Had a success this week, looked at progress on my current reverse diet and I'm up to 2136 calories daily and body fat is at about 18%, I started at 15% body fat in November from my bikini competition and eating 1260 calories a day (ouch, I was starving and super lean). It's been an up and down process but I'm happy with where I am now and will work to continue to increase calories and maintain current body fat.
Holy crap!! Can you give a touch more back story (if you don't mind)? I know you said you were in bikini competitions, but looking at your other posts, you have a lot of knowledge to share. I feel like a background post would be helpful.
Fitness and food have been my hobbies for years. It started with eating healthier by cooking at home in 2007 and has grown from there. I took some weight lifting and running classes at the community college while I was also doing gen. eds. for my bachelor's degree. In 2010 I started going to yoga twice a week while my husband was deployed and fell in love. It was the first time I'd found something that I was willing to stick to fitness wise. I continued going twice a week and would squeeze in the occasional spin class(stationary cycling) when I could. When I graduated from college (BS in Mechanical Engineering) in 2012 I started weight lifting a little more frequently though not super consistent because my new job was ultra demanding and I started an online Masters program so I was very busy.
Around that same time, a friend convinced me to start going to a weight lifting circuit type class at a local gym that only catered to women (not Curves, we were doing squats/bench/deadlift/TRX/pull ups/etc). I liked the weight lifting classes so I stayed with them and would workout 4-6 days a week when work wasn't insanely busy. That gym also had an advanced program for training girls for bikini and figure competitions. They participated in the same sessions that I did, but had extra sessions as well and more specific nutrition guidelines plus posing practices. I had to take some time off from this gym because I started traveling for work, I dabbled for a couple months in Crossfit in Salt Lake City, UT but again consistency was hard because of the work schedule.
Life slowed down a tad (still doing online grad school and working full time but only 40 hrs/per week vs 60-80) and I went back to the women's gym and started training for my first bikini competition in March 2014. I stuck with training 4-6 days a week, with 2 hour sessions twice a week. Then life happened and DH and I got relocated from NM to Northern California so I jumped in with an online personal trainer. He helped me with training and nutrition and I eventually hired a posing coach that was local to me. I dropped to about 13% body fat and competed in my first NPC Bikini Competition in Sacramento Nov 1st, 2014. I stuck around with that same personal trainer/coach for a few more months and switched over to a power lifting training program and even did some strong man lifting until May 2015. Then I realized I needed someone with more experience with bikini girls and switched to the local team(who I'd used for posing) for all aspects of competition prep (training/diet/posing). I had a rough time coming out of my first show and went from 13% body fat to 27% in roughly 6 months. The new team/coach managed to diet me back down to about 15% for my second competition Nov. 7th, 2015. This was an incredibly brutal process, and we are in the process of reverse dieting now.
There is a lot to be said for nutrition practices not just what you eat but also how much or how little. Dieting can have huge consequences on a person, I'm learning that now. My first few coaches dieted me on too few calories and it really hurt my metabolism. I took a training course and received a certification from Eat To Perform(ETP) just this month and learned a ton about how the body works and how dieting can affect it. The coach/team I have now understand all of that (not associated with ETP but follow similar nutritional guidance) and are working to increase my calorie intake back up so that I can "diet" on more calories the next time I want to drop body fat for a competition.
So, I'm not going to compete this year 1) it's insanely expensive 2)my body still needs time to repair my metabolism 3)I need to build more muscle mass and to do that I need to be eating more.
Oh and through all of this my nutrition has varied widely:
2007-2012: transitioned from eating out a lot and only eating packaged food to learning how to cook and cooking most meals at home to eating only "real food" to "clean eating"
2012: learned about calorie counting and roughly tracked for a month, lost some weight
2013: started following the paleo diet, dabbled in food tracking again
2014: stayed with the paleo diet and then did macro tracking for my competition prep while sticking to paleo foods
2015: continued tracking macros but started eating a more flexible/if it fits your macros (IIFYM) diet
I still track and measure/weigh everything I eat using My Fitness Pal, I hope to eventually transition away from tracking, but it's a necessary evil when you're after specific body composition goals like I am now.
I have a public "competitor" facebook page and instagram where I post pictures of food and progress pictures and you know, bikini competitor stuff, not sure if it'd be appropriate to link that here. I also keep my MFP diary public so people can see what I eat and what my macros are.
So yeah, long journey, I've done a ton of research along the way and feel pretty informed, but it's all just a hobby. ;)