The Women's Book: Volume 1: Section 5: Chapters 15-17

About this book

In 2018 I released The Women's Vol 1, a comprehensive guide to women's nutrition, muscle gain and fat loss. This is section 5 of that book which includes Chapters 15-17.Chapter 15 is a general introduction to dieting for fat loss. Topics covered include the face that different goals (i.e. athletic performance, physique competition or general weight loss) have different needs so far as the amount of specific details that a diet will required. Next it looks at the pros and cons of many popular diets along with some of the sources of (often very bad) diet information. Next I look at the topic of dietary restraint, disinhibition and flexible and rigid eating attitudes along with why adopting or developing flexible eating attitudes is generally superior in the long run.Chapter 16 addresses how to determine/estimate maintenance calorie intakes. A variety of approaches are examined but the majority of the chapter looks at how the different components of energy expenditure can be calculated or estimated to reach an estimated total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). It also examines the impact of hormonal modifiers on TDEE for those readers who want to get an even more accurate estimate.Chapter 17 addresses how to adjust daily calories for three different goals. The first is maintenance of current bodyweight or body composition for those who have reached their goals and simply want to stay there. The second is for those individuals (often but not always athletes) looking to make gains in strength, muscle mass or athletic performance. Here I discuss realistic rates of weight gain along with how to adjust maintenance calories to achieve them. The rest of the chapter is dedicated to adjusting calories for fat loss. Topics include the role of exercise versus calorie restriction for fat loss, different methods of setting the daily deficit along with realistic rates of weight and fat loss and what type of deficit they potentially require.