Have you hit the weight loss plateau?

[nickitea]

So I still have body image issues but I have made a big improvement strength and physical appearance wise since I first crash dieting in previous years. I ditch the super low calorie intake because I'm focusing on becoming healthy and strong. However I'm trying to loose body fat (not weight) but my old skinny mentality plays through my head and I don't want to eat too many calories and risk becoming pudgy. But I heard Zig-Zag dieting is a great way to lose body fat and still stay on track for muscle building. Any thoughts?

[Heybales]

So are you currently eating in a deficit but have seen no weight loss or inches lost in 3 weeks?

That's a plateau.

Zig zag doesn't do anything different. That's based on some myth the body clock is set at midnight when your food logging clock happens to change. Not true at all.

Besides, if you want true zig zag, get your average TDEE from past Fitbit weeks, average out to daily level, and eat that same amount daily.

Now exercise is taking different amounts of calories off the top for purely mechanical movement, leaving different amounts for your body each day for everything else. That's zigzag around a central hopefully reasonable amount.

And no zig zag is not good for strength training, the 24 hr window after a good workout is when your body needs the nutrients to repair stronger and build more if diet allows. Zigzagging is just going to foul that up.

So you said your weight is good, but you want to lose body fat. Sounds like you reached skinny fat with bad dieting methods, huh.

The only way to lose fat and not weight is make body improments, and that means eating at maintenance obviously, or TDEE.

Fact about becoming pudgy eating too much.

If you ate 250 calories over your TDEE daily for 2 weeks, you would gain ...... 1 lb slowly.

Reread that.

And if strength training, not even all fat.

Because I'll bet you are right now maintaining at a calorie level that is below your potential, meaning suppressed. And that means it will be difficult to make maximum changes to transform your body.

You may not have all of these, but you can to some extent. Read part 2 also.

http://skepchick.org/2014/02/the-female-athlete-triad-not-as-fun-as-it-sounds/

Your only solution is to strength train - lift weights - heavy for you and progressive overload.

Big reminder, you'll need to manually log this because the Fitbit is badly underestimated for lifting. It would be weight training power lifter type. If you don't do that, you can't get max changes.

StrongLifts 5x5 is good program, as is Starting Strength, as it New Rules for Lifting for Women.

Realistic on results though.

A study of men - so hormone advantage there, traded Fat Mass for Lean Body Mass (they didn't measure muscle, but likely some) at the rate of 3.5 lbs in 16 weeks.

You might hit close to that rate at the very start and very serious about lifting 3 x weekly.

Now you see why body builders bulk and cut - it's faster to gain muscle mass that way.

Gain 5 lbs in 5 weeks, 2 is muscle mass, cut the 3 lbs of fat in 2 weeks in a diet. Repeat. That's men gaining that fast though, women slower.