I have attended several bodybuilding competitions already this year and I am afraid to say I am fearful of the future of women’s bodybuilding. At one competition there was only 1 female bodybuilder. At another competition while it was better there was only six female bodybuilders total. There should have been at many per weight class. This certainly wasn’t any shortage of bikini or figure competitors. Each of these classes had around 20 competitors per high-class. I understand the female bodybuilding isn’t for everyone but I do feel that the powers that be and the NPC are directing the sport to phase out female bodybuilding. With the addition of women’s physique to me this seems even more apparent. I think it is sad that women bodybuilding gives so little recognition without their pioneering efforts there would have been no bikini, no figure, and no fitness. In a sense is the powers that be fault that women’s bodybuilding is in the state that it is. I know several professional women bodybuilders who told me that they have no desire to look like the current Ms. Olympia and these are not petite women in any sense of the word. So when the look that is being presented as the best in the world is not sought after by the athletes who are participating in the sport how anyone can expect the average person to find something that they would be interested in pursuing. While I respect what the current Ms. Olympia has accomplished with her physique I can also see why it is not something that would be most people’s cup of tea. I hope something is done before it is too late for this aspect of her sport. Will I find women bodybuilders sexy and attractive which is obvious as I’m in a relationship of 10 years with a champion female bodybuilder even for me this has its limits. It would certainly be a shame if things are allowed to continue on their current course.

After the competition Tony and I ate like true gluttons. We each ate over a pound of cookie cake, six breadsticks, three quarters of a large pizza, half a pound of twice baked potatoes, three candy bars, a humongous slab of Oreo cake, and that was when I realized I had not had milk over six months! So I poured a 20 ounce glass of moo juice. Tony is there telling me how freaking good it is going to be with his eyes all big and an even  bigger smile on his face. I took the glass and pour the milk down with a resounding AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Just as I was about to remark on how good it was it hit me! I had gone too far! The milk had tipped the scales! I was overcapacity and something had to give. I remarked “oh no, I should not have done that!” Tony was laughing I assume from the panicked look on my face.  Why? he said. I said because Man it was too much! I am going to fucking blow! Now he is really losing it! He has bent over, holding his gut waving me off and yelling stop, stop, stop! You’re going to make me puke too! Then he laughed even more. I ran in the bathroom slamed the door and proceeded to regurgitate about 5 pounds of undigested food! As I was brushing my teeth I was hit with the realization that my stomach was completely empty. I felt like a partying Roman. I announced this upon going into the kitchen and my wife exclaimed “Jeff that is gluttony!” I said are you kidding me I have a six-month credit from starving! God will give me a pass on this I’m sure! This got Tony laughing again and holding his gut. Unfortunately for Tony he is not a puker and was unable to expel any of the food he consumed and was miserably full the entire night. I ate a normal amount of food went to sleep content and satisfied probably the happiest I had ever been in my whole life.

Another factor was that I had done several diets up to this point so my body knew what to do. I have discovered over the years the more diets a person does the better your body gets it losing fat. It is much like muscle memory I suppose. We could call it diet memory and I had several contests under my belt by this time. You know the losses came more slowly and were much more difficult for Tony, at one point I was discussing with John the fact that Tony was not losing. John asked me what Tony’s calorie intake was. I informed him that Tony was only eating 1000 calories a day. To this John replied bullshit!” Tony was so pissed off! He was actually more pissed off than I’ve ever seen him since! He told me 20 years later if John hadn’t had 100 pounds on him, he would’ve punched him in the face! Tony hung in there like a real trooper and indeed he did lean out nicely for his first competition. We decided a couple weeks out he would go ahead with his plans to step on stage he and he had been practicing posing and had it down well. Tony seemed to be a natural at posing and moved from pose to pose well in his routine. A couple days before the show we decided to tan at his mom’s house in the basement. After we had a couple of coats of the old Coppertone suntan one we went to the stairs to find Toney’s huge Siamese cat Tika on the stairs looking at us in a strange way. I do not think she knew who we were with the tan on and it seemed like she decided to defend her territory! Tika had all of her claws out and she intended to use all the weapons at her disposal on us! She began growling really low and hissing, her fur was all puffed up and her teeth were bared. Tony tried to get past her and almost got laid open by a claw swipe! Not a good thing before one steps on stage display one’s physique. Tony tells me to try to get past her; I exclaimed “fuck that man!” So he gets a shoe and begins swatting at this bitch cat! She would not back down even an inch! The more aggressive Tony got the more aggressive Tika got. It was a battle to be sure. I have to tell you I was at the bottom of the stairs laughing my ass off at this bizarre spectacle taking place! Tony finally gave Tika a good hard whack to the face and she finally gave up and ran up the stairs and we quickly exited the basement. Once out of the basement Tony looks at me, eyes all big and said “holy shit, can you believe that?”I told him “I’d never seen anything like it!” but that it didn’t surprise me because when it comes to doing a contest prep Mr. Murphy always seem to be present in forcing his will of whatever can go wrong will indeed do just that and go disastrously wrong! Anyone reading this that has done hard contest preps will know exactly what I’m talking about! So with the tanning debacle over, we went and posed some and let the tan set some before adding yet another orange/brown coat until we were dark enough to take the stage. I drove to the show and Tony did quite well for his first time out. I received yet another third-place trophy.

The next competition that we would prep for would be in the 1989 Mr. Cincinnati, this would be my last teenage competition. I had also planned on crossing over into the open men’s lightweight division. I think by 19 my estrogen had begun to drop because of that my physique was becoming much harder. I also put a little more lean mass on because I had not competed in over a year, the constant dieting I had been doing since my first competition was really holding back my development but I just could not stop competing because I loved it so much. I was obsessed with competition and this was hurting my development. Sitting here in prison I realize that this obsession has really come home to roost now and a price too high has now been anteed up, but back to the story.

With only a few weeks left until Spring, thoughts are turning away from heavy eating and bulking cycles to cleaner eating and training to show off those muscles for the Summer. This means adding in thermogenic (fat burning) supplements to your current stack. Obviously these are going to help you burn fat, but many of them have added benefits that most people never consider.

Fish oil, for example, will help you burn fat…but did you know it will also help you build muscle? Researchers gave 22 subjects 4 capsules each containing 1 g fish oil (600 mg EPA and 200 mg DHA), daily, for six weeks (another group got a placebo). As you can see from the chart below, the fish oil  group lost about a pound of fat, but they also gained about the same amount of lean mass:

So fish oil is one of those fat-loss products that won’t just help you lose fat, but also helps build lean mass at the same time. And another study performed at Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany, showed that fish oil could sharpen mental focus. But perhaps even more interesting to bodybuilders is that fish oil has also been shown to be anti-estrogenic and can even elevate levels of IGF-1, a highly anabolic hormone. Dietary fatty acids , specifically those found in fish oil, have also been shown to be major biologic regulators and have properties that improve overall health. And Krill oil, has been shown to be at least equal, though perhaps better, than fish oil, in all areas that have been scientifically studies thus far.

And how about caffeine? Caffeine can help you burn fat by preferentially “telling” your body to use body fat for fuel instead of protein and carbohydrates – but it can also help improve focus, aid muscular contractions (thereby boosting strength levels, and even boost athletic performance. That’s why we have included it in every fat burner we make!

But what about creatine? We all know that it makes you bigger and stronger, but most people forget that it’s a wonderful fat loss agent. And not only does it help you lose fat, it can give a significant boost to your working memory and general intelligence. Yeah, believe it or not, creatine can turn dumb-jocks into smart-jocks. And it also helps aid general health by improving cardiovascular indexes and heart function.

We can’t forget testosterone either – it’s been shown in numerous studies to not only build muscle, but also to burn fat and although you can’t purchase testosterone legally without a prescription, there are plenty of great testosterone boosters on the market. But did you know that adequate testosterone levels can help everything from maintaining normal glucose (blood sugar) levels, to optimal thyroid levels,  to a healthy heart? And it’s been shown in some studies to help improve cognitive function as well.

But perhaps just as astonishing is Whey Protein – which we know builds muscle and burns fat like no other protein we’ve ever had in the bodybuilding market. In one study, performed on rodents, it protected them against versus tumors induced by the powerful carcinogen, dimethylhydrazine. And in vivo, research suggests it to be a potent weapon against breast cancer.  Some cancer patients have even seen reduced tumor size in a published study. Whey protein consumption has been linked to improved cholesterol levels, and furthermore to be a potent inhibitor of oxidized LDL cholesterol. And would you believe that whey can improve bone health too? Well it can – it has been shown to boost total protein synthesis and DNA content of bone cells. At the same time, it also has been proven to be an immunostimulator – it boosts your immune system. Unbelievable huh? Because it also helps you burn fat, just like the rest of the compounds here!

So although many people think of losing weight as being inherently “unhealthy” – the truth is that many of the best fat burners are also very healthy as well.