Howdy all, well I am getting excited about my trip to the Arnold Classic this year. I hope to take some cool pictures backstage of some of the athletes, do some interesting and fun interviews with some of the competitors, and have some fun at the Expo! Which reminds me, in case some of  you don’t know, in the next week or so after the Arnold excitement is over, I will be introducing Muscle Invasion Radio! I will give you all more information once I have it. I am excited about it because I intend to discuss diet, upcoming contests, and all areas of interest within this ever changing sport of bodybuilding, figure and fitness!

Muscle Invasion Radio will be a radio show with me, Tad the Diet Coach, as your host and I will bring in a revolving group of other hosts who will help me talk about our industry. I am excited because this is something that I have always wanted to put together but just didn’t find the time to do it. Now I am just getting it on the plate! So bare with me as I fiddle with the format of my show and experiment with interviews and topics of interest. Please let me know if you have any topics that you want to hear me discuss. My intention is to share with you some of my opinions and views and at the same time have a bit of fun. Stay tuned….

Ok so I have been very busy these days with the contest season heating up and so many competitors preping for many contests right now. This year should be a very exciting year for my team and for anyone competing. Even with all the excitement of getting your body ready for a contest it seems that so many athletes that I work with year after year hit a stage in their contest prep where they feel burnt out, over tired, overwhelmed and generally down and out. I know because I have felt this way also during a heavy and intense contest diet. Much of this is caused by all the physical, mental and emotional stress you are putting your body under when you ask your body to burn its own tissues as fuel. You start a hormonal cascade that can make you feel a bit down in the dumps and make your dieting process feel like your progress is going nowhere. When in reality you may be right on target. You have to remind yourself when these days come that much of this is part of the preparation process that goes hand-in-hand with getting in great shape for a contest.

I have told competitors over and over at these later stages of a contest diet; “the crappier you are feeling, the better you probably look!” Don’t let your feelings about your prep get in your way of what may actually be going on. It is very important to take this part of your prep very seriously. I can’t tell you how many people I have started working with that end up giving up half way through a contest diet. They all have great reasons why they have to quit, but six weeks prior they were 110% fired up to compete and it “was something they always wanted to do…” before, while now they just can’t do it. Nothing has really changed about competing from the start of their diet until they feel they should quit except how they feel about it. And these feelings seem to always happen is they all get warn down, beaten up, and overwhelmed. So they end up feeling like it all isn’t worth it.

How do you combat this? There are two ways to safeguard yourself against potentially de-railing your contest aspirations. First, get a coach or someone that can help monitor you, keep you accountable, and ground you when you start to lift off into the space of quitting. Second, you have to come to terms with the fact that you are most likely going to feel like not doing the show at some point in your diet. Just knowing ahead of time and telling yourself that there are no circumstances that will prevent you from quitting will help you be more prepared when these feelings of anxiety and depression come to you as you hit your diet hard the last several weeks.

As you think about preparing for a upcoming contest, or as you begin a diet process think about adding these simple mechanisms into your process planning. The strategy is simple, be prepared not just in body but also in mind, because it is usually a person’s willingness that gives out before their bodies do.

For those of you who don’t know me, I am Tad the Diet Coach. I have been a bodybuilder, diet coach, nutritionist and fitness enthusiast for over 23 years now. When I first started my journey into the world of bodybuilding all those years ago, I never guessed that years later I would be guiding others in these wonderful pursuits of bodybuilding, figure, bikini and fitness greatness as I do today (Let alone being honored enough in this industry to get to write and author a blog for such a well respected magazine as Ironman Magazine). The icing on the cake for me is that I do all of this for a living; I actually have a career that I love and that keeps me busier than I thought that I could be, even in these challenging economic times.

My intent on this blog is to provide a useful commentary on the topics of dieting, contest preparation (figure, bodybuilding, and bikini), or anything to do with the arena of nutrition and the industries that surrounds them. I hope to add some value to your personal journey in fitness and share some of my journey with you. I warn all of you who are reading, as many of my clients know first hand, I am a man of openness and positive gratitude. As many of you who know me from my posts on Facebook, I focus my personal energy only on the positive nature of my life and others. I honestly don’t believe that negative works in any fashion for anyone. Fear, hatred, and envy are the negative characteristics that I don’t allow into my “happy-bubble.” My “happy-bubble,” is the place that I live, it is my state of mind that I live in, it is my system of beliefs, it is the methodology of my life, and it is my world-view. My HB is also the secret to my personal success.

A big part of Tad's "Happy Bubble!"

As you have no doubt surmised from my meanderings, my views on contest dieting, nutrition and optimum health have some to do with diet tactics but also have a lot to do with your personal emotional and mental focus. If you have ever dieted for any contest, then you can attest that your success in your diet can often rely on your ability to focus on the positive, even when things seem hopeless. And they often do when you don’t get enough carbs to support brain function and your body is burning its own tissue for energy! So, welcome to my world of dieting and positive journeys! Please feel free to email me any questions that you want me to discuss on this blog. I will try to incorporate them into my commentary or cover them in my ramblings. Thanks and see you at the shows!