Max Alta squat is fucking awesome. 3x+ bodyweight squat raw? Damn. I mean damn.
Eating breakfast vs. not eating breakfast and eating many meals vs. fewer meals makes no difference metabolically.
http://www.leangains.com/2010/10/top-ten-fasting-myths-debunked.html
criedthefox made me lol.
i know ill probably get lambasted here, but, i IF everyday. it works for me. my eating session is usually from 6-9 where i go all out with calories, nutrients,etc.
one of the sole reasons i started fasting in the first place was for energy concerns. i was sick of trying to eat healthy throughout the day (when not at school/work and at my house, it is much easier to eat “healthy”) and did some reading, research, blah blah and gave it a shot. I will swear by fasting up and down. my energy throughout the day never dies down and typically i feel great. energy, really, is the ONLY reason why i IF. i dont understand how statements like that can be made if a system of eating works for an individual? (“A person, male or female, who doesn’t eat breakfast isn’t serious about their life. Period.”)
on days i lift i will break my fast like an hour before i lift and on days i condition i will break my fast after i run.
DRINK THE 70S BIG KOOL AID OR GTF OUT
@hamburgerfan – We are cut from the same cloth, my dear. Knowing that I can eat immediately upon waking is what propels me out of bed each morning.
My friend, DT, just linked me this. It’s pretty amazing.
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y143/MortalWombat68/conanbreakfast.jpg
it shouldn’t even really be a question of metabolism or weight loss strategies or anything other than it’s a time slot for calories. otherwise you gotta eat more during the rest of the day to get the calories you need and you walk away from each meal feeling like you’ve got verne troyer taking a nap in your belly.
Eggs, sausage, bacon, maybe wrapped in a tortilla (it was today) with a big mug of coffee… why the hell would anyone NOT eat breakfast!?! I’m with ellee; Breakfast is often the only thing that gets my head off the pillow. If you choose not to eat breakfast but have a process to work around that and still be big, strong, lean and energetic, then good on ya. But I LIKE eating dead things and will take every extra opportunity I can to devour a few more souls.
The breakfast vs non-breakfast seems like a moot point. IMO Justin is suggesting for the novice trainee who hasn’t started investigating various nutritional strategies on their own an easy solution for them to start with is to 1) add breakfast if they are skipping this meal and 2) add quality protein at each meal. The reasoning being a lack of calories and a lack of protein. This adjustment while simultaneously pushing out “bad” calories will increase protein intake which will help with the structural rebuilding of the body. IF, Nutrient timing, ETC… seem to me more for people that have dialed in their nutrtion. Or look at it like this: adding protein and breakfast is the linear progression of nutrition and IF/Nutrient Timing/Macro Ratio Adjustments are the next step once you stall.
@brian45, “linear progression of nutrition” =genius!
Is that a skyrim reference with Dovah?
I just liked this site a whole lot more.
i dont eat breakfast and havent for close to a year now. I basically have about 8 oz of black coffee before I walk out the door and I begin eating at around 11am-12pm. I am NEVER hungry in the morning and have been that way since i was a child. I am far from an IFer or whatever. But I dont get hungry until about 3-4 hours after I am awake. I also cant eat past 9pm-9:30pm without having issues going to sleep. So I basically have a 7-8 hour window in which I eat.
Granted I am not the leanest dude in the world and far from remarkably strong. But if I clean up my food quality I drop weight. So yeah i am with the minority here I dont think breakfast is important AT ALL. Unless you are in a quest for strength and you eat like a bird so you need 4+ meals a day just to get in your nutrient requirements.
All of this is of course my highly uneducated not so important opinion.
Apparently Rob Adell, a pupil of John Broz, has quit lifting. http://goheavy.com/forums/olympic/index.cgi/read/639869
Good article—- I swear low protein consumption is causing problems for my wife, but it will take a lot to break through the “too much meat will make you fat and give you strokes” propaganda she’s accumulated through the years.
FYI on a minor point — I think that you mean “women’s magazines”, not “feminist magazines”. “Women’s magazines” are the things at the checkout counter, like Lucky, Redbook, Cosmo, etc. There’s some overlap but generally feminist magazines are a bit more high brow and don’t have a mass market distribution.
WHAT THE FUCK. Rob just QUIT!?
I just want to say I hate the use of cavemen as models for how to reach the pinnacle of human potential.
I haven’t read the thread, but if this implies that I’m doing that, I’m not.
–Justin
Totally agree with what some people are saying about breakfast being a time to get in more protein if its lacking, but again, if it works for you, do it. After about 2 weeks of doing IF consistently I’ve never had any hunger until about 3-4pm, and have to force the first meal in, but after that I’m hungry all the way until I sleep, and can easily get the same amount of food, without the energy and hunger pains.
Also, think of it this way. By sleeping you are already fasting (hence break-fast). You’re really only adding about 4-6 hours onto that anyway assuming you have a little bit of time before your first meal, and after your last meal and sleeping. It’s really not that big of a change in your feeding window.
I also don’t feel like you need your diet 100% dialed in to do IF. My diet right now is far from consistent in terms of intake and protein because of not having a car and being a poor college student, so trips to the grocery store aren’t all that common, so sometimes I have to live off of rice potatoes and tuna for a weeks time. I’m still getting far better gains than when I ate all day, and counted all of my macros
“I just want to say I hate the use of cavemen as models for how to reach the pinnacle of human potential.”
echo.
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The caveman comment wasn’t at you Justin, just saw it in a couple comments.