The Prep Diaries – Episode 5

Good Morning, good afternoon and good evening my Bald & Ginger family! I am back with another addition of the prep diaries (no I haven’t secretly dropped off and hoping nobody notices). I am back with a bang and there’s been some changes to report! Cardio is up, calories are down, weight is about the same, but my shoulders seem to have expanded as I can’t walk straight through a door frame and some of my old joggers won’t fit over my quads, so it seems the first phase has been rather successful! The 4000 calorie a day diet has done its job, my muscles are all nice and filled out, my strength has someone gone up and I am ready to destroy some fat! Before we discuss the next phase of the plan, lets take a look at my cardio and my still rather substantial diet;

Cardio

5 x 30-minute fasted cardio

20 mins post workout cardio

Meal plan

TRAINING DAY

Meal 1

1 x New York bagel

2 x whole eggs

1 x scoop whey protein mixed with 300ml liquid egg whites

100g oats

Meal 2

50g oats

2 x scoop whey protein

Meal 3

250g rice

200g chicken breast

200g 0% fat Greek yoghurt

Peas

Nando’s sauce

Meal 4

4 x whole eggs

Meal 5

250g extra lean steak mince

300g potato

Any veg

Pre-training

1 x banana

Post workout

100g oats

2 x scoop whey protein

15g honey

NON-TRAINING DAY

Meal 1

1 x New York bagel

2 whole eggs

1 x scoop whey protein with 300ml liquid egg whites

Meal 2

50g oats

2 x scoop whey protein

Meal 3

250g rice

200g Chicken breast

200g 0% fat Greek yoghurt

Peas

Nando’s sauce

Meal 4

4 x whole eggs

Meal 5

250g extra lean steak mince

300g potato

Any veg

Meal 6

1 x scoop whey protein

300ml liquid egg whites

Doesn’t look like I’ll be getting hungry anytime soon! These changes were made on Wednesday and the response has been rather quick, a couple lbs have dropped off but nothing I’m going to report just yet, we’ll see what a full week brings and I’ll update my weight in episode 6, I do love a cliff hanger!

What I will discuss is the whole premise behind how bodybuilders diet for shows, I gave you a clue to it in the beginning, but what we will basically see happen is as the weeks go by, the amount of cardio I do will increase, whilst my carbohydrate calories reduce, so I work harder on less carbs. But we must consider that my weight comes down as we do this, so I need less calories to move around, this is why its important to get your calories looked at as you come down in weight, although please make sure you’re actually eating your allowance before you start asking me or Sophie to reduce them.

So where does it end? Well this will be up to my coach, but what I can say is where I ended up in previous preps, by the end of the last one I was doing 1 hour of cardio in a morning, an hour of weights and 1 hour of post workout cardio, whilst adding 1 hour on rest days as well. Eventually my carbs did totally deplete to nothing but this was only in the last week, where I do 3 days of no carbs at all. As I do this my water consumption begins to climb so my body becomes really efficient at flushing it out. Once the 3 days of low carbs ends, the carb up starts! I will eat a 250g pack of rice every 2 hours with a small amount of chicken for about 5 or 6 meals, this ensures the muscles fill out ready for show day! The night before when your up to about 10L of water a day, your water is cut off around 5pm, your body continues to flush out the water and you become dehydrated (this isn’t the heathiest sport in the world may I remind you). On day 2 of the carb up (the day before the show) you are allowed the best meal of your life, well it feels that way at the time. For me this was steak, an absolute mountain of chips, and Philadelphia with asparagus. Some people are allowed a pizza of something a bit dirtier, but I was only around 12 stone last time so this will have affected me in the wrong way, all this is washed down with 2 glasses of dry white wine to help further dry you out before show day. I also start the shaving and tanning process, but you don’t need to know about that!

Show day arrives and the food continues, breakfast is pretty much the same and so are the meals up to about an hour before. I can start snacking on things like flapjack, which believe me, it is very easy to get carried away with, and right before I go on stage I have cheeseburger from MacDonald’s (sounds mad doesn’t it) and then its back stage to start pumping up! At this stage its more sweets for carbs and also the sugar makes your blood thicker which causes you to become more vascular, once this is done its on to the stage, and I’m sure we’ve all seen snippets of what goes on there!

This may be interesting for some, we often see the end result but not always what goes on up until this point. This may be different this year as I’m considerably larger than before, but I am eager to see what this might be anyway!

Until next time!

Aaron