Help with workout/nutrition

R

RWN

0
Hello,
any help is appreciated!


I'm new to this forum and I really need some help with my workout/nutrition. So, to the point..


  • INFO ABOUT ME:
    Female
    20 years old
    5'4 (164cm)
    50.5kg (111 lbs)

(just recently started using an app called Nutrino to help track my food/water)


  • FOOD:
    55% CARBOHYDRATES: ~140g (50g simple/ 97g complex)
    14% FAT: 17g (4.5g saturated/12g other)
    30% PROTEIN: 80g
    7 cups of water/daily
    Around 1000-1100 calories/daily


  • EXERCISE:
    I am doing 'The Squat Challenge' at the moment, just finished my first week-- 7 more to go
    It's 3 times a week (SAT-MON-WED)
    1 hr per workout
    4-8 different exercises from burpees/lunges/all kinds of squats/bridges,etc


  • GOALS
    Obviously I want a booty (lol)
    I also want that sexy muscular back (not too muscular), nice legs, calves (my dream)!!!!
    Tone my body
    Maintain my weight (51kg)
    Become fit & eat healthy


  • CONCERN
    I don't want to just sculpt a booty and forget my chest/back/arms/calves!!


  • QUESTIONS:
    I wanted to aim for 40/40/20 (protein/carbs/fat) as I heard it's the best to build muscle, but I just can't stay away from carbs! Is my ratio good?
    What workouts should I add to work back/chest* (How many reps/sets/plan)
    Is my food okay? What should I add/remove?
    Eating 80g protein a day cause kidney problems? (My mom keeps scaring me) -- Btw, I drink one 24g a shake/daily.
    Do I need 80g? More? Less?
    I can't do a push up if I you'd give me a million dollars, why?!


Thank you, any help is appreciated!
RWN.
 
Ideal calorific balance is nothing like 40/40/20. I have explained this numerous times on here and why it's nonsense but it's a while since I last did so here I go again.
In your mouth you will be able to see the huge canine teeth you don't have, because we aren't designed for a diet high in meat and other high protein foods. If you did a chemical analysis you would notice we have immense volumes of amylase in our saliva, designed to start the digestion of complex carbs as soon as it gets into our mouths. Volumes this high are only present in the mouths of animals designed to have starch as their main energy source, that's not even getting into the rest or our digestive anatomy. Sports nutrition is a relatively new area of study, our bodies aren't that new, and strangely what we need in terms of balance isn't either.
Actual ideal balance is 60-65% carbs of which less than 5% of this volume should be sugars, 25% fat and 12.5% protein. Many self included bring the fat and protein closer together and people who do a lot of training and therefore need more energy eat higher proportions of complex carbs than normal, and yes it does work incredibly well.

Protein supplements are big money so people are encouraged to waste their money and time using them rather than buying better food.
There is a limit to how much protein your body can absorb at a time, 17g normally or 25g during or just after exercise, and I mean just after. This means unless your protein drink is just after training 7g will go to making your stool more bound up, and in truth that is not the worst that can happen.
If you take in more protein than you need and it gets into the blood stream it will be in the form of amino acids, no shock to most there. The part the purveyors of these supplements leave out is that amino acids are the nutritional equivalent of time bombs, stable for a while then becoming toxic as they break down to ammonia, there is good news however the body is ready for this and has ways to tackle them before they become toxic. First is to convert any it can to lipoproteins, which is fat made from amino acids, and put it to fat stores, fat gain, just what you wanted no doubt. The second is to make the remaining aminos safe by converting them to urea and flushing them out with a load of water, which can give short term weight loss followed by the body rehydrating itself and yes this does put strain on the kidneys.
Protein supplements are a con. To keep it simple muscle is predominantly water, drinking twice as much water as you need will not make you more muscular, neither will eating twice as much protein, it is truly that simple.

Training balance is ideally Pull Push Legs Core, but considering you are in the middle of a set of sessions at the moment we'll come back to that when you come close to the end of what you are doing. How long will you be on that program?
 
Thanks for replying, CrazyOldMan!

It's an 8 week program (3 times a week for 1 hr), started Feb 9 -- so I should be done by the first week of April. But I could squeeze a day for chest/back maybe?! 'Cause I feel the exercises are butt-focused and I want to do a balance of exercises for other parts of my body as well..
 
As long as you feel you can do so safely it would be good to throw in a session for balance. I don't know the intensity of the program so it would be hard to be totally sure what to suggest.
Squats done well are a good all over exercise and if you focus on it you will have your core totally engaged, if you don't focus on core at all I would say squatting could be dangerous, but that's an aside.
if choosing a day I would go for Thursday to do Pull and Push, I haven't said back and chest, it was deliberate, my attempt at being clever.
Squats use the entire postural chain so you will not need much for upper back, core etc. but the areas that are involved as all are but to a far lesser extent are lats, chest, shoulder and arms. Good news is to work lats, chest and shoulders you will automatically train arms most of the time so this will be quite a simple session.
Please remember this will not make your program balanced, just less unbalanced than it currently is. Come week 6 or 7 come back and we can start setting you up a balanced program or you can just pinch the session in Goldfish's stickie on weight training, which is well balanced.
This is also taking into account the fact you can't do push ups but I would say want to be able to. It will set you on the right path.

Do these circuit style if you can, if training in a public gym at peak times, please don't it would be very unsociable so do one exercise at a time. Intention would be to be doing 3 circuits 10-12 reps on each exercise, if you can't do this do each exercise with 3 sets of 1012 reps. Set the weight at what you expect to do for 10, if you can do more go up to 11 or 12, if 12 was easy go up a weight.

Bench press
Lat pull down
Shoulder press
Seated row
box push ups, to increase intensity move knees further back so they are further from your hands.
Upright row
 
Ok. I'll try to incorporate the 6 exercises every Thursday for the next 7 weeks, but the thing is I workout at home (I don't have time to go to the gym) and for the 8 week squat challenge I don't use any weights..

but I do have two 4kg dumbbells so I can do the benchpress, upright rows, shoulder press, maybe even seated row.. but I'm worried about the lat pull down.. should I get heavier dumbbells? Before I used to workout, I would use them for bicep & tricep curls, even squats and I used to do bent over rows for my back but maybe because of lack of nutrition and protein I didn't see any significant results.. or because I need to up the weights?

Also, I just have a question about the amount of calories to consume is 1100 a day OK?
 
You are wanting muscle growth and I would have to say you are unlikely to get this using a couple of 4kg dumbbells. I train at home as well though as a more seasoned trainer I have a bit more kit at my disposal. I would say use some other tricks for now and really decide what you want before spending the cash. My set up wasn't cheap but I had been training a couple of decades when I bought it so knew what I needed.
Time is a killer.
Thing to be aware of that I forgot to put in earlier is when going for muscle growth you are likely to gain weight even if your body stays roughly the same size, don't stress about this. Goldfish posted up some pictures a while back of a person he was training who put on 5kg of bodyweight whilst looking slimmer. Something to be aware of.
Any training relies on overload and for growth you want to be using weight to overload. Ideal rep range for growth is 10 to 6 and considering you will want a more toned slow growth I would say more 10 to 12. As a woman you are unlikely to gain much mass without intramuscular hormone supplements anyway so expect steady progress.

Assisted chins using a doorframe and chair for assistance would replace lat pulls easily. The movement is key so the hands hold something and elbows need to come to your sides not out like wings, if you get that, your sorted.
Squats can easily have weight added with use of a rucksack and loading it up with your dumbbells or anything else that has weight to it.
An old friend of mine used his bed as a barbell when he was too broke to go to a gym, when he wanted to go up a weight he just put things on the bed. It wasn't ideal and he gained less than he would have using proper equipment but it worked and he progressed.
When it comes to finding ways to use weight ingenuity is invaluable. If of course you have enough disposable income to buy the kit knowing it may become obsolete as you progress or you may want to move in a different direction that will serve you better.

Calories a day are totally subjective. Use calorie calculators as a guide to find out how much energy you are using, decide if you want to lose, gain or maintain weight and eat accordingly. Never drop to more than 1,000 calories a day less than you are burning and try not to go too far over for growth, growth of muscle is slow, but fat will be stored in hours.
I eat 3,500 to 4,000 calories a day and my weight is stable, because I am a hyperactive with issues accepting that I should have grown out of some of the things I do by now. For me 1,100 calories a day would land me in hospital within a week, for you it may be perfect.
 
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