• Ciara, 28, submitted an average day of eating to be reviewed for Business Insider's Nutrition Clinic.
• A nutritionist said eating more food, especially carbs, would help her.
• If you'd like to have your diet reviewed by an expert, fill out this form.

Ciara, 28, submitted her eating routine to Business Insider's Nutrition Clinic, where qualified dietitians and registered nutritionists offer readers advice on their eating habits.

She said her goals are to lose fat and gain muscle.

Ciara does five CrossFit sessions plus five cardio workout classes a week. She rests on Sundays, she said.

Rebecca Ward, a sports nutritionist and personal trainer, told BI that as Ciara uses so much energy, she needs to eat enough to fuel herself and help her body recover, even if she wants to lose weight.

"She would also benefit from taking a lighter training day on one of her days rather than having only one rest day per week," Ward said.

Building muscle requires enough rest and recovery time between workouts, Ward added.

"If she's sufficiently fueled through better, more optimal food choices, that is definitely achievable," she said, referring to building muscle and losing fat.

While strength training is essential for muscle building, exercise is not a prerequisite for fat loss. Moving more does contribute to a calorie deficit, but research suggests formal exercise makes up only about 5% to 10% of a person's overall daily calorie expenditure.

Overexercising without recovering sufficiently can put stress on the body, hinder progress, or be a symptom of an unhealthy relationship with exercise.

"When we overexercise, we often do it for the wrong reasons, believing we 'need to sweat every day to burn calories' or we 'need train cardio to lose weight,' when actually our bodies will benefit more from a mixture of exercise regimes," Hayley Madigan, a personal trainer, previously told BI.

Ciara eats a high-protein diet

Ciara doesn't eat until 3 p.m. when she has half a high-protein ready-meal consisting of rice and meat.

After working out, she has an egg-white omelet with mushrooms, onions, and cauliflower rice or salmon with broccoli and cauliflower rice.

Later in the day, she has a portion of protein pancakes, two packets of protein chips, and, if she's still hungry, a protein shake or bar.

Ciara estimates she eats 1,200 to 1,300 calories and 110 to 120 grams of protein a day.

By not eating till 3 p.m., Ciara creates a large fasting window from the evening before. While some people feel good while intermittent fasting, it doesn't suit everyone and isn't required for fat loss.

Jaclyn London, a registered dietitian, previously told BI she recommends people eat breakfast as it can form part of a healthy relationship with food and also "set the stage" for the day ahead.

Eat enough carbs to fuel and recover

Ward said it's great that Ciara is eating plenty of protein to help her maintain muscle mass, but she'll struggle to build muscle with such low overall food intake.

"Her diet is very low in calories given the energy expenditure she will have with 10 exercise sessions a week," she said. "It will be difficult for Ciara to recover from or fuel her workouts optimally."

It's true that a calorie deficit is required for fat loss, but dropping your intake too low can have negative consequences such as slowing the metabolism, fatigue, brain fog, muscle loss, and menstrual-cycle loss.

"I'd be intrigued as to how well she performs during workouts that are designed to hit her goal of increasing muscle mass," Ward said. "She would benefit from having more carbs in her diet to optimize performance in said workouts, to achieve higher intensity and volume."

Ward recommends Ciara eat more carbs with every meal and snack, perhaps starting by eating more fruit daily, which would provide fiber too.

Carbs not only provide energy for workouts but help replenish glycogen stores after exercise too, which aids recovery.

Don't forget healthy fats

Ciara's diet is also low in fat.

"Fats are essential for optimal health, are fuel for exercise at lower intensities, but also very important for recovery," Ward said. "So adding in a little oil, avocado, nuts, and seeds will help her recover from training and have greater vitality from fat-soluble vitamin absorption."

Consider separate fat-loss and muscle-gain phases

While it's not impossible to lose fat and gain muscle simultaneously, doing so in separate cycles can be more effective.

This means eating at maintenance calories or a slight surplus to fuel muscle growth for a few months and then dropping into a slight calorie deficit to lose body fat.

"Losing fat and gaining muscle at the same time is possible, but is definitely sub-optimal and arguably better done in phases, i.e. maintenance and then a fat-loss phase," Ward said. "The exercise is more enjoyable too when at maintenance calories."

• Looking after our musculoskeletal health can help us stay strong and active as we age.
• Dr. Vonda Wright is an orthopedic surgeon specializing in healthy aging.
• She lifts heavy weights and does a weekly jumping practice to age well.

A muscle and bone doctor who specializes in healthy aging shared her weekly workout routine, which helps her maintains strength and mobility as she ages.

Dr. Vonda Wright, 57, is a Florida-based, double-board-certified orthopedic surgeon, who helps elite athletes, including Olympians and World Rugby Sevens players, optimize their performance.

In our 30s and 40s, we naturally start to lose muscle mass, which is crucial for continuing to do everyday movements, such as standing up from a chair. The process picks up between the ages of 65 and 80.

It's important to stay active to prevent our bones and muscles from weakening, and those who lead a sedentary life with eventually lose strength and balance and start to topple over or shuffle when they walk, Wright told Business Insider.

Around 12% of US adults older than 50 have osteoporosis, and 43% have low bone mass, a precursor to osteoporosis, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. But exercising greatly decreases the risk, Wright said

"Musculoskeletal aging and healthy aging is a lifelong pursuit," she said. "Just show up every day for yourself."

The "critical decade" for people to start developing habits that will allow them to live healthy, active lives into old age is between the ages of 35 and 45, said Wright, the author of "Fitness After 40,"

"70 to 80% of how we age is due to the lifestyle choices," Wright said.

With that in mind, she exercises five to six days a week, including cardio and strength training.

Powerlifting

Wright recommends that everyone learns to lift weights to build and maintain muscle mass.

She is a fan of powerlifting, which consists of deadlifts, bench presses, and squats. She does four sets of four reps of each and ensures she challenges herself with heavy weights.

"I can do four with good form. I'm exhausted. I may be able to do five, but I cannot do six. If I can do that, it's too light, and I need to go up," she said.

Alongside these, she does some accessory lifts, which are targeted at individual or smaller muscle groups, typically focusing on her biceps, triceps, lats, and deltoids. She does four sets of eight reps.

Running with the 80/20 rule

When it comes to aerobic exercise, Wright follows the 80/20 rule, meaning she does low-intensity training, also known as zone 2 training, 80% of the time and high-intensity training the remaining 20%.

Research suggests this approach builds endurance and improves cardiovascular health.

"For everyone, the very beginner runner to the most elite athlete, longer runs where you're maintaining a low heart rate are really beneficial for building aerobic endurance," Dr. Morgan Busko, a sports medicine physician at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, previously told BI. "By running slower for longer periods, you're setting yourself up to be able to run faster."

Wright typically runs on a treadmill for 45 minutes at about 60% of her maximum heart rate, and twice a week, she ends with some speed training. She sprints as fast as she can for 30 seconds four times.

"When you sprint like that and you really push yourself, no matter what age you are, you kind of feel like a badass," she said.

Jumping practice

To maintain bone density, everyone needs a jumping practice, Wright said, particularly if you sit at a desk all day. This can be jumping off a box, jumping rope, or even running up the stairs hard, she said.

She does box jumps between lifts twice a week and gets up from her desk and jumps up and down 20 times during the day. "My patients are used to seeing me jump around," she said.

In a 2009 study published in the journal Sports Health: A Multidisciplinary Approach, Wright and her colleagues measured the bone density of 560 senior athletes with an average age of 65.9. They found that those who did high-impact sports, such as volleyball, basketball, and running, had the highest bone density.

When a person has low bone density their risk of breaks and fractures, as well as osteoporosis, increases.