Staying in Shape for the Long Term

Ron Harris

of jumping off stage into the crowd to pose up close and personal for four or five minutes. I figured a little Ron goes a long way, plus I didn’t want anyone to snap some unflattering paparazzi picture and post it all over the web. Not that I was going to be flashing my privates, shaving my head, or attacking any cars with an umbrella, but if my stomach happened to be protruding at all from any angle, rumors would be flying that I had a ‘baby bump.’ Nothing against that ‘man’ that gave birth, but I didn’t need that kind of notoriety.

I had managed to get myself down to 209 pounds, which was fifteen pounds heavier than when I had won the contest the summer before. And for the first time since then, I could see my abdominals clearly. That got me to thinking about the way we bodybuilders tend to yo-yo up and down in our bodyweight. Over twenty years ago Robert DeNiro was lauded for his amazing physical transformation during the filming of the movie Raging Bull, in which he portrayed champion boxer and complete moron Jake LaMotta. For the fight scenes, DeNiro exercised maniacally and ate a strict diet to appear lean and chiseled (the digital imaging used to superimpose washboard abs like the Spartans in 300 didn’t exist yet). He then ballooned up to a fatso to portray the boxer in his later years. Apparently fat-suit technology had not yet reached the technology that has allowed actors like Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence to realistically portray morbidly obese folks, either. Movie fans and critics everywhere raved about the amazing dedication it took DeNiro to undergo such a dramatic change in appearance. Meanwhile, all the bodybuilders rolled their eyes and said, “Oh big deal, I do that all the time.”

Most bodybuilders dis­tinguish large portions of the year as being either ‘off-season’ or ‘pre-contest.’ If said bodybuilder is of the recreational variety and has about as much desire to get up on stage in a tiny posing suit as he does to watch a marathon of the women’s gabfest TV show The View, these phases are referred to as ‘bulking’ and ‘cutting.’ Whatever the process is called, the strategy remains the same. In the off-season, you eat a surplus of calories, especially more complex carbohydrates, with the goal of gaining as much muscle mass as possible. As you might imagine, some take this idea too far and decide a surplus of anything is acceptable.

Let me preface this by stating that I speak from personal experience when I say that too many bodybuilders use the off-season as an excuse to edge toward obesity. Once you pass a certain point where you lose sight of your abs, it’s common to adopt a devil-may-care attitude about further fat gain. You start focusing on the scale and taking joy in each pound gained, living in denial of the fact that you get winded during challenging tasks like bending over to tie your shoelaces, or climbing the four stairs to your master bedroom. Your 32-inch waist pants become a fond memory as you squeeze tightly into a size 36. The rationalization is that you can get rid of all that blubber when the time comes. Somehow you seem to forget what a long and laborious process it is to shed that fat, much like women are said to block out the horrific pains of childbirth.

So we diet down. Depending on how much fat we have managed to accumulate, how fast or slow our metabolism happens to be, and how strict we are with our diet and cardio regimen, this can take anywhere from six to twenty weeks or more. But in the end, you strip away all that icky adipose tissue to reveal a sculpted god of muscle suitable to stand on a pedestal and be admired. But just as an exhibition of actual Michelangelo sculptures is apt to only be at your local art museum for a brief, limited engagement; so is the average bodybuilder’s ripped physique. And the sad thing is, we plan it!

Nowhere is this more apparent than backstage at a bodybuilding contest. Among the shredded, living anatomy charts with nary an ounce of fat to be found on their bodies, much of the talk centers on all the crap they will be stuffing down their gullets once the show is over. It’s not uncommon to consume so much pizza, cookies, ice cream, pastries, chocolate, and other assorted nutritionally void items so that we gain anywhere from ten to fifty pounds in a week’s time. I’m sure that sounds improbable to some of you, but in this case I am not even remotely exaggerating. I myself once went from 202 to 230 in six days after a contest. If gluttony truly is one of the seven deadly sins, they had better toss plenty of sun block in my casket when I go, because I’m gonna burn.

So within a week or two of being at our physical peak, we look like regular gym rats once more. Gone are the deep muscle separations and striations, the prominent veins, and the tight waistlines. It may have taken as long as six months to diet all the bodyfat off, but it sure doesn’t take very long to pile it all back on again. Being that I have competed in close to two dozen contests since 1989, I had been through this cycle of flabby to ripped to flabby again many times. Even though this most recent diet hadn’t been for a competition (exactly), something inside me finally said it was time to break the cycle at long last. After all, I am pushing 39 now and theoretically, I should be gaining a bit of wisdom as I edge toward middle age. Once the contest was over, I went out for pizza along with a couple of my friends who had competed, and then I went right back to clean eating.

Had I dieted down into true contest condition, maybe the idea of holding that extremely lean condition would have seemed preposterous. But since I was hard but not shredded, and hadn’t suffered through weeks of zero carbs or hours of cardio a day, I knew I wouldn’t have to kill myself to stay lean for at least the rest of the summer. And I also knew that if I could make cheat meals a far less common practice in the off-season, I could actually stay at a respectable level of bodyfat for the long term – something I hadn’t really done since I worked as a personal trainer in Los Angeles in the late 90’s when my lean appearance was a key selling point for new clients.

It’s been a couple weeks since the contest now, and so far so good. The new Parrillo Protein Chew Bars^TM have the consistency of taffy, so eating one of those a day is just like having some junk – except that it’s totally clean and packed with nutrients to assist in muscle recovery and growth. I am still hitting five or six 45-minute sessions of brisk cardio a week, which not only keeps the bodyfat at bay but keeps the old ticker nice and healthy too.

Maybe the best motivator of all for me to stay in better shape year-round is the additional attention I have been getting from my wife. We’ve been together for nearly two decades, so it’s not like my body is any kind of exciting novelty to her. She’s been there and done that. But she has admitted that she finds me a lot more attractive when I’m lighter and leaner – while nicely telling me that she feels quite the opposite when I’m heavier, my face gets round, and I have a butt the size of one of those new Smart Cars. Of course we are all still supposed to love our spouses in sickness and in health and all that good stuff, but the reality is that few people find excessive weight gain attractive.

So I’m staying lean for the long haul. Not shredded to the bone mind you, but definitely in a lot better shape than I have been in the vast majority of my adult life as I’ve been constantly ‘bulking up’ and using that as an excuse to eat crap and slack on cardio. I urge you all to take a good look in the mirror. If you don’t like what you see, or don’t see (namely your abs), you might want to give some thought to trimming down and staying that way. You’ll be healthier, obviously you will look and feel better, and when the time comes to really get ripped for whatever reason, it won’t be too hard to do. If you choose to spend most of your life ‘bulking up’ and with your muscles buried under doughy layers of fat, that’s your deal. Just don’t go thinking you’ll win an Oscar for it like Robert DeNiro. All you’re likely to get is the “Customer of the Month’ appreciation award from your local Domino’s Pizza.