Amped Training

Female-specific Issues with Dieting

A total calorie deficit with adequate essential nutrients is required to see losses in weight and changes in body composition.

However, this can cause a problem in some women. As noted before, some people can require extreme calorie deficits in order to see continual losses in fat mass. In females, this can be problematic in terms of getting in required nutrients, not to mention what seems to be a greater susceptibility to metabolic issues from dieting.

This can be solved with two approaches.

1) Add some activity to expend energy. By doing this, you can increase the net deficit by means of using up extra energy, as opposed to taking in less energy through food. Even 200-300 extra calories a day can be quite helpful. In smaller women, cardio in some form is virtually mandatory due to this issue, along with possible blood-flow issues to fat stores in the lower body.

As an aside, this is typically why you see so much cardio used by female bodybuilders and figure competitors. While some extra activity is a good thing, too much is not, and it's very easy to tip the scales from “good enough” into “way too damn much”. A recommendation of 20-40 minutes per day of low-intensity cardio or 10-15 minutes of anaerobic work (if it can be fit into the schedule) is plenty.

In general it seems a lot of people will find that more activity and higher calorie intakes will give better results, but taking this to an extreme may not always be a good idea, nor practical for most people.

2) Cyclic dieting. By alternating periods of very low carbs and calories with frequent refeeding, and periods of higher carbs and a smaller calorie deficit, many of the metabolic issues can be avoided.

For our 100 lb woman, this might look like so:

Low-carb/low-calorie phase

125g protein
50g carbs
50g fats

1150 calories

In this instance, the carbs will come almost entirely from "trace" carbs found in other foods.

There will be 2-3x weekly refeeds, at 2-5g/kg of carbs (90-225g) each. This will serve to off-set the lowered calories. Anecdotally women in general seem to do better with smaller but more frequent carb-ups as opposed to fewer, larger refeeds.

The number and carb amounts of each refeed would be dependent upon the calorie intake and leanness of the individual. As a rule, the lower the calories and the leaner the person in question, the more frequent refeeds should be.

Moderate-calorie phase

100g protein
110-115g carbs
50g fats

1300 calories (~15% deficit)

The moderate calorie phase would still place the individual in a deficit, but a less severe one, 13 calories/pound as opposed to 11.5 cals/lb in the low-calorie phase.

This would serve as a mild break from the more extreme dieting, while still allowing some progress to be made.

Due to the oddities of metabolism, a fluctuating approach like this actually tends to provide better results than simply trying to brute-force through a diet. It's counter-intuitive in many ways, but it works.

Of course, there are some women that won't need even that; the low-calorie phase with refeeds will be more than sufficient for dieting. However having the occasional diet break, be it structured like above or even just forgetting about the diet entirely for a week, will very rarely cause problems when done every 6-8 weeks.