Hi Everyone,
This week we’ll look at plateaus, body fat, and general fitness. The Mailbag has been slower in coming around, mainly because I’ve been spending my spare time working on a P90X blog that will, hopefully, answer in detail most of the common questions we get about all of our fitness programs, including diet, and not just P90X.
Here is a list of topics I’ll be posting on in the upcoming weeks. Please let me know if I’m skipping over any topics you can think of. The 90X blog posts began in March. Eventually they will be cataloged and live somewhere for easier reference. Upcoming topics include:
Nutrient timing
Recovery Formula
When to eat more; when to eat less
Healthiest Meal of the Day
Good old fashioned weight training
How to peak
What is a mastery phase?
Creatine
X Plus
The effects of too few calories
How long should a phase be?
How age affects your workouts
http://steve-edwards.blogspot.com/Now on to your questions:
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I have an interesting question for you: how do you get rid of the famous – or rather infamous – plateau? I’ve been at the same weight for over two years, drink my 8 glasses of water a day, eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, exercise between 1 ½ to 2 hours daily (yes, this includes cardio and strength training at least 3 times a week), take in my recommended 8 hours of sleep a night, stay away from processed meats, refined sugars, caffeine, alcohol and what is commonly known as “junk food” (i.e. cookies, potato chips, etc.) and I still cannot manage to shed the unwanted pounds. Sorry, but WTF is going on with my body? I have always been heavyset and managed to lose 100 pounds since 2003, but now, my body just does not want to budge. My doctors and even nutritionists cannot explain why! This is so frustrating and is having a major impact on my motivation to keep going…what can I do to rev. up my metabolism again and start loosing?
Thanks.
Vicki-Anne Rodriguez
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First of all, congratulations on your initial step! That is amazing and, I’m sure, has transformed you from health risk to healthy, so it’s the most important one.
As your body gets closer to a weight where it’s happy it resists change. The closer one gets to their “ideal” weight the harder it is to lose weight. This doesn’t seem fair but the healthier you are the more your body resists so you’re probably pretty healthy right now.
To break through any type of plateau you need to change something in order to shake your body out of its state of homeostasis. You may know that you can get fitter but your body is probably pretty happy, especially given your former state. So your shake up may have to be a little drastic.
Doing the same thing that got you to where you are won’t cut it. You’re fitter now and require more exercise, and perhaps more food, than you did as you were losing weight. Adding calories is one of the most common ways we get our members off of plateaus. As you gain more muscle you require more nutrients. Your metabolism may be in survival mode. Adding more INTENSE exercise is another way. The easier way to add intensity is to try something new that will force you into an adaptive phase. Nothing breaks a plateau as effectively as adaptation to something new. Here’s an article I wrote on the subject:
http://www.beachbody.com/product/newsletters/296.do=================================
You mention in this article that a body fat percentage of 14 to 18 is normal for women. From the information I've receive from medical professionals and personal trainers, this is incorrect and would actually be considered very low and unhealthy for the normal range. At 14% body fat some women stop menstruating. I was told it should be between 18-25.
I am very healthy and fit - I work out 4-5 times per week and eat a healthy diet. I have 22% body fat. So according to your article I have too much body fat??
Can you please explain where you received your information and why it is so low?
Thanks,
Lisa
I was intrigued by your article about being “skinny fat”. I do not consider myself to be one of these people, but nor do I feel I am fat. And to read your article, I am indeed VERY fat according to your body fat percentages for women. I am 37 years old, 5’5’’ tall, and weigh 137 pounds. (I’d like to lose about 5 to 7 pounds but this is where my body really likes to maintain). I have been through P90X once very strictly and a second time modified. I have since then mixed and matched P90X routines with running outdoors, running the elliptical, doing weight workouts using a universal machine, and other DVD toning and aerobics routines. I work out for about an hour a day, 4 to 5 days per week.
That being said, my body fat percentage is about 23%, which, until I read your article, I thought was not just healthy, but very good for a woman. I have read that up to 30% is healthy for a woman! And you’re saying we should be between 14 and 18%?! Help me out here…which is correct and why?
Thanks for your input!
Amy Wendt
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I got busted a few times on my body fat % estimates for women. I posted these two because they gave me a chance to cover this topic from a couple of angles. I used older figures for this than are now given out. I will explain why but I didn’t say “normal women”, I said healthy. I did, however, use athletic healthy as my standard. “Normal” goes higher than this. Just how high is a matter of opinion.
First off it must be noted that body fat is no longer an exact science because most people take theirs at home with devices that are inaccurate. These devices usually state they are “plus or minus 5%”, which is a lot. The thing with them is that you can often change your body fat % by drinking water. I’ve seen mine change by 5% in 15 minutes. Because of this I no longer use body fat % as any sort of exact target. The only thing I care about with clients is that this percentage is going down. This you can tell by pinching your fatty areas. I don’t see a lot of reason to use body fat % calculators. If you do use one I suggest calipers. They may not be ultra accurate but they are very simple and, at least, consistent.
How/why did the % for “healthy” women change? I have two copies of the same fitness book, written 10 years apart. The extreme range of body fat, the low end of athletic and the high end of chronic obesity, have remained the same. In between we’ve become more lenient.
“athletes” have changed from 10-15% to 10-22%
“normal” has changed from 14-18% to 16-25%
“”clinical obesity” has changed from 26-35% and is now broken into two categories: “potential risk” 26-31% and “clinical obesity” 32-35%
“chronic obesity” is 36% and above.
Examining this we must wonder whether these changes are actually accurate in terms of health or political. My wife is 5’2” and 100 pounds. She’s fit but a long way from the smallest women on the planet. She’s a size 0 but she says she now has a hard time finding size 0’s that fit. At one time she could wear size 2. At 6’1” 175 I grew up a large to XL. Now I’m often swimming in a medium. Clothing manufacturers have admitted to changing their sizes to help people feel better about the size they are wearing. Is this the case with body fat percentages too?
Looking at both scales there remains little question that anyone exceeding 25% body fat is at risk. Does it really seem feasible that telling someone with 25% body fat that they are healthy and not borderline? This sounds ridiculous to me, especially given that most body fat calculations are incorrect. Sure, they MIGHT be less but is it worth rolling those dice? I smell political correctness at work here.
I’ve worked with a lot of athletic women. I’ve seen many who regularly test under 10% that are exceptionally healthy. As for lack of menstruation, studies have show that is due to lack of nutrients and not body fat %. Sure, these often occur within the same individuals but, again, I can site hundreds of cases over the years of women with low body fat percentages who were exceptionally healthy. If I’m going to choose a side to err on when it comes to body fat percentage, I’m going to choose lower for most people.
I should also add that I have personally experimented with my own body fat %, which has been tested as low as 2%. Absolutely your fat percentage can get too low and it can lead to problems. I’m certain had my stayed there I would have gotten chronic fatigue syndrome. But that is at 3% LOWER than the lowest standard set for male athletes. At 3% above what is now “normal” for women I’m well into the risk category and hedging towards clinical obesity. And we hardly need studies anymore to warn us of this danger. We are the first generation to have a lower life expectancy than our parents in recorded history, which is almost entirely due to obesity. I’ll continue to aim low.
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Great advice. I have a question. I have severe low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) and am finding it very difficult to get thru one hour of cardio without taking in numerous calories (i.e. Cliff bar, gu shots, etc). I’m trying to eat several small meals a day to regulate it but still seems like it’s not working and it’s very difficult to lose weight this way. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Dawn Alsip
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Those sugar shots aren’t the best solution for you. Instead, add some complex carbohydrates to your evening meal. I would also suggest that you are under eating in general. I would recommend eating 5 times a day and having some amount of complex carbs at each meal and dropping sugar altogether. You’ll find that your energy will stay more constant, you’ll recover better, and, as long as you’re eating enough calories each day, you’ll store enough blood and liver glycogen through the night to get your through your morning workout.
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Hi,
I want to tell you that I appreciate the quality of journalism that Steve Edwards articles (and others) contain. This is real information, conveyed clearly, and presents all information from a perspective, which is the way good writing educates. These kinds of article are quite unlike the typical, puffy 'marketing' pieces that Internet sites pass off as 'content' while they are flogging their products. I applaud you and this website for really presenting important information that people can think about, from a fitness expert's perspective. This is just as important, in my view, as presenting fitness techniques for health.
Sincerely,
Kass McMahon-Kelly
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Thanks, Kass. How can I not print that?
I haven’t seen too many good “health” films recently. I do have King Corn on my Netflix list. Hopefully it’ll be good. So this issue I’ll recommendation No End In Sight, which is about the debacle in Iraq. Whether you support our action in Iraq or not there is no question that it’s been mismanaged and is costing us a lot of lives and money that could be spent on something a lot more tangible, like our obesity epidemic. This is sort of the film version of the book Fiasco. Written by a war historian (not a liberal or anti-war activist), it called the Iraq invasion “the most ill-conceived military engagement in history.” It’s hard to be impartial about war; but from a business aspect it’s been a disaster and the more we track the statistics the more it’s clear that this was a business engagement. It’s embarrassing to see our populace getting bamboozled like this. Hopefully, with disclosures like these, we won’t repeat these things in the future.
Until next time, don’t just train hard, train smart,
Steve
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