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Bodybuilding Nutrition 101
Class Is in Session With Professor Milos ‘The Mind’ Sarcev!
By Ron Harris
Milos Sarcev is a legendary coach not only for his unique training methods but also for his brilliance in the arena of bodybuilding nutrition. Since it’s an area rife with confusion and conflicting advice, I sat down with the man they call “The Mind” to pick his considerable brain about subjects such as meal frequency, protein requirements, and especially the area he pioneered for all of us decades ago: intra-workout nutrition. Could it be the key to unlock astonishing new gains for you? Read on and find out!
Most bodybuilders eat every two to three hours, but lately a lot of people have been trying intermittent fasting, where you fast for about 16 hours of the day and then cram in all your meals and calories in the other eight. What’s your opinion on that?
It’s idiotic for bodybuilders. I know there has been a trend in the longevity world, because there were studies that showed if you starved mice, they lived longer than well-fed, fat mice. Great! I would rather live half a year as a lion than a full year as a sheep. Bodybuilders are lions. Intermittent fasting makes no sense to me. You’re going to fast for 16 hours and then eat everything in sight? Why 16? Why not 18, 20, or 22 hours? Why not do what Jesus Christ did in the desert, go 40 days without any food and then feast for a week? It doesn’t make sense. We need calories, we need nutrients, we need energy to live, to survive and perform. If you’re a bodybuilder training intensely with heavy weights and trying to pack on muscle, how can you possibly fast? It makes no sense. I have read a lot of information from doctors and scientists that I respect who recommend fasting for out-of-shape people who need to lose body fat. These are people who don’t train, and they are trying to make it simple for them. Their diets are both time and calorie restricted. But then they give them the freedom to eat anything as long as it conforms to those parameters. My favorite Socrates quote is, “I can’t teach you anything, I can only make you think.” Please do think about it. Does it make sense to starve yourself and then indulge in whatever you’ve been craving for those 16 hours?
I think I’m going to start calling you “the Socrates of bodybuilding.” An even more popular diet trend in recent years has been IIFYM or If It Fits Your Macros. With that, if you are supposed to eat 500 grams of carbohydrates in one day, supposedly it doesn’t matter if it comes from cleaner foods like rice or potatoes, or junk like Pop-Tarts and Fruity Pebbles. Do you believe a carb is a carb, or does the body treat those types differently?
You have to take the whole concept with a grain of salt. First, let’s look at a couple of different macronutrients. If it’s a carbohydrate, you have simple carbs, complex carbs, starchy carbs and fibrous carbs. Even among simple carbs, you have sucrose, fructose, glucose and so on. I believe in “if it fits your macros in a time-appropriate fashion.” Simple carbs are allowed intra-workout and post-workout. If you prefer highly branched cyclic dextrin, or waxy maize, dextrose or maltodextrin, you can choose any of those. During training and right after, these carbs are going to be used to boost your blood sugar level, trigger insulin release and fuel muscular contractions. So if you’re supposed to get 100 grams of simple carbs daily, this is when you get them. The remainder of your carbs should be complex, and timing them before and after your workouts is ideal. I have a Fat Burning Zone, a Maintenance Zone and an Anabolic Zone. This is how I structure the different phases of the day in terms of diet.
One thing I do give freedom with is protein. If it’s lean protein, that’s one category where you could choose from chicken breast, turkey breast, white fish or egg whites. Or, if I’m giving you a higher-fat protein meal, that could be salmon, beef or whole eggs, or a lean protein where you add fats to it. Even there, you need to be specific about which type of fats you’re taking in. Do you want saturated, hydrogenated, trans or a healthier fat as found in salmon or avocados? It can’t be just “if it fits your macros,” because you do have good fats and bad fats. Bad fats are proven to be bad for your health. If I was giving you a diet and it has you eating six meals a day, I allow you to choose but it would still be a certain type of protein, carbohydrate or fat, not just anything. IIFYM is based on your caloric requirements for the day. So let’s say it’s 3,500 calories, which would break down to 400-500 grams each of protein and carbs, plus a little bit of fat. You can play around with that, but it still can’t be just any type of protein, carbohydrate or fat. It should be the right type for the right time to serve the right function.
Protein requirements are another controversial topic. Some recommend a daily intake as high as 2 grams per pound of bodyweight, while others say a gram or even less is more than adequate. Where do you stand on that subject? Does it differ by the individual?
I tend to go with 2 grams per pound of bodyweight for bodybuilders. I grew up in a medical family and would see the protein requirements recommended at 0.38 grams per kilo or .8 grams per pound, something like that. Listen, these requirements are not meant for athletes, especially not bodybuilders. It’s for the average person. And even then, these requirements aren’t optimal. It’s a minimum required for mere survival, and it's based on amino acid profiles. You have eight or nine essential amino acids, depending on whether or not you consider histidine to be one. Your body can’t produce those, which is why you need to take them in. Your body is able to manufacture the non-essential amino acids. I started out taking in the minimum amount, but then I heard maybe you should increase it. I increased it to 2 grams per kilo, then 3, and eventually close to 4 grams of protein per kilo. I kept gaining more and more muscle mass with each increase. When I would decrease my protein, I lost some mass.
I heard people I respected like Lee Haney, who was considered a mass monster of his era at 250 pounds, talking about how moderate his protein intake was. He would eat a gram or at most a gram and a half per pound. If you remember that story about Nasser El Sonbaty coming to my house and looking through my training and nutrition journals, at that time he was eating 250 grams of protein daily. He saw that I was eating 450-500 grams every day. Nasser, being Nasser, said, “If a little punk like you takes in 500, I’m going to take 600.” And he blew up not long after that.
The average person needs 1 gram per pound. Athletes would need a gram and a half, and athletes trying to build muscle should have 2 grams. I was coaching Andy Bell and some other notable athletes back in the day, and he asked me, if more is better, why don’t I increase it to 3 grams per pound, or 6 grams per kilo? He did, and got the greatest results ever.
I’m sure you heard the claim that a human can only assimilate a maximum of 30 grams of protein at a time. How ridiculous. You assimilate 100 percent of everything you eat or take in. Would it all go to muscle protein synthesis? No. That synthesis is caused by stimulation, which creates the need for it. If you’re a sedentary person and there is no need for protein to be synthesized, of course it won’t happen. The protein will be converted to glucose through gluconeogenesis, and the extra protein will be converted to energy. Remember, carbs and fats are energy nutrients, but protein is a building nutrient. It can become an energy nutrient if the other two macros are missing or if there is no need for it. Physical priority number one for the body is energy. Energy can be created, and it can be stored. When your glycogen stores are fully depleted, you don’t have an energy source. As soon as you eat carbohydrates, your body tries to replenish those stores. Now think about body fat. It’s kind of dangerous for a person to be super lean, because energy reserves from fat are what would keep you alive if you had to go for long periods without eating, as our ancestors often did. Fat is stored in our body fat, and carbs are stored as glycogen. But protein is stored in our muscles.
How about shakes versus real food? I remember in the ‘90s when some athletes like Lee Labrada were using shakes to replace most of all their meals. In your opinion, is solid food always the best option if you can manage it, or can we have a couple of shakes a day too?
If you can manage all solid meals, do it, because food is food. Chicken is chicken, fish is fish, and so on. Powder is powder, but only from reputable companies. I remember Lee Labrada was always publishing analyses of his protein and meal replacement powders to prove that what was on the label was in the bottle. Today his son Hunter takes in a lot of his protein from their company’s supplements. I believe a high-quality protein powder is just as valuable as solid food. Are you telling me your body really knows whether this lysine or phenylalanine or arginine is coming from solid food or a protein shake? When you digest a carbohydrate, it all goes down to glucose. Protein is broken down into the amino acids and those go toward whatever tissue needs to be created, whether it’s for bone, hair, enzymes, hormones or muscle tissue. Are those amino acids somehow less valuable if they are coming from a protein powder? I don’t think so.
I know you remember a great amateur bodybuilder from the ‘90s named Eddie Moyzan. He was doing seven shakes a day and one meal. My reaction was that’s so wrong! But then, he looked better than me. I’ve known a lot of bodybuilders who had a bad appetite who couldn’t eat all the protein I wanted them to. Many would ask to replace some meals with shakes. I said yes, if you trust the product, we can substitute that. One benefit of the shakes is that you can have 50, 60 or 70 grams of protein with zero fat. If you eat 70 grams of protein from beef, you may also be getting 70 grams of fat. You didn’t eat that beef because you wanted the high calories or the fat, you just wanted the protein. Fat is the bonus, the side effect you didn’t want. So to answer this once and for all, I do believe that high-quality protein shakes are just as valuable as protein from solid food.
Yet another area of debate is how many calories over maintenance level are needed to gain new muscle tissue. I remember the late Mike Mentzer believed a person only needed a couple of hundred extra calories a day, while others have recommended 1,000 or 2,000 surplus calories. How much do we really need to grow?
Let’s analyze that, and I want to say I had so much respect for Mike Mentzer. I had the chance to be trained by him a couple of times before he passed away. A thousand extra calories? For the love of God. Calories provide energy content, and that energy can either be used or stored depending on your energy needs. We really only want to store it as extra protein. You can gain muscle size on maintenance calories, but it’s hard and rare. Fat burning and muscle building are two different things. Again, let’s say your maintenance level, the amount you need to maintain what you have, is 3,500 calories. I’m going to start manipulating things. I start adding in calories around the anabolic phase of the day when you’re training. The meal before the workout will be a shake or an easily digestible lean source of protein. Then during the workout you’re going to have your intra shake. In that we have an abundance of amino acids plus creatine, glutamine, beta-alanine, citrulline, all the supplements we want to insert into the muscle cells. We’re going to trigger insulin release from a carbohydrate. We need those to maintain glycemia and for muscle contractions. The trick is that the glucose is going to trigger insulin release, and insulin is a storage hormone. It’s going to take anything that’s in the blood and store it in the first available cells and tissue. The only cells and tissue that will be available are those in the muscles you are training. All those nutrients will be directly inserted into that muscle or muscle group. I’ve seen more retention of muscle using this method than I have with more calories taken later when they’re not needed. That’s why it’s possible to gain muscle even on maintenance calories. What would I do for a person looking to gain? I’d increase calories by 300-500 daily from protein and carbs, certainly not from fats.
Hearing all this makes me want to remind the MD readers that one area you definitely pioneered was intra-workout nutrition. The athletes you trained back in Fullerton, California when you owned Koloseum Gym all drank your custom concoction during their workouts. What was in that mix?
I made all the athletes who came out to work with me understand that when you start training, you create hyperemia, or increased blood flow to the muscles. This only happens during training. I’ve said this many times because I am trying to make everyone understand and take advantage of this process: you don’t fly an empty plane from Las Vegas to New York. Without passengers, the flight is worthless. So don’t send empty blood into a working muscle either! Your body has 5-6 liters of blood. Most of the time, only about 10 percent is in your skeletal muscles. If you start training your chest or your quads with intensity, within 20 minutes, 70 percent of your total blood supply will be in your chest or quads. This is hyperemia, and it's documented. If that blood is saturated with amino acids, creatine, glutamine, glucose, beta-alanine, citrulline, L-carnitine, whatever you put in there, it’s ready for immediate uptake. It’s already hydrolyzed. Your body doesn’t need to break it down into components. The glucose you take in intra-workout is going to trigger insulin release. Insulin takes out whatever is in the blood like Federal Express. Insulin is a hormone that wants to regulate the blood sugar. If you are hyperglycemic, that’s toxic, and that’s why insulin is there to regulate it. How does insulin bring down that high blood sugar? By disposing it from the blood and taking it to the tissues. If you eat high amounts of sugar throughout the day as many people do, then insulin is your enemy because it will make you fat. You’re not directing where those carbs and calories are going. When you’re training, the only possible place the carbs can go is straight into the muscle cells. The athletes were all on board with that.
I didn’t have an intra product 20 years ago. I had to get all the ingredients separately, and I was lucky to have a friend who could get me the amino acids and creatine and all those things in bulk at a very good price. Every one of those men made incredible gains, and these were all seasoned veterans. It’s not like a beginner, who makes those newbie gains even when he does things wrong. Dennis Wolf is a good example. In 2006, he didn’t even place top 15 at the Olympia. He came out to California to work with me, and in 2007 he got third at the New York Pro, won the Keystone Classic two weeks later, and then got top five at the Mr. Olympia behind Jay, Victor, Dexter and Ronnie. The added size and fullness made him look completely different. Now I am formulating an intra-workout formula for JYM Supplement Science. Jim Stoppani, Vince Andrich, Mike and myself have talked about it extensively. They know this was my original idea that I applied with many bodybuilders back in the day. I’ve been saying the same thing over and over, yet there are still people who don’t take advantage of an intra shake. I don’t understand why, so I’ll ask you. If you don’t use it, what is your excuse?
I had tried it in the past, and the sweeteners in it made me nauseated while I was training, especially on leg or back days. I went back to drinking plain water when I train.
You could have searched for another product that agreed with your digestion better. Do you understand now that when you go to train, let’s say it’s legs, and you stimulate them, all that blood will go straight to your quads? If you’re only drinking water, the muscles won’t be primed to trigger anabolic hormone release, and it won’t have all those anabolic nutrients available. You will empty the quads, catabolize it. Your body will recognize the micro-tears in your quads and the loss of glycogen, and it’s gonna slowly replenish it afterwards with your post shake. But in the meantime, you’re breaking down the muscles. You’re catabolic. You’re purposely going into a catabolic state with the hope of eventually putting the necessary nutrients back. With the intra shake, your body has no choice but to absorb all those nutrients into the muscle cells you are training. Why would you want to miss out on that amazing opportunity?
I always assumed, and perhaps wrongly, that as long as I had my whey protein isolate and cyclic dextrin along with creatine and glutamine as soon as I finished training, I would be fine. I didn’t need anything during the workout except water.
So you’re going to totally empty the muscle, then drink your post shake and hope it slowly replenishes everything? Your body’s only priority once the workout is over is to take care of the trauma that was just inflicted on the muscles. But if you’re under stress and other tissues besides your muscles need those amino acids, they will take priority. The body will shuttle those to where they are needed most. But when you are training, the only place those aminos can go is into your muscles. Why would you lose at a time when you could be gaining? Being in a catabolic state is unhealthy and will impede your gains. Would you want to empty your wallet of cash while you train, and then just slowly add the cash back later, or would you rather fill up your wallet while you train and then add even more money afterward? We all want to maximize our results from training. As we are talking, I haven’t developed the intra product for JYM yet. It will be the ultimate and most effective of its type with the best ingredients possible, that I can promise you, because my name and reputation will be attached to it. But whether or not you choose to buy and use it, I urge everyone to apply the principles of the hyperemia advantage and intra-workout nutrition. If you don’t, you really are missing out on the gains you could be making.
Website: www.jymsupps.com
Instagram @jymsupps
Ron Harris got his start in the bodybuilding industry during the eight years he worked in Los Angeles as Associate Producer for ESPN’s “American Muscle Magazine” show in the 1990s. Since 1992 he has published nearly 5,000 articles in bodybuilding and fitness magazines, making him the most prolific bodybuilding writer ever. Ron has been training since the age of 14 and competing as a bodybuilder since 1989. He lives with his wife and two children in the Boston area. Facebook Instagram
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