Cheat meals, do or don’t
I am always asked about cheat meals, do I put them in my athlete’s diets, are they good for you, can they help you, why? Yes I do put them in almost all my client’s programs. If you adhere to a few simple rules of thumb you can make cheat meals work for you. First let me explain the value a cheat meal might have for your program, then I will explain the rules for having cheats in your diet and finally I will tell you when I take them out of a dietary plan.
As a serious and strict competitive dieter and athlete you probably follow a very strict dietary regimen. Ninety-nine percent of the time this is what you want to do in order to achieve great results with your body. For competition dieting you have to be ultra-strict and follow your plan to a “T” always. However, I know that having planned cheats in your prep process can have tremendous value. Here are several reasons why:
- If you can’t stick to it; it doesn’t matter
- Metabolic boost
- Fueling up a depleted body does you good
If you can’t stick to a dietary plan, no matter how good it is, it will be worthless to you. You have to build mechanisms into your lifestyle and dieting tactics that will empower you to stick to your plan and prep. Often times when you have a planned cheat meal it can provide you with a huge motivation to stick to your plan. Looking forward to a cheat meal can act as a powerful emotional reprieve for you as you plug away day after day hitting your cardio and doing your caloric restrictive dieting practices. Like I said earlier, if you can’t stick to a diet then that diet is really no good to you no matter how good the diet plan is. You must always make your diet practices realistic and doable. Adding in a cheat meal each week is a great way to make almost any hard diet doable.
As you diet for contests, your metabolism will always try and adapt to what you are doing to your body. If your calories drop each week then your body will eventually learn to live on less. This is why we are still walking this planet. Our bodies have this wonderful ability to adapt and move toward homeostasis, always striving to stay alive and create some kind of balance. As you get four, five and six weeks into a contest prep or dieting plan, your body is now starting to try and figure out what you are doing most of the time. So throwing in a planned cheat each week can go along ways into tricking your body and your metabolism into thinking that you are getting more calories and nutrients than it really is regularly. The net result is that a good cheat meal can, in these times, help bump up your metabolism. You can tell this is happening actually as you eat your cheat meal. Most people during this phase of dieting will notice that as they eat their cheat meals they break out in a sweat and get real hot. As a flood of nutrients hit your body’s energy systems, your body reacts quickly and can now regulate temperature better. Often times, your core temperature goes up enough, releasing more heat than normal and you sweat. This is your metabolism kicking up to accommodate for the extra calories.
More than just an emotional reprieve and more than adding fuel to your metabolic processes, cheat meals can help you reload valuable lost glycogen in your liver and skeletal muscle. Not only do you need glycogen in your body to fuel great workouts, but you also need some for your daily activities without burning muscle. ot having some of this glycogen reserves can be detrimental to holding onto all of your valuable muscle for contest time and for the healthiest metabolism possible. After all, the more muscle you waste during a diet the slower your metabolism will become simply requiring fewer and fewer calories to exist. This loss of lean tissue will in the end slow down fat loss exponentially during your diet because now your body not only requires less calories to live but now it also requires less energy to burn during your activities. Refueling these glycogen stores are vital to keeping your hard earned muscle on your body and ensuring that your metabolism is running as fast as it possibly can. All of this is under the assumption that your cheat meals have a substantial amount of carbohydrate matter in them. Which brings me to the rules of the cheat!
Rules of Cheat meals;
- Cheat at the end of your day
- Don’t skip any other meals
- Make your cheat carbohydrate rich
- Don’t let your cheat last more than 45 mins
Your cheat meals can be very effective in your dieting practices, but in order to make them completely effective for competition dieting and for making aggressive fat loss each week it is essential to follow these guidelines. Always eat your cheat meals at the end of your day. This seems at first to sound counter intuitive and may seem to go against common logic. But the truth of the matter is, if you are following a strict dietary regimen, you are doing cardio everyday, working out with free weights, and not cheating on your diet normally then the best time to eat a cheat meal is when it poses the least risk to your progress and gives you the most value. Eating your cheat in the evening is the best time of day because it is at the end of the day when you have less time to cheat afterwards. It has been my experience that when people cheat in the morning or earlier in the day, it is much harder for even the best dieter to keep to his or her normal meal schedule after a big cheat. Not only do you have to contend with elevated and very sensitive insulin levels (post-cheat meal), but you now are most likely bloated and full and less likely to eat your next meal on time, which is usually a couple hours later. Eating your cheat meal at the end of the day minimizes your risk of over eating this meal because you haven’t gone more than 2-3 hours between meals all day, your own natural insulin levels should be stable because of this, and you are in a good position now to enjoy a good cheat meal and get the benefits without too much risk of over doing it or gorging till you are sick.
The next important factor goes hand-in-hand with the first rule, always eat all of your other meals in your day. Don’t miss these other meals no matter how badly you think you will cheat on your diet with this free meal. The temptation is usually to minimize what you eat throughout the day to try and minimize the negative effects of eating more calories in one meal than you will probably eat in three or four prior meals. But this is never a good idea. Eat on plan and then do your cheat. If your diet is planned correctly and your body is in the right state then your cheat meal will only add value. Again, not eating your other meals will just artificially raise your insulin levels prior to your cheat and increase your risk of fat storage and more than likely cause you to overeat your cheat meal.
In every fat loss diet whether it be for competition or not, after a certain period of time you have to reduce carbohydrate matter in the diet in order to force your body to rely on other fuel sources, namely fat. During this process of slowly reducing carbs in your diet glycogen is leached from the muscles and eventually your muscles will become depleted of valuable glycogen. Planned cheat meals can become a valuable source of muscle glycogen if you eat cheat meals that are rich in good carbohydrates. Eating pastas, whole wheat breads, potatoes, rice and the like can really help replenish these glycogen stores. Not only does making your cheat rich in carbs help replenish your muscle glycogen but it also stimulates metabolism. Carbohydrates are the main macro nutrient that can motivate your metabolism to speed up when you are dieting hard. It will be natural for your metabolism to slow down through the dieting process, but eating a good cheat meal that is rich in carbs can help postpone your normal metabolic slowdown.
Final rule of thumb is really a word of common sense, don’t let your cheat meals last more than about forty-five minutes in duration. It isn’t hard to turn a cheat meal into a two hour smorgasbord of eating everything in sight. Remember the intention of your cheat meals are to add value to your dieting process. We want to stay motivated, decrease muscle wasting, increase metabolism, and achieve our goals of fat loss. This isn’t a time to go nuts! Many people start thinking that they deserve their cheats after working so hard throughout the week. I am here to tell you that you deserve NOTHING. I don’t mean to sound callus, but the truth is you deserve what you have already, not what you want. When you get achieve success with your dieting process and look the way you want to, then you will deserve it! Remember that this is a process that you have decided to follow and if you want the results of a well planned diet and you want to enjoy the benefits of a great looking, lean body then you will have to do do what is required to have that body. Deserving has nothing to do with any of this. Keeping to these rules for cheat meals will help guide you in having the most productive cheats possible, but remember all is for not if your diet isn’t designed correctly for you and if you don’t take enough time to achieve your goals. Good luck!
Setting goals with a focus on attitude
Every year many people go through the ritual of re-defining what it is that they want from their bodies and setting goals for this is a common place. Here are my suggestions to making this more than a just a ritual but apart of your year’s success process.
BE SPECIFIC
First, make sure you are very specific about what you want. What this means is define exactly what you want in concrete terms. You should know what you want so that you not only know when you get there but also so that you can more easily design a path to accomplish it. If you want to gain muscle this year then you should know exactly how many pounds and what you are going to do each day and week and month in order to acquire this goal.
KNOW YOUR DESTINATION
You should also have a planned date in the year when you expect to accomplish each goal and you should be specific about this date also. If you don’t know how long you have to get there then you really have few ways to know what kind of pace you need to set for yourself. This also increases your focus when you know exactly what you want and when you want to achieve it.
MEASURE YOUR SUCCESS
Make sure that you have some way of measuring your success throughout the year. If you don’t have a clear way to understand how well you are doing then it is likely that you will give up sooner. If you can measure your success or failure each day, week and month then you will more likely to fix any problems and address any challenges along the way. Also, knowing where you are in your process can be an incredible way to get a sense of accomplishment as you plug along the path to your end goals. It is always important to recognize what you are doing right, and not just beat yourself up when you feel you are doing poorly. You will thrive more off recognizing your successes, which can create momentum in your year’s journey, than focusing on just where your challenges are.
ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING
The people who accomplish more goals consistently than others share one big thing in common…positive attitude. When I say positive attitude it means more than just thinking warm fuzzy thoughts or saying only things that seem to highlight where you want to be. For me positive attitude can mean some of this, but more importantly it is a way in which you approach your day. It encompasses your overall world outlook and often controls your responses to challenges and helps guide your intentions. Attitude is the sugar in your Cool aid! Without it victories can seem disappointing and short lived.
Pointing your attitude toward the positive also means focusing your attention, thoughts and actions on what produces the good feelings that we all want more of each day. Your attitude will be the single most important attribute and will influence your success more than anything else in your life. Your attitude will define your life, open or close opportunities to you, and give you a sense of fulfillment in your life of fill you with a sense of despair about your existence. Ask any great diplomat, negotiator, CEO, world leader, or athlete and they will all tell you that you must have the right attitude to achieve success in anything.
DON’T GIVE UP OR GIVE IN
I really see this as a point of a positive attitude but being able to not give up and stick through the challenges and hardships as you travel the path of your goals is also a requirement. As a matter of fact, if you can’t look disappointment and failure in the face and keep on going then you might as well not try to accomplish anything great in the first place. Challenges and obstacles are inevitable in everyone’s year goal procurement. If our goals and desires weren’t significantly challenging then everyone would have the body they want and the success in their lives they want but the fact is that most don’t. So recognizing that there will be challenges along the way and possibly more failure than you expected should be on the table from the start. It is O.K. to acknowledge that you won’t always reach your goals when and how you expected to. This is a part of the goal achievement process. The point is that you don’t give up or give in when you are knocked down.
I see so many people every year who try to achieve their body goals and falter so quickly and the second they are knocked down they seem to refuse to get up and continue to try. It is as if they have hit a wall and somehow know that it is un-scalable. Don’t see these intermittent challenges as obstacles, instead see them as opportunities to learn how to be better at whatever you are after. Remember, you are in control of your actions and you will be the one who decides to give in, give up or keep on going. I don’t know how many times I have talked to successful people about how they have accomplished the things that I wanted to emulate and the first and most important part of each of their stories are what they learned through the obstacles they had to over come. And it is often these challenges and failures along their path of success that defines their journey and gives them a heightened sense of elation and fulfillment when they finally reach their goals.
What an incredible honor we all get to be able to choose our life’s paths. We don’t often get to choose how victory comes to us, nor do we often get to set the timelines but we decide everyday to be on the path. As long as you are on the path and have the right attitude that points you forward you will get there eventually. And I know that a life focused on these kinds of principles will be one that is filled with tremendous value and lessons.
Attitude of being a champion!
As a competitive diet coach I have gotten the opportunity to work with many great athletes over the years. This year I have had the pleasure to work with another exceptional athlete, IFBB Figure Pro Natalie Waples.
Attitude of Champion comes through onstage
What made her special this year in my mind is her attitude amidst all kinds of challenges and disappointments. Many competitors want only to win but a true champion k
nows how to take defeat and challenges in the same manner as victory. It is this kind of positive attitude and sportsmanship that impressed me the most and deserves recognition.
Natalie competed seven times professionally this year, and with each outing put 110% into her efforts. She stayed positive and professional even when confronted with serious disappointment. Many competitors claim to compete only for themselves, often saying that they only want to do better than last year. However, when the rubber meets the road and they are confronted with a loss they fall apart on the inside and sometimes on the outside. This was not the case with Natalie this year. Whether she got last call out or first call out at a show, I was impressed with her sense of professionalism and her ability to pull herself together and push onward no matter what the show outcome.
It pleased me very much to take Natalie to compete in the IFBB Figure Olympia this year where she did a fantastic job and looked great in a tough field. No matter the outcome, this sport needs to add value to every competitor’s life. This seems to be the case for Natalie; and I am blessed and happy to be a part of it. I am looking forward to even greater things this next year with her! Many competitors can take a lesson in being a champion from Natalie. Not everyone will win a title or show, but everyone can be a champion when you have an attitude like Natalie Waples.
2011 IFBB Toronto Supershow Standouts!
On June 17-18, 2011, Toronto Canada hosted the 2011 IFBB Toronto Supershow. Promoter Ron Hache held IFBB Men’s Pro 202 and Open events, as well as Pro Figure and Pro Bikini contests. While I didn’t know what to expect of this show, it was put on very professionally with all the bells and whistles the other big pro events have like an Expo and amateur events and pro hosted seminars.
At these kinds of events you can really only participate in so much but I found it easy to do just about all that I wanted to and attend all the major Pro events. At every contest I am always trying to find the stand out competitors who either knocked my socks off or who impressed me with their raw potential. In Toronto, I found a few, and here are my notes…
Candice John and Aleisha Hart
In the Pro Figure Candice John, who ended up with the runner-up spot behind Gennifer Strobo, stood out to me right away with a very nice “T” shape and I actually I had Candice ahead of Strobo. Aleisha Hart, who has been consistently placing better and better at the last few Pro events this year. Improving and toning down her muscularity and her historically thicker look. Kudos to her and her coach (sorry shameless plug) for the work done! I am still at a loss why Natalie Waples, who just weeks before placed 3rd at the Cal Pro and qualified for the Olympia, didn’t get a first call-out. She was tighter and had much better shape, lines and aesthetic qualities than most of the other competitors in the lineup. There are always a few mysteries at every show. That is what makes this sport so interesting sometimes.
In the men’s 202 lbs pro division the clear standouts were Shaun-Joseph Tavernier and Myoba Edwards. Both Tavernier and Edwards were impressive but Tavernier was just fuller and more complete. But I was impressed more with Edwards’ level of conditioning. He was super-shredded! Even this guy’s hamstrings had striations! Very nice work!
The very thick Lionel Beyeke
Finally, in the open category the stand out was Lionel Beyeke! This guy is really going to go places if he gets his conditioning just right. He was in definitely in shape, but may have spilled over just a bit. This guy really looked fantastic and reminded me of a smaller version of Kai Greene. The disappointments in the open division was Brandon Curry. While he got his Olympia qualification, he still is missing his mark on conditioning. He looked fuller and tighter at the finals and much improved, but a few tweaks to posing and to his last week of prep and this guy is very dangerous! Brandon has one of the prettiest physiques out there and can win any of these shows, but seems to look like he simply doesn’t want it bad enough on stage and his physique seems to echo this sometimes by the lack hardness and grainy detail it takes these days to win at this level.
Overall, Toronto was a wonderful place to visit and I enjoyed the shows! I will be back!
Attitude Determine’s Your Altitude
Two of my figure champs and two of the best attitudes!
Your attitude will always determine your outcomes in life. In our lives, we usually get exactly what we expect, even if we don’t want it. But having a blessed and abundant life is more than just thinking happy thoughts and pushing your head in the sand. Positive and wonderful sentiments are great but what we all really want is for that to translate to our lives in real concrete ways.
Living up to the gold standard of positivity is not an easy task these days. And going through the motions of a positive existence will eventually show its negative results in your life if you don’t feel the positive abundance in your life. Remember, honesty with yourself and being true to your heart is the best policy here. In order to make your life what you want you have to be honest with yourself, even if you aren’t with everyone else. When you are honest with yourself, you then can accurately determine where you are in your life’s process. This is very much like the contest prep coaching that I do. If I am not honest with my competitors at every turn, every week, then it is hard to know how much effort must be applied to get the desired conditioning at a show.
Living an honest life, being happy and at peace in our lives, are qualities that stem from our attitude. This attitude ingredient is the key to life’s treasures and the abundance that our lives can offer to us. The only contingency to access the kind of attitude that will unlock these riches for us is real honesty with ourselves. It is impossible to move forward in our lives if we don’t act from our current positions. In other words, if you don’t respond to your life from where you really are right now, then you can’t make authentic progress.
Strive to be honest with yourself first, live intentionally, and express yourself with compassion, and the product of your life will yield abundance beyond what you could expect. This is the way we are designed.
Men’s Physique Success
This year the NPC introduced the Men’s Physique division to many NPC sanctioned events. Just last week California had its first men’s physique division at Jon Lindsay’s NPC Muscle Contest and it went off with a bang with over 30 competitors entering in the new division.
I have to say that I was very impressed with how fun it was to watch the new division. I must admit that I was originally skeptical about what this new division would bring to the contests. But to my surprise it was fun to watch and the contest was judged as the NPC rules have stipulated. What is the future of men’s physique?
This next year I believe that men’s physique will grow fast and it will have a nice place in NPC sanctioned events. For me I welcome it as a very nice avenue for men to compete in a physique contest who aren’t interested in developing a competitive body that it takes to win at bodybuilding, but one that still looks muscular, defined, and impressive. The emphasis in men’s physique is not to be overly developed and shredded but instead fit, muscular, and personality.
The only criticism I would have of men’s physique is that it borderlines on men’s fitness modeling and which can make it less of a physique contest and more of a beauty contest and not a sport. Much of the fate of men’s physique will depend on how the judges judge the events and who and how the competitors show up. No matter what this year will be a unique and fun year for the sport and industry of bodybuilding, physique and fitness!
New Year’s Resolution Time or New Year’s Action time?
Well it is almost the end of January and for many it is a disappointing time of the year when all the New Year’s resolutions have gone by the way-side. It seems to me that many people set themselves up for failure with New Year’s resolutions when they aren’t explicit with defining daily actions that will dictate whether they can succeed at whatever New Year’s resolution that they have set before themselves. It is important to understand that the outcomes our lives follow the direction of our daily processes. Your daily process is the sum of all the actions that you repeat over and over each day. Brushing your teeth, for instance, is a great process to have if you want clean teeth. Now this seems obvious, but when you extrapolate the effects of your daily process over time you can quickly see how this can directly impact all the goals that you may have for your life.
In order to accomplish anything in your life you have to put your desire to action. You must translate what you want from your life and associate it with an action or a series of actions each day. If you can do this and repeat it daily, then you have a winning daily process that will over enough time empower you to accomplish whatever you want in your life. New Year’s resolutions are for many, much like a wish list that you want. The only problem with wish lists are that you have to give them to someone else who is willing to give you what is on your list if you ever hope to get what is on your wish list in your life. Resolutions are wish lists for ourselves, and built within this is the assumption that we will give to ourselves what is on the list. In order to do this, you need a process that has actions associated with it. In other words, you must do something to get what you want and I would extend this to say that you must do something everyday if you want to get what is on your wish list and keep it. So before you abandon your New Year’s resolution this time, sit down and think about what you must do daily to accomplish your resolution. Then go out and do it daily!
Tune in to the latest episode of Muscle Invasion Radio with me Tad the Diet Coach, I spoke in detail about the topic of New Year’s Resolutions. Let me know what you think. Good luck.
Holiday Season Transformation
Congrats on your transformation Alan!
Sorry I haven’t posted in a bit. This year has been a busy one for me and my coaching practice. But now the Holiday season is in full swing and I thought it a good time to pick one of my clients and send out a very big congratulations on a big success this year. I have worked with Alan Lacuesta for only a three months, but in this time he has really come a long way and I wanted to recognize his efforts and hopefully this would inspire others. He is a bodybuilder but not a competitive one yet. He approached me because I worked with his wife last year, and wanted me to take him through a contest prep diet and give him the experience of what he could possibly expect from this kind of diet. He wanted to take his body somewhere it hadn’t ever been at. I told him of course I would help him but he was in for a rough ride because I knew that without the motivation of a contest to be in shape for he might find it hard to make it through the tougher parts of the diet without cheating and feeling like he simply wanted to give up.
Going through a contest diet is hard enough, but to do it without any contest in mind and to do it just for the sake of achieving a leaner look would be very hard. I have worked with people over the years who have tried this kind of thing and many don’t make it to the end because at some point it simply gets too tough. The reward of looking better seems to go the way side when faced with hunger, depression, and fatigue. But to Alan’s credit he made it through a typical twelve week contest prep diet in tact and looking great! Now while I would have recommended about four more weeks of contest dieting in order to achieve the “contest condition” that I like my athletes to show up in, this was a great exercise of fortitude and determination that I rarely see. So congrats to Alan Lacuesta, you I am a proud coach!
Posing, Posing, Posing
When you prepare for a contest whether it be in bodybuilding, figure or bikini you must practice your posing frequently so that when you get on stage you look professional and polished. You don’t want to look like you have to think too much just to hit a shot or to get your body into the right position. I just got back from the NPC Nationals in Atlanta and I am still surprised that even at one of the highest level of contests you still see guys and gals who are suppose to represent the best of the amateurs posing like they are novice competitors.
I have the five minute rule with all my competitors. Here is how it works, everyday you spend five minutes practicing your posing. Everyday at the same time, you spend five minutes running through all your mandatory poses just like you would in front of a judging panel. At the end of a week this gives you 35 minutes of good posing practice. At the end of a twelve week contest prep cycle you will have about seven hours of posing practice! That is a lot of practice.
Most competitors don’t even start posing until a few weeks out from a show and they try to cram in a couple hours of posing a few weeks before. The result looks unpolished and often the competitor looks like they are thinking too much on stage instead of running smoothly into each pose. Not to mention, small amounts of practice is very manageable and will lead your body and mind to retain more in its memory when you hit the stage. What you want to focus on when you are on stage is smiling and looking like a winner!
Tad the Diet Coach at the Masters Nationals
I thought I would let you all peer into my mind a little after I have just competed at this year’s 2010 Masters Nationals in Pittsburgh, PA. As a competitor, it is always a humbling experience to go to any big national event and compete against the country’s best competitors. This year was no exception. This year’s contest was huge with around 500 competitors competing and being in a class of around 20 heavy weight guys can feel overwhelming to the first timer. While I am not new to the National stage, it was still a humbling and inspiring experience for me.
I finished 3rd in such a deep and competitive heavy weight class and it was a great feeling of accomplishment to be in a top spot. I must admit though, the best feelings for me are always when I get crowd support and competitors that come to me and appreciate the hard work that is put into my body in order to get it ready to compete. I have competed for over twenty years and I am still hooked on the compliments that are given to me after a contest.
The most important step in my competitive process has always been answering the critical question “what next?” I always evaluate all my competitive experiences in the same fashion. First, what am I taking away from this show that makes me feel good? Next, what did I learn that can make me a better competitor and bodybuilder? And finally, how do I use these components in my competitive process so that I am building on each show no matter what the outcome was.
This time around I learned to trust what has always worked in my diet process. I did less experimenting and more of what I knew has historically worked for me. Don’t try and fix a machine that isn’t broken. In my case, the keto diet that I had been trying to make work in my diet process the last few contests simply didn’t produce the end product in my physique that I was trying to make it produce. Going back to what I knew would work and having patience with my body was the key to feeling great on my diet and getting my body to look closer to what I wanted it to look like day of the contest did the trick.
Balance and good feelings should always accompany any contest
Finally, feeling great about my competitive process reminded me why I do this stuff in the first place. I do this because it adds value to my life. Feeling great about what you are doing and about yourself is important to being a balanced person as well as giving you the internal fuel to give back to others. So because it was so easy for me to get value from the Masters Nationals this year, it was an easy decision for me to continue my process and plan on competing again in a few weeks at the North American Championships. My goal is to extract similar value from this next contest experience and to walk away with good feelings and a sense of progress in my bodybuilding and my life of good feelings (not to mention my Pro Card!).
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