Written by Matt Porter
post contest
REBOUND!
How to use this anabolic phenomenon to work with you and not against you.
What Binge Eating Does
to Your Body
• Insulin: When you binge eat following a competition, you
will raise the amount of insulin that is present in your body. This
raised level of insulin will cause your metabolism to slow down
at rapid rates. Severely heightened levels of insulin will normally
take from 2 months to several years to return to normal.
• Thyroid: When you binge eat, you tell your thyroid that
you do not need any more thyroxin because you can supply it
yourself. As a result, your thyroid stops producing thyroxin and
your metabolism begins to crash. You may be tempted to take
medication to counteract this effect. Be aware, however, that 1
single secretion of your thyroid gland is about 100 times more
powerful than any medication you can take.
S
o you decided to commit to entering your first bodybuilding
competition. You’ve planned out your 16 week diet protocol, which will get you as lean as you have ever been.
You’ve structured your training program methodically,
which coincides with your nutrition and cardio outline perfectly.
As the contest date approaches closer and closer, and hunger
gets more intense, you begin fantasizing about pizza, milk shakes,
cheese burgers and junk food you never initially craved. You can’t
wait to reward yourself with all of the forbidden junk food you yearn for
and also give yourself a much needed break from training and cardio.
I mean, hey, you deserve it right? You just beat yourself down for 4
months and should be able to reward yourself for the hard work you
put in. Not so fast champ! I will explain the more logical and proactive
approach to coming off a pre-contest training and diet regimen.
After months of strict rigorous dieting to achieve extremely low
body fat levels for a bodybuilding contest, you are essentially priming
yourself for what could be a muscle building dream, or a fat hoarding
nightmare. As body fat levels dip into the lower single digits, the
hormone leptin is significantly lowered, thus triggering intense hunger
followed by an increase in ghrelin production. When attaining truly
shredded conditioning, the constant hunger is unavoidable.
Typically, a competitor will begin plotting their “post-contest binge”
a few weeks before the contest, making a list of all empty calorie,
fat storing foods, which are also non-conducive to muscle growth.
Instead, the smart competitor should be planning out their off-season
protocol a few weeks before the show and plan on making the most
of their post-contest rebound. Having a good quality protein powder
on hand like ALLMAX Nutrition’s ISOFLEX Whey Protein Isolate can
help with those cravings.
After the contest is over, your body is primed to store every nutrient
you ingest. Since body fat is extremely low, your insulin sensitivity
is very high. This means less insulin is needed from your pancreas
to shuttle nutrients to their destination. Greater insulin sensitivity
translates into nutrients being absorbed towards muscle cells and not
adipose tissue. Since leptin is low and ghrelin is high, your appetite
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for muscle building foods will be sky high. The foods you should be
focusing on are typically what you would have consumed during your
pre-contest phase, but in copious amounts.
T
he foods that should be focused on are lean protein sources such
as chicken breast, white fish, fatty fish, lean cuts of red meat,
fibrous complex carbohydrates such as whole oats, long grain rice,
yams, red potatoes, whole wheat pasta and ALLMAX Nutrition’