S6:E1 - Nutrition Mistakes Fitness and Physique Competitors Make

You ever wanted to compete, get in the best shape of your life, get absolutely shredded? Well, competitors from all over make numerous mistakes when it comes to nutrition and getting up on stage. In this episode of our YouTube show, we're going to be talking about the biggest mistakes competitors make, from starting calories too low to overdoing the If It Fits Your Macros plan to everything in between. I'm joined by our terrific coaches today, Amy and Master Coach Tyrone.

Yeah, just on that point, The biggest one to really start off with, and I think is one of the ones that sets everyone on the back foot, is starting, starting too low. It's generally a thing with a lot of female competitors that I see. They'll come in and be like, I want to compete in 20, 24 weeks or 16 weeks, whatever. And they're already on 1,800, 1,200 calories, whatever it is. It ends up equating to a 40% deficit of what their baseline is. And then it really just gives us, gives them nowhere to go.

So we just back up from that just a tiny bit and just give some context to it. So basically what you're saying is that And you probably have multiple examples, I'm guessing, of this is when a competitor starts with us, you know, week 1, let's say, and the show is, I don't know, like 24 weeks away. They're coming at week 1 at 1,200 calories.

And it's not that 1,200 calories is bad because obviously it becomes that number that everyone just picks out of the air. It's more that it's already quite low for where they are. And that's probably going to be where you want to finish them. If not, ideally you want to finish them higher. Coming into comp. It's just more that once they're that low, you've got nowhere to go.

Yes. And I remember I've been doing competition prep for a number of years. My first comp as a competitor was 2004, and I did everything you could possibly do wrong in getting in shape and getting on stage. And I think I started my prep around 800 to 1,000 calories. And where do you go?

You do—

where do you go from there?

I'll tell you where you go from there. Just keep increasing cardio. So my cardio was— we went from 1 hour a day to 2 hours a day. And it wasn't until I really started learning— and I had a terrible experience in 2004 competing, terrible experience— and that really was the impetus for me to go out and become an expert, because my experience was so bad that I didn't want anyone else to go through what I went through. I'll give you context, Amy. You know, like, people, how they manipulate water? Oh yeah, yeah. So I stopped drinking water for 4 days, but not only that, I also went to a sauna to try and dry it even further. So this was like my peak week nutrition. It was horrible. There weren't even carbs in my peak week nutrition. The advice I was getting was completely bad. So as I say, this is the impetus. But after that, and learning what I've learned, I noticed that it was a common theme, just I think due to the bodybuilding culture of you have to make it hard and it should feel hard. Yes, it should be hard, but it shouldn't kill you. And there's hormetic adaptation where you actually want your body to recover, and there should be periods of overfeeding and recovery and periods where you're going to push the body a bit harder. But those periods need to be regulated. And what I see is the big problem is people just think hard equates to good, and it's never the case.

Yeah, 100%. And I think there's always going to be that element of hard, and there's always going to be the element of it's going to suck because you're going to get leaner than you ever have been before and leaner than your body wants to be, and it doesn't want to be there. Okay, and from that homeostatic point of view. It wants to, you know, it needs— you need a bit of body fat in order to function every day. But at the same time, it shouldn't be 30-odd weeks of dieting to the bottom of the, you know, the depths of hell, and then doing 3 hours of cardio and 20,000 steps a day.

With that said, you know what else is a big mistake, right? Big mistake that I see is people who are 30 kilos overweight, so they've got 30 kilos of fat to lose, and they decide, I'm gonna— or 20 kilos of fat to lose, and they want to do a comp in 12 weeks. That's also, I think, a mistake because people— the body's only going to lose body fat at the rate it can. And we're talking about homeostasis and the hormetic adaptation. If we try and get the body and force it to be leaner by simply stripping back the calories, there is going to be that supercompensation that occurs once these people start eating, quote unquote, like back into maintenance and their body hasn't fully adjusted at a weight set point and they blow up completely. Instead of looking to try and lose 30 kilos as a comp prep or lose 20 kilos as a comp prep in 12 weeks, really what the approach should be is get to a healthy body weight, and then the comp prep from a nutritional perspective should be much easier. And this is where you find that the extreme comp preps, extreme diets, I think, manifest for a lot of people and create a lot of problems, is because it's just, I want to get that, I want to get that as fast as possible, and the only tool they can think of is calorie deficit. But the body's so much more complex than just using calorie deficit as a means to get that outcome.

Yeah, which is definitely why we've got some systems in place now. You know, we've got systems in place in terms of allocating a certain period of time where it's going to be, okay, this is where we're going to be setting you up in terms of going, okay, we need to build your calories up. Let's say you come in, you've got 30 kilos to lose, you go, I want to compete in 12 weeks, and it's like, well, no, you're not going to. And if you are, then we're not going to take you there. There's plenty of coaches that probably would, and unfortunately, you know, Fortunately for you and for us, it's not us, because we want to set you up where you come out the other side of comp prep better. And that, whether that be, no, you're not going to come out, you know, absolutely comp lean. We will, you know, like I'm speaking to one of my competitors at the moment, I said to her, you know, you're probably going to put on about 5 kilos afterwards, but it's a good 5 kilos.

That's completely normal as well.

100%. You don't want to walk, you're not going to walk around comp prep, yeah, comp stage lean. And the goal is to put 5 kilos on straight off, you know, within 4 to 8 weeks after you get off stage.

I think people are so stuck on comp prep needs to be hard and like you have to really grind to get to stage. At the end of the day, the judges don't care. They don't care how hard you push. They don't give a shit. If the person next to you did it easier than them, like, like, that's a good thing. The fact that you got to stage and it was easy is better than it grinding to the end. So I think getting stuck in that mindset of it has to be hard, it has to suck, it has to this, it's like Yeah, if it's done wrong, of course it's going to suck. At the end of the day, it's going to suck.

Anything wrong and it always sucks.

You competed last year for your first time.

Yeah, absolutely.

Mr. Tyrone, you guided her. How do you want to say, like, how was your, your process nutritionally? What do you found that you found there?

Yeah, so for me, I found that because we did— we had a build, we had a really long process leading into comp. We didn't just diet straight in because when I walked in the door, I wasn't—

How long was that process?

Oh, it was over a year.

Over a year. So what were you doing? What were you doing over that year? You started Jan?

Was it Jan or December?

Started November.

So you're in a calorie deficit, just to give some context, you're in a calorie deficit for over a year.

Absolutely not. If I walked in and said, hey, let's compete the next show that was on, I would have hated it and I probably never would have done it again.

Why do you think you would have hated it?

Because I would have been grinding, my calories would have been low, I would have been like energy horrible.

But you also had the X factor as well, which a lot of people don't get when they think comp prep, I'm just going to cut calories. You have the gut stuff going on as well at the same time.

Yeah, absolutely. I had things going on nutritionally. I just, I couldn't get my calories up at a certain point. So for me, competing at that time was just, it was wrong.

You couldn't get it up because you want to expand on that. You couldn't get up because what, the foods? Because you couldn't, you simply just couldn't eat foods that were high enough in calories because that would offend your gut.

Is that right?

Correct. Yeah. I, there's certain carbs that I just couldn't eat, and I got to a point where The more food I ate, the worse I felt. So there was no point in trying to compete at that stage. It was like, let's get the health sorted first and then let's look at competing.

And just for the people who are watching who are like, if it fits your macros diehards. So we did get, you did have a stool test. We did look at your gut, what was happening there, uncovering, because this thing with nutrition, again, it's not just calories obviously important. They do count. No one's saying they don't count, but what also counts is your overall health and wellbeing. And if you do have an overgrowth of bacteria in your gut, it can be diagnosed with a stool test and looking at what the overgrowth is there. Candida, is there an overgrowth of something else that needs to actually be treated and that's causing effects? That is going to have a downstream effect on things like protein synthesis. It's going to have downstream— well, just everything that's to do with digestion, which is obviously going to be a huge part of you getting lean.

Yeah.

And it also has an aesthetic look too. So if Amy was eating the wrong food, she'd have those almost sort of puffered looks. Well, I was pregnant. And the last thing you want to do is you want to get on stage looking over the distended cutting because you haven't looked after your health and you cut and looked at those upstream effects where, yeah, it can play a role. Not only— it will play a role not only on your health and the way you feel, but also the way you look, which at the end of the day, if you're going to do a comp, hey, look is going to be the most important thing.

So rather than the mindset of just it being hard, what I'd encourage people is you want to look for optimal. And optimal is not being in a deficit for an extended period of time without an endpoint. Optimal is kind of edging on that chaos and order. It's edging on eating enough so you can perform like a demon, but not eating so much that you smooth over.

Yeah. And then just backtracking on what Amy said, if she had competed from when she first walked in, if we had a diet, if you had a diet back then straight off the bat, you would not look anywhere as good as you did either.

And the goal of, for me, competing was I want to look my best. I wasn't just doing it to get to stage. I was doing it because I wanted to look the best I've ever looked. And for me at that time, it wasn't going to happen. So I think it does come down to is like why you want to compete. If it's because you want to be the best version of you, then is this the best version of you or is it not? And I think that's where you've got to go from there.

Client comes in, says, hey Amy, I want to get ready in 12 weeks, and you think you've got to feel like, yeah, they've got 20, 30 kilos that they've got to get to a healthy weight, let's say, or they've got gut issues. You going through that, what advice do what do you give them?

Hell no, you ain't doing it.

They're like, I want to, I want to. What else do you give them?

You're not doing it with me. That's what I say.

Yeah, but why?

Like, let's get even more like— because your firsthand experience.

Yeah, I think for me, like, it just comes— I'll just say, why do you want to compete? Like, what's the reason? Is it because you want to look a certain way? You can always look a certain way. Is it because you want to be the best version of you? Then if it is, then I can tell you now this is not going to be the best version of you. And I think putting a plan in place and working, like, okay, the end goal is competing, we're going to get there. Like, the stage isn't going anywhere, it's not gone tomorrow, the stage will always be there. And I think having that in the back of your mind is, let's get to a healthy place first, and then let's set some goals and go from there.

My favorite accent for that is, get in shape, then do a show, not get in shape to do a show.

Absolutely. It can't be the motivator, it really can't. You need to have other factors that really, um, why you want to get there.

Yeah, I agree 100%. I had one client, it was like last year actually, not Amy, another competitor I had. And when she first came to me, she was eating 2, 1 meal a day. I think I worked out it was like 800, 900 calories. Not for any reason. Well, one was because she wanted to restrict calories because she wanted to just lose weight, which wasn't working in the end anyways. But the other was because she just led a busy lifestyle. And then we took about 6 months, 6 to 9 months, but we built it up and it was just to slowly build the food up. Not only that, but She got to train harder. She then built more lean mass on the way, and in the end of the day, she ended up looking better. And then it enabled us, enabled her to actually lose body fat, body fat in a better rate than initially. Because again, she was on 800, 900, 1,000 calories when she first came. There was nowhere to go. So there was nowhere— her body had already, was already pushing back at that point, and she was constantly getting sick. She was tired, you know, near things where Like, at the end of the day, it is aesthetic as well, where you need— for females, you know, you get your hair and makeup. If you've got thin hair because you're malnourished, it's a problem. It's a problem. And it happens.

So, oh yeah, a lot of competitors like, oh, my hair just started falling out and getting thin when I started competing. It's like, that shit ain't normal, right? Yeah, shit ain't normal. Like, you're doing things that you shouldn't really be doing, and we've got to look underneath the hood, get some bloods done. Perhaps maybe your thyroid is getting ramped away.

I think you just cooked for a bit too long.

We want to go to about medium rare.

You went well done. One of the things I did early on, I learned obviously BioSignature from Charles Poliquin back in, what was it, 2009, and I implemented it across all clients and all competitors particularly. And one of the biggest mistakes that I've seen competitors make over the years is they get a nutrition plan and they get no feedback, biofeedback from that nutrition plan. And I really harp on this point a lot that biofeedback cannot be divorced from the nutrition plan. You have to have, in other words, the biofeedback. And when I say biofeedback, that's how you feel, your sex drive, your mood. Are you losing your hair? Also, are you losing body fat? Are you putting on muscle? That is by, like, how is your sleep? All of those things, that's biofeedback that informs the decisions that we make with your nutrition plan. In other words, every week I'll do a bioseq, check in with my competitors. Are you losing If the answer is yes, let's keep the diet rolling. So their diet at that point, at the start of the comp, at the start of the show, maybe they're 20 weeks out, might be 2,000, 2,400, whatever it was, high calories. I would continue to increase their calories as long as their body fat was losing. Let's add more carbs, let's add more carbs, let's add more carbs to the point. And I'd always run this and people would be like, results are so systematic because to me it was so clear. It's like once I understand the biofeedback that's happening, then making decisions, I know what I'm making decisions on. And a good example I have was actually Karim. So I was measuring him, kept increasing his calories. I think we got to about 3,500, and it got to a point where he started not to lose any weight. I think it was about 7% body fat, and he was there for 3 weeks. And then at those 3 weeks, I kept slashing his calories, going lower, going lower, going lower. I'm like, we've cut so much, you know what we need to do? We need to refeed. We did a refeed and he actually went over with the food that I recommended. He ate more, way more fats than I said. But interestingly, a week later he was 5% body fat. And it just shows that what most people do in those situations is, oh, you're stuck at 7% body fat, let's drop it. Let's drop 1,000 calories. Let's drop 500 calories.

Bring up the cardio. Yeah, yeah.

Sometimes what needs to happen for that adaptation to take place is let the body rest, completely rest, then the body does actually what it wants. There's so many examples.

A good system that I like, and I use this quite often, and especially when we are getting to the back end, is I'll do 5 low days during the training and then have 2 complete rest days where not only are they rested, but all they've got to worry about is steps. Food comes up, so they always have 2 refeed days, which then backs off. And watch, I've got one of my competitors doing it at the moment where her weight is almost like, again, systematic. Sunday, Monday, she will do 2 high days. So weight goes up on Sunday, weight goes up on Monday. Now she's online, so I don't have Biofeedback's a little bit different where I'll ask questions.

You can still get questions.

Still got questions. We still talk every week and we message a lot. So I'll watch photos, still do photos, photos every week as well. So we've got a full system in place for that. Then come Tuesday, it'll start to drop back down again. By Thursday, and I actually spoke to her today about it, this is, it's so good just how systematic this is. It's amazing. By Thursday, she'll be a kilo lighter than it was before. And then again, it's just been that same process. And I'm like, it's not broken, don't fix it. But the offset of that is Then that's my point.

Most people go, oh shit, what we should do now is just slash calories.

Yeah. And you got to remember, so the benefit from having those refeeds is like, it's one, it's a stress relief on the body, but two, it then enables like, you ask anybody after that refeed, go, I had to train the next day.

Like a beast.

It was like, well, yeah, you've just progressively overloaded everything that was stuck for the last 2 or 3 weeks. So, you know, the body's going to adapt and it's going to use up everything you just fed it.

And Amy, you've got 2 competitors now that I think will probably take out either first and second. And if they don't compete against each other, if they compete in different divisions, I think there'll be two first places. They are looking absolutely amazing, both of them. Do you want to talk about the approach that you've taken with these two girls?

Yeah, so both these two girls, like, they're coming in, they're going to compete in what, 3 and 6 weeks now? And funny enough, they actually walked in the door, they were the same weight, they were the same height, the same body fat. So they were like, you'd think that they're almost two identical girls. And the approaches— no, no, same body shapes. Same, same. I would— you would think that these girls were twins. And then it's funny enough, going through the process now, their approaches, they're both completely different. Completely different.

You mean that you can't use the same thing for the next person?

Absolutely not.

Explain how your approach has been different between the two girls.

So yeah, both these two girls, so they came to me, um, one before— not the same time, so different times. And I just went, I can't believe this, these girls are the same. And I took one girl dropped her calories down, she responded quite well. Took another girl, calories down, didn't respond quite well. So two different approaches. I've had to use refeeds with one and I haven't had to use them with another. So I think it just comes down to, again, it is all about that biofeedback. One girl was giving me great biofeedback, one girl not so, so we had to change our approach. And I think that really comes down to, again, having that plan and to be opening to changing the plan because the plan is always changing.

But I think also this is like having a coach that's going to change it for you and not One, if you're doing it yourself, you can do it yourself.

Like, good luck.

Yeah, good luck.

You're either—

it's like you've got great accountability, and I—

or even accountability, it's like, I think for me, if I was my own coach, I was like, what's the hardest thing I could do? Yeah, I'm gonna do that. And despite if it's going to work, I'm just gonna do the hardest thing. Yeah, yeah, it's not helpful, but I think that's how— or yeah, the opposite is like, what's the easiest? What's the least?

Like, which exercise do I not like on my program? Great, I'm not going to do this. The same thing with food. It's like, oh, How can I squeeze this in? Because, you know, I can make this work. And you— and as a coach, you're always going to try and justify it, aren't you?

Oh yeah. And even like myself, I said to— I'm saying to Tyrone when I was competing, I was like, this should be harder. Why aren't I struggling?

Why am I dying?

Why am I dying? Like, can you just give me something like really hard to do?

Just don't mention the fact that you lost— I was at 6 kilos in the last week.

Oh, exactly. And I was like, come on, give me more, give me more. What are you doing?

Like, this is— you lost 6 kilos in the last week?

Oh yeah, sorry. So Amy was Second comp we did last year, we were already what, 3, 4 weeks out?

Yeah.

3, 4 weeks out, came in at like 1% on the calipers. We were like, sweet, we're done. We're just gonna cruise in.

Super lean, super lean, skin folds. We're like, everything.

We're like, we're done, we're ready. I'm like, we'll just bring food up a little bit and we'll just slowly increase it, eat you into comp. And then I think it was like 2 weeks out, we walked in, I was like, like, you're looking Like, what's going on? Measured her, was like, bang, like 6% on the calories. Yeah, went up 6% in like 2 weeks. I was like, whoa, what happened? The gut.

Good question.

It was the gut.

It was a gut.

Yeah, yeah, the gut flared up. Exposure to—

no, well, I have no idea.

We don't know. Ended up having to pretty much get off, so get off what she was on. So pumpkin came out and we introduced red rice. And like, just hypothetically, or My theory would be that it was just her gut just got sick of it and caused contamination. Microbiome changed at the wrong point in time when we wanted to. And we've just had to change a carb source. Basically, I think what'd you go from 52 kilos that week before?

Yeah, I was 52 at the start of the week and then 9 days later I was down to 47.

Oh wow.

46, you got on stage at 46.

Yeah.

And it got to a point where did a peak week and you turned it around. Yeah, yeah, but it was just like Amy had more carbs in that peak week than I think she had since like she'd started building at the start of the year.

Since ever.

Yeah, yeah. And even on there, I think we got up to like 300 and like 400 grams, 400 grams of carbs. And it was just, and it was, you know, we picked and chose the carbs that she could handle previously, and then we tweaked it a little bit after she's had a bit of a flare-up. Yeah, but that, and that's the difference on what was I mean, we'll just go on, oh no, you're lying. You haven't been following the plan. On you go, get on the treadmill. See you in 3 hours.

That's where like you couldn't, you know, she was already following the calorie deficit. Yeah, you know, you're a robot.

So I'm just like, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I swear.

I had the same experience actually with Janet. It would have been 2016. It was before the Arnold Classics. I think it was the Arnold Classic. She came in and you know, Janet's always shredded, always to the point. She comes in, she says, you can't see my abs. And I was like, shut up, Janet, what are you talking about? Of course you can see your abs, you're Janet. I've never not seen your abs. She goes, no, I had a gluten exposure and it really messed me up. And I was like, whatever. I never forget, she pulled up her abs and I've never seen Janet without abs. And this is one time where I saw her and she was like— and she saw my face. She's— I could see her start to tear up.

I'm like, oh shit.

Oh no, I take it back, I take it back, I take it back.

This was 5 days— it was 5 or 6 days before a comp, right? Like, it was just my reaction because I was like, I just wasn't expecting her, like, what, like, her abs to be that smooth because the day before, the week before, she was so shredded. But we had to— I got at the muscle testing table, my old party trick. Got the muscle testing table, did the whole kinesiology thing, and figured out that the only carb that would settle her gut was white potato mashed. So she mashed like almost like a baby. Yeah, you mash potato for a baby. That was her free carb. But you think about it, like the logic is that people go, oh, you know, kinesiology is all woo-woo stuff. But if you really think about that, like mashing up the potato, like she's just basically drinking almost pure glucose from the potato. But that was the carb that we used for a carb up, and she was able to just— that was the only thing that wouldn't offend her gut, and which was able to get in so much carbs that way, which turned around Did she look as good as she would have looked if she didn't have the flare-up? Probably not, theoretically, obviously, because you can only speculate. But she did turn around. I think she won as well. I can't remember. I think she did win. I don't know if she won the overall, but she did win her class, which I thought was spectacular given 5 days earlier had this gluten flare-up behind the scenes.

It comes down to a plan. Like, really, you just, you need a plan in place. You need a coach and you need someone to keep you accountable as well. I think too many people just think it's one size fits all, and it's just not.

You need to be able to think on the spot. Yeah, like I said, like, you're gonna have that, you know, that freak out. I remember when I measured Amy and she had that flare-up, and I've just gone, same thing. I'm like, oh shit, what are we gonna do? Oh no, you need it. It was like, I was like straight on the phone, and I was on, I was talking to Christine because she was looking after Amy's cut at the time, and I was like, all right, what, what's going on? What do we do? We've got 2 weeks and this is not going the right way. And look, it all worked out in the end, and I To be fair, I don't think Amy could have looked any better. And it was probably the best peak that I've ever done with a competitor anyway.

So yeah, shit, we need a coach who has a plan but can then drive through the murky waters when needed as well.

I'm waiting for like a four-wheel drive analogy. You gotta be able to drive through the rocks.

Tank. I think like a tank.

Yeah, FJ Cruiser or something, especially when it gets emotional.

Maybe save that for another podcast.

Sorry, is that the emotional?

That could be a whole other topic.

Well, it's been a pleasure speaking to you both and shooting the shit. As they say, uh, about comp prep mistakes. If you like this episode, make sure you stay tuned for more. Before we wrap up, Tyrone, where can the folks find you on the Instagram?

Uh, Instagram @coach_folino. That's F-O-L-I-N-O. Um, otherwise, yeah, you can come into Enterprise Fitness, and that's generally where I spend most of my time.

And the Amys—

and my Instagram is @amydorrell, D-O-R-R-E-L-L. And that's on Instagram. And yeah, at Enterprise as well. We're here all the time, every day.

My name is Mark Ottobre. What I'd like you to do right now is hit subscribe on our YouTube channel for more great videos. We have another part, two more parts coming out about comp prep. We're going to be talking about training mistakes and the body kind of emotional issues. If you want me on Instagram, it's Mark Ottobre. Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube. Until we see you again, train hard, eat well, and supplement smart.