Eating more is the key to bringing your best package to the stage
A firm, muscular body needs calories! (and heavy lifting) if your comp diet calories are at rock bottom expect to be losing a shlt tone of muscle on your prep and have an ass like a deflated pancake on stage. Let me explain why.. There are 2 major substrates that your body can use as fuel in a calorie deficit. Muscle and Fat. Obviously as a bikini or fitness competitor we are looking to maximise the amount of body fat burned and minimise the amount of muscle loss. Pretty simple.
When calories are in a MODERATE deficit you optimise the ratio in your favour of this fuel utilisation i.e your body burns more body fat than muscle. This is great. Do this.
What we are seeing more and more of is girls starving themselves with f**k all calories during comp prep and getting on stage looking flat and fat. Of course you’re going to look like this if you use this approach.
Eating in a ridiculous deficit will have you churning through lean mass (muscle) like no tomorrow while being very inefficient at burning body fat.
It makes sense from an evolutionary perspective too. Body fat is obviously a preferred fuel source thats why we store it, for times when our body needs energy right? Correct, but When you starve your body by eating next to nothing the preferred fuel source ratio changes. Which fuel source is going to keep you alive? Fat. Which fuel source is going to kill you faster? Muscle (because muscle demands more energy). So your body will preferentially burn muscle as it thinks you’re starving and wants to slow down the rate of energy the body uses and keep body fat stores as long as possible for survival purposes. In this situation your body doesn’t give a shit about your glutes 😂 (and it shows on stage)
Everyone is always saying ‘all that matters is a calorie deficit’ which is true for weight loss (enjoy losing your hard earned muscle with that weight loss). As a competitor you should be looking for fat loss and muscle retention. (More in comments)
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Keep your calorie deficit MODERATE. If something is not working and you’re not losing fat you’ve done something wrong and screwed your metabolism or health is not in order (check bloods). Pushing your body harder into an aggressive deficit is only going to screw you up more.
Are you competing next year? Now's the time to start prepping if you want to be competitive. Our team of bikini and fitness competitors are growing fast and dominating shows.
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Personal Training Hawthorn, Melbourne