FlaredupFitness

It is currently 5 days after my competition and I’ve been feeling rundown and exhausted. I pushed myself harder than ever before and ran my body right into the ground by overtraining in a large caloric deficit for an extended period of time. I think I’ve come down with the flu the last few days so I’ve been taking it really easy. I’ve only worked out twice in the last 8 days, I will attempt to drag myself into the gym tomorrow depending on how I’m feeling.

I haven’t gone completely off the rails nutrition-wise. I did have a pizza and ice cream after my show Saturday and I made a huge pile of Nachos earlier this week but now I am back to business as usual. I’m eating the same things that I was eating Pre-contest. Many athletes that compete really go off the rails and eat anything and everything they couldn’t while they were prepping for their show. This is not what I want to do. It is not uncommon for people to gain 10-30 pounds in a week or two after their show. The key to not having a Post-Show rebound is to Reverse Diet out of your deficit. I will explain and show exactly what I will be doing as far as Post contest diet and how to effectively reverse out of your diet with the most minimal gain in body fat in a later post. I did all this work why would I throw it all away in a week or two of binging? A reverse diet is a slow increase in calories to bring your body out of a deficit. So basically I will increase my calories by 100 each week until I find my Base level of calories. For example I was dieting at 2000 calories per day, this week I am slightly higher carb at 2100 calories per day and next week I will be eating 2200 calories per day with most of the additional 100 calories coming from increased carbs. This is one of the hardest parts of competing is to reverse out of your diet.

So What Now?

Do not get me wrong but I would absolutely love to crush 3500 calories a day like I did in the offseason but I have to have extreme self-control here. It will likely take over 8 weeks to effectively reverse out of my caloric deficit but if I do it properly I should be able to maintain a very low body fat while increasing lean muscle mass for the summer. My plan now is to enjoy my summer while watching what I eat and hopefully make some big gains over the next few months. I am not sure if I will ever decide to compete again but I will definitely not stop training and improving my physique. Going on stage really showed my strengths and weaknesses so I am going to work really hard over the offseason at bringing up lagging body parts such as my traps, legs and rear delts by hitting them at least twice a week. If I do decide to compete again it would not be until November or Spring 2016 so I have some time to work on my weaknesses. Overall I am really excited to have competed in The 2015 Southern Alberta Bodybuilding Championships and a big congrats to everyone who will be competing in Provincials next weekend!