Underweight Advice

[ryantherobot]

Underweight Training/Nutrition Advice:

I've been making some serious progress and my arms and back are definitely more defined from all the pull-ups, hanging exercises, planche, and l-sits but I'm still underweight and carryin fat around. I've made a lot of dietary changes and am eating a lot healthier but its been about 6 months now and I'm still the same in terms of % fat.

I've read about the Glycemic Index on here and then followed up on other sites as well as Cortisol but I really dont believe those are my problems. I just can't seem to tone my body.

Any advice/suggestions would be much appreciated. I don't do much High Intensity training or Endurance/Aerobic/Cardio stuff, would that be the best way to lose the fat.

I'm just scared of under-eating and losing what muscle I do have -vs- over-eating and never getting rid of the fat I've got. Surely there's no perfect answer but any advice for toning up a bit would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you as usual

*edit* I should mention I'm 5'11 and weigh in anywhere from 142lbs to 146lbs.

[Blairbob]

are you eating enough fat? are you eating too much fruit ( and therefore sugar? )

are you not eating a surplus of calories towards your basal metabolic rate + whatever activity you do during the day?

do you get enough GOOD sleep?

I, myself could stand to use some HIT or tabata intervals and short metcons, which is what i prefer anyways besides some short runs. strength is continuing to go up but slimming up will make me stronger pound for pound and this could all just be motor unit recruitment.

[ryantherobot]

I'm really not sure how to answer some if not all of your questions

I think I'm getting a good amount of sleep now but it was definitely a problem I fixed. Now I'm fairly sure I get enough sleep though.

Not sure about enough fat? I might say no to this but not sure, I eat pretty little and not much fatty things. How do you know how much fat is right? Sort of same thing on the Calories I have no idea if I eat the right amount for my given activities nor have I heard of Basal Metabolic Rate.

Could you perhaps explain these or help point me in a direction to find out better how much I can do. Pretty standard meals for me is either Egg with Vegetables, Tuna with Vegetables, Mince Meat with Vegetables, or sometimes Rice/Beans/Spaghetti with other things. Like last night I made Curry of Rice, Blackbeans, Lettuce, Bokchoy, and Pele (pele is a grean leaf). Today for breakfast I ate some of the curry leftovers and then after working out I had some tuna.

[gekitsu]

just a few random bits that spring to mind (from all kinds of sources):

-when cutting calories, make sure you still get all the nutrients you need. its much harder to plunge your body into emergency mode when it has everything it needs.

in general, if you try staying away from processed food in favor of fresh food, youll do yourself a big favor anyway.

-watch your balance of the "big three": fat, carbohydrates and protein. youll want a good dose of protein and then focus on getting your calories through EITHER carbs or fat. some people react better to low-fat than they do to low-carb and vice versa. even some dietary concepts that arent strictly low-carb or low-fat work, like ori hofmecklers warrior diet (only high-protein snacks over the day and one big meal to keep you sated in the evening - its said to force you into fat-burning over the day and do good things to your insulin sensitivity)

-it might be more effective to first gain a few pounds of lean mass (which can be a pain in the behind for hard gainers, i hear you loud and clear on this one) - train well and eat plenty - and go into a more dedicated fat-burning phase afterwards. if you dont carry too much excess fat around, the effects of heavy training on your muscles will raise their energy need even in "standby" mode and be enough to solve your problem.

also, gaining some muscle tone and/or mass, and having good body posture will make some subcutaneous fat look much firmer. it wont be a chiselled body, but it will make you look strong and hide away quite a few pounds of unwanted fat.

-read up on nutrition! it doesnt have much to do with gymnastics, but t-nation and similar sites often feature articles on nutritional details and even featuring recipes. if you have a problem that belongs to the trade of a bodybuilder and general beach-guy (want more muscle, want less fat), those people might know efficient strategies you can weave into your training life. anyway, read up on the subject - the more you know, the better.

-the body seems to be much more effective, metabolically, when running at high power: think michael phelps' gargantuan level of training and the insane amount of calories hes said to consume per day. a caloric deficit of X hundred calories per day at low levels is much more likely to mess with more than just your body fat (the dreaded undereating effect, plus you dont have enough energy to train well) than the same amount of deficit in a training schedule that elevates your caloric intake drastically.

-the most efficient exercises in terms of fat burning are high intensity interval training exercises (HIIT). you could try putting two sessions of e.g. HIIT running into your training schedule. take care, though: HIIT is very intense. its not a good idea to train all-out and high intensity every day. if you remember coach sommers first training article, he prescribed ridiculously low time frames for improving strength: accumulate 60 seconds of holding your positions in the back lever and planche. an amount this low will not fatigue you and will not let you train to failure, thus reducing the intensity of the training unit. an all-out bodybuilding session that has you working in the gym forever, with lots of big movements like squats, and systematically fatiguing motor units will be much more intense and thus require days with lower intensity to balance out and avoid CNS fatigue.

its not as much of rocket science as it sounds, though. just take care not to overfatigue with HIIT - dont do it every day and dont do a full-fledged gymnastics-focussed workout on top of it.

just google around a bit - there are countless articles describing HIIT and tabata intervals and citing the according studies.

-what blairbob said: have enough sleep. deep, sound, quality sleep that is! sleeping regularly is best. (i.e. do not have your daily sleep times fluctuate too much, as long as they keep adding up) also, drink enough water.

-i keep hearing praise for nate greens book "built for show" - which is geared towards young everymen wanting to fill their frame out and look good naked. you could try hunting down a bit of info online and decide whether it mighth be worth a buy. combining its concepts of nutrition and exercise programming with the knowledge of gymnastics training from coach sommers book might yield quite impressive results

[ryantherobot]

well looked up the BMR thing

http://health.discovery.com/tools/calcu ... basal.html

says that I should be at 1712.4 approximately

I also looked it up on Wikipedia and don't fully understand what it means in terms of my goals.

I also went to this website and found an approximation of calorie intake: http://www.shapefit.com/dailycalorie-calc.html choosing moderately active reveals 2572 and very active 2915.... I'm definitely far far below this.

So does this mean I should eat more? Eat the same but exercise more? Exercise and eat more? I don't fully understand the underweight but fat thing.

And no I'm not doin it to look good naked, I'm doing it to be healthier and improve my training by not carrying around worthless body.

[gekitsu]

well, motivations are different, but what you want to do might be the same. obviously, if your goal is to have a healthy body composition, you really wont need anything to grind yourself down to a far <10% body fat level.

what could help the advice is a bit more info on your situation.

are we talking a little underweight or substantial underweight? are we talking an unpleasant bit of excess fat or talking severe amounts? (severe underweight with borderline obesity sounds a little unlikely, though)

regarding your caloric intake and your metabolic rate: this was meant as a pointer that oftentimes, its not the best way to try dieting down but rather train hard (=raise calorie demand) and eat accordingly, but keeping a little bit of a negative balance. nutrition and body composition is such a very complex subject with lots and lots of things that can play into it - dietary habits, lifestyle, genetic predispositions, hormonal things, ...

as long as we are not talking about substantial problems in terms of bodyweight and fat, id say that the best you can do is to live healthy and let your body adapt. read up on nutrition, different concepts (i.e.: how many meals per day, how to divide calories between meals, what to get your calories from etc...), some caveats, some bsic principles, etcetera... get to know what you eat and stick to a strict policy of food quality and informed choice of food.

tuna for example is known as a good source of protein and omega-3 fatty acids. noodles, on the other hand, are high on carbs. nothing of that is inherently bad, but it sounds a bit like a mix-and-match of everything thats said to be "good fitness food". if you really need to cut weight, id say

a) look for a nutrition plan that fits your needs and stick to it.

b) try incorporating one or two sessions of interval training into your routine.

if you dont really need to lose huge amounts of weight, id say get smart about food, eat healthy stuff, and do some intervals for that extra kick in your metabolisms behind.