A guide to get you started on your path to Sexypants.

KatieLouiseRyder · March 2015

Am 19, 5.1 ft, 8.1 stone and i got weighed and measured in boots today and it come back i have a body fat of 35.5% and my body fat mass is 18.1kg.

Could some one give me advice as i wouldnt class myself as fat also I know i have a little bit of fat round my stomach but nothing to bad?

shepslisa · March 2015

Much appreciated

savouryduck · March 2015

Anyone used this http://iifym.com/iifym-calculator/ IIFYM calculator for working out their intake needs?

It suggested an increase of around 300 calories a day over what MFP settings suggest!!!

Aye29 · March 2015

Hello ! Im new here I didn't understand the app please help me

sejaltripathi744 · March 2015

A little confused but getting there. Trying to plug in my iifym goals in her but it's seems like I can't get my macronutrients right.. Need friends on here who have nailed it.

aceangeldeb · April 2015

Thank you for such great information!! I've been eyeballing my portions, but I'm going to start weighing everything now. This logging thing is much easier than I thought it would be, YAY

highwind_valor · April 2015

Thanks for this!

HealthyDreamy · April 2015

Bump!

whitneyrabbott · April 2015

Thank you! Haven't taken before picture yet. Well written, enjoyable and helpful.

galengentry · April 2015

Can anyone help me? I need directions on how to get to the post. Not the comments. I'd like to read it.

liltysonn · April 2015

How much does water weight account for if your taking creatine. Im just starting out and would like to get an accurate weight of myself before i start and end up cutting to many calories and eventually losing muscle as a result

acord123 · April 2015

Thank you for your sound advice. I have a workout program. I just need to motivate myself to go to the gym and do it. I guess I need to just get up and go, no excuses.

vegaschick82 · April 2015

Thank you for the great advice

justishall242 · April 2015

Thank you for sharing

justine_howe · April 2015

Very well written ! Those were some good tips I'll try applying into my routine

jaclyntranchannel · April 2015

@liltysonn creatine is naturally produced by the body, so if you take creatine supplements, excess amounts will be excreted. So, body water weight plays a minimal role. Also, you wouldn't lose muscle mass by decreasing your caloric intake unless you chronically starve yourself for extended periods of time (we're talking months). Your body will resort to breaking down fat before protein.

heybales · April 2015

savouryduck wrote: »

Anyone used this http://iifym.com/iifym-calculator/ IIFYM calculator for working out their intake needs?

It suggested an increase of around 300 calories a day over what MFP settings suggest!!!

MFP is starting out with NO exercise accounted for until you actually do it and log it.

The weekly TDEE calc's include your planned exercise if you used it right.

But add exercise to MFP as you should do, take a weeks total, and divide by 7, and it probably matches much closer to the other one.

Though - that site, many find, really under-estimates - despite their claims of dead-on accuracy, but not sharing how they calculate different than any other site.

heybales · April 2015

KatieLouiseRyder wrote: »

Am 19, 5.1 ft, 8.1 stone and i got weighed and measured in boots today and it come back i have a body fat of 35.5% and my body fat mass is 18.1kg.

Could some one give me advice as i wouldnt class myself as fat also I know i have a little bit of fat round my stomach but nothing to bad?

So if you think weight is in good healthy range, and even distribution of bodyfat is decent enough except for some spots, then you likely need to do a swap of fat for muscle, while eating at maintenance.

That's only going to happen with lifting weights. Gives the body some exercise to really transform the body with, and the repair uses extra food you aren't actually eating.
So fat makes up the difference.
So you lose inches, weight stays the same, you look better. Now as the fat drops, you got something underneath to show off.

heybales · April 2015

jaclyntranchannel wrote: »

@liltysonn creatine is naturally produced by the body, so if you take creatine supplements, excess amounts will be excreted. So, body water weight plays a minimal role. Also, you wouldn't lose muscle mass by decreasing your caloric intake unless you chronically starve yourself for extended periods of time (we're talking months). Your body will resort to breaking down fat before protein.

Sadly, it doesn't take that extreme to start losing muscle mass.

Most diets cause you to lose it. Upwards of 20% of weight loss is LBM, with part of that being muscle mass. True, some of that you don't need with smaller body, but whole lot easier keeping what you got then trying to get it back later.

And it's not that you are breaking it down for an energy source right then, but rather the body breaks muscle down every day anyway, and when in a diet, not eating enough, macros are partitioned to whatever the body deems needs them the most.
So muscle just ends up not getting rebuilt back if it isn't used as much other systems needing the amino acids.

Hence the reason it's found that resistance training and using the muscles, and eating enough protein more than when bulking, and eating a reasonable deficit - all help retain muscle mass.

Your body uses fat as predominate energy source already, if you go by % of calories supplied in average day.

Sarauk2sf · April 2015

liltysonn wrote: »

How much does water weight account for if your taking creatine. Im just starting out and would like to get an accurate weight of myself before i start and end up cutting to many calories and eventually losing muscle as a result

It varies as to how well you respond, but between 3 and 5lb is not atypical. It usually takes 7 - 10 days to stabilize.

Sarauk2sf · April 2015

jaclyntranchannel wrote: »

@liltysonn creatine is naturally produced by the body, so if you take creatine supplements, excess amounts will be excreted. So, body water weight plays a minimal role. Also, you wouldn't lose muscle mass by decreasing your caloric intake unless you chronically starve yourself for extended periods of time (we're talking months). Your body will resort to breaking down fat before protein.

Not at all.

Creatine is naturally produced (and can be got from some food sources, primarily meat), but not in the quantities it can fully utilize.

You definitely can lose muscle mass without starving yourself for months at a time.

Unknown · April 2015

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hezemakiah · April 2015

Fantastic info - thanks for the post! I hope more new people just starting out find it before the "HELP! I'M NOT LOSING!!!" post begins......

Whittedo · April 2015

I sure wish that I had read this when I first was starting out rather than discovering 106 days later. Fortunately through trial and error and some reasonable advice from other forums I am doing most of what you recommend now. Sadly I didn't take any fat boy pictures at the beginning. More's the pity. This should be a must read for every newbie.