In this episode, we learn how much you should aim to lose during your shred phase when bodybuilding, and in what kind of time-frame?
We discuss some best practices for shredding, planning & measurement techniques and how NOT to shock your body to avoid negative results.
Muscle Talk - Bodybuilding podcast by International Protein
If you want your own questions answered on our bodybuilding podcast, then join our private Facebook Group and share your ideas, https://www.facebook.com/groups/muscletalk
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A Thinkroom production.
https://www.thinkroom.com/
In this episode, we learn how much you should aim to lose during your shred phase when bodybuilding, and in what kind of time-frame?
We discuss some best practices for shredding, planning & measurement techniques and how NOT to shock your body to avoid negative results.
Muscle Talk - Bodybuilding podcast by International Protein
If you want your own questions answered on our bodybuilding podcast, then join our private Facebook Group and share your ideas, https://www.facebook.com/groups/muscletalk
If you'd like to learn more about International Protein, visit https://www.international-protein.com/
A Thinkroom production.
https://www.thinkroom.com/
Ash Horton:
Our host, the world-renowned Christine Envall, an IFBB Professional, three times World Champion, a mentor, and icon. And of course, a founding co-owner of the best supplements money can buy, International Protein. In this episode, we learn how much you should aim to lose during your shred, and in what kind of timeframe. We discuss some best practices for shredding, planning and management techniques, and how not to shock your body to avoid negative results. So, today's topic how to shred from diet to gym routine. Christine, what have you got for us?
Christine Envall:
Okay, everyone at some point in time, whether it be for a competition or whether it just be for personal reasons is going to want to drop some weight, obviously, what we call shredding. A few different factors involved with that. Obviously, you talked about diet talks about gym routine and there's supplements on top of that. There's what it is exactly that you're trying to achieve. Are you going for bodybuilding comp? Are you going for maybe figure, bikini comp for the girls? Or are you just doing it to get in shape like some of those 12 week challenge kind of things? So, it's always been around. Diet is probably one of the most popular topics that people talk about. So, I'll break it down from starting off with the diet, and then I'll talk about the training programs.
Christine Envall:
So, when it comes to diet, obviously, there are a lot of different ways to diet, and we've probably talked about some of those in the past, but the main thing obviously is counting your macros and then it comes down to whether the person's going to follow like a low carb or a high carbohydrate or a low fat or what type of diet that they're actually going to follow. So, when it comes to your diet, and starting, deciding that you're going to shred, the first thing you probably need to do is look at obviously what the goal is and when that is.
Christine Envall:
So if you're starting out and you have a competition, first competition, you might want to look at something like a 12 week plan. You don't want to make it so long that you're just not going to stick to it because it's like it's forever and you don't want to make it so short because you might underestimate how long it actually does take to do properly, and to get that in getting shapes. So starting off let's say 12 weeks is a good place to start. And I will actually at the end of this go into a little bit more detail on what you can expect to achieve in that point of time and what to do if you are going to do shorter or you are going to be longer. So, number one would be, let's look at a 12 week program and look at where you are. Do you need to lose five kilos in that 12 weeks? Do you need to lose 10 kilos? Do you need to lose 20 kilos?
Christine Envall:
Now, all those within reason are actually possible, and a lot of it does depend on how hard you're going to work and how severe you want to cut your diet. Now, my theory particularly for bodybuilding where you're trying to retain muscle is you don't want to go over about a kilo a week. So if you've got a 12 week diet, probably aim for somewhere around that 10 to 15 kilos that you need to lose because obviously in there is going to be some fluid, which doesn't really count because it doesn't take a negative calorie to drop fluid, but you will lose fluid throughout that process. So, looking at where you are and where you think you need to be, if you think it's around that 10 to 15 kilo mark, 12 weeks is perfectly fine. So, that's the first way to set out. If you've got-
Ash Horton:
And of course, if you drop it too quickly, you're going to get stretch marks and things like that potentially as well, right?
Christine Envall:
It depends on your age. That whole thing of loose skin depends on what degree. Most people who aren't chronically obese aren't going to get too much of a problem with the loose skin, doing it over that kind of a timeframe. It's really where someone has extremely stretched skin from being super large, where they'll find that they diet and they still have that baggy skin. But you normally have to have been fairly, extremely overweight to get that. If you're just a regular kind of off season or carrying that 12 kilos or something like that, you're probably not going to notice that type of thing. What you do risk more of as you try to do it too quickly, you end up, you're going to burn more lean muscle mass and lose more lean muscle mass as well as body fat because your body's like it's looking for fuel. And unfortunately, whilst you have all those fat stores, it just doesn't work where it only takes your fat stores.
Christine Envall:
If you go to negative calorie too severe it, yeah, unfortunately, the body just will... It will take from the muscle, particularly if you are training, which sounds like it's contradictory because obviously, you train to preserve the lean muscle, but that's contingent on you actually feeding that muscle as well. So, number one, the majority of people are going to be good with a 12-week diet. If you're looking at losing that kind of a weight amount. If you've got 20 kilos to lose and you know you have an amount of about 20 kilos to lose, then you'd really do need to already plan on leaving a longer timeframe to do that. And if you've only got four or five kilos to lose then maybe you don't need to do 12 weeks, but maybe you can put 12 weeks in your mind. And if you hit it after six happy days. So, that'll be the first part, number one with your diet. So number one, you picked out.
Christine Envall:
Number two would be then you do have to choose what method are you going to use. Now, as you know I'm not a big fan of the zero carb, particularly assuming here that you're going to be going for some kind of bodybuilding style competition because you've got to be weight training and you're going to be doing a lot of cardio. And we'll talk about that under the training, but you need the energy, you need the carbs, and that's your friend when it comes to that. Like your performance in the gym does come back to what you're fueling your body with. So you want to set your diet up so that you're constantly fueling your body.
Christine Envall:
And that's where we've talked previously about having that sort of five meal, a day type structure. You need to work out how much you need to... How negative you need your calories to be to achieve that. And that's where that three to 500 calories a day deficit from where you are now. Now, this is all kind of complicated because you're thinking, "How on earth do I find that out?" You do need to do some research on your foods. You do need to start looking at what you're eating. You do need to know what's in those foods.
Ash Horton:
It comes back to measurement.
Christine Envall:
Absolutely, yeah.
Ash Horton:
Every time we talk, it comes back to measurement and discipline.
Christine Envall:
Yeah. So, if you don't want to count your calories then you at least have to benchmark where you are, and even if you don't know what's in the food that you're eating, you need to know how much you're eating. So, you can say, okay, I have a cup of oats. I'm having a super protein powder. I'm having this much chicken. Even if you don't exactly know what macros in that I would suggest that you do go find out. But if you don't, that's your benchmark. And then to come back from there, you just have to... You do need to reduce, but you do need to know what's in your foods so you know how much to reduce. Otherwise, you end up going to the extreme and you might cut out too much of something.
Christine Envall:
You really want to try to keep those meals fairly even, and you want to reduce a little bit from every meal so that you're not... It's like having a big patch in the day where you're very low in energy, very low in calories because that catapults into the fact that you're going to probably try to... Your body wants, it's going to start craving something. You're going to go out and cheat and eat the wrong foods. So, set up a structure that really exceeds the energy when you need it. So you've got the energy to train. You've got the right carbohydrates to recover. You got the right protein for recovery and you set your diet up in that method. So knowing what's in your food really is what you need to do. There's so many apps around nowadays.
Ash Horton:
My Fitness Pal for example, it's a good one, right?
Christine Envall:
Yeah.
Ash Horton:
You can scan the actual product and nine times out of 10 it pulls it up and gives you all the stats on the actual food.
Christine Envall:
Yeah. And to be quite honest bodybuilders tend not to eat a huge variety of food. It is very basic. You'll eat some, either do chicken or fish or lean beef, rice, maybe pasta, vegetables are obviously very easy because they are quite low in pretty much everything unless you're looking at potato and sweet potato and pumpkin, and those kinds of starchier products. And then those people who are going to eat oats. So, it's quite simple. So, it's not like you're having to look up 100 different foods. So my recommendation really is learn your food, know your food-
Ash Horton:
And then your constitutes.
Christine Envall:
And then, yeah. And then obviously from that falls out to the quantity. So we have talked a lot about different macros. As I said, my preferred range is having about 35% of your calories coming from protein, about 25 from fats, and then the balance from carbohydrate. And that's a really good... It's very balanced. It gives you the energy that you need. It gives you fats to help your joints, give you the fats that you need and the protein for recovery. So then when it comes to shredding, it really is coming down to the negative calories. So, obviously, diet is one way to make your calories negative, but then the other way to do it is burn more. So let's assume from your weight training point of view, you actually should try to not really change your routine from offseason to on season very much at all.
Christine Envall:
So, I know when I started out, it was like, you went from offseason. You might've been doing your 10 reps, and your four sets, 10 reps kind of thing. And then the trend at that time was like, "Oh, as soon as you went into comp prep, you'd up your reps. And that's probably the last thing that you should do because straight away your strengths dropped and dropping strengths related to a dropping size. Particularly, if you're early on in your bodybuilding career, your body will definitely... It will definitely respond to that in that way of saying, "Well, I don't need this size anymore," because it is definitely the size and the strength is very related. So, the muscle size and strength is very related. So, therefore, if you're not pushing it this heavier weight the body automatically drops that size if it doesn't need... If it hasn't got that weight anymore.
Christine Envall:
So, I actually recommend that you do for everything, try to keep your rep range the same on majority of your workouts. Now, some people will change up a few different exercises, what we call for shaping and to try to bring out a little bit more definition, but overall your basics like your bench presses and your squats and all your back exercises, and those are really key core exercises, try to keep your same weights that you were pushing in the offseason. You might lose a few reps, but you got to really try to maintain those. That's the training aspect should be the same, pretty much all around. And then you start to change up your cardio.
Christine Envall:
So your cardio is where you play with the calories, the calorie burning and use the cardio and that new hybrid weighted cardio where you might be using some lighter weights, high reps, and trying to like shape a little bit more through that. Use that as a way to bring in the definition that you're looking for. So essentially, if you look at this model you're bringing your calories down, you're bringing your energy expenditure up through cardio, but you're keeping your weight training as the static, as the one constant throughout that equation. So, during this shred, obviously, you're starting off on your diet. You've worked out what you're on in the first place by just looking at what you're doing before you actually start to diet. Reduce that little bit per day, a little bit of calories, 300 to 500, females normally 300-
Ash Horton:
Kind of balanced across each meal. [crosstalk 00:00:11:18].
Christine Envall:
Yeah, don't just take one [crosstalk 00:11:22] 300 calories and say, "Okay, that was easy.
Ash Horton:
Yeah.
Christine Envall:
So if you got five meals and you're dropping out that 300... Sorry, across those five meals, you really are looking at what about 80 to 90 calories or something per meal. You're not looking... Or even less than that. You're not looking at a huge amount. So, you're not even... You're not going to notice that much. If you're dropping out 500 calories, then it's 100 calories per meal.
Ash Horton:
Or easier, drop out your last meal before you go to sleep. You're definitely going to notice it.
Christine Envall:
Yes. There's going to be a lot of hunger, and depending on what that meal was you may be dropping out proportionately too much protein or something. So, I also try to drop the protein and the carbs and the fats proportionately. So that, that ratio stays the same. So then you're starting off on that. You're going along. You're tracking your weight loss. You're looking at yourself in the mirror because weight loss is not everything. It is a good idea to get some... We've talked about scans before. It's so easy now to get a scan. It used to be a bit of a deal to try to get one of those 20 years ago. Now a lot of gyms will once a week have someone comes in and does scans and you just pay your $30.
Christine Envall:
So it's not... If you're trying to get a good results, it's a really good idea to get something like that done even just monthly to make sure that you are actually losing the body fat and not the lean muscle, because obviously if you're losing too much lean muscle, you'd want to readdress and look at what you're actually doing so that you track along. You hit a plateau where you feel like your body's not changing. And then that's where you say, "Okay, now I need to increase my expenditure." So when you're tracking along, I normally would go one... The first time I hit a plateau, I would try to do more. And then the next time I hit a plateau, I would try to drop my calories a little bit more. And then the next time I'd try to increase my expenditure again.
Christine Envall:
So only in extreme cases, would you try to do both. And that kind of gives you that leeway where you're not getting to a point where you're having to do two hours a day of cardio because you just keep on increasing what you're doing, or you don't get to a point where you're dropping your calories that low that you're basically going into starvation mode and your body tries to hold on to everything. So if you're weight training doing cardio, you'd probably for females try not to go below about 1200 calories a day. If you're hitting that point you need to address if this is the right time for you because you're jeopardizing your health if you're starting to go into that low-calorie regime. You've maybe suppressed your metabolism. Guys, that might be around about 1800 calories, but it's so individual depending on your body size, body weight. Totally different for someone who weighs 50 kilos versus someone who weighs 150 kilos or 100 kilos, even so. A lot of it is very individual, which is why you need to sort of find where your baseline is.
Christine Envall:
So, then obviously the cardio again starting off with your baseline and everyone is different, but if you've been doing zero cardio in your off-season then half an hour a day is plenty to implement into that routine. If you've already been doing half an hour of cardio then obviously that's your baseline. And if you're going to increase your cardio. You don't have to go crazy and double your cardio. You can literally add 10 minutes and that will make a huge difference. So it's all about that incremental plan. And also thinking about it in the 12-week timeframe say, let's assume you hit a plateau every four weeks.
Christine Envall:
So that's like three times that you hit a plateau. You got to think about too, what's realistic for you to be able to do. If you're going to double your cardio and say if you had to change it one more time. Are you able to actually do an hour and a half cardio? Like if you go to half an hour to an hour and then to an hour and a half, literally, can you do that? Whereas, if you can go and go an extra 10 minutes, extra 10 minutes, normally people can squeeze an extra 20 minutes into their day overall, or look at different types of cardio. Like, can I do mixed up and do a more high intense type of cardio? Do I do something which is more effective, takes less time? Or, or does it work better for me if I do a longer lower intensity hyper cardio. So I'm a big fan of doing a mixture, but it's that thing where different people will respond better to different things.
Ash Horton:
And you also do your cardio fasted, correct?
Christine Envall:
Correct. Yeah.
Ash Horton:
Why is that?
Christine Envall:
It's because when you burn calories on an empty stomach and you haven't got that food there as an immediate source for the body to use the research is that after that you continue to burn more calories for about an hour and a half after that. Whereas, when you have the food available in your body stored in the muscle, and you're basically in your bloodstream to be used for energy during your workout you don't get that afterburn effect. Like literally you burn the calories... Well, you increase your metabolism while you're doing the training, but then after you finished the training it just goes back to normal.
Ash Horton:
I just want to point out to all our listeners I am here to ask all the dumb questions, so you guys don't have to. So, if I do ask silly questions. There's a reason for it. There's a method to my madness.
Christine Envall:
Yeah. Someone asked me, but wouldn't the extra food that you ate beforehand allow you to work harder and burn more calories?
Ash Horton:
But isn't digestion the hardest thing the body can do?
Christine Envall:
No.
Ash Horton:
Okay. Dumb question. Perfect example.
Christine Envall:
I don't believe so. People say that, and I know that's been a theory over the years as to negative calorie foods because your body actually burns more calories digesting it. But I think all of that got debunked.
Ash Horton:
With obesity, yeah.
Christine Envall:
No, no. With actual research. There is a post on my Facebook page that I shared across from a particular scientific journal. So, it might be the nutritional journal and they actually had done a lot of research on if there were any foods that in fact were negative calorie and it was not true.
Ash Horton:
Okay.
Christine Envall:
It was just wishful thinking?
Ash Horton:
Yeah.
Christine Envall:
So, obviously, yeah, digesting is a process, but it was physically forcing your muscles to work, and creating energies is definitely a way more efficient way of burning calories. So, yeah. Unfortunately, no. But as far as the, will you burn more calories if you've got more energy in your system to do that? I don't know if there's any research exactly on if you have food and you burn 100 more calories here, does that equate for the afterburn? I think just that whole concept of keeping your metabolism higher for a longer period of time suits a lot better.
Christine Envall:
What I like about it and why I also do it fasted is because I do it first thing in the morning, and I don't necessarily have after my night meal, after my weight training meal, I don't really eat carbohydrate. So in theory, when you talk about recovery supposedly that's the best opportunity to do that, but on the other side, eating carbohydrate at night when you're trying to diet is not a good thing.
Christine Envall:
So it's a bit of a contradiction there, but if you do a fasted cardio session, you'll put your body into that state, again, of wanting to take up the carbohydrates. So, first thing in the morning, you do the workout, you eat the carbohydrates, your body's in that hyperactive state of wanting to receive the carbohydrates and store them. And then it stored them ready for my weight training session in the afternoon. So, for me it's the perfect recovery scenario so you get the extra calorie burning and you still optimize your uptake of carbohydrate in that. And I also like to eat carbohydrate in the morning.
Ash Horton:
Yeah, don't we all?
Christine Envall:
Yeah, it fits in all aspects and then it's in the system to recover. So, I guess that's the... I guess, there's the diet side of it. That's the cardio side of it. And then obviously the supplemental side of it. We've done the podcast on fat burners. I obviously like my Carni-strip to do pre-cardio. So I'll take that with my Amino Recovery and my Brutal Pumpers, my pre-workout fat burning muscle recovering stack before I do my HIIT in the morning. And you can work around utilizing different fat-burners and see the success that you have. And again, sometimes it just helps to stop you feeling hungry in that respect. And other times it will actually assist with increasing your metabolism even further.
Christine Envall:
So, it's you look at it like an age, it sort of makes it just that little bit easier. So, as we've said, a lot of the fat burners, you're not necessarily going to sit there, do nothing, eat chips and pizza and everything and drop weight. But when you're following a restrictive calorie program, you're doing your cardio, you're doing your weight training and then you take a fat burner on top of that is obviously when they're most effective. So people kind of argue, "Well, do they actually work because you're doing all of that already? It just makes it that little bit easier because a lot of the time it is an energy thing when you are on restricted calories and working very hard to cut up, you need the extra energy. You feeling a little bit low. So, anything that helps give people energy is obviously going to make things seem easier and allow you to continue to work harder.
Christine Envall:
So supplements, obviously, it's a personal thing, but it's something that people definitely looking into to try to improve that, the effectiveness. Obviously, with the Carni-strip we've talked about how without the carnitine can't burn the body fat. We've been talking to people recently who've been using the Carni-strip and it's exactly that where you hit a plateau and a lot of the time the plateau, you hit that plateau because your body doesn't have enough carnitine to continue to burn the fat. And as soon... And I've experienced exactly the same thing throughout my competing time where I'd be doing everything that I would normally do. And just finding that I was getting a sticking spot. I wasn't getting the fat to shift off in those last couple of places. And then I would realize that I hadn't been taking any type of carnitine supplement.
Ash Horton:
You can't take too much of it either, can you?
Christine Envall:
No, it'd be very, very hard to take too much of it because-
Ash Horton:
So, you have it about three times a day?
Christine Envall:
No, I actually... You can do, but I actually have the equivalent to three servings once a day. I have quite a large dosage because-
Ash Horton:
In the morning?
Christine Envall:
In the morning.
Ash Horton:
Yeah.
Christine Envall:
Yeah, I mean, sometimes I will do it before my nighttime workout as well because it's non steam. Obviously, so you can have that in the evening and it's not going to affect your sleep, but I do find that it does actually give you energy. So in a way it does kind of like...
Ash Horton:
Yeah, I find that too. Yeah.
Christine Envall:
Yeah. So, it really depends. If I feel like I need it I will sometimes do again, Amino Recovery and Carni-strip as my pre-workout before my weight session. But as I said, I'm not really training for anything specific. So I just kind of cruise along in my weight session. So I don't have to worry as much.
Ash Horton:
And what about your Iso-Cuts?
Christine Envall:
Okay, so that's, I guess the what you choose to eat on your diet. It's the perfect protein solution, really, because if you're looking at your calories and you're looking at taking in protein, then you obviously need to be really mindful of... You obviously not going to be eating a lot of red meat because there's a lot of extra fat. Even though it can be lean, there's still a lot of extra fat. Like the leanest beef that you'll probably find in the supermarket is about a 90% protein, a 10% maybe a 5% fat. Chicken breast is naturally around about that kind of three or 4% fat. So, protein powders are obviously a perfect solution because one the speed of digestion for post-workout, for recovery, the right amino acid profiles. But then when you look at our Iso-Cuts versus say our Amino Charged WPI, both of them are isolate products, but the Iso-Cuts carries the fiber with it, which brings the calories down.
Christine Envall:
And it also has the fat burning ingredients. So it has the green tea, has the green coffee, has the Garcinia, has the [inaudible 00:22:50] carnitine, has the ingredients which actually help increase your metabolism. So, if you were to take Amino Charged WPI or Iso-Cuts, get your same amount of protein from either and work that into your diet, you will actually notice the difference on the Iso-Cuts in that you are essentially saving a few calories and enhancing your metabolism and getting that increase in metabolism. So working into those five meals, if you're doing three protein, two meals that have what I call a chicken or a chicken or chicken or a chicken or a chicken, because there's really when you're dieting, what else do you want to eat?
Ash Horton:
Yeah.
Christine Envall:
And then the other three meals, say your breakfast, say your pre-workout meal and your morning tea kind of thing might be made up of Iso-Cuts as the protein. And that's what I would do when I was cutting up for a comp. I would always use the protein, which is going to give me the best bang for my buck in terms of fat burning lower calories for the amount of protein, and also that fiber to help me feel fuller. So you're not going to get that hunger going from meal to meal. So, that is why when you're actually setting up your diet, the type of food that you're eating is so important. Iso-Cuts was designed to be used like that. If you're... As I said, I was making a joke about bodybuilders not eating a lot of different types of foods, but there's a reason for that.
Christine Envall:
You can eat anything to get your calories and anything to give you carbohydrates, but we've all found over time that certain foods make us feel full on, so we're not as hungry. Certain foods seem to provide energy in a better way. Like oats is so popular because it's so low-glycemic, really delivers the energy nice and slowly, and makes people feel like they've actually eaten a meal. People will find that something like sweet potato is so popular, but it bloats and the energy delivery of it compared to rice, the same amount of calories from rice versus sweet potato is totally different.
Christine Envall:
But then white rice does digest very quickly, which for some people is kind of a negative. But then at the same time, when you're dieting, you actually liked that feeling of something having burned out of your body quickly. You don't feel like you're sitting around sort of sluggish, but you're not hungry, if that makes sense. It's a kind of a weird situation where it burns quick, but you're not left starving versus something which leaves you empty and feeling hungry, which some of the straight-up isolate proteins can do. But something like the Iso-Cuts has got the fiber in there, which will help to fill you up. And basically, no calories but volume, which is again why I eat vegetables.
Ash Horton:
It tastes really good too at first because it's got peppers and cinnamon in it.
Christine Envall:
It's got cinnamon. Obviously, the green teas have got a bit of bitterness because of that. It's a very pure form of green tea. It is very high in what we call the EGCGs, which is the Epigallocatechin, which is what's responsible for the fat-burning in green tea. So most green teas have got about 60% and this is 94% of those active in parts. So, it's a very powerful fat burner, that one
Ash Horton:
At first, when I first heard it, I was like, "Oh, that's different." But actually, over time, it's become my favourite. So, yeah.
Christine Envall:
Good, good. Yeah. And that's, I mean, that's about when you're dieting, it's about choosing foods that you like and that digest well with you and that mentally satisfy you as well as nutritionally because I don't... I think sometimes we underestimate the mental side of food. For example, a simple thing like an Apple, which has crunch and juiciness and a bit of sweet and a bit of tang. Just having an Apple a day when you're dieting kind of gives you that something to look forward to. I know a lot of bodybuilders used to cut out fruit from their diets, which was, oh, because it's sugar, but natural fruit, that's full of like a whole bunch of other nutrients and fiber and burns totally different as if you were eating cane sugar. And obviously not only just because of that but also because it has the fructose, which is a lower GI sugar.
Christine Envall:
So it's that trade-off of yes, you might be getting a few calories coming in from some simpler sugars, but the mental aspect of being able to stay on the diet because of that and taking it around the training time, either post or pre when your body is either going to be using that energy or using it for recovery, then it's the perfect time. And you don't have to eliminate that from your diet because like I say, the mental aspect of food, having something that tastes good like your protein powder that tastes good that also is burning fat like the Iso-Cuts, but foods that you enjoy and give you something to look forward to is also a very, very important part of the cutting process that we don't always talk about.
Christine Envall:
You can be a hero and you can tough it out and you can do it really, really hard, but to be able to do that three or four times a year and have a successful competitive career where you climb the ladder and you become the top of your game and you have to do those multiple competitions or keep it going for week after week after week, you have to make it something that doesn't make you dread doing it. You've got to incorporate it and make it something that's easy, relatively easy to do because of what you've chosen and how you've chosen to do it.
Christine Envall:
So, that's essentially that, but just coming back to the timeframe and all that kind of stuff. Obviously, the less weight that you have to lose the better, but then the flip side of that in bodybuilding when you're trying to gain size and that sometimes you do have to put on a bit more weight than what would be considered desirable. I know I used to drop about 26 kilos.
Ash Horton:
That's a good effort in 12 weeks.
Christine Envall:
No, I used to use about 26 weeks.
Ash Horton:
Right, a kilo a week, yeah.
Christine Envall:
Yeah, yeah. It would start, my first show would be maybe 20 weeks in and then I'd have a series of competitions. So by the time I finished my competitive run, which might be three or four shows, that'd be another six weeks would have gone, and I would have tightened up probably another four kilos over at that point in time. And as I said, there's some... In the initial phases of a diet like that where you're coming from holding a lot of extra fluid and food weight, and extra glycogen in your muscle because you've been eating a lot of food you will drop in those first probably two or three weeks you potentially will drop about five kilos and then it will trail off to that more realistic kilo a week.
Christine Envall:
If you can accelerate it at the start. And then the last six weeks, get it down to like a half a kilo a week, so you're not having to still really come crashing in then that's even ideal. But again, I always went on the theory that you had to leave yourself room to move in case you did have a stagnant period that lasted for more than what you would expect because sometimes they do. Your body will very stubborn and you do try a couple of things and it doesn't work. And you have to try a little bit harder. And before it, two, three weeks has passed and you got to catch up and get back on track. So, expect the unexpected when you're prepping for a comp.
Ash Horton:
And then it creates some real stress, wouldn't it?
Christine Envall:
It does, which again, holds fluid, stops you from dropping weight. Stress is really the enemy of anyone who's trying to compete. You could also start to catabolize muscles. So, you really want to keep out of that stress zone and see that's why you don't want to force yourself into a situation where you've got four weeks to go, but you've got eight kilos to lose because it's never going to be a good result.
Ash Horton:
Okay. So if we were to summarize this, it's having one really tight control method around it. One key level a week.
Christine Envall:
Yeah. No more than.
Ash Horton:
No more than.
Christine Envall:
If you are at a great position where you only need to do half to three quarters, even better, but be realistic and don't expect on average to do more than one a week.
Ash Horton:
Yep. And across your meals, just drop it a little bit across each meal. So you're not starving yourself.
Christine Envall:
Correct. Yeah.
Ash Horton:
And not shocking the body.
Christine Envall:
Every time you do have to drop just drop that little bit off each meal. If you have to make an adjustment and you have to drop out another 300. Again, the temptation might be let's just slash that meal right there, there's 300 calories. But the reality of actually sticking to that is a different story. So, yeah, just take a little bit out of each.
Ash Horton:
Is there anything else I've missed?
Christine Envall:
I don't think so. Oh, I guess really the main point is pick foods that you like. If you don't like fish, don't put it in your diet. If you don't like salmon, like me, don't put it in your diet. Really, obviously being realistic, don't put chocolate in your diet, but if you can-
Ash Horton:
How do you take it out? So delicious.
Christine Envall:
No. Well, the thing is though, and this is the little secret, maybe once a week you do have chocolate, but you can't have a block of chocolate. Maybe it's 10, 20 grams you get that really nice thin chocolate, or you have that treat once a week, which is not a binge, mind you. It's not a free for all. It's like a one meal, which has maybe a little bit different, a little bit higher in calories. It has like a couple of 100 calories extra. So you've got that mental thing to look forward to. It gets you through each week.
Ash Horton:
Well, this all makes a lot of sense, Christine, thank you very much. I'm sure there's some very appreciative listeners and this is going to add a lot of value to their lives. Thank you very much.
Christine Envall:
Thank you, Ash.
Ash Horton:
Words of wisdom. If you like what you've heard, recognize that these tips are free. So show your support by becoming a loyal International Protein customer by jumping online, hunt our product down, and hit that buy now button. So once again, like, share and subscribe to our podcast so we can continue to bring you these episodes from our one and only Aussie muscle guru, three times World Champion, Christine Envall.
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