Transcription
Pressure makes diamonds, so I'm covered in ice. Got me out for the slice.
What is up, YouTube? Today, I'm going to be taking you guys through the exact diet that I followed to get insanely shredded to win Olympias. So, I'm going to start with meal number one, 'cause we don't call it breakfast. I'm going to get prepping on that.
How many meals per day would you eat and prep?
It usually was around six meals a day plus a protein shake. Near the very end, the protein shake would come out.
Why so many meals instead of fewer big meals?
When I was eating more meals and spreading them out more, I felt like my metabolism was revving up. I was able to burn more calories throughout the day and use that food more efficiently. That's not really proven. People fight against that, but I noticed it firsthand that it actually works. So, big thing in bodybuilding, just most meals as possible. Also helps to like spread stuff out. So, you make sure your nutrient timing is like efficiently spread throughout the day, so you're always getting a little bit of intake of protein, so you're not losing too much muscle.
All right, so bringing me back to the prep days, tracking this food. This meal is 375 grams of egg whites and one whole egg. It is quite a sad-looking meal, but that's what it is. You're trying to get to not enjoy your food. This comes out to 267 calories, 50 grams of protein, 6 grams of fat, and 3 grams of carbs. So, a lot of my meals were consistently around 250 calories, which is even saying that number is so sad. That's like a portion of a meal that I eat now. But that's what it takes. I typically would eat this meal at any time between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m. This would be the first meal I would eat right after cardio. And then I typically train after the next meal. So, this was just getting some protein in. That's all I was worried about.
Did you care about taste when you were in prep, or were you just eating for a purpose?
I mean, it was eating for a purpose, but because you're so hungry from literally being starving for a bit of extra period of time, everything starts to taste good.
What tips do you have for people as a 6X Olympia winner for people trying to get as lean as possible?
I actually have a lot of tips because I was starving all the time, but I'm eat this 'cause I got to get out of here and I'll say them later in the video. When prepping, you got to be exact.
My scale is not accurate enough.
This would drive me crazy in prep, but I'm letting go of the obsession and the OCD, so we're going to move on at 44.8 instead of 45.
Came back a little there for a moment. So, my eyes are twitching a little bit.
All right, so meal two was frequently my favorite meal of the day because this was my pre-workout meal. When I was down to really low carbs, I would only eat carbs before and after the workout, and I would use oatmeal. I could have had rice or whatever, but oatmeal felt like it held me satiated for a little bit longer, and I was allowed a scoop of protein a day for the most part of the time. So, me being able to eat something that is chocolate flavored or vanilla or cookie cream when I'm in like starvation mode tasted incredible. So, I really enjoyed this meal. To get a proper amount of protein from a meat and not just powder, I would have a little bit of ground turkey. And I loved ketchup, but you can't have ketchup with all the sugar in it. So, I would end up eating pico. So, it would be 90 grams of ground turkey with a little bit of tomato. 45 grams of oats. These are the bowls that Bradley eats like fruit out of. And these were like my meal bowls. And then I put a scoop of protein in here. Mix it up. And that would be my pre-workout meal. All right. So, this beautiful meal came out to 362 calories. This is a high-calorie meal. 49 grams of protein, 5 grams of fat, and 31 grams of carbs. I had a period of prep and my total carb intake was 40 grams pretty frequently. So, this would pretty much be close to all the carbs I would eat in a day other than a little bit from either the tomato or some vegetables or whatnot. But, this was predominantly it. And this would be my big, satiating meal that I would have before going to workout.
You use the chess pieces idea for food. What are you actually moving around from one day to the next?
Usually, protein would never change, and you would pull fat and you would pull carbs throughout. So, start having carbs every single meal, a high amount of carbs, and then you'd start pulling those carbs one by one. Typically, my last meal of the day would pull the carbs, be higher fat like salmon with just vegetables, and then throughout the meals, you would just pull, pull, pull carbs until at the very end, you're left with just a little bit of carbs right before your workout, right after the workout. Sometimes you pull the post-workout or the pre-workout ones. But really, at the end of the day, it's you have a meal plan that you know your body's good on. You follow it to a T. Your body knows when the food is coming, what type of food is coming, and you're just pulling it away. You're getting used to getting this amount of calories in this exact way, and all of a sudden, just less, less, less. So, your body's burning more calories, you're consuming less, and then you get shredded over time.
You said earlier you had tips for people trying to get as lean as possible. What are they?
I have quite a few, but number one, because it would be revolved around this meal, is sleep. You lose one hour of sleep, your discipline tanks, and people don't understand that. So, the worse your sleep is, the less sleep you get, the harder it is for your brain to make the decision to do hard things. Your willpower decreases. By fact, not no matter how strong you are, it gets harder if you do not sleep. So, sleep hygiene is so important, especially when you're dieting, you're trying to accomplish something difficult because the more tired you are, the worse decisions that you make. So, often in prep, when you're starving, it was already hard to sleep. So, I would eat breakfast, often shower, and then nap, just go lie on my couch in the sunlight, just like put my feet up and just lie there and just fall asleep. And I would nap, and I'd wake up and like, "Can I eat again?" All I was thinking about was food. Good sleep, long sleep, restful sleep makes everything in life easier, especially dieting. So, if you're someone whose sleep is off and you feel like you keep making bad decisions and your cravings keep getting the best of you and your discipline just sucks in terms of what you eat, rule number one is to try and sleep better. And that will help you, I promise, to full extension.
Drive the elbows. Boom. A little faster. Three, two, one, and go. Three, two, and one more. How like as you're coming down, you're driving your feet into the ground to push your back into the bench. Driving through your feet into the bench, even on flat. Two, one, dead stop. Go. Three, two, one. Dead stop. Go. Three. Try to throw it off you. Go. Yep. Three, two, one. Three, two, one. Good. Three, two, one. Boom. Done. Another one. Dunzo. Dunzo. Dunzo.
This brings me back to Olympia prep 'cause I don't think I've had just plain fresh-caught Alaskan cod. Age-old bodybuilding wisdom is you eat white fish to get thin skin. This meal is 100 grams of white rice, 200-some grams of white fish, and I got a little bit of asparagus in there. Asparagus, if you will. I used to put shredded lettuce in all of my meals because it added volume and no calories, but there's an outbreak and people are getting sick eating lettuce right now. I'm not trying to risk that right now. But this comes to 300 calories, 47 grams of protein, 29 grams of carbs.
You gave us the first tip for getting lean. What's number two?
Probably honestly, the most important is setting yourself up for success. Your environment and your schedule. So, when I'm prepping, I knew exactly what I was eating every single day. I knew what time I was eating it. Having a specific routine that takes the thinking out of it makes your brain require less discipline to make the right decision. So, if you have to make yourself, make your life easier for you, you will be more likely to succeed. Don't rely on discipline. Rely on systems and structures and routines and set your environment up for success.
Justin, anything to add?
Don't be a skinny [ __ ].
Oh, no. We're trying to be a skinny [ __ ]. We're trying to get shredded.
Be a skinny [ __ ]. Think like a skinny [ __ ].
So, prep is really just eating egg whites and white fish, huh? We were staying at the Trump the last year I competed, and it was pretty hilarious because Trump actually stayed at my hotel while we were there. So, there was like, what's it called? That security called, what are they called? Secret Service.
Secret Service on every floor. They were on our floor. When you eat a lot of fish, you can't escape the smell. When I was cooking this, Courtney was like, "Oh my god, this is like prep PTSD." And when I cooked it in a hotel room, like pounds of it, like $200 of cod. You sweat out fish. Your whole house, your clothes, everything around you just attaches and smells like fish. Secret Service agent literally two doors down from us. You get off the elevator and you're just like, "Whoa, the whole floor smells like fish."
Like, "Yes, 'cause everyone's coming to buy probably all the fish. 3 lbs of cod and like 3 lb of salmon."
Oh, it's chicken. It's not even fish. It's a delightful surprise.
If you're single and you're prepping and you're eating a lot of fish, just stay single. I'm trying to get past it. But that being said, next meal is more fish. This is 220 grams of white fish cod with some asparagus. No more carbs for the rest of your day. Not around the workout. So, like I said, carbs are all around that. This is really just getting protein in for the rest of the day. Making sure I'm not getting too skinny and keeping calories as low as possible.
In the streets, everyone around me know that's a fact. I told my talents all over, man. They play me everywhere on the map. I don't fall in love to don't get a text. Running out of space for clothes in my closet. My favorite notification is deposit.
Would you recommend people copy these exact meals if they're trying to get lean?
Yes and no. Everything always depends. I feel like if you really wanted to get lean, this works. But it's definitely a very extreme version. Like, if I just wanted to get leaner now, even myself right now, I wouldn't do exactly this because life is different now. I don't have as much muscle tissue on me. I don't need to get as lean. Like, bodybuilding is the extreme of everything. That's why everything's so boring, so low calorie 'cause it's just optimizing as much as you possibly can. If you set yourself up with a diet that is too difficult that you're not going to follow, you're actually doing yourself a disservice. You might as well add calories in and actually follow the diet than start with a diet too hard that you're not going to follow.
Can you have cheat days and cheat meals while you're still trying to get lean?
They're a tool that can always be either harmful or useful depending on how they're used and if you actually need them. If you're someone who's like, "Knowing I can diet hard all week if I have that meal on Saturday, if I have that date night on the weekend," then great, that works. Not really sustainable for like long-term life. Sometimes people have a cheat meal and it actually makes their cravings way worse that night, the next day, the next couple days, they're thinking about food more because they had a taste of it versus when you're restricting, you think of it less. So, you just got to know what is going to affect your mind the most.
How's your diet nowadays compared to what it was during prep?
Oh, I mean, compared to this, significantly better. People, if you're not watching this and you're like, "That looks like a good diet," then you've lost your mind. Really, it's just a lot more free and flexible. I ended up being free for a while. I was having sandwiches and wraps and doing all these things that I love to do, and then I kind of just converted back to the food I always ate. There's usually a ground turkey and rice meal. There's usually ground beef with avocado. There's usually an egg and bread meal. And then I usually have a brown rice pasta with either ground beef or ground turkey as well. That's 90% of what I eat. And I'll throw snacks in there because Bradley has good snacks that she has around the house, and I'm not going to not eat her snacks, especially if she doesn't finish them. But as a whole, I eat very similar still. This meal is 150 grams of ground turkey, one egg, and four egg whites. And it always comes out to a little bit different, but this is like 300 calories, 50 grams of protein, and like 7 grams of fat from an egg, but still super low calorie. Usually, I would eat this meal, put the dish away, and go to bed. Like, there was no like hour before bed. That only matters if you actually have food in your stomach. I was so empty that I didn't notice I had food in my stomach, and I certainly wasn't spiking my blood sugar from eating this meal. So, I would go straight to bed and just fall asleep. That's a bonus tip right there is you can't eat when you're sleeping. So, it's a way to diet.
What's your final tip for people trying to get lean?
My final tip is going to be, I'm trying to keep this practical with walking after every single meal. This is like a traditional thing. I think Stan Efferding like coined it. Being able to go on a 10-minute walk after every single meal doesn't just allow you to burn a little bit more calories, but allows you to stabilize your blood sugar. And the more that you stabilize your blood sugar and you don't have spikes of blood sugar, A, it controls cravings. B, if you don't have glucose circulating through your blood, your body's more likely to pull fat. And then you're burning more fat. And it's just a great way to digest, move the food through you, and just also get in the sunshine a little bit. And it helps cortisol. Cortisol is brutal for anything to do with trying to diet. So, it's a beautiful little thing that you can add to, and it's very easy to do. Once it becomes a habit, it's really not that hard. Most people will eat a meal and sit on their phone for 10 minutes. If you just take that time to go out for a walk outside and move your body a little bit, it is like a crazy cheat code. Some people don't even do cardio. Bodybuilders don't even do any cardio because they get enough steps in a day from doing consistent walks throughout the day. So, it's a big thing that is anyone can add to their life to make them healthier, but also just burn fat easier.
All right, that is a wrap on this full day of eating. Going back to how I ate to get as lean as possible trying to win the Olympia. If you guys like this theme, we also did a morning routine video, the same morning routine that I followed in Olympia. We're going to put that link on the screen right now. But that's all we got for today. Appreciate you guys watching. See you next time.