How Many Post Show Cheat Meals Can I Have?

Pizza, burgers, sushi, cookies, and the list can just never end! Post show eating can be a challenge for many competitors. You get off stage and after months of restrictive structured eating you now have free reign to eat anything. You then wake up from your food coma one-week later 20lbs over stage weight looking like a swollen sausage. Then from that point on you feel lost in wanting to eat more, but also wanting to go back to a fat loss diet. I am going to give some details into how I plan my caloric adventures, but still dial it in for progress into the offseason.

I am basing a lot of the post show food allowance around physique goals and the mental and physical state of the athlete. I can write a whole newsletter on each aspect but today I want to just focus on the rate of body weight increase to look for, goal body fat targets, and how this will give a caloric goal to hit weekly.

The post show period is about removing the negative adaptations from a long contest diet and setting you up for a productive offseason. This is getting a person back to normal sleep patterns, GI/bowel movements regular, mentally not food focused, return to hormonal base line, and libido back to baseline among other things. This is very much determined by energy availability, your body fat level and caloric intake level. So, we need body fat to return to a level close to the individuals set point that they feel “normal” at. For males this is typically around 8-12% body fat, for females 18-22% body fat. These are some rough goal targets we are aiming to hit. Now, we want this gain of body fat spread out over the next 6-8 weeks. Not the 1-week 20lb weight gain binge fest.

The first week post show I usually like to see a 2-3% body weight increase. I competed at 212lbs at Olympia and came back home at 215lbs, end of the week I was 216lbs. This fit right into the range. I had 3 large meals post show off plan non tracked, but the second day after the show ate only protein and veggies (300g protein, trace fats and carbs). This dropped off the water from the cheats quick. Third day after the show I was back to my routine diet I followed 2 weeks out (200g carbs, 300g protein, 30g fat). I went back to this to establish the response. If body weight drops over the next 7 days, I know I am in a deficit or surplus and can adjust accordingly.

You probably see where I am going with this. After my 7 days of staying on plan, I dropped to 215.2lbs. So, I know I can add in my weekly cheat meal and increase daily food intake. Let’s get nerdy with some numbers. I dropped 0.8lbs over 7 days, 3500 calories equal ~1lb of fat, so my deficit is 2800 calories (3500 x 0.8) or a 400-calorie deficit per day (2800/7 days). Now, I want to be in a surplus and gaining 0.5-1% body weight per week up to my 8-10% body fat goal in about 7 weeks. I need more than 400kcal per day addition to be in a surplus, so I am going to add 650kcal per day. However, I want a cheat meal and I just need my average calories per week to hit that surplus amount. Once per week I am going to have a 1500 calorie cheat meal and then add 400kcal per day to my diet. This will all average out ~614kcal addition per day. I follow this for 7 days, check if I am on track body weight wise and visually, I adjust from there and keep repeating this process.

This is not the only way to do this and much of this has to come down to adherence. Some cannot stay that strict post show and might need a faster rate of gaining, so they don’t fly off the handle. But this gives a starting point to how we might manage one person, like myself, post show. Giving this layout to a person a few weeks before their show can mentally get them engaged on what must be done, rather than giving them a plan post show when they are already checked out and shark mode at the sushi buffet.

Now someone post show? Send this over to a friend!

Think bigger!

Train Hard!

John Jewett MS RD IFBB Pro