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

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?

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!!!

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.

Thanks for this!

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

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

Thank you for the great advice

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

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.

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.

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.

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......

So_Much_Fab wrote: »

One of the best posts I've seen here. Kudos.

can't find the guide you are all talking about