S6:E3 - Is Comp Prep Healthy? Post Comp Blues and Obsessing About Your Body

Have you competed or are you competing soon? This podcast is just for you. What to do with the post-comp blues and the body dysmorphic issues that ultimately arise from obsessing about your physique. Hi, my name is Mark Ottobre, owner and founder of Enterprise Fitness. I'm joined by master coach Tyrone and awesome Amy. We're gonna be discussing all things comp prep, but specifically pertaining around the healthy aspect and what to do. Welcome to the show. Who wants to kick us off but both of you?

One at a time.

One at a time. Let's be.

Okay, go. Ladies first.

Well, why don't you go first then?

Health. Health. Competing and health. Do they really go?

Do they make you? No. Yes and no. It's not healthy until it's not healthy.

You're right. It's—

I mean, and I think more the issue is like, are you telling me that I can't walk around comp lean all year round?

Yes.

Like they do on Instagram?

I am telling you that.

Why?

Because Instagram is people's highlight reels, and you compare your real— your backstage of all the shit that happens backstage to other people's highlight reels.

But I can't be 3% and walk around like shredded all year round?

By definition, a peak competition state is what you peak to. It's like people who compete in the Olympics, athletes who compete in the Olympics, they're not in that Olympic prime, ready to run their best race all year round. They're ready to run their best race, they train up to that best race to give that maximum performance for that best race. If you think of training and nutrition as building, the wider the base, the higher the peak. You want to build scaffolding up to that peak. The wider the peak, the more scaffolding you are, the higher you can go. And when people try and look at it and go, I'm gonna maintain this physique, this level of physique all year round. The ex— I think what creates a lot of depression for competitors is this expectation around how they think it should go. They should be in shape, they should be 5% body fat, they should be ripped, abs lean. I'm not saying like people shouldn't get fat obviously and just eat shit and not care about their physiques. I'm not saying that.

I think that's something we can touch on after, like the whole blowout thing is definitely something we can touch on.

Yeah, absolutely. But I think if you are looking and defining what a comp prep is, it is your peak size. State of leanness, which is what you train towards. It's not a physique that is ultimately— because you're also manipulating water, you're manipulating sodium, manipulating carbohydrates, you're doing different things with your diet as well to get yourself into the— as by definition, the leanest you've ever been. Obviously, when you start to bring food back in, you're going to put on weight, you're going to put on a little bit of body fat as well, and that's perfectly normal. And particularly for females, but also for males as well, you're I just think the conversation and the expectation around that is what fucks people up.

How did you get over Amy?

That's the thing, I think going into a comp, it comes down to why are you competing? Are you doing it because you just want the look? Why are you competing? 'Cause if you just want the look, then it's not gonna sustain you after that comp.

What sustained you?

What sustained me is the process. I enjoyed, I wanted to push myself to a point where I had never been before. It was a challenge to me.

What does that mean?

So a challenge for me, I was like, something I've never done before, never ever done in my life. I thought, oh my God, getting on stage.

Wanna do a marathon instead?

Why?

You know why? I feel like that answer justifies, I was like, why would I wanna do that? Why would anyone do that?

Why would you wanna do that? Yeah, it comes down to, as you said, why you want to do it. If it's just for the look, the look only lasts so long. And let me tell you, when you get on stage, you are on stage for an hour, 2 hours. So if you are prepping, like for me it was 7 months, 7 months of hard work for 2 hours on stage. If I just wanted that look, what was I gonna do after that? Like that's my peak performance. That's my peak physique for me that I've reached that point. And now it was like after that comp, it's like, well, what now?

I've reached the goal.

For me, it was, all right, let's be better. How strong can I get?

How did you feel? Like, how'd you feel? Like, well, let's go through your energy levels. Oh yeah, those last couple of weeks, I reckon you're on fire. Oh, you were doing really well. But before that, when you really had to have a grind and sustain that, you— how did you feel day to day?

I could not sustain. So for me, all I wanted to do leading up to comp was just sleep. I was at that point where, one, I I was really cold and I was really tired. So for me, I was in the best shape I had ever been in, and I was wearing really big baggy jumpers and a Kathmandu jacket during summer. Yeah, a Kathmandu jacket during summer. I had about 4 layers of clothing, and mind you, this is like Melbourne. Yes, not that warm, but hey, it was like summer, and I was wearing 4 jumpers. I was like falling asleep, and I was in my best shape that I ever was, but I really showed it. I really, I was like, I really love the look. I'm like strong. I've got muscles are popping. But for me, I was at that point where I just didn't feel good.

How was your mood?

Mood? I, there was nothing. Like I was just like, you talked to me.

How long did you have to maintain that? Like how long were you into that state?

So into that state. So probably from about, about 2 months out, 2 months out of comp.

And when would you say it started to get unhealthy for you?

Unhealthy, the last couple of weeks is probably when it really started to hit home. I was like, you know what? I'm feeling good. And then about 4 weeks out, I was like, oof, okay. This is what it feels like to be lean. You know what?

I can imagine. Which is lean?

It's like actually like there's lean and there's like—

It's comp lean.

It is like—

So it's like to be comp lean.

Oh yeah. Or the best, like it's thick skin lean.

Yeah.

Like plain and simple. And then like, even from a health perspective, you know, When females get that lean, 9 times out of 10 they'll lose their period, which is not a healthy thing. You're supposed to get your period. And for guys, they lose the sex drive. You lose a sex drive, like your dick ain't gonna work, like it's plain and simple. And it won't be until you bring your food back up and you go, oh wow, there it is! Yeah, welcome back, welcome! We have liftoff! And that's one of the detriments of like, who the fuck wants to live like that every day?

Super low cals, it comes with the territory. And that's what you said before, like it's healthy to a point that it becomes unhealthy. So it can start healthy if you have someone who's 20 kilos overweight and they're like, yeah, I want to get in shape, and they start getting lean, then they get healthier. And I mean, it's always that bell curve, right? It's bad, good, optimal, and then you start to draw off. But in this getting comp, functions of the body are going to start to drop off because you're pushing towards a physique that the body inherently does not want to maintain. And that's where the expectation is, the physique that you're going to achieve, you're not going to maintain. And if you do maintain it, I would say you fucked it up because if you weren't lean enough, you weren't lean enough. Exactly, you weren't lean enough. If you can maintain your comp physique, you're too big, then you weren't trying hard enough.

Yeah, you shouldn't—

you need to put like— it's to get up on stage, it's to push yourself and go, I'm leaner than I've ever been, I look the best I've ever looked. If you look that like that every day, then are you really pushing yourself?

Yeah, and you're leaning the 99.5% of the rest of the world. And it comes out to— it also comes down to framing at the same time. Rather than looking the end date, rather than looking at it as the comp day as the end date, you need to look beyond that. And that's what I've done that with— we do that with all our competitors. But hey, I've got that— I had that conversation with one of my competitors at the moment who's online, and we've looked beyond. It's like, okay, yes, this is where your comp date is, right, but this is what— where you're going to finish afterwards. It might be 6, 8, 12 weeks after comp day and go, okay. And I actually said to her, the weight you're at now— we're like 9 weeks, 9 and 10 weeks out— I'm like, the way you're at now, this is where you're going to finish after your comp weight, because this is a healthy you. This is how you are. You should be able to maintain this. And she came and she was a bit overweight to begin with. So again, we're in the middle of that bell curve, but now we're going to go—

that's a great place to be—

far beyond.

Oh, it's It's a great place to be.

It's like the eye of the tornado. It's nice and calm and peaceful and you can do what you want, you can, whatever. But wait, now we're going to go straight into the eye. So we're going to straight into the nasty bits.

Hell's depth.

Yeah.

And that's where I think biofeedback is so important too. Like we touched on in our first video is how do they feel throughout the process? Because they're going to hit a spot where they feel amazing on top of the world. I can train hard, feeling good, looking good. And then they're going to hit that point where you do get to the essential level. Levels of body fat and they start to go, I feel tired, I'm not sleeping well, I'm not training as hard. And that's where you go, okay, you know what? See how you feel now? See where you felt 2 weeks ago after comp? That's where I want you. When you finish comp, we wanna get back to that point where you're training hard, you feel good. Like that's the place where you wanna live. That's the place where you wanna hang out.

[Speaker] It's also the place where you don't wanna have to, where you're not talking in your own mind going, do I wanna do this session? Do I wanna like, I remember when I did my photo shoot, I remember being on my motorbike I was riding to train and I'm like, I don't need to train today. I don't want to, I don't want to. Maybe I'll just do, you know what, nah, this is just— it was literally justifying why I was there. And I reckon that's what actually kept me going because I was probably concentrating less on the road and concentrating more on my own head. And I did, you did the session, but it's that same talk every day.

I was like— so we're talking about health aspects of competing. There's really two compartments we need to define. One is the— what we're talking about now is the psychology of it, which can become very unhealthy. But there's also the physiological aspect. And to frame it, I remember reading— this was, I don't know, maybe 5, 10 years ago in the paper. This was back when like people read the paper. They did a write-up. Yeah, your generation, eh?

Um, we're old, man. Yeah, I know.

Hey, fuck, don't remind me. In the paper, they did a write-up on figure comps, and there was this girl in there they featured. And in it, she's like, competing's not for everyone, it's really hard, I have 14, 14 cups of coffee a day to keep me going. I'm like, fuck, man, you have 14 cups of coffee a day because your diet fucking is shit. That's why. If someone has to have 14 cups of coffee a day to get through a comp prep, man, you shouldn't be competing, or you need to fire the person who's doing your diet because that's shit.

I was gonna say, that's me on a normal day. I love coffee.

But that's why your HRV and heart rate is so high.

Low, you mean low.

Like, my HRV is just low. Your heart rate is high. Heart rate's high, HRV, yeah.

Yeah, no, but well, 100%. And look, disclaimer, like, you, it, you prob— you're going to feel a lot less energy, a shit ton less energy, and you're probably going to drink a little bit more coffee. If you're drinking 14, you got an issue. Like, that's a whole lot of other issues.

Maybe we'll talk, because even like, cap it at 3. Yeah, maybe, maybe 5.

Amy didn't drink any coffee. Amy got no coffees there. And but that's the other thing, if you're drinking 14 cups of coffee a day, you're not sleeping. Yeah, you're not sleeping. That's then— that then is then going to halt your fat loss, your fat loss rate. Like, you're not going to be able to get as lean as fast and look as good as you can on stage.

Protein synthesis, well, parasympathetic, straight inflammation.

As soon as you don't sleep, you're inflamed.

Yeah, like insulin sensitivity. Yeah, regulation. Yeah, healing process. Your body, you need to sleep.

Yeah, my lowest days, like my lowest weights in prep, and when I was looking my best, is when I had the best sleep. It was like I had 9, 10 hours sleep, I woke up the next morning, oh, look at that, we hit a new low. And it was like, there you go. Sleep plays a huge part. It's not just your diet and training, it's how you recover.

Yeah, so to break it down, there's obviously calories, which is what most people think about, and they become obsessed about just cutting calories. There's gut health, which we've spoken about in a nutrition segment. There's food quality, right? There's training, there's lifestyle stress, there's— and when I say lifestyle stress, that can be defined as work, money, relationships. But also on that, it's like foods that you eat or foods that you don't eat. For example, a lot of people, if they have an intolerance to something like gluten or say lactose intolerance and they continue to have these foods, that's going to create a stress on the body. Versus— and also people who are malnourished. So for folks who just aren't eating enough protein, that's going to create a stress on the body as well. And the thing is, when we go through these comp prep phases, we really do pull at the wheel, so to speak, in many different directions. And that's where people's health starts suffer, and you want to be able to mitigate some of the health side effects. So you said before about, you know, when females get very low with their calories, they start to lose their menstrual cycle. But if you combine that with poor gut health, and you combine— so low calories combined with poor gut health combined with lifestyle stress combined with poor food quality, or macro— or basically not making up macronutrients combined with food sensitivities combined with bad sleep combined with overtraining, you're You can see how now this is a recipe for disaster because what ends up happening is people through willpower, they go, but then they get into this hole, which then takes years and years and years to climb up out of because it's not like they did damage from the comp in a week. They consistently did damage over a period of time. And now their body has to acclimate out of that. And if you can regulate these functions better and be aware of these things, this is why I think with a comp, You don't want to start a comp as an unhealthy person. It's the worst thing you could do. You want to have good habits, good behaviors, good sleep patterns, good food, good digestion, good gut. Get yourself healthy.

You've got to live the lifestyle.

You've got to live the lifestyle.

And that's the thing, it's— you're doing the reverse of somebody that's, that's heavily overweight or obese, and it's like, well, they come and they go, I want to lose 40 kilos in 12 weeks. Like, how long did it take you to put these 40 kilos on? Probably about 7 years. Great. Okay, it's going to take you a little bit longer than 12 weeks to lose those 40 kilos. You've been dieting yourself, trying to live in that comp prep lean for 6 months, 12 months. It's like you've created a lot of physiological damage. It's going to take us time to actually get you back out of that and get everything regulating again, whether it be gut health, hormones, leptin and ghrelin levels, emotional status. You know, for a female, we have to get your period back. That could take, depending on how long you've— you haven't had it for long. How long is a piece of string?

How long is a piece of string? So there's some good herbs you can take too, and supplements. Even then, you still get a You're gonna get the food back, you know, lifestyle back.

And that's the thing, you can take all the herbs and supplements you want, but if you're too— if you're lean, too lean, it's just not gonna happen.

That's like, you need it. What did we diet for? We— I did 7 months. It was my comp prep, it was 30 weeks. And for me, it took me at least 20 weeks, like about 30 weeks comp, about 3 months after my comp, so about 12 weeks after, to actually feel normal or alive. I was still feeling those effects after my comp for at least 8 to 12 weeks post. I was bringing up body fat, I was eating more, I was training better. Yeah, like every day I was getting, feeling better than I did at the last, but still your body is in a state of stress. It's gonna take time to readjust your body back to normal.

You had to, the gut stuff as well to compensate and deal with it.

Absolutely, yeah. I had to slowly bring back food in and just, foods I hadn't eaten for 7 months. It was just like my body was like, well, what is this? What are you doing to me? So I think stress and competing, it's a long-term game. It's not just comp date is the end date. You've got to look at the big picture and say, yeah, comp is just a part of the process. How are you going to bring yourself out of it? How are you going to live? Because you can get so caught up on comp day, but really it's one day.

After my first comp, I put on like 14 kilos in a week.

Yeah, it's not uncommon.

That's probably—

this is 2004.

We could probably back it off and just slow that down a little bit.

I had no one coaching me, no one guiding me. I dieted on 800 calories, and then after comp, I remember I said to my cousin, can you stop by the servo? Stopped by the servo, ate chocolate, then went to like TGI Fridays, ate a burger, ate chips, ate the loaded nachos, ate the ice cream, had a like sodium wish. And then the next day I was like eating pizza, kebabs, you name it, I was eating Everything. How good did you feel?

Oh, terrible.

It's so long to recover, so long.

It also goes with those people that are just doing comp after comp as well. It— you develop an unhealthy relationship with competing because you're gonna be in that— one, you're never going to get any better because you never have time off in order to bring up your weaknesses. And then two, like Amy said, you're in a constant state of stress. You are putting your body under an immense amount of stress. You need to actually take the stress off. And that's the same thing as trying to be lean. It's like creating that unhealthy relationship with comp. And there's people that just keep going, oh, I'm gonna do this show, I'm gonna do this show, I'm gonna do this show. And it's just, yeah, causing an amount of insane amount of damage to your body physiologically and then emotionally as well.

And that's why you see, you see so many people, they compete once and they go, never again. And it's like, why? Why is it that everyone competes once and they never want to do it again.

Well, I think it's the opposite. A lot of people compete and they want to keep doing it and doing it.

They want to keep doing it and doing it like weeks after. But if you said to, hey, you're going to compete again, but you're not going to do it for another year or 2 years, people go, nah, stuff that.

Yeah, they want to do it. I see what you're saying. People compete once and they're like, they were either— they either want to do like the next show right away, or they want to— they don't want to play the long game.

It's like a travel bug. It's, oh, you're going your first overseas holidays. I want to travel everywhere right now, but I want to save for 6-12 months and do another big holiday. Let me go now.

Yeah, it's the flashy light syndrome, the object. Oh, let's get that, I want to do it right now. Yeah, yeah, show after show, rather than let's compete maybe once a year and peak for that one year, like one time a year, and do the whole like phase of strength building, muscle building, then get you lean.

There's a whole process, a whole process.

Oh no, yeah, so look, you guys bring up a good point because that has— I have seen that where people do what, season in A where they do the rookie and then they do the other show and then they do the mid-year show and then they do the Vicks and then they do the Australians and then you're like, man, you literally competed the whole year. And then they get shitty when you're like, man, you don't do as many shows. Like, why? Because you're gonna look the same at each show.

Then they get shitty when they look the same and they still place fifth in the last show and they place fifth in the first show. It's why that happens. Because you look the same because you just fucking hammered your body and hammered it. It's like kicking a dead horse. It's still dead. You keep kicking.

I think the problem there is the identity piece where people, when they compete, they go, well, now I am a competitor. And what do competitors need to do to validate that identity? Is they need to compete. But rather than going, I can't compete once a year, or I can't compete every 2 years, to maintain that identity they have to do and live this certain lifestyle. And often that lifestyle isn't conducive to their total life, if that makes sense. It doesn't fit in at the moment because Life happens, right? And everyone has different priorities, but sometimes career takes priority, relationships take a priority, competing maybe takes a backseat, and maybe sometimes competing takes the priority, right?

That's the thing, competing should complement your life. It shouldn't override. It should not be your number one focus and that's all you care about. You need to have things going on outside of competing.

If you could mic drop right now, I would really encourage you to, but it's stuck to the table. Please don't mic drop, this is an expensive mic.

And Ramu's gonna look at you and be like, fuck's sake, why did you have to drop that mic?

Competing shouldn't override your life, it should complement it. And that is something that I think competitors don't spend enough time on, is like, what's going on outside of your comp? Because when that comp day is over, then what?

There's an outside?

There's something else other than competing? Yes, there is. And it's so important to have those goals that outside of competing. Because as I said, that comp day, it comes and goes. I couldn't believe how fast it went. I remember 7 weeks, 7 months of just dieting and going, oh, I can't wait for the day. And the day just comes and goes, and you're like, Tina, you're like, shit, that's it.

But also having those things outside of your life keeps you focused on competing. Because if you only— and this is what happened to me when I first competed, was I was obsessed about competing. That's really all I was focused on, I had going on. And I became obsessed. And when you have nothing else to do and focus on, that's all you focus on. And it's actually like watching grass grow because you're like, am I getting leaner? Am I getting leaner? Whereas if you're busy and you've got a lot of things going on, you tend not to fuss and worry so much about the rate you're losing body fat, or are you losing weight on the scales. You just, man, I ain't got time to stress about this shit. I'm just going to do the process and let it happen.

Let it happen.

Not only that, but then like you do neglect a lot of things during prep as well. You'll neglect family, you'll neglect friends because you can't do those social things. Because you're so focused. You might be going to a party, a family party, and you're taking your Tupperware container and you just— you're that guy or that girl.

You're definitely that guy.

Mate, no, not yet, not yet. I'm that guy.

I was that guy.

Come and ask me at Christmas this year and it might be a different story.

But I love food.

I love food.

Me too.

Like, what's the point of looking the best you've ever looked in your life and having no one to share it with? Yeah, you can look good, but it's just you. You and your— What's the point of having a dream body if it's a nightmare to maintain?

Absolutely.

What's the point in that? You're supposed to enjoy it, not have it and then just resent. You're going to end up resenting it.

Onward. Amy's deep emotional mic drop. We'll probably leave it there. Hey Amy, where can people find you and your wisdom?

My wisdom. So you can find me on Instagram at Amy Dorrill. So A-M-Y-D-O-R-R-E-L-L. And Tyrone?

You find me on Instagram at Coach_Folino. So C-O-A-C-H underscore F-O-L-I-N-O. I nearly forgot how to spell my last name. Or you'll find me at Enterprise Fitness, where I spend so much of my time drinking coffee.

And you can find me on Instagram and on TikTok at Mark Ottobre. And make sure you follow— Instagram— make sure you follow Enterprise Fitness. And because you're probably watching this on YouTube, make sure you subscribe to our channel and ring that bell for more great videos just like this one. I hope you have enjoyed And if you want to reach out to us here at Enterprise Fitness for training, do so by visiting our website, MelbournePersonalTrainers.com. Until we see you on the next episode, train hard, eat well, and supplement smart.