Thanks for your support brother. And yeah this has been a good learning experience and priority check, but also certainly excited I got pretty shredded and can try to grow from here!
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WOW brother, this is absolutely the best! AMEN DUDE! Praise God!
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Yeah man you are right about that. At first it was a hard decision and took a little while to come to the conclusion, but once I really thought about my priorities, it became an instant no brainer.
Yes, I mean really to be a competitive bodybuilder, bodybuilding HAS to become an idol, there’s no way around it. It’s too all-consuming for your time and mental health. And maybe other people don’t have the same experience; I mean getting stage-lean is miserable no matter who you are, maybe others aren’t hit the same way I am, but there’s no way competing and prioritizing my faith, family and businesses can co-exist.
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Amen brother, 100%.
Man I hope you are healed bro. God will meet us where we’re at, even if it hurts, and it’s all for our good. He certainly had to humble me many times in many ways, and I’m always praying that He keeps me humble and helps me keep Him over everything and everyone in my life, where He belongs.
Thank you brother, God bless man!
I’m so glad to hear this, Rob. It’s clear from your post that this is a such a positive development for you and your family.
I’m 100% with you. I don’t get a lot of satisfaction from achievements, but taking care of the body and mind that God has entrusted me with on a daily basis is one of my greatest joys. This lifestyle is fun and challenging of course, but there can also be subtler aspect of honour and gratitude. We don’t know what purpose He has for us, but we still endeavour to do it well.
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Interested in seeing your shape before starting reverse diet.
Looking forward to following along reverse diet log too!
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Bro I love that and agree completely, honoring the temple God has blessed us with that holds His Holy Spirit is absolutely another, deeper level of motivation and fulfillment I never had in this prior to finding God. So good man.
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Right on bro here’s my last set of progress pics I took prior to starting the reverse diet. This was 2 weeks ago at 158lbs. Especially looking at the hamstrings and glutes I could see a dryer harder look coming in. Looking a little flat, but this is also first thing fasted in the morning without a pump or anything.
I’m not gonna be taking these type of progress pics anymore. It’s too time-consuming, but will for post pics from the gym etc.
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Quick shot mid workout on chest and delts day. Current weight 162, up 4lbs since starting the reverse diet two weeks ago, certainly there’s an influx of water weight, glycogen in there from adding 90g carbs per day. We are in a gaining phase right now, I’m not sure of the amount of scale weight. We are looking to add each week, but I’ve got my macros and I’m sticking to them and each week when I check in, we evaluate based on scale weight, and how I’m feeling.
There’s a lot of false bro science out there that after getting super lean like a prep, your body is primed to put on muscle and bulk hard. This is actually completely false, your body is actually primed to put on FAT, lots of it, very fast, not muscle. So a careful reverse diet is necessary if you want to minimize fat gain. I’ve never done one before and can attest for sure if you’re not careful within 2-3 months you can easily look like you never did a diet in the first place.
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I have never heard this “said out loud”, but my experience better aligns with what you said. It was as if everything I fought to minimize (fluid and fat) seemed primed to resume its “home.” Which actually makes the most common sense.
I always just re-fed after contests.
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What is your plan to reverse diet?
Still working with your coach for this part?
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Exactly! Do you remember ballpark what your weight gain looked like post show?
Mine happened real fast, there was always 6-8 pounds over a few days of water and some fat, but it piled on pretty fast. I was never coached on reverse dieting and I was so hungry all the time I just ate everything.
Cliff talked about this on a podcast once, I can’t find it now but basically he was saying that it would only make sense for your body to put on lots of fat and minimal muscle. Getting that lean your body doesn’t know you’re doing it on purpose, it thinks you’re starving. Metabolism slows down, hormones get all jacked up and everything else that goes along with it. So your body is just trying to survive. If we think back to how we lived as humans for most of our time here on earth until very recently in our history of having grocery stores, while being hunter gatherers, it was natural for us to have periods of eating a lot of food then minimal food, our bodies store fat to keep us alive. So when your body thinks it’s starving and has no fat on it, to think eating and lifting will add muscle would go directly against what the body was built to do and would actually hurt it by adding more muscle than fat. Your body is ready to add lots of fat as quickly as possible to survive and fix your hormones.
I also noticed that for sure post contest, it takes months to start feeling back to normal and your body has no “I’m full and am ready to stop” button. It’s a crazy feeling to physically be extremely full, but mentally you just want to keep eating even if it hurts. The night after the last show in 2017 I ate so much food that at one point I got light headed and thought I was going to pass out, probably because my blood sugar went from being in the basement for months to sky high in a very short amount of time. My stomach hurt and was so full. But, I didn’t pass out, then I ate some more. 
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Yep still working with my coach through the reverse diet. I’ve never done a calculated reverse diet and I want to make the most of it and really nail this gaining phase as much as I can. I’m way too hungry to try to coach myself through it. I’d have a plan and for sure wouldn’t stick to it. I’d eat my usual clean food, but no doubt I’d tell myself, “no man it’s ok you need to start gaining some weight” and I wouldn’t be able to be objective about it, and I’d eat more than I should be for my goals.
I know myself, and working with him throughout this process is how I will best stick to the plan and get the best results. I’ve had a lot of coaches over the years in both bodybuilding and business, and also speaking as a coach myself, there’s something really incredible that happens when you hire a coach for something. You hold yourself to a higher level of accountability. Most people think it’s the coach that holds you accountable, but a good coach’s job is not to hold you accountable, it’s to show you exactly what to do and how to maximize what you’ve already got inside you. But what actually does happen when you hire a coach is you hold yourself more accountable, because you’re investing your own hard earned money in someone who is not a friend or peer. They’re an expert and the sole purpose of your relationship is for them to make you better, so you’re going to make the most of it what you’re doing, and you don’t want to disappoint them. I do not want to cheat on my plan knowing I’d just be flushing money down the toilet if I did, and I don’t want to have to write in my check-in email that I couldn’t stick to my diet.
So we started by reverting back to my previous set of macros. At the time right before I stopped the prep, my macros were, 200c, 225p, 56f, we went up to 240c, 225p, 60f. New training plan and we removed all cardio, I was doing two 15min sessions per week. I was weighing myself every morning to see how I would respond to the changes. By day 5 my weight was still the same and I actually looked like I was still getting leaner, so we then made a more aggressive change last week in the middle of the week, adding 50g carbs daily. So here’s what the macros have been so far.
1. 200c, 225p, 56f - cutting macros
2. 240c, 225p, 60f - reverse diet macros start
3. 290c, 230p, 64f
I still have one refeed day per week, which is:
380c, 180p, 66f
On those days I save the majority of my calories and carbs for dinner and have a massive awesome meal, and a pint of halo top ice cream for dessert.
I also have a new training plan, he asked if there’s anything specifically I wanted to focus on growth wise and I said arms, so we’re shooting for overall development but really bringing up arms.
So I run the training and nutrition plan each week, check in once per week with scale weight. Based on the scale weight, he makes the call on if we make a change or not.
We made the last macro change last week, and I gained just about 4 pounds of scale weight in a week so we kept numbers the same this week.
He also asked me how hard I want to go on weight gain, and I asked for a moderate approach. For sure I want to put on as much lean mass as I can, but there’s a point of diminishing returns. I saw a video online recently about how much of a caloric surplus to be in while bulking, showing research for two groups of lifters who ate in a surplus, one was a moderate surplus and one was a really aggressive surplus. They both put on muscle, the aggressive surplus group only put on a little bit more muscle than the moderate group, but something like 4x-5x the fat gain. Totally not worth it. I worked really hard to get this lean and I do not like dieting, I’d rather maintain a leaner physique year round and go on a light cut for summer or an event or something if I want to. So we’re for sure getting into surplus mode, but we’re doing it a little more slowly than I would if left to my own judgement, which is a good thing right now.
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I’ve worked with a couple coaches. Honestly I’ve found my compliance to be better using them, but not because I’m holding myself more accountable, but because I don’t want to disappoint coach.
I’m too permissive with my own shortcomings in this department.
4lbs is a lot, but likely glycogen as we all know.
I’m curious what his threshold’s are…
something like:
0lbs weight gain per week = increase 250cals
.5lbs-1 weight gain per week = no increase
\1lbs weight gain per week = drop 250cals
Just what my bro math tells me (I think I saw a Layne Norton reverse dieting scheme like this as well).
Curious if your coach has a different plan.
As always, thank you for your detailed response. This whole thread has been a great learning opportunity for me.
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Yeah for sure that initial jump of glycogen from adding 90g carbs daily carbs over a few days and removing all cardio, the scale has evened out since then and I’ve been holding steady at 162.0 all week since Monday. Today is my refeed so tomorrow it’ll be higher and likely come down over the next few days so we’ll see where we end up next week.
I’m not sure if we have such hard guidelines in place, also considering that while I am in a gaining phase we’re also trying to get my body to normalize from a hard cut so I don’t think we’ll be removing anything that we add. I think if we have a situation where if I gain more than a pound, we’ll probably keep numbers the same, rather than remove anything, and ride them until we increase again.
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Ballpark is about all I would know. I didn’t weigh post contest. But I do know that the weight came on fast. I got a vast amount of edema after most every show that wasn’t a “tune-up” show. Once I ate so much that my edema was so bad that by Tuesday or Wednesday I couldn’t fit in any of my shoes. That required an immediate diet rectification. I would suppose that I gained between 10 and 15lbs by mid-week after most shows.
In regards to your body being primed to gain fluid post contest. In 1977 I had just won a show and ate like a pig Saturday night and all day Sunday. I saw a show that was two weeks later. I decided to give it a try. I had acquired a fair amount of water weight, but got back on my diet (which was low sodium). By the next Tuesday I was back to being on track for the show on Saturday. I had a sharper look that next show. My guess that my body was in a dire sodium sparing mode coming into the first contest. I had replenished the sodium in my body, and when back on the diet my body wasn’t trying to protect me from sodium depletion as hard the second contest.
For that reason, I never worried about doing a “tune-up” contest prior to my targeted contest. Also, I did many contests so that I felt very comfortable on stage. It is my belief that anxiety is a major enemy to looking sharp on stage. Most people who look better the next morning than they did the day of the contest, it wasn’t because they missed the carb loading. It was because anxiety caused them to hold a layer of fluid under their skin that was pulled from their muscle. So, they looked flat and smaller on stage.
As to post contest abnormal edema: I trained at a body weight between 240 and 245lbs “off season.” If I ate the same food at that body weight, I would experience very little edema. But at 218lb stage condition, I would experience vast edema. I would account my body being in dire sodium sparing mode was the difference in response to the diet change.
Refeed yesterday was epic! Local Mediterranean place, I ordered a bunch of stuff a la carte to put a meal together. Here are the macros I saved up for this meal:
190c, 50p, 37f
-chicken kebab
-lamb kebab
-beef shawarma
-rice
-pita
-grilled veggies
-Ezekiel bread muffin (added this to get to my carb total)
My little girl had a fun dinner or organic chicken fingers and fries, I had a handful of fries as well, so good.
I didn’t eat all the meat, for sure ate all the carbs!
Just finished legs today and felt great having a lot of fuel for this one. New PR on leg press, this was for 8 reps. The gym got a new leg press machine I tried.
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Weighed in at 162.9 today, up .9 pounds from last week, still looking tight and strength continues to go up. Feeling better and a little more normal every day.
Nutrition wise, transparently it’s been hard sticking to the plan, I’ve been so hungry and the current plan macros are feeling restricted like I’m still dieting. I haven’t had a day since Friday that I’ve stuck to it perfectly. Friday I went over on my re-feed meal, all clean stuff, middle eastern food with meat, rice, veggies, Friday probably went about 10-12g over on fat and maybe 30g-40g over on carbs.
All the other days I’ve been 30g-50g over on carbs, not protein or fat. Usually it’s a couple extra strawberries here, extra apple slices there, extra Ezekiel cereal with my pre bed meal, that kind of stuff.
Sunday we had a birthday dinner for my mom and I ate a little lighter during the day, dinner I got marinated chicken breast, veggies and rice, went over on fats and carbs with the olive oil that they put on the veggies and the amount of rice, I’m thinking it was around 12-15g extra fat total for the day and around 40g carbs.
So, with that extra food, I gained just under 1lb to 162.9, and man I am still looking super tight. Crazy!
I would imagine the macros I get back from
my check in today will reflect what I’m actually eating and we will stick to that without adding anything additional. I’m guessing around:
340-350c, 230p, 70f
But we’ll see what coach recommends, I was transparent that I need to keep eating at least this much to keep feeling better.
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Alrighty, we bumped macros just a little bit and coach emphasized that it’s normal to be hungry right now, but if my goal is to have as minimal fat gain as possible to really keep the numbers dialed in this week. I’m super happy with my physique right now and don’t want it to start going the other way, so we set some new macros and I finished some nutritional jujitsu on my plans. New macros:
305c, 230p, 66f
I pulled some macros from other meals and added an additional smaller meal, so I have a total of 6 per day now, counting my intra workout carbs and post workout protein shake and banana as a meal. Coach also emphasized I should add in more intra workout carbs as they really help performance and we’re trying to grow. Here are my training and off days (I train 5 days per week)
Today is an off day, I’m pretty stoked for my cashew butter and banana sandwich.
The biggest change is the extra meal, this morning was the first time I had it and it’s making a significant difference in my hunger. I usually wake up right now between 6:30-7, but with the morning routine with the family and getting my little girl out the door to pre school I don’t eat breakfast until 9:30 or so and by then I’m pretty hungry, so this small meal shortly after waking gets some calories in me quickly, and has some good fiber and a little fat. I just do a little batch of overnight oats, instead of milk I mix nonfat yogurt and water to get a creamy consistency without the fat, and the fat comes from chia or flax seeds (macros are interchangeable for those).
I gained .9 pounds last week and we’re shooting for .5-1 pounds per week to ensure maximum muscle and minimal fat.
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deff tight and those shoulders looking swole mate. Quality
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