Episode 39: Eating clean is a privilege

Occasionally someone will ask me, what’s the hardest part about being a bodybuilder? I always say the same thing – the eating. Once you are fully committed to the bodybuilding lifestyle as I have been now for over twenty years, food is no longer for pleasure. Food is fuel to support great workouts, and then it provides the necessary building blocks for the recovery and growth of the muscle tissue you broke down during intense training. Not just any food will serve these purposes, either.

You need a steady supply of lean proteins like chicken or turkey breasts, egg whites, fresh fish, and lean cuts of red meat. You also need plenty of complex carbs like sweet potatoes, brown rice, and oatmeal, as well as fibrous carbs such as broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, and asparagus. Without the fiber from raw vegetables, your plumbing can get pretty backed up – not a comfortable feeling I can tell you. Did I say ‘steady supply’ of clean food? I did, because to stimulate the metabolism and prevent you from slipping into that dreaded catabolic state where your body hoards fat and scavenges your own muscle tissue for its amino acids, you must eat every two to three hours from the time you wake up until the time you go to sleep. Many bodybuilders now do something I started doing long ago, which is to have a protein shake containing casein, such as Parrillo’s Hi Protein™ or All-Protein™ at some point in the middle of the night when you get up to use the facilities.

Training is fun, but all that constant eating? It can often seem like a real chore. But like so many things in life, we bodybuilders can fail to appreciate just how critical eating the way we do is toward looking and feeling great until we are unable to do it for a while. On a recent ‘vacation’ to Florida, I gained a new appreciation for how lucky and privileged I am to eat like a bodybuilder.

Why did I throw those quotation marks around the word vacation? Generally speaking, a vacation is supposed to be a time to relax and chill out. I knew well ahead of time that this week would not be so stress-free. First, there was the nonstop drive from Boston to Fort Lauderdale to drop off my wife, her mother, my daughter, and her best friend at a Carnival cruise ship. In lieu of a lavish Sweet Sixteen party featuring a
performance by Lady Gaga and concluding with the presentation of a pink Lamborghini, my daughter was getting a week floating around the Caribbean. My wife and mother-in-law were along to provide adult supervision and to make sure the girls didn’t have too good of a time.

Meanwhile, I would head back to Orlando with my ten-year-old son to spend the week in a time-share condo with my wife’s sisters, their kids, and a friend of one of her sisters whose son I came to refer to privately as Spawn of Satan. All I can say about that particular kid is that if he were mine, I would certainly be in jail right now for child abuse. Then again, I doubt he would be as out of control and totally lacking in respect for his elders had I raised him. All in all, there were six kids, four adults, and three theme parks to visit and squander obscene amounts of money on. I never thought I would live to see the day when you could buy a decent used car for less than it would cost you to go to a couple of these places. Mickey Mouse must be living quite large these days.

I prepared as best I could for the week, knowing that my typical pattern of eating four or five solid meals and drinking two protein shakes a day would be impractical at best. With me was a full canister of chocolate Hi-Protein Powder™ and two full boxes of Protein Chew Bars™, as well as a container of raw mixed nuts. The bars and nuts would be taken into the parks with me. Not only was the food in these places ridiculously overpriced and loaded with trans fats, but my traveling companions, being quite sluggish of metabolism, simply did not stop to eat very often. As I knew from past experience, they preferred to have just a couple breaks for snacks and juice boxes over the course of eight or nine hours and would wait until they exited the park to find a family-style restaurant to gorge on appetizers and margaritas. I’m not knocking their penchant for alcohol – a day at a theme park with all those misbehaving and whiny brats would drive anyone to drink. That’s why I didn’t blame them for heading to the Jacuzzi every night with a large tumbler full of more booze. As the only adult male in the place, I knew that asking these vacationing women who clearly already had their hands full with the kids to cook me up some grub would not have been met with enthusiasm. My cooking skills were limited to frying up eggs and microwaving oatmeal.

Had it not been for all my Protein Chew Bars™, nuts, and the shakes I was constantly blending up at the condo, I would have surely missed many more meals than I did. As it was, I still missed plenty. At the parks, I grudgingly chose to eat the expensive greasy crap rather than go all day without any real food. By the end of the week, even though I had managed to sneak off to a local Gold’s Gym a couple times, I still looked and felt worse for wear. My muscles weren’t as full, my workouts were nothing to brag about, and I had definitely put on some bodyfat. When you look fatter even though you’re three shades darker, you know something’s wrong. Usually a tan makes anybody look leaner.

I was so ready to get back to my normal schedule of clean meals, but not quite yet. I still had to head way back down to the bottom of the Sunshine State, then drive back to Boston. I still had a few bars and some nuts left, but in the interest of making good driving time there would be precious few stops to eat, and those would have to be at fast food joints right off the I-95.

By the time I got home, I was practically kissing the floor in my kitchen. No longer would I be denied access to the food my body needed, when it needed it. There was my refrigerator, my oven, my microwave, stove, and all the good, clean food that really makes the difference when it comes to having an exceptional physique. You can train your ass off, but without the proper nutritional support, you just won’t ever look much better than the average gym rat who skips meals and eats the wrong things.

Before this vacation, a vacation I felt like taking a vacation from when it was over, I no longer felt that eating like a bodybuilder was an obligation or a chore. Instead, it was something I was privileged to be able to do. Instead of whining about how I can’t eat French fries or fried chicken strips, I was thanking God I didn’t have to subsist on that garbage. Rather than complain about how I have to eat every two hours, I am overjoyed that I am able to. Isn’t it funny seeing how the other half lives for even just a little while can shift your perspective and teach you to be more grateful for what you have? As for me, I am eating clean meals right on schedule again and loving it. It’s only been a couple days, but already I feel so much better and the unwanted chub that I gained during a week of terrible eating is well on its way off.

So the next time you think about eating the way we bodybuilders do as something that takes too much time and effort, remember that eating like a regular American slob truly sucks. And if you don’t believe me, just try it for a week!