Ep 214 – Coaching Natural vs. Enhanced Athletes with John the Bodybuilding Vegan

In this insightful episode, Ben and John dive deep into the nuanced world of coaching natural and enhanced athletes. From mindset shifts to prep challenges, they unpack key strategies and misconceptions in physique competition prep. Whether you’re a coach, competitor, or curious fitness enthusiast, this episode offers clarity, perspective, and practical wisdom.

Highlights from this episode:

• Key differences in coaching natural vs. enhanced athletes
• Understanding stress, water retention, and their effects on weight fluctuations
• How visual assessment often trumps the scale in contest prep
• The complexity of managing more variables in enhanced athlete prep

Tune in for an honest, relatable chat that goes beyond the highlight reels and into the heart of what it means to connect authentically.

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Related Phrases:

natural bodybuilding prep, enhanced athlete coaching, muscle retention strategy, visual physique assessment, stress and water retention, weight fluctuation in prep, contest prep mindset, body recomposition effects, advanced coaching tactics, stage-ready conditioning

Transcript:

[Ben:]

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Vegan Protein’s Muscles by Brussels Radio. I am back again today with John Thomas, a.k.a. The Bodybuilding Vegan, for now a part three of our discussion on the differences and similarities between natural and enhanced bodybuilding. So, it feels like we just talked, because we did earlier this week, and we’re continuing the conversation as when we get talking, we have a lot to say.

So, we wanted to make sure that we didn’t have anything that was left out. Last time we covered training specific topics, and today we’re gonna jump right into nutrition. But before we do that, John, how’s your morning going so far?

[John:]

Filled with gratitude. What you guys don’t know, behind the scenes, Ben does all the coordinating and scheduling for this, and he works with me when I ask, can we do this time? Can we make it two hours earlier?

Can I be five or 10 minutes late to make some coffee? And so, I just wanna say thank you, sir. I am doing great.

We did talk earlier this week. This is actually my fifth podcast this week, which is kind of nuts. I obviously have the Vegans Who Live podcast with Brooke, so we do that, but I think this is a really important topic.

I think we’re gonna drive a lot of value here, because bodybuilding is not so simple as if it fits your macros. And when you get on the enhanced side of the stage, it gets even a little bit more, I think, nuanced. And I think part of that is really just enhanced guys might be weighing 250 to 300 pounds, and natural guys, unless they’re like six foot six, just aren’t.

So the food volume becomes an issue for a lot of guys. Anyways, we will dive into that. I do wanna do an ask, though.

Most important thing, do you drink coffee as well, Ben?

[Ben:]

Yeah, I had my coffee already this morning. So I had my coffee, I had my pre-workout meal, and now it’s digesting, and I’ll be hitting the gym after this. So yes, I’m a coffee every day kind of guy.

[John:]

Yeah, I lied to myself and said I was gonna quit caffeine after my show. Now it’s my show in 2021, and I still haven’t quit. What are you training today?

[Ben:]

I’m training the upper body. So I’ve been running an upper-lower split since about half of the time coming out of my contest prep and ending my season. It’s a bit of a lower volume phase for me right now to kind of heal up some niggles and injuries that I picked up along the way for the prep.

So it’s really a recovery-focused split, and I think bodybuilding is, to an extent, a sport of over-recovery, because when you come into sessions feeling very fresh, you’re going to perform well, and performance increases are the name of the game. And it’s a fine balance between recovery and still making sure that you’re producing enough demand and stimulus to grow. So for right now, I’ve just been running an upper-off, lower-off split repeat and taking rest days when I need it.

If I need to push back-to-back days, it’s no problem because it’s an upper-lower. So let’s say something comes up on a day that I was supposed to train, I can move that a day earlier or a day later, and it’s totally fine. So I think it’s been nice from a flexibility perspective.

And then also just feeling a little bit of burnout at the end of my season, it’s been nice to actually take a step back from training and go to the gym three to four days a week instead of going five, six, whatever it typically is for me. So that’s what I’m doing right now.

[John:]

Very cool. I’ve done that after some shows as well, cutting back to like four days a week. And it really does free up your time.

When you’re usually going six days a week for cardio and five or six days a week for training, going down to three or four, it’s like, oh my gosh, I have all this extra time, I can work on projects. Okay, cool. I was just curious.

I watched some of your leg day footage yesterday, nailing the hack squats. All right, well, I think you said you had some questions. I have some thoughts as well, as far as like things that I think would be valuable to cover.

I guess we could kind of jump into like where I’m at personally, and then you could ask some questions either around that or just off your list anyways. And then if there’s anything that you don’t ask, I’ll try to remember to throw in. So currently we had discussed a little bit in the training podcast that came on last, where I was at in my journey.

I’m basically in an off season trying to gain some mass here. I have gone a little rogue. My coach is on vacation for a couple of weeks.

So not really, like my check-in is every two weeks and he just happens to be out of town for this one. So I’m like, you know what? It’s gonna be three weeks before I get feedback.

I’ve done this long enough. I’m feeling confident that I can make some adjustments as needed. So I’ve pushed my food intake up to, right now it’s 241 pounds this morning.

I’m doing 370 grams of protein a day. I’m doing 500 grams of carbs a day and 75 grams of fat. Now that’s on training days.

On my rest days, I keep the protein a bit lower, 300 grams. I do 350 grams of carbs and 75 grams of fat. So a little bit lower protein, a little bit lower carbs.

The methodology and mindset behind that is, from my coach’s perspective, let’s give you a bit of a break from the digestion side. It’s not so much like, oh, you don’t train that day. You don’t need the protein.

It’s more of like protein is hard to digest or harder. So this is a way we can push a bit harder on training days and give your digestive system a little bit more of a break on off days. And then one day per week, I’m supposed to get a high day.

On that day, we do about 300 grams of protein, I think, 700 or 750 carbs and like 100 grams of fat. So that’s a good bit of a higher day. I don’t always get the higher days because whenever I go out to eat and I eat way more than I should, I kind of count that as a higher day.

If I was a perfect bodybuilder, we’d pretty much just have the higher days and it would be food that I’m weighing and tracking and knowing exactly what it is. But I’m not always perfect. So yeah, that’s kind of where I’m at right now.

I wanna push the food a little higher, to be honest, but we’ll kind of figure it out from there. So yeah, all right, I’ll open the floor to you. You said you had some questions.

[Ben:]

Some things I can go off of there, questions for you. Let’s start with protein intake. Where do you usually set that with your clients and does it differ between your natural clients and your NAS clients?

[John:]

So there’s a few factors and variables that would go into that. I’m gonna say like first thing, is it lifestyle or bodybuilder or like pseudo bodybuilder, like somebody that wants to bodybuild, but not get on stage. If you’re just lifestyle, protein is gonna be kept generally lower, maybe a half of a gram to three quarters of a gram per pound of body weight on average.

Now, if they’re like, hey, I’m lifestyle, I really wanna lose a lot of fat as soon as possible, set me up with the best diet for this. I might push their protein higher just because it’s gonna keep them fuller. And tip here for people, protein is harder to digest.

So while it technically has four calories per gram of protein, the same as carbohydrates, four calories per gram, protein is so intensive for digestive purposes that from my understanding, you really retain more like three calories per gram, at least from what I’ve read, what I’ve been told. So having somebody doing 200 grams of protein and 300 carbs would actually be like 200 protein, 300 carbs versus 300 protein, 200 carbs. The 300 protein person would be more full in my opinion and actually technically taking in less calories.

So that might be a swap that I would do with somebody that’s really trying to lose weight. For my bodybuilders, which is probably what people are more interested in on this podcast, really, I don’t dip below a gram per pound of body weight, natural or enhanced. And then it kind of, again, depends upon where they’re at.

I’ve taken people as high as like one and a half grams per pound, I think. Like I’ve had some female competitors that were natural, were like 120 pounds taking in like 190 grams of protein and that just worked for them. Their carbs and their fats were getting pretty high.

And then for some of my men, enhanced guys, yeah, I kind of base them similar to how I base myself. I’m 240 pounds, so taking in 370 grams is probably about a gram and a half per pound, I think on average. And so I’ll have my enhanced guys kind of fall in line with that just because it seems to work.

Is it more than what all the studies say? Yes. And as we were kind of alluding to in the last episode, there haven’t been studies done on enhanced vegan bodybuilders, so how are we gonna know where to set their protein?

We’re just gonna look at the people that have achieved a lot and err on the side of it’s better to have more protein than to not have enough, in my eyes. So I don’t know if that fully answered the question or not or maybe over-answered. It perfectly answered it.

[Ben:]

I’ll give you my thoughts on everything that you just said. I would say for my lifestyle Gen Pop clients, it’s pretty similar to you. If they can get to that three quarters of protein per pound of body weight, that’s great, but I find that some people just don’t want to or don’t like to, and that’s fine.

I think most of the time, yeah, that half gram per pound is gonna be more than adequate for somebody who just wants to lose some body fat, put on a little bit of muscle. And then I would say across the board, my recommendations are quite similar to yours, and yes, protein, because it has a higher thermic effect of food, meaning as you described, it’s just gonna take more energy for our body to break it down and convert that to stored body fat if we are in a surplus or in a deficit. It just takes more calories to process it versus carbohydrates, a little bit less so.

I think it’s like 10% in fats is virtually nothing because storing fat as fat is a very easy process. It’s not very energy intensive. And I also do something similar with myself and with some of my competitive clients where actually when they’re in a deficit or in a diet, I know it’s popular to increase protein because we want the ideas that we want to be able to preserve muscle mass as much as possible.

But I actually find that usually I’ll just set their protein at a gram per pound at the start of their prep and kind of just keep it there for most of the prep because as they’re losing body weight, then that proportion of protein per whatever pound of body weight is going to increase. And I think as calories get really low, you have to start to pull from fats and carbs. And if you’re getting so low in your carbohydrate intake that training performance is starting to be impaired or with fats, you have significant impacts on hormones or maybe that somebody finds that their cravings or their adherence is a lot worse with super low fats, then I think that sometimes I’ll even bring down the protein just a little bit to be able to preserve that training performance or preserve that adherence to their deficit. And then when they’re in a gaining phase, I think that’s the time where I’ll actually probably push protein a little bit higher because we have such an excess of calories that if there is a benefit to be gained from higher protein intakes, then why not?

It just makes sense. If you can digest it well and you can get it in, I think this is an area where something like protein powder comes in really useful because it’s not a very high volume food. It’s a little bit tastier and more palatable for some people.

And I think that it makes it a lot easier to hit those higher protein intakes without as much of a digestive impact. So I’m curious to know what are some of your protein sources that you use pretty often with yourself and then you find yourself recommending to clients as well?

[John:]

Great question and quick reply to what you said. You hit a couple of good points here. Training performance is absolutely vital for building muscle.

You can eat all the protein you want. If you don’t train, you’re not gonna grow. And if you’re in a deficit, like you said, in a deficit, it’s like, okay, I have this impossible task of trying to not lose any muscle.

What’s the best way to set up the diet in a way that uses enough fat to support hormone production, uses enough carbs to drive training performance and enough protein to allow recovery to occur? And so, yeah, it’s like a game of where can I pull from? So I’m similar to you.

The protein, when a client starts with me, you normally get set. And then unless something major changes, it usually stays there and then we just pull from carbs and fats. Now, if it’s an enhanced competitor, fats are a bit less important in the short run.

Like long run, I don’t wanna run somebody on 15 grams of fat a day, hell no. But if we’re in like the last month or two of prep and we’ve really gotta drop some body fat and they’re enhanced, like your testosterone production is still going to be occurring because you’re injecting it. I guess you’re not really producing it, you’re injecting it versus your body needing to naturally produce it.

So we might pull from more fats than from protein at that point, just because I feel that will work a little bit better. For, again though, there’s so many, like it depends and this is part of being a coach. The last couple of weeks of a prep, I’m probably gonna pull their protein down too.

The girl that I had that was doing 190 grams of protein all prep, she’s around 120 pounds. That last couple of weeks, we pulled her down to like 100 grams of protein because it’s gonna be easier on her digestive system. She might fill back out a little bit if we use some more carbs.

Training intensity those last couple of weeks, like I tell my athletes, pretty much year round I want training footage. Last couple of weeks before a show, I don’t want you messing around with your tripod and slowing down your sets to film and record. I’m not gonna be like, okay, yeah, we did nine this week.

Let’s go for 12 next week. Like, no, your food’s gonna be even lower. So there’s so many, it depends here.

And that’s why I recommend if you’re listening to this and you wanna compete, don’t be a fool like me and don’t hire a coach. I mean, even right now with all I know, I wouldn’t compete without a coach. I feel like it’s really, really vital and helpful.

Even if I had someone, you know, Ben isn’t on my level right now on the enhanced side, and that’s fine, but he could be that objective eye for me, let me know how lean I’m getting. Because when you get stupid lean, like you can’t see yourself. And I know I’m getting way off tangent here, but it’s really important to have that outside view in my opinion, and to be able to make those diet changes.

So like, I could definitely like hire Ben to help me get through a prep from that perspective. I know where to set some of the things, but that’s where I would still struggle with myself. So anyways, all of that being said, I don’t know if you wanted to reply to that or if you want me to just jump right into protein sources or.

Jump right into protein, yeah. I don’t have too much to add there. Basically, John, shut up, you’re taking too long.

[Ben:]

All right, protein sources. I agree, I disagree, but you know, not too much to add.

[John:]

Ah, so as a vegan, you know, it’s really fricking hard to get protein. Like nothing has protein in it. Actually, that was one last thing I was gonna say.

Pushing protein higher in the off season makes sense for two reasons. One, why not? Two, well, I guess the why not is digestion.

So if it messes with your digestion, don’t. But the two is, you’re gonna be getting a lot more, help me with the word here, like proteins that kind of just tag along with foods. Like oats have some protein, bread has some protein.

[Ben:]

Yeah, auxiliary proteins, I’m not sure. Yeah, no, extra proteins, I know what you’re saying. Yeah, tag along.

[John:]

Yeah, like indirect maybe. There’s a meat-eating word for it. They call like the meat proteins and the dairy proteins or like the whole proteins, but then like all these little other ones on the side.

And so when you’re eating 5,000 calories of even like fruits, veggies, oats, rice, you’re probably still getting a few hundred grams of protein but they’re maybe not as high of quality as something like a protein source that’s complete like tofu or even like a pea protein isolate or some even like the mushroom proteins, like meaty has a mushroom protein that’s a complete amino acid profile. And I’m not super concerned about having a complete amino acid profile in each meal, but I do feel like having those higher quality proteins is still important. And so if you’re getting two to 300 grams of protein a day from those incomplete sources, quote unquote, it might still be beneficial to have some higher quality sources throughout the day.

Now, okay, now actually answering the question of where do I get my protein? Where do I recommend people get their protein? This is a big part of the coaching process is finding out what works for the individual client because for some people, TVP is great for them.

I like TVP, it’s pretty high in protein, moderate in carbs, very low in fat, but it doesn’t digest well for everybody. I work with Say Grace, it’s a company that makes a soy protein concentrate in the form of like strips, bits, shreds. So the macros on it are very, very solid.

It’s like 20 grams of protein, five grams of carbs and a half a gram of fat per serving. So it’s very, very chewy. I love this for my prep competitors.

I wish I had found it on my last prep because it just takes forever to eat. So it’s very filling, but it’s a complete source of protein, it’s very lean. Both of those are soy-based.

Continuing down the soy-based trend, we have tofu. Tofu is great. It does come, it’s more like a whole food.

So it’s a little bit more filling, I feel. However, it does come paired with some fats. So if your fats are getting lower, we might be pulling tofu out for something else.

Kind of other forms of tofu would be anything from soybeans, like edamame, crunchy, like pre-packaged soybeans from like the Only Bean, edamame pasta. Like there’s a lot of different options that you can go the soy route. And that’s really all we’ve talked about so far.

So that’s soy. If vital wheat gluten digests well for you, that’s another really cheap, pretty lean source of protein that you can use. When I make mine, I make it in a seitan and I usually add in some nutritional yeast, add some B vitamins, add some additional protein, rounds out the amino acid profile.

And then another big one for me is powder. And a lot of people are like, oh, I don’t wanna eat powder, it’s not real food. But like, these are the same people eating bread.

And it’s like bread is just literally wheat powder. You’re not gonna eat pea protein isolate powder, soy protein isolate powder, or some other like pumpkin seed powder, like why not? The reason I like protein powder is numerous.

The reasons I like protein powder. One, it’s convenient, you don’t have to cook it. It’s right then and there.

If you have a good protein powder, it’s going to be lean. Which basically means it’s not paired with a bunch of fats and carbs. Usually if you get a good one, they’re palatable.

So this isn’t as big of an issue when you’re dieting. When you’re dieting, everything tastes good. But if you’re in the off season and you gotta put down a thousand calories, it’s like, do I want beans and rice again?

And I don’t really do beans and rice, but like, okay. Something like a whole foods thing, or like, oh, you could make this like dessert style, peanut butter, chocolate cup, cream of rice bowl. And it’s like, ooh, that sounds appetizing right now.

Even though I’ve eaten 5,000 calories today, I could probably get one of those down. So really do like protein powder. I worked with True Nutrition for a while.

I used them for a decade using mostly their pea protein isolate. And that was solid. I’m now signed with Veg.

So I’m going to plug them. Nimai Delgado’s company, they make a pea protein isolate that is also mixed with pumpkin seeds. And, oh man, I am blanking on the other one.

There’s like a hemp, I think hemp, like a little bit of hemp and a little bit of pumpkin seed to round out the amino acid profiles. It’s a very complete protein source. And yes, I am sponsored by them.

Code BodybuildingVegan if you want to support. But sincerely, I didn’t really want to love them years ago because they were a competing brand. And now like trying them out before deciding to sign with them, I knew they were a good fit for me because that was the protein powder I started to grab for my pre-workout meal.

Then as you just mentioned, you had your pre-workout meal. For me, that is the most important meal of the day as far as digestion is concerned. I don’t want to eat something new.

I don’t want to try something different. I only want what I know is going to feel really good for my stomach so that I’m ready to train and don’t have any digestive distress. So sincerely, Veg has been doing phenomenal by me.

I don’t have any of the stomach discomfort that I would sometimes get with other brands. And that might just be that they use Stevia as a sweetener instead of the artificial sweeteners. The powder does just seem to mix easier.

So getting into the weeds here, but protein powder is another really solid option. And then you are going to get tons of protein from those like incomplete or side sources. So if you’re doing a lot of oats, if you have nutritional yeast, if you have beans, if you have nuts, vegetables, even some fruits have a little bit of protein.

So all those do add up and those should be tracked. They just wouldn’t be my main sources. So like I personally wouldn’t sit down and have beans and rice and call that like a meal.

I’m probably like, there’s no way I can eat enough beans to get 60 grams of protein in a meal. And that’s usually about where I average. Okay, I just talked a lot.

[Ben:]

So that was pretty comprehensive for protein sources and just describing what you’re eating. Describing some of your rationale there. Something that I want to circle back to that you talked about just briefly was the intake of carbohydrates and fats when it comes to your overall diet.

So I would say for GenPOP, usually I’m just having them focus on protein and calories as the main kind of thing to be concerned with and letting carbohydrates and fats fall kind of where they may based on personal preference as long as we’re not going to the extremes, no fat or super low carb. I would say for my competitors and individuals who just want to get the most out of their training and the results, I do tend to favor a slightly, I would say more carbohydrate biased diet and setting fats on the lower end. And then if they find that they’re really having difficulty adhering to that, I’ll titrate up the fats and I might set fats a little bit high for my female clients compared to my male clients in proportion to their overall calories, but it’s not a major discrepancy and most of the time it’s personal preference.

Now, I think that when you get into a prep, obviously you have to limit certain things like you were saying and as you’re getting kind of deeper into those stages, fats are probably going to be the first thing you pull from because carbohydrates are that important for your training performance. And I would like to know for you, how much do you think that recommendations of like very low fat, very high carbohydrate diets, do you have like a bottom, I guess, bottom floor for fat intake for natural clients versus your enhanced clients? And then how much do you think like the high carb, low fat, I guess you could say like macronutrient split is related to the fact that individuals who are enhanced do have some of that exogenous hormone intervention and then also taking into account things like insulin and that in the use of enhanced bodybuilders and perhaps being able to benefit from those super high carbohydrate intakes, maybe opting for a lower fat variety that a natural client might not be able to benefit from or might see more detriments to. Those kind of a long winded way of getting there, but I’d like to know your thoughts just on that topic as a whole.

[John:]

Yes, I’m gonna do my best to remember everything you just said, if I miss one, let me know. So kind of like a bottom floor for enhanced versus natural athletes for fat intake or and also how do I set up my client’s programs? I feel that, have you heard of the vertical diet by Stan Everting?

That’s kind of how I like to look at nutrition. Like if you came to me, Ben, whatever body weight you are right now, there’s a certain amount of vitamin A you should get per day, vitamin D, B12, protein, carbohydrates, fats, and that’s like the floor just to like not even maintain your body weight, but just to get you all the vitamins and minerals you need to be healthy. And in this vertical diet, that’s like kind of like the foundation.

And then when we’re building somebody up, we go up vertically, we just add on top of that. Now, if you wanna add super healthy foods, you wanna add more bananas, you wanna add nutrient dense foods like sweet potatoes, you can, but if you’ve already hit all your micros and it’s time to add food, then we might add things like rice. We might add things like cream of rice, rice pasta, whatever digests really well for you, usually rice or for a fat source, maybe something that’s like macadamia nut oil, something that’s very easy to digest.

Anyways, I just wanted to mention that, like I kind of start off with like the bare minimum and then we can add from there. And then so when it’s like time to pull back, that’s normally like where I like to have that floor. And so for a natural athlete, there’s probably like some formula or something, but for women, I don’t like to take my natural women competitors below like 30 to 40, 30 to 40 grams of fat a day is like kind of like where I’m like, I start to get anxious if we have to bring them down below that.

I really haven’t, other than like for two weeks, I brought a competitor below that because I felt like that was really what we had to do to get her ready for stage. And we’ve worked for four months to get on stage. I don’t want to, but like two weeks isn’t gonna kill her.

And she’s already this far in. However, I don’t wanna stay there for very long. As soon as the day after the show, we’re coming out, we’re gonna go add back some fats.

For men, it’s gonna depend some on like body weight and size. I would say like 40 grams of fat per day is kind of like the floor. I really wouldn’t like to, and like, I don’t like to touch the floor.

I like to be a little bit above the floor, but that’s kind of the floor for natural guys. Enhanced, I don’t know if there’s a floor. I mean like 15 grams a day, 20 grams a day.

Luckily, I haven’t had anyone on the enhanced side that’s really had a prep that’s been like hell to where we have to do that. So I’ve been grateful there, but like, yeah, if needed, that we have more room to pull just because their body doesn’t need the fats to make these hormones. Carbohydrates is really not a floor other than really for vegan athletes, like you are gonna have a lot of like incidental carbs, even with protein powders, even with tofu, even with very, very lean sources.

So again, I like to keep carbs higher as far as health, not health, performance, training performance. Now back to the whole coaching thing, there’s always like exceptions, right? Well, the lower fat, higher carbs seems to work well for the majority of a prep for most people.

I have noticed though, some of my people, enhanced and natural, for some reason seem to do better with a bit of more of a fat loading approach during peak week than a carbohydrate based approach. And in the case in point, I had an athlete that ended up after their night show, had their regular sweet potatoes like they wanted, but they added some nut butter to it. Next day, woke up significantly more full.

And I was like, what’d you do different? Oh, I added in like an extra 60 grams of nut butter on top. I was like, all right, we got a show in two weeks, let’s try this again next week.

And we, instead of pushing the carbs really high, because I was having trouble adding body weight back to her, we pushed the fat a bit higher and the look was better and the look stayed. So like for her next prep, we’ll still drive fat low during the prep, but when it’s time to refeed and go through that peak week and try and present her best look on stage, we’ll use a little bit higher fats. So every body responds different.

Now I know every prep is different too. I know this isn’t like the magic silver bullet that’s gonna work guaranteed, but it’s just another aspect to look at. So, okay, I know I went down a rabbit hole again, as I seem to usually do.

What were the other questions?

[Ben:]

The only other one I was curious about is, do you think that some of the recommendations for these like really high carb, really low fat diets is related to insulin usage in enhanced competitors?

[John:]

No, I think you hit the nail on the head more earlier that it’s harder to store protein or carbohydrates as body fat versus fats are. I also think for most people, we perform better on higher carbs. I just think humans were meant to run on carbs.

Our brains function better, our muscles are literally driven by carbs. Yes, they’re repaired by protein, but they’re driven by carbohydrates. And I think almost to the point of just it being difficult to get 1,000 grams of carbs a day without 100 grams of fat, like other than that being like a slight difficulty in planning, it makes more sense to go higher carb.

And what’s funny is like a lot of people don’t know this. When I go out to eat with my brother, we’ll get a pizza and he’ll be like, oh my God, that’s so many carbs. And I’m like, actually dude, I can get five to 600 carbs a day, no problem.

But there’s in this one pizza, 150 grams of fat, that’s the problem. I also think from a satiety perspective, it’s easier to push carbs higher than fats. I just in general, like if you’ve got to eat 6,000 calories a day, I would make the majority of that carbs.

From the enhanced side though, we do see better nutrient partitioning with enhanced individuals. They seem to be able to shuttle more of those carbs into the muscles. The issue with enhanced competitors is that you’re going to be taking in more food.

And other things in your body might start to need to compensate for that. So like your natural insulin production, if you’re like me taking five to 700 grams of carbs a day, almost every day, it’s kind of like your pancreas is taking little hits every day. So I can only speak from my own experience here.

I haven’t used the enhanced side. I’ve used insulin with very many of my clients. And in my own journey, I have used insulin, but it’s not quite the way people think.

A lot of people think, oh, you’re going to go on insulin and you’re going to get huge, you’re going to get swole, you’re going to use 1,000 carbs and get jacked immediately and be super strong. The way my coach employs insulin is more of from a health perspective. It’s a long-term game approach.

Now I’m not doing like 20 to 50 units. I’m doing like three units, three times a day, which if anybody knows, that’s a very small amount, like less than a diabetic would use. However, we pair it pretty strategically.

We usually do it with like the first meal of the day. And then I believe with the pre-workout and post-workout meal, they’re usually both higher carbohydrate meals. And the way that works is it’s not like this great muscle building, using all those carbs to build muscle.

But what it does is it allows my pancreas to not have to work so hard a few times per day. Because it’s basically, if you’re taking in 800 carbs a day, your pancreas is like constantly working to produce the insulin to help shuttle those carbs where they need to be. So in this case, if we just use a little bit of insulin, it’s like, hey, pancreas, you don’t have to work right now.

You can take a little break. We’ll use you at the other meals. And what that has allowed me to do is keep my blood sugar more in check during off seasons with really high calorie intakes.

But for prep, I’ve never used insulin in a prep. I know some people like to because it can give you better pumps. But I mean, your insulin sensitivity should be pretty high in prep anyways.

You know, you’re not taking in as many carbs and you’re doing more cardio. So yeah, I think final thing here, kind of like on the super high carb, lower fat for these enhanced competitors, that’s just where their digestion is best. At the end of the day, I think what limits like the super elite bodybuilders on the enhanced side is not how much drugs they can take, not how much training they can do.

It’s how much food can they eat without blowing out their midsection. And so when you’re at 8,000 calories a day and I’m not really there, but like some guys are, some of the top guys are, that’s so much food to take in. And you almost wanna think like, what do you eat when you’re sick?

You eat rice, you eat crackers, bananas, like eat soups, like easy to digest foods. That’s more of what you wanna eat. Now, I guarantee no pro bodybuilder at 280, 290, 300 pounds eating beans and rice.

Like it’s just too much fiber there. Same thing, like even veggie intake. They probably do more of the greens powders than actual vegetables because it’s just gonna be easier on their digestive system.

And we’re not going for ultimate health here, guys. We’re going for who’s the freakiest 300 pound dude on stage. That’s really, okay.

I feel like I’ve talked a lot.

[Ben:]

I wanna touch on that last point. I can’t say that I can directly relate to what you were just speaking about with needing to get food in, but I can say the last time that I reached the peak of my off season, I was eating around 4,500 calories every single day. And that was a lot for me.

So I had to get creative with some of those strategies that you mentioned. It was a couple of liquid meals per day where it was pretty much just shakes that had a lot of stuff like bananas. There was maybe some dates in there.

I was having some fruit juice. I was having a lot of rice, like you mentioned, different kinds of rice, because there’s also, I think, a component of, like you have to keep the meals interesting, like you were saying earlier. Like if it’s all one kind of thing, like that kind of monotonous texture can be difficult.

So I was having rice, and then I was also having rice crackers in that same bowl because one was crunchy and one was like a little bit softer. I found that I was having to vary my carb sources a lot so that I actually wanted to have an appetite for these meals. And I think that’s really important when you are trying to get a lot of food and you have to keep your appetite in a good place.

And I think that when you have meals that are super high in fat, they’re taking a long time to digest. You’re just not ready for that next meal the time you need it. And a lot of these bodybuilders who have to eat a lot of food, they’re having to do six, seven, eight meals per day just to get the food in.

And if you’re spending more than an hour or two digesting that, you’re not gonna be ready for that next meal. And I think that’s a reason in itself why it makes a lot of sense to go for this lower fat, higher carbohydrate approach. And I could also see it being the case where if your blood sugar is not in a good place, it’s like chronically elevated.

I could be wrong here, but I’m pretty sure that blood sugar kind of like ebbs and flows has to do with digestion as well. Like that kind of that ghrelin and leptin pathway. And so if you’re in this state where you’re not digesting your food well, it’s not going through you efficiently, your hunger is probably not gonna be in a good place either.

So I think all of these kind of factors play in there. And I want to know kind of off the back of that, how important in your eyes is it to find food sources that digest well for you? Maybe not just for like the 250, 300 pound bodybuilder, but just like the everyday client, maybe the competitive bodybuilder or the gen pop person.

And I guess at the extreme ends, do you find that meal frequency kind of what I was touching on there with like making sure that you are spacing your meals out, maybe not like having a massive meal at one point in the day, and then maybe like, then you can’t eat for another five or six hours. And then that kind of having a cascading effect there. Like, do you find it important to try to get into a rhythm where you’re eating similar meals at similar times each day and having more frequent meals?

Do you find that that helps versus having like a couple of large meals throughout the day for competitors who need to eat a lot?

[John:]

I’m gonna answer that in reverse order. So starting with the meal sizing, back when I was eating, I was, when I was younger, I actually ate more food, which is interesting in and of itself. There were periods of time where I was doing over 5,000 calories a day consistently.

And I would get a biweekly, once every two weeks, I would get a meal off plan. And usually I’d pick pancakes. And I noticed that I’d eat that pancake meal, they’d be very high in fat too.

You know, of course there’s butter and stuff, vegan pancakes, of course, guys, butter and walnuts. And on those days, those were the hardest days to get my calories in. Because then I didn’t want to eat like for another three to four hours.

And now I’m starting to get meals behind. So I think that meal frequency is important. I think you hit the nail on the head, Ben.

Your insulin spikes hardest if you just have carbohydrates by themselves. Like if you look at the glycemic index, certain foods will spike your insulin more than others if they’re eaten by themselves. That’s how the glycemic index works.

If you take something like white potatoes with a high glycemic index, but you pair it with protein, they slow down their digestion. You pair it with even another carb with oats, they’re gonna slow down their digestion. You pair it with fats, it slows down the digestion.

So bodybuilders having very high carbohydrate meals and relatively lower fat, but still paired with protein, kind of allows that insulin spike to occur, drop, the digestion finishes, and then it’s ready like a conveyor belt for the next meal. If you have a lot of fat, your insulin might be kind of raised throughout the whole day. So again, from a health perspective, your body might just start shutting down sooner.

You might have to start using insulin sooner or even get to a point where just digestion isn’t gonna work. So back to meal frequency, I think it’s person to person dependent. I would really probably never put a competitor on less than four meals a day and probably not more than seven, like seven’s really kind of pushing it.

As far as the consistency of the meals, like you said, like you can do shakes. I’ve talked to some pros that do like 70,000 calories a day. They won’t do shakes anymore.

Now they might do like a protein bowl, but they won’t do a liquid meal because there are aspects of chewing your food and that’s where digestion begins is in your mouth, the saliva and enzymes that are created when you chew your food. So if you’re gonna do a smoothie, I would recommend like trying to like fake chew it as you’re doing it, like if that’s how you have to get your food down. But for them, they’re mostly finding ways to get insane volumes of food down in more compact ways.

So I love cream of rice, but it does carry a lot of water with it. You might be better off using a rice pasta or even just regular rice because there’s not as much water in it. You could probably mix protein powder in regular white rice and get it down.

I know bodybuilders will use dextrose in white rice. It’s just like literally adding like carbs on top of carbs. Things like dates or date syrup work well.

Trying to pick off the top of my head, other like crazy things. A lot of fruit juice. You can add in eight ounces of orange juice with six meals a day.

That’s another thousand calories probably. Like there’s ways to like play the system and that’s kind of where the higher level coaching comes into play is how to do that. And I guess to wrap that into another question that you had asked is like how important for lifestyle all the way up to enhance geared competitors is digestion and finding foods that digest well for them.

I think it’s imperative. I think it’s one of, you know, the two things that I feel I do the best and need to have done for my clients are training footage. So I can see how they’re training and then picking optimal diets.

I love the simplicity of if it fits your macros. However, so many people mess that up and just don’t pick what works well for their body. So many people tell me like on the foods, what do you like?

I’ll ask them before they sign up with me. Oh, I like kale. I like broccoli, cauliflower and beans.

And I say, okay, cool. How does your stomach feel after a kale meal? Well, I get some gas and it hurts a little bit, but then it’s okay.

I’m like, how about beans? So lots of gas. Okay, what about broccoli?

Oh, stomach hurts a little bit, but I’m like, okay, you love all these foods. Why do you love them? Oh, because they’re healthy.

Well, they’re not working for you. You’re telling me you’re gonna like, let’s try spinach, asparagus, green beans instead, mushrooms, squash. Those typically work better for people.

And so I don’t, there’s not a single client I have that has an original meal plan from me that has broccoli in it. You’re like, what? I’m vegan or not.

It’s tofu rice and broccoli or chicken rice and broccoli. It’s like, nah, not with me. Like, it just on average doesn’t digest well for people.

So yeah, I think finding foods that work well for you is hugely important. And how do you figure that out? Like, yes, I’m a coach.

Yes, I try to help troubleshoot, but I really have to play with each client to find out what works well for them. Things that allow us to figure this out is having a set meal plan, eating the same four to five meals in the same order for a week or two. That usually helps us narrow it down.

Because then they’re like, oh, how’s your digestion this week? Oh, a little bit of gas after some meals. I’m like, which ones?

They’re like, oh, meal two and meal five. Okay, great. That’s a ton of information for me.

So I’ll go look at meal two. Oh, we have oatmeal. Hmm, maybe there’s too much fiber for this individual.

Maybe we need to try cream of rice instead of oatmeal. Or maybe there’s like some spinach in this meal. Like maybe spinach isn’t digesting well for them.

So I’ll make a swap. I’ll change out the carb source. I’ll change out the veggie.

Usually one at a time, because otherwise there’s too many variables. And then why is meal five not digesting well? This should be a really easy meal to digest.

Hmm, maybe it’s them. Maybe it’s like we have TVP in this meal, and TVP just doesn’t work for some people. So we try Say Grace, or we’ll try Seitan or another protein source.

Or maybe it’s a total volume thing. Maybe by meal five, this is an enhanced competitor in the off season. The food is so high.

Maybe we just need to get really creative and find ways to pull down on the size of that meal, and then maybe implement some other things to help them better digest the other meals. I have been, for digestion purposes, I have like kind of a list of what I like to do with every client. I like every client to have some sort of vegan yogurt in their plan.

I like every client to have another probiotic food, whether that’s kimchi, sauerkraut, something that’s fermented. It could even be tempeh. Something like that, some fermented foods.

I like, especially when calories are higher, and it’s not like a pre-contest phase, to have some mango or pineapple in there, because I feel those are fruits that digest well by themselves, but they also carry some other things, some enzymes that help the client digest protein better. What are the other tips? I’m giving away all my tips and tricks here, but I have morning digestion drinks that I might have them do with like aloe vera, apple cider vinegar, some glutamine.

Glutamine’s not really great for building muscle, but it’s good for digestion, so lots of little tips and tricks there to try to nail down digestion, because if digestion is good, everything else flows well, and I think a lot of people are starting to figure out that gut health relates to brain health. It’s like interlinked, so if your gut health is off, brain health’s gonna be off. You’re not gonna be feeling great in a number of ways.

Okay, spoke a lot there. Happy to hear your thoughts.

[Ben:]

Just on that last point, yeah, I remember reading this book where they were talking about that, and these like short-chain fatty acids that your gut bacteria produces that then go up to your brain and have cascading effects, so I think that whole topic is fascinating in and of itself, and I think when you feel good, you’re going to do everything better in your life, and that relates to nutrition, that relates to just mood, that relates to your performance in the gym, so I completely agree. I think finding foods that digest well for you, because there’s so many foods that have, you know, let’s say you wanna get a certain micronutrient. You could find probably 10 or 20 foods that have a high amount of that micronutrient.

There’s no one food that you have to have, and I’ve also found the same thing where I think the cruciferous vegetables, some people can do them okay, but I’d say for most people, they just don’t digest them well, especially if it gets above a certain amount. Like for some people, maybe they have a food that gives them trouble past a certain quantity, and they can have lower quantities, but for some people, it’s like any amount of that thing is going to probably cause some digestive distress, and it’s, like you said, it’s different for everyone, so I think it is helpful to have those systems in place, having something like a food diary where you can just make notes of, okay, after this meal, I didn’t feel so good, or, you know, after this one, I felt really good.

I felt like everything was kind of just flowing. So I want to transition next into a variety of topics. You mentioned peak week, so I’d like to know for yourself, I was actually curious about what you were talking about there with clients that yield fat load versus carbohydrate load, and that’s a little bit more of a nuanced discussion point here, so I think I’ll ask a question about that, but I’ll kind of expand the scope of peak week.

So for those of you who maybe aren’t a competitive bodybuilder, you’re not familiar with this term, or maybe you’ve seen kind of people talk about it, but you’re not sure exactly what it is, peak week is usually the final week leading into a competition in which you might make some tweaks to somebody’s plan in order to try to make them look their best for that one moment where they’re on the stage, and there’s some variables that you can manipulate when it comes to nutrition.

That’s usually mainly what we’re doing, supplementation, which would include kind of PEDs in this conversation, or maybe not PEDs, but outside assistance, and then talking about things like fluids, training. So I would love to know what are some of the differences in peak week for your natural competitors versus your enhanced competitors, and something that I guess going back to that question of fat loading versus carbohydrate loading, usually when you come into peak peak, you’re not very high in glycogen because you’ve been depleted for a long time for your contest prep, and so your fat intake’s probably been pretty low, your carbohydrate intake has probably been pretty low, and when you top some of these stores by eating more of these in this week, you kind of fill out, your muscles look a little bit bigger, you can pull water, or in this case, a triglycerides into your muscle to kind of just give them a little bit more of a pop.

Something that I found with smaller competitors, I think is that usually they might benefit from more of a fat loading approach and not going as hard on the glycogen loading, because I think usually you just don’t need to load as much glycogen for those competitors, so maybe female competitors, smaller male competitors, but for those really big, maybe male competitors, you know, you’re a heavyweight bodybuilder, whether that be natural or enhanced, I find that maybe taking more of a aggressive approach when it comes to glycogen loading, carbohydrate loading.

So I’d love to know kind of just generally, difference between natural and enhanced for peak week, and then have you seen any trends when it comes to certain people doing better with like a carbohydrate load versus a fat load?

[John:]

So, peak week in and of itself could be a whole episode. Usually though, my main tenets are about the same. It’s a great peak week for me if you can, as the client, send me photos each day that week and I could basically say, all right, we’re ready to roll on stage.

It’s Wednesday. Oh, the show’s on Saturday. I’m like, no, you look great.

That’s usually where I like. I like to be ready early. I don’t like to still be trying to lose fat during peak week.

Really, it’s about reducing systematic fatigue as much as possible from all the cardio they’ve been doing. And then like you said, filling them back out, trying to find the best stuff to fill them back out with. So, biggest difference between natural and enhanced is just what you’re allowed to do.

With an enhanced competitor, you can use diuretics. I don’t really like to. I’ll admit my experience there is mostly personal use.

I don’t have a big track record of using them with athletes. I’ve used them on select competitors that were already pretty established, had already used them before, and were pretty familiar with their bodies. And I just, to be honest, cut down the dose of the diuretics because that is one area that you gotta be careful of.

A number of competitors have died from messing up their diuretic usage. And so, you know, you accidentally inject an entire vial of testosterone, you’re gonna be just fine. You might have some estrogen or some mood swings, but like you’re not gonna die.

You accidentally do too much diuretics, and I’m talking like two pills instead of one, or one pill instead of a half, you can die. And so I don’t like to play those risks. Not when, you know, with other established coaches have done well with athletes without using them.

So that’s an opportunity that you could use with an enhanced competitor. Outside of that, you have things like insulin. Again, I’m not as well versed in using insulin in a peak week.

I feel like, again, it’s also, it’s like a double-edged sword. It might help you a little bit. It could potentially hurt you a lot.

Really with enhanced people, you get to use orals, oral steroids, and those are faster acting. Injectable steroids usually stop about a week out from a show because you’re more likely to retain water, have, I mean, you really will retain water. They just affect your hormones.

So for the most part, I cut all injectables out about a week out. So then we can pick back up and still have those androgens in play by using oral steroids. Oral steroids also really do kind of super load the muscles.

I mean, you can gain 10 pounds in two days on oral steroids. That’s not muscle, but like you’re just storing a lot more water and carbs. So it’ll keep that full look.

You can keep an athlete fuller and then maybe use more carbs to carve them up if they’re enhanced. So you just have more tools at your disposal. However, it’s almost like, you know, you got this super cool German car with 500 features.

If one of them goes wrong though, and it’s electrical, the car is not starting. Kind of the same with enhanced bodybuilding. You got more tools, but you also got more opportunities to mess up.

Outside of that, it’s very similar for peaking a natural versus an enhanced athlete. Things that I do is usually pull down on cardio leading into peak week for both. I normally start, I like to feed my athletes a little bit earlier, usually Wednesday, Thursday.

That way we’re starting to have less of a need to feed them as much on Friday or Saturday. And I’m not really trying to carve you up on Saturday. Like at that point, I want your waist to come in nice and tight.

And I’d rather you be a little bit flat than a blown out waist. Other things, I learned this from Corrine Sutton, but I pretty much pull all veggies out on Wednesday. Assuming it shows on Saturday, it just seems to keep fiber down.

Digestion is a little bit better. I usually drop protein in peak week. That gives us the ability to eat more carbs and more fats.

And again, for digestion, I don’t really manipulate water too much. Even I’ve had an athlete turn pro, I never mentioned what her water should be. And that might sound like, Ooh, you messed up.

But like I was looking at her every few hours, every day for the two weeks before the show. I just said, keep doing what you’re doing here. Like with in regards to the water, like what you’ve been doing is looking great.

I don’t wanna like water load you and then water cut you and like mess with your electrolytes. And like, you’re looking fucking phenomenal. And she won the whole show.

So it’s like, it worked. Other people I gotta, I do dial in their water a bit more because I know they need that. And I guess that’s a part of coaching is knowing your athletes, knowing where they’re at.

Normally I will push sodium up throughout the week and normally will push water up throughout the week and do maybe like, like let’s say we’re doing three gallons of water a day for an enhanced athlete. Friday, I might have them do a gallon and a half and Saturday I’ll just judge based on how they look when they wake up. And then with the Friday with that gallon and a half, it’s usually the first half of the day and then kind of just cut it off at night just so they can flush out the rest of the water, have some water with their meals so that the carbs have something to pair to and go into the muscles.

But like really, that’s about it. I mean, that’s my, peak week is not a time to do extreme things. If you do extreme things, you’re probably just not ready to get on stage in my opinion.

Every individual has been different. Every peak week has been different, even for myself. On the enhanced side, I will say like for me, I came in stupid lean and stupid flat.

Like I was 210 pounds a day on my show. I started prep at like 265 pounds, so 260. I really over dieted for that show, went home, got high, or no, we went out to dinner, had a couple of burger, vegan burgers, went home and ate like 15 green bites.

Like I binged, I binged eight. But the next morning I woke up 217, had a bit of a gut, but holy shit, my arms were like two inches bigger. So I really should have probably found something that was easy on my stomach that I could have really loaded with.

And like the green bites, it sounds silly. You can support me, use all caps, code hashtag bodybuildingvegan, check them out. But you’ve had them, you know they’re good, but they digest really well.

They use like rice flour and avocado oil for the fats, some sugar and some pea protein isolate for the protein powder. I literally, I jokingly told my coach, I’m kind of serious, like next prep, I just want to eat like 10 of them the day before the show on top of my normal diet, and I bet you I’ll look good. So it is about finding that balance of how do you fill out your muscles without blowing out your stomach.

On the enhanced side, that’s usually more of the issue.

[Ben:]

Really don’t have anything to add to that. Like everything that you were saying, I was nodding along, I’m like, yep, that’s pretty much exactly what I’ll do. I think, like you said, probably loading a little bit earlier in the week, Wednesday, Thursday, and then having Friday kind of be like a check day or a cleanup day.

If they need to load a little bit more, you can do that. If you need, okay, we loaded a little bit too hard, we’ll go a little bit lighter today. And then as you mentioned, probably keeping water pretty similar, maybe increasing a bit as the carbs are coming up, increasing sodium a little bit as the carbs coming up, because to store glycogen, it’s a water and sodium dependent process.

So you need to have those to a certain extent, at least remain the same or probably increasing a little bit as you’re loading. And then Saturday, yeah, we’re not really feeding anyone. We’re trying to kind of just keep things with where they’re at.

If they wake up looking good on stage, they’re going to remain looking good. So it’s probably just gonna be, so they’re not starving if they do eat anything that day. Do you have time for one more question?

[John:]

I’ll give you one more and then I gotta pee.

[Ben:]

All right, that’s it. So you mentioned last time we talked about rate of gain or rate of loss being a little bit more tricky for enhanced competitors because there’s more variables when it does come to maybe water retention from the use of anabolics or kind of other things that you might be taking. So how important do you feel that progress photos and the visuals are for somebody who is enhanced because the scale weight data is less reliable?

And I guess kind of tagging onto that, how do you assess progress when you’re going through diet phases or gaining phases with competitors who are maybe enhanced versus naturally? Do you find that there are big differences? Are you relying more on visuals versus kind of that scale weight data?

[John:]

Yeah, everything just happens faster for enhanced athletes usually. So, I mean, like in my own journey, I was like 180 pounds when I started TRT. I think we started like 70 milligrams per week of testosterone.

That’s a very small dose, very small. I kept my diet and training 100% the same. I was 189 pounds in 10 days.

That was the only change was adding a little bit of testosterone. And did I gain nine pounds of muscle? Hell no.

But my body did start to shuttle more carbs and retain a bit of water. I seem to be that type of athlete that just retains water with everything. Like certain people will think certain drugs like, oh, Anovar gets you lean.

Like, no, I gain a lot of water when I take Anovar. Pretty much everything I take, I gain a lot of water. So, those fluctuations need to be factored in.

So, usually what I have my athletes do is like if somebody’s new, they come to me, they’re enhanced or they’re gonna go that route. We get a baseline going prior. Try to find maintenance, get their maintenance calories.

Maybe they’re 4,000 calories a day, they’re 200 pounds. All right, maybe even more, 220 pounds. All right, we’re going to add in these injectables.

Now, usually, there’s so much to go into here. Ester weight is a factor, like testosterone propionate is going to absorb and be usable way faster than something like testosterone ananthate or even like longer ester drugs. So, it’s probably getting too much into the weeds.

But for example, this athlete, they might start the injectable drugs and go from 200 pounds to 210 pounds within the course of a week or two. And it’s not really they’ve built any muscle, it’s just increased glycogen storage in their muscles. And then after that’s kind of leveled out, that’s when I like to start making the changes.

So, now our new baseline is 230 pounds and we want to get average, on average gain maybe, I don’t know, a pound a week, maybe, maybe not. It depends on their experience level, depends on how they look in the mirror, depends on their training performance. I got one athlete, we introduced gear into play for him again, and he was up like seven pounds in a week.

And I looked at his photos and I just kept going back, forth, back, forth, back, forth. The seven pounds up photo, he looked leaner. All right, we’re fucking killing it, dude.

How are you feeling in the gym? Oh, great, you know, hitting good numbers. And probably not from the drugs so much, like it’s gonna take them four to six weeks for him to really get stronger from the drugs, but having those carbohydrates more stored more effectively, more water, more glycogen, better leverages, he’s already feeling better in the gym.

And probably some of the psychological, he’s like, oh, I’m seven pounds up on the scale, I’m gonna push harder today. I swear, like there is a huge psychological component to drugs that really just changes people. They’ll train harder on cycle, just because they know they’re on cycle.

And train less hard off cycle, because they’re like, oh, I’m not on. And it’s like, no, you still need to train as hard as you possibly can. Pretend like natural athletes, they don’t get to go on and come off.

They’re always training hard and so should you. I don’t even remember what the original question was.

[Ben:]

Let’s just say you’re taking somebody through a prep. How much do you look at the rate of loss there? Is it more so you’re not like, okay, because I know sometimes when I’m coaching someone, and I currently only work with natural competitors, I’m very much looking at the rate of loss and looking, okay, this is our timeline.

If we’re not here at this rate of loss, by this certain time, I’m probably gonna make a change. But it seems like because there might be more variables at play for someone who is maybe in a prep, maybe you’re introducing some orals, and there’s just maybe more complicating factors there when it comes to their scale weight. Do you find that you’re going less on rate of loss and you’re using more visuals to see if they’re getting leaner?

Or what’s kind of your thought process there when you’re thinking about making a change?

[John:]

Yeah, I think really on the hand side, you have to take a more holistic approach and you can’t dial, yeah, I do look more at the scale with my natural athletes because like speaking personally, I’ve had numerous preps where I’ve stayed 235 pounds or 240 pounds for two or three months. But I’m still in prep, I’m still doing cardio, I’m still on my diet. And the thing is, it’s just water retention is starting to occur more just from a stress standpoint.

And I think I’m probably still building muscle at certain times. So it’s like a recomp effect. Like in three months, I’m almost the same weight, but I look three or 4% body fat lower visually in the mirror.

I haven’t checked, so I don’t know for sure. And if we were just trying to achieve scale weight, like if I was a fighter or something and I had to clock in at a certain weight, we’d probably have to sacrifice a lot of muscle to lose the weight. So it can be almost a mindfuck, like, oh, I’ve been in prep for two months and I haven’t lost any weight, but are you leaner?

Oh, yeah, okay, well, on stage, you don’t get to hold up a card and say how much you weigh, you get to show how lean you look. So yeah, the variables there make it a good bit more difficult. And it just takes more experience and more practice and more of like, not a natural bodybuilding, it’s easy by any means or easy to coach.

It’s just, it’s maybe more straightforward. It’s still a hard game. It’s still a very difficult game to dial things in.

It’s almost just like with the enhanced guys that the degree of variables, it can, it’s almost like a three-pointer shooting game versus a three-pointer. Like, it’s not easy to shoot a free point and you’re going up against other people shooting free points, so you gotta be better than them. And it’s like a three-pointer, maybe the enhanced is like, there’s more areas for this to go wrong.

So you can be just as good of a player, but miss the mark more often, I guess is kind of how that is, is what I view it from a coaching standpoint. And I’ll shut up here, cause I do gotta pee and we’ll have to do another one. Maybe pee.

[Ben:]

Honestly, that was probably the last question that I had. So that was pretty comprehensive, although I’m sure we’ll have you on again, not too long because I always enjoy our chats. I think we get into a lot of the both higher level concepts, but then also kind of just like, things that everyday folks who are trying to get into fitness can pick up.

So I think there was a wide spectrum of topics we covered that I think whoever’s listening, you’ll be able to take something away from this. And if you did enjoy, please be sure to give the podcast five stars on whatever platform you’re listening to. If you’re watching on YouTube, give it a like, give it a comment if you wanna see John back on again.

And please be sure to reshare, to tag John at the Bodybuilding Vegan. You can tag me at Ben A. Mitchell.

If you’re looking to do any sort of coaching, John is a coach himself. We do coaching here at Vegan Proteins. You can head over to veganproteins.com if you’d like to learn more. Thank you, John, for your time again today and we will see you all in the next one. Thanks guys.