DefMetalLifter
MuscleChemistry Registered Member
[h=2]The Great Equalizer[/h]In the old days you could get away with being a little smooth as long as you were big. But those days are over. Anything short of being shredded leaves the door open for you to get beat. If you get ripped, you can beat guys much bigger and better than yourself. At the professional level, Andreas Munzer is a perfect example of a guy with limited genetics who soared through the professional ranks and onto magazine covers- all because of his shredded condition. Clarence Bass even wrote a book on being ripped and no one would've given his build a second look if it weren't for an incredibly low body fat. On the other hand, guys blessed with amazing genetics who just can't get super ripped can end up losing to worse bodybuilders. Though examples like Mike Matarazzo, Lee Priest and Mike Quinn abound at the professional level, guys who never reach a truly ripped overall state can be found at every level of competition. So the greatest equalizer is being shredded everywhere and being shredded has everything to do with perfect pre-contest dieting.
[h=2]The Road to Competition[/h]Most amateur shows are scheduled throughout the summer months, so timing is critical. Assuming your body fat is within reason (generally less than 10 percent), dieting for a bodybuilding competition requires a minimum of 12 weeks of contest prep. So if your body is above the 10 percent level, you'll need to lose weight first before entering the rigors of pre-contest dieting. Remember not to kid yourself on this one. Put bluntly, don't blow smoke up your ass.
Dieting for a show is all about getting ripped and starting down the road to a competition with too much fat to begin with is definitely a road to disappointment. Unlike your training, where you can skip a day here and there with little or no detriment, dieting for a show just doesn't work that way. You simply can't make it up. Don't forget that once you're too far behind, you won't be able to make up the ground. So being accurate and honest with your baseline condition is essential.
If there's any doubt, the best bet is to have your body fat tested at your local doctor's office (if they offer the service), nutritionist or even university. Hydrostatic weighing (water submersion) may be the best conventional method, but it tends to be overkill and besides, it tends to only be offered at major universities with exercise physiology departments that offer the service by appointment to the general public. If you can get it done, that's great, but if you can't, bioelectrical impedance analysis (also known as BIA or plethysmography) is perhaps the easiest and most available way. It's even offered at most gyms and simply requires the placing of some electrodes. Just be sure you're fasting beforehand. Also fairly widely available are skin calipers. This involves an examiner using a caliper device to pinch areas of skin with underlying fat from sites around the body. Usually both three-site and seven-site measurements are offered. The seven-site is more accurate. When performed properly, both BIA and seven-site calipers are accurate within reason. These latter methods are adequate and even though not perfectly exact are fine for setting your baseline and then following up.
Next, after making sure you're within acceptable shooting distance for the show and you've mapped out your timeline, you need to nail down your diet baseline. If you don't have a precise fix on what you've been eating, you need to immediately do a three-day diet log. Don't change anything in your diet yet. Just eat normally, but write down each and every piece of food, supplement and drink you put into your body and the exact times you consumed them. Note the amount of protein, carbohydrates and fats in each food. Using a piece of paper, a pencil and carbohydrate counter, which you can find free online or purchase for a few dollars at your local bookstore, this simple exercise will allow you to precisely calculate the amount of carbohydrates you've taken in each day. Once you have the information, take an average of all three days. That establishes your baseline carbohydrate intake.
Your protein intake amount should stay stable throughout the pre-contest period. This should come out to about one gram per pound of bodyweight or roughly 20-30 grams every two to three waking hours, with the exception of the post-workout meal, when you can add in an additional 10-20 grams of protein. Your fat intake should also remain stable throughout this period. This should come out to roughly 30-40 grams of strictly healthy dietary fat each day. So with the macronutrients of protein and fat really being non-variables, it should be clear that contest dieting is all about carbohydrate management.
[h=2]Dietary Consistency[/h]The first dietary adjustment you need to make has nothing to do with drastic cuts and going overboard too early. Instead, before we cut back on anything, we want three days of rigorous dietary consistency. Prior to these three days you precisely map out and plan the schedule for all the meals you intend to take in, along with the exact timing of these meals. The subsequent three days should be nothing more than an exercise in precise dietary consistency. You must plan how to get in all your protein meals along with your requirement of essential fat, plus properly space the daily average carbohydrate intake that you calculated doing your three-day diet log. Surprisingly, this may end up being either less or more of the total calories you're used to taking in. That's why relying solely on caloric intake is so problematic.
During these three days you should just be getting used to eating exactly the same things at exactly the same times each and every day of the foods you nailed down. The idea is to nail down your baseline with exactness. This may seem boring, but eating the exact same items at the exact same times is the absolute best way to get control of your diet and make proper changes. Otherwise you'll just be shooting in the dark when it comes time to start cutting things.
Let's take an example of a 25-year-old natural, 220-pound bodybuilder at nine percent body fat. With no other special considerations, he may likely come in with the following baseline profile:
30 grams of protein for six meals+one meal of 50 grams=230 grams/day=920 calories
40 grams of fat from mixed sources=360 calories
300 grams of carbohydrates=1,200 calories
Total calories=2,480 calories
Using this model, the next step, after firmly establishing three days of standardization and consistency, is to be sure your protein and fats are at the correct levels. Remember that, though dietary fat will come down a little, these levels are going to stay virtually consistent right up until the show. So if you find that your protein is too low or too high, your fat is too low or too high or from a poor source, you must make those changes immediately.
Based on a body fat of 10 percent, protein intake should be roughly a gram per pound of bodyweight. Fat intake should be about 25 percent of your total baseline calorie intake. In the example given, it would mean that this guy would have to slightly reduce his protein intake, clean up the types of fats he's eating to focus on the essential fatty acids and reduce the amount to about 30 grams per day. Once these levels are reached, they should remain fairly consistent throughout the diet period despite the inevitable drop in bodyweight, carbohydrates and total calories. These adjustments should be executed immediately and maintained for a three-day adjustment period.
On the last day of the first week, it's time to add in sodium. Don't get nervous, I'll explain more in the next two articles in the months ahead. But as long as your own doctor says it's okay, your sodium must be temporarily high, not low, in the early stages of dieting. It will definitely cause you to retain more water and make you smoother, but that's actually what you want to happen this early in the game. So make sure you have at least eight grams of salt (roughly 3,200 milligrams of sodium) in your daily diet somewhere. If your calculations from food and supplement labels seem to come up short, just use table salt. Don't worry if you're a little either way. That's okay, I'd rather you overshoot the mark a little. Levels too low this early will negatively influence your final condition.
[h=2]Onto the Second Week[/h]By now, we're onto the second week and only have 11 to go. It's time to draw our attention to carbohydrates. This is where it gets tricky because you have to rely on how you look to determine if and when to cut carbohydrates. Since we rely on the mirror, I have a couple of tips. Try to have one or two more experienced guys help you out and assess your physique every three days and avoid daily stares in the mirror. In the last few weeks you can stare at yourself every day, but over-scrutinizing your conditioning this early will quickly become maddening in the weeks ahead. Keeping these assessment sessions to every three days and having outside input from guys with experience is a good way to prevent you from driving yourself crazy or simply making the wrong call. A bad call would be to cut carbohydrates while you're still getting harder. Remember that if you're still getting tighter every three days on the same amount of carbohydrates, there's no need to drop the amount just for the sake of dropping it. In fact the result will be that you flatten out and lose too much muscle. Only when you and your colleagues are certain your condition is unchanged from one assessment session to the next, is it ever time to drop carbohydrates.
Nevertheless, as a general guideline, given the 12-week preparation and adequate baseline, I generally don't like dropping more then 10 percent of your original baseline level of carbohydrates in any one-week period. Over the years I've found that an eight-percent drop tends to be the most accurate overall number I can use without flattening the muscle. It doesn't seem like such a big drop at first, but really catches up to you because what begins as a small portion of total carbohydrate reduction ends up increasing in proportion exponentially as this same amount is dropped.
Take the example I gave where the guy is base-lined at 300 grams of carbohydrates each day, eight percent of which equals 24 grams. Since he's got roughly 11 more weeks ahead, if his body allows him to push to the extreme to get him ripped by dropping carbohydrates by eight percent of his original baseline each week, he'll end up taking in less then 40 grams per day. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing, but you just want to make sure such a schedule is necessary. Again, remember it's critical that you don't overshoot the mark by being too aggressive with your carbohydrate cutting. Remember you'll be training fairly intensely this whole time and if your nutrient needs aren't met, you'll flatten out and lose mass at light speed. The best way to get this right is to examine yourself in the mirror on a regular basis and have some experienced person or people in your corner who have some understanding of the sport take a look at you with regularity and give you their honest feedback.
