Intense Training Q's -> Sleep & Body Fat Retention

[Gladiola]

I know that intense training can cause the body to retain fat in a sort of "survival mode" - is it b/c of the stress & cortisol?

So then HOW LONG does it take to adjust to the higher intensity level of training & get bf% back to normal??! Anything that can be done to help the body adjust?

Is more sleep necessary with more intense training? I've usually got 6.5-7.5 hours per night most of the time & that was fine, but I'm more tired & BRAIN DEAD a little bit more lately - on the same amount of sleep.

THANKS!

 

[circusgirl]

Don't know about lifting, but triathletes tend to need up to 12 hours of sleep a night when they are doing 2-3 workouts a day coming up to a race. Maybe you are training harder, and need more sleep as a result?

Again, maybe it's different for high intensity training as opposed to the endurance training triathletes do, but it's a possibility...

 

[wilson6]

"I know that intense training can cause the body to retain fat in a sort of "survival mode"


?????????????????


W6

 

[nikkita]

I've heard of "survival mode" but is when your body gets catabolic. To prevent catabolism you need to eat well, take lots of water during the day and sleep. In my opinion, 7.5 hrs is not enough if you're training more intensively, remember your body needs to recover. In my case I try to sleep between 8 and 10 hrs... some people may need more.

 

[MS]

An average adult female needs around 9.5 hours of sleep to be optimally healthy. This doesn't take into account the effcts of intense training and individual variation. Compare this to the ~8 hours that an average adult male needs, and you can see that there are a lot of women that are prolly under recovering through lack of sleep! IMHO if you are not using AAS, then sleep is an incredibly important, maybe the most important, ingredient for optimal bodybuilding. However, I have never heard of overtraining making you gain fat! Lose muscle, or not gain muscle, or not lose fat perhaps.....but gaining fat is going to be from hormonal imbalances or more calories in than out. Are you sure you're eating ENOUGH? Lack of fatloss/ LBM loss is associated with calories too low, but not intense training per se. Insulin sensitivity problems are the other possibility. But intense training would improve this rathter than make it worse.

 

[w84me]

how about carb intake? I can tell a major difference when I start cutting down on my carbs ... blonde jokes were invented during this timeframe from all the stupid brain dead comments I have made at work during cutting stage

 

[Gladiola]

"I know that intense training can cause the body to retain fat in a sort of "survival mode"

-STRESS to the body, cortisol. No? Ok, so I'm totally wrong.

Help me out here with other ideas then! I already have an e-mail out to the team nutritionist with all my details & asked if my caloric intake should be higher.

Spatts - do you always subtract fiber from your carb #'s? If that's the case, then 50g Carbs is much more feasible for me to handle than I had originally thought!

 

[SteelWeaver]

An average adult female needs around 9.5 hours of sleep to be optimally healthy. This doesn't take into account the effcts of intense training and individual variation. Compare this to the ~8 hours that an average adult male needs, and you can see that there are a lot of women that are prolly under recovering through lack of sleep! IMHO if you are not using AAS, then sleep is an incredibly important, maybe the most important, ingredient for optimal bodybuilding.

Well, if that's the case then I know someone who's going to grow like the incredible hulkess next year, heh heh.



There are so many variables, Gladiola. If I were you I'd tinker with one or two things at a time, run it for a few weeks, then re-evaluate and tinker again. Your body's probably just unhappy with you at the moment for messing with it's routine, and it's trying to figure out how to adjust. (I guess??? )

The only thing we can say for sure is that eating enough of stuff that's good for you, training intensely and sleeping a lot will increase lean body mass and help burn fat, assuming the hormonal environment isn't screwed up. I'm not helping here, am I?

'kay, bye ... Go hit the sack.