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!Help for my recovering bulimic girlfriend!

Trav386

New member
Hey everyone,
my name is travis and I could use some help. I've got a girlfriend right now who is recovering from bulimia. She's been working out and not really seeing results. I'm worried that if she doesn't see results by working out and dieting then she'll spiral right back to bulimia to get rid of bodyweight. I've told her that I would help her becuase she thinks I know alot about lifting becuase I play soccer at UNC-Greensboro. I mean, I do know some things about lifting for performance but I dont think its necessarily what she needs. But, I dont know.
I know diet plays a big role. However, I dont know a whole lot about dieting. To be honest, I've always been below 10% bf and have been able to eat whatever I want and still be defined. But, I have no clue what kind of diet she should be on and what type of training she should do to yeild the best results.
She is about 5'3-5'4 and weighs 125. I mean she small but her bf% is pretty high. Right now, she's been doing the elliptical for 30 or so mins for her cardio and then she just does the circuit training machines. I know she needs to switch to a HIT cardio and I know that circuit training is going to yeild the best results. So if you all could help me out with some sort of diet/workout plan thats works that would absolutely amazing. Thanks.
 
I have assumed your girlfriend is 24 for purposes of what I'm going to write.

Her BMR is 1382 calories per day using Harris Benedict equation.

To maintain weight she should eat:

1658.4 if she is sedentary;
1900.25 if she is lightly active
2142.1 if she is moderately active
2383.95 if she is very active.

To lose a pound a week, she needs to eat 500 calories less than this amount. The most she should aim to lose is 2 pounds per week (1000 calories less than amount) but she should not drop her calories below 1200.

I would advice her simply do 45 minutes cardio daily (just use 15 minutes treadmill, then elliptical then rower) and weights twice per week for 45 minutes. She doesn't need to do HIT

This would qualify her as moderately active - so to lose a pound per week, she should eat 1600 calories, or 400 calories per breakfast and 4 other meals of 300 calories. Each meal should contain 25 grams + protein, and aim for 30-40% calories protein, 15-25% fat, 40-55 % carb (if this fails, reduce carbs, increase protein after a month)

Basically, she could eat something like this:

Breakfast: 100 grams of oat bran + 1 cup milk.
Meals 2-5: 400 grams veggies (only low cal vegies such as brocolli, carrots, cauliflower, onion, cabbage etc); 100 grams of meat (only fish, chicken and lean red meat permitted);

With meals 2-5, 6 grams of fat supplements should be taken (i.e., omega 3, flaxseed oil, evening primrose oil etc) should be taken with the meals, unless you eat good fat products such as salmon. I'd also recommend a non-fat cheese slice with 2 of the meals, as the calcium helps fat oxidise.

This is pretty much what I did for 6 weeks to drop from 15% bf to 8% (although I'm a guy and was running 12 km per day, so I did this on 2200 calories)



Trav386 said:
Hey everyone,
my name is travis and I could use some help. I've got a girlfriend right now who is recovering from bulimia. She's been working out and not really seeing results. I'm worried that if she doesn't see results by working out and dieting then she'll spiral right back to bulimia to get rid of bodyweight. I've told her that I would help her becuase she thinks I know alot about lifting becuase I play soccer at UNC-Greensboro. I mean, I do know some things about lifting for performance but I dont think its necessarily what she needs. But, I dont know.
I know diet plays a big role. However, I dont know a whole lot about dieting. To be honest, I've always been below 10% bf and have been able to eat whatever I want and still be defined. But, I have no clue what kind of diet she should be on and what type of training she should do to yeild the best results.
She is about 5'3-5'4 and weighs 125. I mean she small but her bf% is pretty high. Right now, she's been doing the elliptical for 30 or so mins for her cardio and then she just does the circuit training machines. I know she needs to switch to a HIT cardio and I know that circuit training is going to yeild the best results. So if you all could help me out with some sort of diet/workout plan thats works that would absolutely amazing. Thanks.
 
Turning 20 means her calorie requiremetns would be slightly higher - but not substantially so, so it woudn't matter.

You can google the Harris Benedict equation to work out your calorie requirements on net.

I should add, if she is bulimic, I've read that milk and wheat products often trigger the bulimia binge eating - so perhaps, if there was any food for her (such as wheat and dairy) which prompts the binge eating, she should exclude these things from her diet to prevent the binges

Trav386 said:
Thank you so much. She actually just turned 20. Does that make a difference?
 
she wont see results as far as muscle definement is concerned by being on a calorie deficit. Ideally, now would be a good time for her to do a clean bulk to put on some of the muscle that was lost through the bulimia. I would say that a bulk for someone who is recovering from an eating disorder would probably be a tad counter productive, since some weight would be added, however, if you can talk her into this it would yield the best results down the road. Her bodyfat is high because of the bulimia (I hope you have told her why this is so - as it may prevent her from returning to it)

If the idea of a bulk is totally out of the question I would definitely keep the calories closer to maint instead of farther, to help ensure that most of the weight lost is coming from bodyfat and not more muscle tissue..

probably no less than 1700..
 
I disagree respectively with poysyn's advice - for someone who has not done any weights, you can as a beginner gain muscle and lose fat - this happens to me. It stopped after about 8 weeks, where I had to increase my calories to maintenance to gain any muscle. But in the first 8 weeks there were noticable gains to most parts of my body.

As for HIT, if she is a recovering bulimic, I think that HIT may be too demanding for her in the initial phases - this is something more suited to people who have engaged in fitness training for a longer period. Any event, I can burn 1000 calories in an hour running 8.7 miles per hour on the treadmill - can HIT burn more calories than an intense run (if so, where can I read about this.). I'm working on boosting this by using inclines but have to sacrifice too much speed at moment to do this
 
Well, the thing is that she's only going to be able to make it to the gym 4 days a week. So thats really limiting me as far as coming up with a balanced program. I dont want her to do too much weights and not enough cardio and vice versus. So when she gets into the gym she's not going to have an hour to be devoted solely to cardio. most likely I'm going to have her do 25-30 min of HIT. From what I can gather It burns more calories in the short time frame that she would be having.
 
If she can only train 4 times per week, 2 times weights 2 times cardio.

But surely she can run in morning or something like that?

Trav386 said:
Well, the thing is that she's only going to be able to make it to the gym 4 days a week. So thats really limiting me as far as coming up with a balanced program. I dont want her to do too much weights and not enough cardio and vice versus. So when she gets into the gym she's not going to have an hour to be devoted solely to cardio. most likely I'm going to have her do 25-30 min of HIT. From what I can gather It burns more calories in the short time frame that she would be having.
 
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