Episode 8 - How to increase your contest prep effectiveness by 80%

In this episode we cover the baseline diet, why it is a key to success and how to initiate the baseline. 

Also, is civil decency dead, or is it poised to make a comeback. 

Transcript

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How can you know how to get where you want to go if you don't know where your starting point is? Back when I was an aviator in the Army and I was given a task of planning a mission, the first thing you did was to plot the exact location on a map. Without that key bit of information, the mission would be doomed to failure. Yet every year I speak to countless coaches and competitors who tell me about the struggles it took to get to the stage, how the things never went correctly, the plan had to change countless times, they spent time spinning their wheels, the show debut had to be continuously moved and postponed, all because they were missing a key point of data. What if I told you there was a simple method that would increase the probability of success by 80% or more by simply investing two to six weeks of your time? A baseline diet establishes a starting point for contest dieting from which the course can be created. It feeds the baseline from all other changes, be it calories, macronutrients, training, cardio, all those volumes can be adjusted from the start point. So, how do we get this foundation set up? Let's dig into it. In a world of enhanced physiques and social media smoke and mirrors, where do you find the truth? Welcome to the OCB Natural Edge Podcast, the official voice of the world's largest drug-free bodybuilding federation. From the science of the shred to the grid of the stage, no secrets, no substances, just the edge. Simply put, a baseline is determined by simply cleaning up the diet, taking in a consistent amount of calories to allow the body to stabilize at a reference point. During the process, you don't increase your training or your cardio. You need to arrive at homeostasis as your starting point. Homeostasis, simply put, is just a dynamic equilibrium. It's just a point of continuity. You should use this time to replace all your empty calories with good, wholesome foods and determine your exact caloric needs as well as your macronutrient needs. This becomes your reference point for all planning. And then it can also be used to transition into a growth season after your competition. Now I'm going to go on the assumption that most of you are seeking to lean out in order to compete. But no matter what your goal is, whether it's a vacation, a photo shoot, a high school reunion, the baseline diet is the first key step in body composition adjustment. Now, why would you need to invest this time for a baseline? Well, have you ever heard of somebody who started a diet and they tell you that they're not losing weight? How about a competitor that keeps telling you they repeatedly start this diet, nothing is happening, they make more drastic changes, nothing happens, they get discouraged and they abandon the project? Has this happened at the start of your diets in the past? The reason is simple. Most people don't eat a normal set number of calories or macronutrients each and every day of their offseason. You might eat 2,000 calories one day, 3,000 calories another, and then 4,000 calories the next. If you started your diet at 1,500 calories based on the frequency of you bouncing all around with your caloric intake, you wouldn't tap into the fat stores because your body has been conditioned to not release fat. Why? Well, in the case outlined, the body knows it's eventually going to get a larger number of calories in order to make up the deficit. So why should your body tap into precious fat stores? It's not in a fat burning or muscle-building mode. It is in a survival mechanism where you have a surplus of calories, a level of calories, a deduction of calories. It really doesn't know where its start point is. Now, swapping between a healthy day of eating and a binge are too common today. Has the following ever happened to you? You eat a fairly healthy, low calorie intake for several days before your body even begins to adjust. And then the cravings hit and bang, you binge for a day or two. Now you feel bad and you cut way back, eating less than half of what you were eating before. You start doing more cardio than Olympic marathon runner. And after a few days or a week, your willpower is gone and you end up pigging out again. After a few days, you calm down and you say you're just happy with where you are. Well, this is the cycle that most of us are on before we even begin our contest prep. And this is why a two to six week baseline is essential before you even think about adjusting calories down and trying to lose fat. For some people, you might have to stay in a baseline for up to three months. It depends on how much damage you've done to your metabolism before you begin the process. This will allow fat loss to be initiated properly. But let's start with the baseline process in a simple format, utilizing a two to four-week timeline, as that's what most of us would need. Most of us are going to hit a point where you're neither adding or losing weight in your offseason. You're just in a stalemate. So this is where I suggest you begin. You start by recording everything you eat. Change nothing you eat. Eat the same foods, the same amounts, the same time of each day. If your weight is stabilized, say at 200 pounds, then don't change anything. If dinner is an ice cream cake, so be it. If the next day it's eggs and toast, then so be it. Now you do this for 10 days, and you only track your number of calories. Try to make it as exact as possible. All those little bites don't count, they count. Add it all in over a 10-day period, and then divide that number by 10. For the sake of this exercise, let's keep the math simple and say it's 3,000 calories a day on average. Now, this is going to be your baseline caloric start point. This is your target. Once you have that number, as I said in this case, 3,000, go to step two. Now the second step is we want to keep the same amount of calories each day, but replace the calories like soda and snack cakes and Twinkies with good muscle building and whole foods. Things like oats, grains, yams, chicken, eggs, cottage cheese, typical bodybuilding fare. Fruits and vegetables are a must, so make sure you take in some nuts and other essential fats as well. Meals should typically be pieced together using a source of protein, a source of complex carbohydrates, some vegetables and some fiber and some fats. Typical baseline bodybuilding fare. But how much of each macro you should start with? Well, that's step three. Now I always like to start with protein as the basis. So starting with your protein, strive for a gram to a gram and a half of pound per body weight. Now, if you review the episode we did on body somatotypes, you can get an idea of where you should start with. But let's assume that you are an endomorph or an endomesomorph. Now, for that 200-pounder, an endo would eat one gram of protein per pound of body weight, and that would equate to about 200 grams of protein per day. To find out how many calories that is, all you have to do is multiply 200 by four, four calories per gram of protein. And then you subtract that number from that total caloric intake, which, as we said, was 3,000 calories per day. In this example, that 200 grams does equate to 800 calories, and that leaves you 2,200 calories a day for all the other stuff, carbs and fats. Now, the number of fat and carbohydrate calories is a very individual thing, but you're trying to establish a baseline to bridge out to from there. So attempt to eat about the same percentages of fats and carbohydrates that you were eating before you started the process. If you can look down at your food log that you maintained for 10 days and you see you're predominantly eating carbohydrates, then go on a higher end of carbs. If you were eating mostly fats and proteins, then go on a lower end of carbs. If you're not sure, as most of us are not, I suggest taking about 65% of those remaining calories as carbohydrates, just to give you a start reference point. Now remember, these reference points are going to be tweaked during the dietary process. And the first thing you're probably going to eliminate when you begin your caloric cuts is carbs. So you really want to start at a higher number. If you start at a lower number, 15%, where are you going to go from there? So I suggest 65%. To figure out the number of grams, all you do is take 0.65, multiply that by the 2200 calories. Now I know the math is a little complex. I'm going to put the formula down below just so you can see it in its simplicity. But quickly put, that gives you about 1,430 calories. This would be your carbohydrate baseline. Now the remaining number of that would be your fat calories. So that'd be 770 calories. Remember, fat is more calorically dense with nine calories per gram. So simply divide 770 by 9, and that gives you 85 grams of fat. So your baseline diet in this situation would be 3,000 calories, 200 grams of protein, 357 grams of carbs, and 85 grams of fat. Now, this is where the next step comes in. Carbohydrates, they don't make you fat. However, poor choices in carbohydrates do, as well as quality sources of other nutrients. So here's where you want to do the cleanup. Now, most people do eat quality sources of protein. Just remember to keep your protein at a stable 200 grams per day split up over your meals. Simple. Now let's look at those carbohydrates. First, people fear carbohydrates where they shouldn't. Carbohydrates do create a release of insulin, but insulin is the most powerful anabolic hormone in the body. It has two anabolic functions. First, it shuttles the carbohydrate, sugars that you eat, into the bloodstream and then into the muscle where it's stored as glycogen until it's needed by the body for your hard training and your cardio. The next anabolic role of insulins is driving amino acids into the muscles so they can be repaired after training. You must consume carbohydrates on a baseline to aid in recovery and repair. Even if during your dietary process you go down to a very limited number of carbohydrates or you are in a keto or zone type diet, you're still going to be adding in carbohydrates infrequently for recovery to create these anabolic switches. Now, if you take in too few carbohydrates, the amino acids from your higher protein intake won't be able to efficiently repair your muscles, and you'll have less energy to weight train. Not a good way to start your pre-competition diet. Trust me, over time you will get there. But you don't want to begin a 18 or 22-week prep already depleted. There is a downside, however, those same receptor sites on the muscle cell are also located on the fat cell. And here is where all these GLPs and medications and all the different glycemic indexes and et cetera come into play because too high a carbohydrate intake, mostly from taking in too many simple carbohydrates, the cookies, the candy, the white bread, processed foods, is going to cause an extremely high and unbalanced wave of insulin that's going to shuttle most of that sugar into the fat cell where it's going to be stored for future long-term use. This is the epidemic that has plagued America. Poor carbohydrate choices, poor carbohydrate choices creating the endomorphic or mesoendomorphic situation that we have. So, how many grams per day is an individual thing, as I said. But I always advise athletes to work with as many grams as they can take in and tolerate without getting fat. Hence, 65% to start your baseline. We know we need carbohydrates to optimize muscle building and energy, but we also want to make sure we take in good, healthy fats. Now, you're looking at essential fatty acids primarily. Now, your body has two types of fats that you take in, saturated and unsaturated. Saturated fats, they have no health benefits. That's the blubber on the meat that you eat and bad oils. Unsaturated fats contain many essential fatty acids, and essential fatty acids are found in things like cold water fish, salmon, omega-3 fatty acids, nuts, avocado, etc. Essential fatty acids are required for hormonal regulation, and they can increase insulin sensitivity to the muscle receptor, and they have been linked to favorable body composition changes. So you don't want to eliminate essential fatty acids because they are a key to your progress. Just like carbs won't make you fat, fats won't make you fat, as long as in both cases, you're eating the proper sources. Avoiding fats of an unsaturated variety would be as foolish as avoiding protein on a diet. So make sure that a large portion of your fat calories come from those unsaturated fats such as whole nuts, walnuts, almonds, and a good amount of fatty fish. I love salmon, and it's been part of my competition preps in off-season diets forever. I also like to take in essential fatty acids like krill oil or fish oils. It's probably one of the few supplements that I've taken year-round. Neutral fats like olive oil, they're also good. Now let's look at how are we going to structure the eating plan. Well, I have never been one to recommend somebody go from eating usually three or four meals a day to all of a sudden I'm starting my contest prep and baseline, I'm going to eat six or eight times per day. I think it's best that you eat on your own biorhythmic cycles. I have always been somebody that prefers not to eat large amounts of foods in the morning. I always had poor results when I tried to establish myself on a six or an eight meal day plan where I had all balanced everything and I started shoving breakfast down my throat. It just didn't feel good with it. What I did feel good with was having my first meal about nine, 10 o'clock in the morning, and then having three or four meals throughout the rest of the course of the day for a total of four to six meals. That was my preference, and it worked really good for me. Other people prefer to break it into smaller feedings throughout the day. Just kind of stay on your own biorhythm. But I am going to make a suggestion of when the best times to take those carbs in are. You already determined that you're going to be taking in 357 grams of carbs per day. When should you take them in? I like a targeted approach. So the three best times to take in carbohydrates are your first meal of the day when you're breaking your fast. A good amount of protein and carbohydrates, essential to start the day. Another good time to take them in would be a couple hours prior to training so you have the energy that you need to get through a vigorous weight training workout. And the last best time would be immediately after a workout to help replenish your glycogen stores and to click those anabolic switches that you need for the insulin. Other meals during the day can be higher in fats and proteins and vegetables and lower in the carbohydrates. But that's my suggestion when tapering in your meals on your baseline diet. Eat the number of meals that you normally enjoy eating. Stick with morning, pre-workout, and post-workout carbohydrates, and then balance the rest of your nutrients out. Protein is best balanced throughout the day. So if you're taking in 200 grams of protein and you're going to be eating four meals a day, that would be 50 grams of protein. Now that sounds like a lot. However, the body can't absorb and utilize as much protein as necessary in each feeding. I have read a lot of research of 30 to 35 grams. I've read counter-research that says if you needed 80 grams and you took in an 80 gram meal, then your body could utilize up to 60 or 70 grams of that protein. Somewhere in between lies the key line, but it does seem to be a little bit individual. So I suggest balancing it out. Four meals, 50 grams per day, probably better off with five meals with a little bit more balance in there. And that's simply it. All you're doing on your baseline is establishing your bottom line calories that you need, determine what your macronutrient compositions are going to be, utilizing the formula, and then you set upon maintaining that for two to four weeks. As I said, it can take up to several months of clean eating to get you to where your start point is, but that's only for the severely metabolically damaged. Your average person, two, four, maybe six weeks of clean eating, utilizing that format will put you in a good homeostasis and baseline to go forward. So establish your baseline, eating the proper foods, train hard and keep track of everything, and you can easily transition into a successful contest prep. Now, on that note, I do want to say keep track of everything on your baseline because this is the data that you can use in the tail end. There are a lot of great apps out there on your phone. Some people like to go old school, like myself, with pen and paper. And I have training logs for every single season that I competed all the way back to the early 80s through when I retired in 2008. A lot of little competition logs and diets out there, but it always gave me a reference point to go back. And the one thing that I found that my success increased dramatically every time I took the two to four weeks to baseline my diet. Now, how can you avoid this? Well, you can avoid having to ever baseline your diet by turning around and doing it the first time you ever compete. Compete. And when you come off your diet, bring your caloric and your macronutrients back up to your baseline and stay there year round. This will give you a good basis year round. Most of us don't do that. We compete, we fall off the bandwagon, we slip into old habits, we want to compete again. For those of you that go through that process, which was me for a lot of years, then this is the way to do it. So establish your baseline, know your starting point, and have a successful mission to the stage. Now, in closing, I want to talk about something that we're all noticing. Over the last few years, it seems as though the volume of our public life was turned up to a deafening, hostile speech. We've seen a new low in how do we speak to and about one another. But I'm here to tell you that while this feels like a breaking point, it's actually a crossroads we've been at before. History shows us that America has had a habit of descending before it decides. We felt the same fractured hostility in the late 1870s during the Reconstruction era, and again during the social upheaval of the 60s. Now I was alive to witness the upheavals and the return to baseline of the 60s, and that hope and cooperation returning. In those moments, people felt just as certain that the other side was an exosential threat. Division created everywhere. But history also showed that when the noise got too loud, a quiet exhaustion set in. And that exhaustion was the first step towards returning to decency. So is there evidence that the tide is turning? Unsurprisingly, yes. While the headlines are screaming the rhetoric, the exhausted majority of Americans are finally looking for a way to bridge that gap. And the data is starting to show a silent shift. Recent 2025 and 2026 polling suggests that the vast majority of Americans are the exhausted majority, and they're finally done with the threat of anger. I've begun to see this in public. I've noticed more people holding doors open for strangers or letting somebody pull out of the street in traffic. More people are being polite to each other. People are looking at building bridges with the rocks being thrown and not walls. And that bridge is exactly what happens on the gym floor. When you're backloading a bar for a heavy squat and some stranger comes up to spot you, you aren't looking at a rival. You're looking at a brother or a sister in the struggle of the iron. We share a common language and iron standard, if you will. We know you can't fake results. You can't shortcut discipline. The shared respect for the work creates a foundation of decency that transcends the labels that the world's trying to pin on us. In this sport, we compete against each other, but we're united by a lifestyle. A return to decency doesn't mean we have to agree on everything, it means we lead with the respect that we've earned through our own discipline. The world outside is starving for the iron standard. They mean people who understand that you can be intense and focused on your goals without being cruel to the person standing next to you. Decency isn't a top-down policy, it's a bottom-up practice. It's the high-protein meal quietly prepped in the kitchen. It's the encouragement that you give to a rookie in a weight room. And it's a handshake after a hard-fought pose down. As you head into the world today, take that iron standard with you. Let's be the ones who lower the temperature in the room. We earn our confidence by doing the hard things. And sometimes the hardest thing of all is choosing to treat our neighbor with decency in a world that's forgotten how. So if you like this episode, please share, subscribe, leave a comment. We appreciate hearing from you. And thank you for being part of the edge. So until next time, stay hungry, stay humble, and stay natural. Sully out.