Brothers, we’ve all been there. We’ve all got our own stories to tell. We all know dieting f*cking sucks. Here are a couple of observations from some bodybuilders and coaches:
Machine
The alarm goes off. 4 a.m. came too quick. Your mouth is dry, you can’t walk without hamstring cramps and egg whites with oatmeal does not seem to make you run to the breakfast table anyway.
One hour of cardio, 90 minutes of weights, baked chicken breast, steamed green beans, and a headache to wash it down. All before 10 a.m. Damn, dieting sucks.
G Diesel
The dreams man… the f*cking dreams. I could do cardio all damn day, no problem, but as soon as I start eating ultra-clean with restricted calories, the dreams begin.
Vivid dreams of every sugary, fattening food under the sun. I wake up positive that I cheated on my diet while I slept.
Vag
As a powerlifter, I don’t diet. The only thing I have for achieving maximum power is training hard and calories.
When I take some of those calories away to make weight, it makes the power unsure and in some of the more extreme cases, made contests lift very heavy.
Schak
Your body is craving what it thinks it needs, and now, besides beating it up training, you deny it the satisfaction of what it wants.
You hunger for certain rewards that you enjoy and dieting does not allow you those rewards. Dieting just sucks period. No reason, it just ain’t fun.
Lad
Dieting is controlled eating. By eating clean, you gotta eat every few hours to maintain any type of energy level.
Diet is a four letter word.
J Dawg
The worse thing about dieting is the hunger pains and decrease in energy. Getting through the workouts when you’re dieting is much harder than when you’re bulking.
All junk food must be kept out of reach. Most individuals who haven’t genuinely committed to dieting will give in to these cravings, but the true warriors overcome and look beyond the temptation and keep their goals in mind to prevent themselves from faltering.
Mazz
The last few weeks of my diet, I basically eat the exact same foods everyday: oatmeal, chicken and broccoli. The monotony kills me.
Also, I’m really moody the last few weeks. I usually try to be a nice guy but when I’m dialing in for a show, its best just to leave me alone unless I talk to you first.
Why Dieting Sucks? More Responses
The following are responses from other writers to the same question:
Louis Dorman
Okay, you meet a great girl and you want to take her to a nice restaurant. Then you realize that you are counting calories, you have a schedule of meals, workouts & bedtime. You have a f*cking curfew!
It’s like you can’t spontaneously go out and enjoy yourself. You try to make the best of the situation and you make plans, but the lack of options while going out to dinner is very slim.
You can’t go out and have a nice bottle of wine, dessert and then wake up the next morning next to her. If you do stay the night with her you have to set your alarm on your cell phone to 5am and get back to your house for your morning cardio. Dieting sucks because it f*cks up your dating life.
Daniel Gastelu
Extreme dieting for bodybuilding competitions or sports like wrestling (which I had to deal with during high school and college) that requires reduction of body fat below healthy levels really does suck, big-time.
Once under the 8 percent or so body fat level, this turns on metabolic emergency switches that make the physiology and psychology go into a type of “eat or die” state of being.
Even when following the best fat reduction diet, once your body fat levels reach this “low warning zone level” you spend day and night fighting off thoughts of eating and resisting the physical drive to get up and eat; which is a torturous state of being.
The lower your body fat levels go, the more torturous it is. I can still remember the nights during my wrestling career when I woke up and raided the refrigerator, usually the night before a match.
I had to keep it stocked with low calorie vegetables, like heads of lettuce and pounds of fresh broccoli, which I ate plenty of during the day, but especially needed on hand at night to make those mid-night binges less calorie damaging.
After my last wrestling match almost 3 decades ago I never wanted to do extreme dieting like that again, one reason why I never enter any bodybuilding competitions.
But, now at 48 even with eating a healthy diet and daily exercise, keeping body fat levels down is getting harder, especially if I want to get and stay under 9% body fat. Now when I need to seasonally reduce body fat levels, I use my expertise to follow a body fat reduction diet that sucks less, but it still sucks.
David Robson
Dieting is a necessary evil when preparing to get into competition shape, and/or to be at ones best. To bring out the lines, and improve muscle symmetry, dieting (if done correctly), combined with cardio training, works by stripping any excess body-fat. I remember dieting to be an arduous process of deprivation and despair, for the most part.
Constant dieting is boring and can actually change one’s attitude completely, to where they are uptight and judgmental of what everyone else is eating. Dieting can also be rewardingly enjoyable (depending on the dieter’s motivation levels and the type of shape they are in). For many bodybuilders, feelings of hunger equate with physical triumph as they edge closer to achieving sublime conditioning.
I think dieting is important to some extent (an 8-12 week period once a year for instance). However, trying to maintain a high level of conditioning over the long term, through dieting, can be the ultimate act of deprivation – depending on how disciplined one is.
Eating well year-round, and staying within striking distance of competition shape, is a way better alternative to staying on a strict diet. This way, dieting can be done over a shorter period come pre-contest time.
Ron
- The only good part about dieting is the brief look into senility you get… as the carbs become more and more scarce your cognitive skills diminish (as does your temper) so much that the day of the show you find yourself unable to perform simple arithmetic.
Brenda Kelly
Some of my dieting friends do not even go out since they don’t want to see what they are missing. Not me.
I love to ogle the dessert trays, wine list, pastry cases and even the cheese isle at the grocery store! It must be some sort of missed placed torture!
My imagination is good. Way good. Not good enough to replicate the taste, feel or comfort from my favorite foods and drinks though! Does this stop me from ogling? No. Do I eat or drink these things when I am dieting strictly? No. Ouch.
Shannon Clark
I think that dieting sucks mostly because it really plays a role with you psychologically. When we go into a state where we are restricting what we eat, our minds tend to naturally crave what it is we can’t have even more.
So this sets us up for more severe cravings that adds stress on top of being so strict with yourself and trying to exercise in an energy reduced state. Also, when we are eating a hypocaloric diet, it seems like we lack energy for everyday things that can be very frustrating at times.
Finally the last thing that I think sucks about dieting that comes after the diet, is getting used to eating normally again and seeing your bodyfat go up.
A lot of people have trouble after getting so lean and getting into contest shape learning that they can’t stay this way year round and giving up their hard earned leanness.
Richard Baldwin
Dieting sucks because it doesn’t work! The key is nutritional eating, not fad diets. There is no secret “diet”! In addition, nutritional eating is not rocket science.
Everyone really knows what they shouldn’t eat, but they do it anyway. So the key is motivation, not to go on some weird starvation diet, but to eat good, nutrient-dense foods!
Curtis Schultz, AKA Coach “C”
Why dieting sucks for me is that when I’ve dieted with my wife when she was prepping for a bodybuilding show, at the end of it all I’d lose one inch maybe?
All that depriving of myself of the foods I want to eat for one lousy inch off my waist…screw dieting! Eat what you want and just do more cardio…Food makes the body good!
Anita Ramsey
I’ve heard stories of other competitors being grumpy when they are dieting, they chose to diet not someone else so they have no right to get grumpy. As for myself, I don’t get grumpy, just hungry.
You’re hungry all the time and you’re eating constantly, it just doesn’t add up. But, it really doesn’t bother me to diet, because I know I’m going to look HOT when I’m done!