If you've never had the pleasure of watching a bodybuilder eat immediately after finishing their competition, then allow me the enjoyment of describing a typical feeding frenzy. Let's see, after our specimen of ripped, chiseled, starving muscle polishes off the several candy bars hidden in his duffle bag, he will more than likely head off to the nearest pizza parlor. Before the large pizza with double cheese arrives, at least two or three beers are in order. When the pizza finally arrives, don't expect to be offered a piece, it's a well known formality among bodybuilders to never, under any circumstances, get your fingers in the way of their mouths. The next stop on the bodybuilders agenda will be a donut shop, where the order will consist of 6-12 donuts of all shapes, sizes and flavors. These tender morsels will be eaten in the car, on the way home, where a basket of brownies and home baked chocolate chip cookies are waiting.
 
Once several cookies and brownies are scarfed down, the bodybuilder heads off to bed where thoughts of sugar plums dance in his head. The next days eating will be even worse!

You think I'm kidding don't you? Folks, the binge that I just described isn't something I made up, it's an actual eating frenzy I've personally witnessed many times. How is it that perfectly sane, wait a minute, let me rephrase that, how is it that bodybuilders, who almost always eat right and never misses a workout, could end up with such bizarre binges? It's not only the physique competitors who experience problems, but it's people just like you and me, trying to get the most out of our training programs by eating right, only to find ourselves occasionally struggling.

To explain, let me back up a moment and tell you a little about my experience. Several years ago, I worked with a psychiatrist in Houston, where we primarily worked with eating disorders and obesity. During that time, I developed my theories on what I call "The Psychology of Eating Management". At that same time I had been working on the side with various bodybuilders helping them get ready for their contests. Although I witnessed the excessive bingeing episodes that followed a long term diet, it wasn't until I competed myself that I discovered what I refer to as "The Psychology of Deprivation". Being a nutritionist, I became keenly aware that my thoughts for food became increasingly more intense as the diet progressed. By the final week of the countdown before my show, I had amassed a long list of foods that I couldn't wait to eat. Now keep in mind, the list of foods I developed cravings for, were foods I had never even cared for, much less ate before I began dieting. Foods like pizza, cheesecake and anything chocolate began to occupy my every waking moment. When the contest finally ended, my eating frenzy began. Just an interesting side note, it took about three months before I was finally able to return back to what I call clean eating.

Out of that experience came a new me. I could suddenly relate to my eating disorder patients on a whole new level, and on top of that, I was able to develop a technique to help them overcome the constant urge to binge. In fact, what I soon realized was that competitive bodybuilders, dieters, and bulimics all share a similar behavioral pattern. And it is this pattern that leads directly to intense cravings, preoccupations for food and binging episodes. Here's how "The Psychology of Deprivation" works.

You begin by eliminating all your favorite foods in a quest to drop body fat. Since the goal of competing, or fitting into smaller size jeans means a lot to you, you make a commitment to be perfect and strict with yourself. For the first two or three weeks everything goes smoothly as planned. Then suddenly you find yourself craving a specific food. The more you think about that particular food or foods, the stronger the craving becomes. As time continues, the craving intensifies and you suddenly binge. After the binge, you feel a sense of guilt. You feel guilty because you violated the very rules that you set down for yourself which was to be perfect. Suddenly, a different kind of thought pattern begins to emerge. You know that you've blown it, so you say to yourself, "Well, I've blown it now, I may as well really blow it!" and then off you go eating everything you can get your hands on.

While that last thought pattern sounds a bit illogical, it actually makes perfect sense to the deprived person. You see, it occurs to you that you have to stop eating and get back on your program. Knowing that you have to get back on the program, you unconsciously decide that you better eat as much food as possible because you know you'll have to stop soon. Which can make the guilt feelings and bingeing worse. Consider this analogy, if you were driving down the road and had a flat tire, would you ever jump out of the car and slit the other three tires? Obviously not.

The pattern exhibited by a bulimic is the exact same pattern of the self imposed rigidity of a bodybuilder. Have you ever been around somebody that talks about food all the time? The more rigid and perfect you try to be, the more preoccupations with food will result. Now in the case of the bodybuilder or competitor, it is absolutely necessary that they impose this kind of sever restrictions on themselves. But far too many people, who never consider competing, think that severe omissions and rigidness are the only ways to getting lean, and that's just not the case. The key word used to describe the onset of the binging episodes, regardless of whether it's a bodybuilder getting ready to compete, a dieter trying to shed a few pounds, or a bulimic, is deprivation.

Deprivation can have a major impact on your perceptions of food and your ability to adhere to your dietary program. Many of you may struggle with your dietary program from time to time, and find yourselves enjoying an occasional binge. But just because you never diet harshly, don't think deprivation isn't affecting you. Deprivation has several levels, the bulimic and bodybuilding descriptions were scenarios of the extreme cases. On the other side of the spectrum, in a milder sense, deprivation can exert an effect on healthy, non-dieting people as well.

Consider these three examples of how the sensation of deprivation could sabotage your ability to eat right. Skipping meals, shaving calories back too far and basically allowing yourself to get too hungry is the most commonly recognized form of deprivation. This example is obvious and doesn't really require much explanation. The second way deprivation occurs is due to repetitiveness. By eating the same foods over and over and over and over again you will become bored and no longer be satisfied. As time progresses, you'll find yourself finishing a meal and immediately looking in your cupboards for something else to eat. In most cases something sweet. Even though you like the foods you're eating, the mere boredom leaves you unsatisfied. You see, at the base of the brain there is a satiety center and when the right moistures flavors and textures hit the palate it sends a nervous impulse to the brain that tells you that the foods you eat are mentally satisfying.

Deprivation can also result from poor cooking skills. Imagine what happens to the person that peels the skin off a chicken breast, sprinkles it with pepper, broils it in the oven and eats it with a dry baked potato. Or worse yet, opens a can of water packed tuna, eats it straight out of the can, and chokes it down with some dry rice. How long do you think a program like that will last? I could eat 20 pounds of that type of food, and still stand up from the table and immediately start looking for something sweet to eat.

In essence, to make long term gains in bodybuilding, you have to eat frequently, eat a lot and basically eat the same kinds of foods day in and day out. Understanding the various ways that deprivation can diminish your desire to eat right, let me share with you some insights on how to develop a bodybuilding diet that you can use for life.

(1). Understand that the goal is progress, not perfection. No one, regardless of how disciplined they may appear, can eat perfectly all the time. Secondly, realize that bad choices are a part of healthy and normal eating pattern. But if you get a flat tire and eat the wrong food, just don't slit the other three tires.

(2). "Make Better Bad Choices". If you have a strong craving, go ahead and satisfy it, but rather than choosing the fattiest food, try to make a better choice. Common examples would be switching from ice cream to frozen yogurt, or from potato chips to pretzels, or a hamburger to a turkey breast burger. In some cases, when the lower fat alternative doesn't do the trick, eat the food you crave, just eat a little less of it. For example, if I'm craving a juicy steak and normally eat a 16 oz. slab, maybe this time I'll order a 10 oz. filet.

(3). Understand that your eating program is a lifelong journey, not an overnight trip. Like any road you travel down, expect bumps, red lights, yellow lights, detours and unexpected stops. The holiday season, birthdays, weddings, and vacations are very bumpy times for most of us, so relax, enjoy the ride and rather than trying to be perfect, consider just trying to eat better than you have in the past. Progress is being made if you find yourself making better choices, even if those choices fall short of being perfect. Progress is also being made if you don't gain weight during a time that you normally would. So, if each holiday or vacation that comes along you normally gain 5-10 pounds, and this year you don't, then that's progress.

(4). Don't set unrealistic goals on yourself. A little known fact about the pictures you see gracing the insides of all the muscle magazines (Muscle Media 2000 included), is that the majority of the shots were taken right before or immediately following a contest. Consequently, the images you see is not the normal appearance these people possess all year. It is a temporary look, and very few bodybuilders or fitness models can maintain that sharp, lean look all year. Furthermore, good genetics, anabolic steroids, diuretics, growth hormone and who knows what else helped create that temporary look.

(5). Eat frequently and make sure each meal is balanced. Hunger is such a strong driving force, it even over-rides sexual desire. By eating frequently, and making sure each meal is balanced with low fat protein and a complex carbohydrate, you will rarely feel hungry. Just a side note here, many bodybuilders discover during the final few weeks before a competition that they cannot sleep. A chief complaint among competitors is that after about 4 hours of sleep, their eyes pop open, and they cannot fall back asleep. This inability to sleep is caused by very low body fat levels. Once the body fat drops to a certain point, your circadian rhythm becomes disrupted, and you awake earlier so that there will be more time in the day to hunt and forage for food. This response is a survival carryover from our ancestors.

(6). One of the biggest problems bodybuilders face is eating the same old foods, day after day. And when you have to eat six meals a day, getting a lot of variety can seem difficult. Develop a wide variety of low fat foods to choose from. Remember the grilled chicken or water packet tuna example I used earlier? Well, here's a great cooking technique anyone can do. First of all, I grill all my meats dry, chicken breast, turkey breast, shrimp and even fish. But the catch is, I don't eat it that way. I use easy to make salsa's and relishes and top the meats with them. Toppings like these make foods a lot less boring and visually more appealing. With food we are stimulated by sight first, taste second. Toppings not only make the food look appetizing, they also add color, moisture and additional flavors that satisfy. Here's three great examples that are fast, easy and most importantly don't require cooking or heating.

BLACK BEAN SALSA

1 can of cooked black beans

1/4 cup diced red onion

1/2 cup frozen corn (thawed)

1 medium tomato diced

1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Drain and rinse the canned beans. Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl. Stir well. Place in refrigerator for 30 minutes or longer. This salsa is great over grilled fish or chicken breast.

Cal. 358 / Fat 2.4 gm. / Chol. -0- / Pro. 19 gm. / %Fat 6%

Imagine the various colors that the black beans, pink onion, yellow corn, red tomato and green cilantro create when placed over grilled fish. Secondly, notice what little time a recipe like this would take. Simply open a can of black beans, dice up the vegetables and toss in some frozen corn. Perhaps more importantly, is how this recipe transcends into the next days cooking. For example, this recipe makes a lot of salsa, store the leftovers in a Tupperware container and place it in your refrigerator. The next morning, toss some of it in a Teflon pan, pour your egg whites over it, scramble together and place it in corn tortillas. We'll call that southwestern burritos.

PINEAPPLE PICO DE GALLO

1 cup canned pineapple in its own juice (diced)

1/4 diced red onion

4 heaping Tb. diced fresh cilantro

1 Tb. lemon juice

dash of nutmeg

dash of cloves

Place pineapple, onion and cilantro in mixing bowl. Stir together, and add in lemon juice and sprinkle with spices. Mix well. Serve over grilled fish or chicken breast.

Cal. 120 / Fat .8 gm. / Chol. -0- / Pro. 1.4 gm. / %Fat 6%

MANGO RELISH

1 cup freshly diced mango

2/3 cup orange juice

1 tsp. nutmeg

1/4 cup diced red onion

Mix together mango, onion and orange juice in mixing bowl. Sprinkle with nutmeg. serve over fish or chicken breast.

Cal. 257 / Fat 1.9 gm. / Chol. -0- / Pro. 3 gm. / %Fat 6%

The goal of a sound, healthy eating program should be progress, not perfection, in other words, stop trying to follow the "perfect diet", "perfectly". Far too many people set themselves up for failure by imposing strict rules and guidelines that cannot be followed for life. Many athletes see and read the pre-contest diets that the pros follow, and think that's how they should be eating all year. Additionally, the rigid omissions always end up leading to intense cravings and eventually feelings of hopelessness about your ability to stay on your program. To succeed and stop yourself from going crazy, start managing your favorite foods, don't avoid them.