How to lean out the right way for your boudoir photo shoot
Most women say they want to lose weight before their boudoir photo shoot. What most don’t realize is this is the opposite mind set most women should have if they actually just want to lean out. Can you lean out by losing weight? Yes you can. Can you lean out while staying the same weight? Also yes.
The reason for this is because losing weight requires calorie restriction (going on a diet) with the ultimate goal of lowering one’s body’s fat percentage and the overall size of the body.
Although some may benefit from reducing their overall size, arguably most women I talk to should instead recompose their body and not restrict their calorie intake.
Instead of an unsustainable starvation diet, most women who want to improve their physique should instead focus on getting stronger rather than diet down to lean out.
Using a body recomposition strategy, you can reduce your body fat percentage while staying the same weight or even gaining a few pounds! This is because your muscles will begin to grow and displace your body’s fat storage. This idea of recomposition is how you can lean out while keeping your weight the same or even slightly higher than it is now.
In short, Diet and exercise together is the correct way to lean out and improve your body. Diet alone is not the path that leads to a healthy body and thus a sexy physique. Both diet and exercise need to be practiced in tandem to be a healthier person with a better looking body.
To lean out, I’ve found that it’s easiest to focus on four main things:
If you do all of these things, you’ll see very positive changes to your body in about a month and you’ll experience changes family and friends will notice in about 3 months.
Now that you understand the difference between losing weight and leaning out, let’s go over these four points in detail so you can lean out and reach your physique goal in time for your boudoir photo shoot!
Exercise Vigorously
To recompose your body, you will need to subject it to enough metabolic stress to stimulate muscle growth. This article about how to tone up for your boudoir session shows what exercises you should be doing, and how often you should do them to reach your physique goals.
In short you’re going to want to challenge yourself with at least 1.5 hrs of vigorous exercise per week. You’ll also want to prioritize resistance training to experience the biggest visual transformation. That said, you’ll still see big results with endless other exercises if you prefer doing something else.
The bottom line is that you’ll need to choose an exercise that’s physically challenging and focus on performance. The visual results will follow naturally assuming you do well with your nutrition and sleep.
You can look to the elites in whatever sport you choose to get an idea of the physique you will develop while practicing that sport.
Eat Enough Protein
This is something that took me way too long to figure out myself, but basically you can’t out exercise a bad diet. In other words, to capitalize on all your hard work at the gym, you’ll need to provide your body with the material it needs to rebuild itself.
Protein is the primary macro nutrient your body will use to repair your muscles from your exercise.
Simply put, if you don’t eat enough protein, your effort at the gym will be wasted because your body won’t have the material to rebuild itself.
By building this muscle in the gym, consuming enough protein and maintaining your overall calories, you can effectively stay the same size but replace your fat storage with increased muscle size. This is how you lean out without losing weight.
The easiest way to lean out is to consume your protein target (we’ll discuss your target in a second) from animal products. This is a quick bio availability chart to show you which proteins are most absorbable by the body. Consuming more products higher on the list will be the most efficient materials you can consume to lean out.
you can Google “protein bioavailability” to do additional research for other foods you have questions about.
Next you’ll need to figure out your protein target using a macro calculator. Just plug in your current info and click “calculate.”
This is what the macro calculator looks like. Click the image to enter your own info.
Next, you can just do a little homework and google things like; how many grams of protein in an egg? Or, how many grams of protein are in rice and beans? Alternatively you can also look at the nutrition label on a can of tuna for instance to see that one can has 30 grams of protein.
By doing this you can record how much protein you consume for the day and compare with your protein target.
If you are a vegan or vegetarian I highly recommend you work with a nutritionist to better understand how best to approach your protein intake. This is because for non-meat eaters, protein becomes harder to figure out as you’ll have to mix and match different plant sources to get a complete amino acid profile in your diet.
If you don’t consume a complete amino acid profile, you can expect inferior results and negative health consequences. My understanding is that there are a few things such as: Omega-3, Vitamin b12, and Calcium that most non-meat eaters would greatly benefit from supplementing.
Tips for eating enough protein
Regardless of whatever diet you choose, eating this much protein might feel like an impossible task until you fully embrace the idea of meal prep. I personally cook my protein in bulk about twice a week to make sure I always have enough on hand without having to cook for every meal.
If you’re having trouble consuming your protein target, you can boost your protein intake with a quality whey protein isolate. This is the one I use, but there are lots of great brands out there if you’d like to try something different.
To accurately account for your macros it’s a good idea to try and eat out as little as possible as this makes tracking your macros very difficult. The reason for this is because it’s impossible to know how the cook prepared your food. Restaurant food often has a lot of extra fat calories to make it taste yummy but this will come at the expense of your goals.
Likewise, you should rarely eat things from packages, and when you do, read the ingredient list so you understand what’s you’re putting into your body.
Whenever possible it’s always best to consume single ingredient foods like an egg, soy or fish. Things like chips, pre-prepared meals, and dips have multiple ingredient lists and should be consumed with caution.
Don’t Over Eat
Once you figure out how much protein your body needs, your priority above all else should be reaching that target. This doesn’t mean you should only eat meat or other protein foods and that’s it, but it does mean that protein is the most important macronutrient you should prioritize if you want to become leaner.
Once you have you have a good idea of how much protein you need to eat in a day, you’ll need to make sure you’re not over eating on your carbs or fats.
Carbs and fats are also essential for health but it’s important to not over consume these macros as this surplus is what will lead to an increase in fat storage and lean mass.
In other words, carbs and fat are the lever you use if you want to consume a calorie surplus, deficit or if you want to remain neutral (neither gain nor lose weight). Protein intake won’t change much between all of these scenarios but the amount of carbs and fats will.
Some people believe keto (very low carbohydrate) diets are better for health while others think low fat diets are superior. Whatever team you’re on, you can choose that option from the results you get from the macro calculator.
Note the buttons at the top of these results. These buttons adjust the macros to whichever diet style you prefer.
To simplify all of this so it isn’t overwhelming, most people will see great benefits from just focusing on consuming a protein target and being careful to not over eat on carbs and fat.
In my experience even if you’re running a caloric deficit you shouldn't feel hungry while fueling your body like this. You also shouldn’t feel full during a recomposition. You should feel satiated but not stuffed.
To make the diet part of recomposition as painless as possible, I recommend tracking your protein intake for a week so you can get a proper idea of how much you’re consuming.
After you have an accurate idea of what it feels like to consume your protein target, you can then eyeball your protein consumption moving forward while focusing on not over eating on your carbs and fats.
If you find yourself getting off track with your eating, you can simply re-track your protein consumption for a week so you can recalibrate your brain to the correct amount moving forward.
I should note that serious physique athletes measure everything they consume. For most people though keeping things simple and just tracking your protein and eating the balance of your carbs and fats until you feel satiated is less complicated and easier for people to make a habit.
Tips for not over eating
If you drink wine and beer, consider replacing these treats with low carb options like vodka, whisky, gin, rum or tequila. All of these options have significantly less calories and are low carb.
Drinking high calorie drinks like juice, soda or Starbucks can also easily make your calorie neutral diet a surplus for the day. Avoid these drinks and replace them with water.
Likewise, it’s easy to overconsume on fat macros with dressings and sauces. Use these sparingly as a surprisingly little amount will push you into a calorie surplus for the day
Get Enough Sleep
The final thing you need to do to lean out is to make sure you get enough sleep every night. While you may feel like you can function just fine on a couple hours of sleep, not getting enough will short change your body composition goals. This is because sleep is a critical process for proper muscle recovery.
The science behind this is basically that during non-REM sleep your blood pressure drops and your breathing becomes deeper and slower. Brain activity also slows considerably, which allows the muscles to capitalize on an increased supply of blood.
This increase in blood flow to the muscles delivers extra oxygen and nutrients which facilitate healing and growth. This is how muscle tissues are rejuvenated and thus how your body builds lean mass.
Additionally during this phase of sleep our bodies also secrete growth hormone from the pituitary gland. This hormone also helps stimulate muscle growth and repair. Not enough sleep causes a sharp decline in growth hormone secretion which will directly translate into your body having a reduced capacity to repair itself.
The TL;DR
In short, you don’t build muscles at the gym. At the gym you are destroying your muscles. You actually build muscle while you sleep. This means that getting 7-9 hrs of sleep every night is crucial if you want to lean out and change your body composition.
Conclusion
In conclusion, leaning out is not that complicated if you focus on the key points covered in this post. Exercise vigorously, eat enough protein while not overeating on carbs and fat, and get enough sleep. By simply making these few things habits, you should notice profound changes to your physique in anticipation for your boudoir photo shoot.
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