Log on to any social media feed and you are guaranteed to see at least one person posting about being active or announcing their plans to live a healthier lifestyle. However, everyone has different plans to reach specific goals. Some will want to shed a few pounds, some want to maintain their weight and some want to add more muscle and become a bodybuilder.

Although spending lots of time lifting weights is part of the bodybuilding process, there is more involved. The nutrition aspect is especially key, along with the dedication. There are also different types of bodybuilding. People who train to be a bodybuilder learn that the sport is more than being in the gym constantly and that there are a lot of misconceptions about it.

Categories

Jim Morris has promoted the Ontario Physique Association for 28 years and competed prior. He said as bodybuilding evolved the amount of categories expanded. He explained part of it is from women getting involved with bodybuilding.

“It started with only men’s bodybuilding. The women weren’t even going to the gym at that time,” he said. Morris said women’s fitness, figure and bikini categories developed over time and became alternatives to the “extreme” muscular look.

He said each category is a little different from one another. For example, women’s fitness also involves a performance component, such as gymnastics. He said women involved in figure competitions have athletic bodies, but feminine features too.

Bikini competitors are like those in figure, but “mildly athletic” and “softer” looking. Women’s physique focuses more on a muscular look than figure and bikini.

On the other hand, Morris said men’s physique is a bit like modelling because the competitors have more of a “beach body” and will wear clothing such as knee-length shorts instead of briefs.

Although there are many different categories, the first step for any kind of bodybuilding is the same, with training and nutrition.

Training & Nutrition

Morris said anyone who wants to get into bodybuilding should first find a personal trainer. Luckily, it’s easy to find one right here on campus.

Fanshawe College’s Fitness 101 has trainers that create nutrition and exercise plans based on specific goals, including preparing for a competition.

Dustin Rice, Fitness 101 senior fitness consultant, said his friends participated in these events and that he did training that was similar to bodybuilding. Rice learned the process of bodybuilding is tougher than it looks.

“The dieting is especially not fun at all,” he said, “There are going to be times where you are extremely hungry and irritable.”

Mariah Zalitach, a nurse in London, loves bodybuilding and plans to compete. She said when she was about to start four years ago, her coach asked her if she felt mentally prepared for the task.

“I thought he was joking, [but] looking back on this moment, he was 110 per cent on point with his comment, and to be honest, I was not mentally prepared at all,” she said, explaining bodybuilding trains both your body and your mind.

Since there are many different categories of bodybuilding, the training and dietary requirements can vary. However, Morris said that you will generally eat six meals throughout the day and your bodybuilding tool kit is diet and exercise.

“How you look is going to depend 75 per cent by how you diet,” Morris said, “It’s a lifestyle, it’s not like another sport where you go and play your game and you have a few beers. This is one where everything you do, 24 hours a day, counts.” Victoria D’Ariano, a figure bodybuilder and a nutrition coach at FlexPlex Muscle and Fitness, said preparing your meals for bodybuilding is different than for any other sport. She added she trains less during the week than when she used to swim.

“With swimming, you don’t have to focus on the meal component,” she said, “I kind of just ate whatever I wanted. I was training four or five hours a day, so it was just getting food in you.” The Western University alumna now trains three hours daily for bodybuilding.

D’Ariano said studying Kinesiology taught her about proper nutrition, which helps her as a coach. She said the key is increasing your daily protein count.

She suggested eating a gram of protein for every pound of body weight. She also recommended combining it with a bit of healthy fat and carbohydrates.

“That’s going to help slow down the digestion [so] you’re going to feel fuller and also protein is going to help with building muscle.”

Rice said the dieting aspect also affects your social life because you have to stay at home while your friends are hitting up the bars on the weekend.

“You can’t even look or think about beer because it will mess with your head and will get you completely out of that zone you are in.”

Zalitach said during her bodybuilding journey, she’s learned only those who are going through the exact same training know how you feel.

Zalitach explained some people don’t understand why she can’t have “just one piece of cake”, and “all of a sudden you’re ‘no fun’ because you can’t drink alcohol, yet you’re still the designated driver at the bar having her keys taken away because ‘no way you are sober!’”

She added she’ll go to Subway if she wants a cheat meal, although most people think it’s pretty healthy for a fast food restaurant.

“You begin to question everything you eat and when you’re actually allowed to eat normal food, you’re scared to eat it because you have it so engrained in your head that it’s not part of your lifestyle anymore.”

Misconceptions

It’s no question that the one of the biggest stereotypes in bodybuilding is the use of steroids.

“After studying Kinesiology and studying other sports, pretty much every single sport in the world is on performance enhancing drugs. With bodybuilding, you’re focused solely on that person looking a certain way, whereas other sports, when they’re track athletes, baseball players and NFL players, they’re performance [based],” D’Ariano said. “You see them performing well, but people don’t think it’s because of performance enhancing drugs.”

D’Ariano also said some people think bodybuilders have an ego.

“Some are egotistic, I mean the whole sport is about your body, so it can become a little self-absorbed, but I have to say when you are competing it’s not about looking good. Obviously, you want to, but it’s a sport, so you’re doing things to improve for yourself.”

Morris felt that most misconceptions have gone away, since a lot more people understand the sport. However, he noticed a lot of women will say they want to tone up, but not build too much muscle.

“What do you think tone is? It’s muscle,” he said.

However, D’Ariano said bodybuilding can be confusing and even she thought it was odd before she started competing.

“You see a bunch of people, they just go up on stage and they’re flexing and posing and I didn’t understand it,” she said. “Once you get exposed to it, you really see that it’s actually a sport in terms of the training and the preparation that goes into it. I would actually say it’s one of the hardest sports and I’ve done a lot of sports.”

With the amount of commitment involved, does bodybuilding mean no pain, no gain?

Morris said that’s only the case with the workout’s intensity because muscle builds when you feed and rest your body. “You’ve got to limit the amount of training you do or you won’t recover and if you don’t recover, you don’t grow and develop muscles.”

Zalitach said any people who are interested in bodybuilding should make sure this is something they truly want.

Along with the physical and mental challenges, it can also be very expensive, with bodysuits for competitions costing a minimum of $400. However, she said it’s worth it in the end because of everything accomplished in the process, including losing weight and living a healthier lifestyle.

“It makes you feel amazing that you know despite how hard the sport is, you are still managing to get through it,” Zalitach said. “I’m a completely new person.”