Nutrition Periodization for Physique Athletes
This article provides evidence-based guidelines and practical examples for nutrition periodization in physique athletes. I’ll briefly cover calories and macronutrients, flirt with the idea of weight cycling, debunk some ideas around insulin sensitivity, and then provide strategies to periodize nutrition.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Calories
- Macronutrients
- Weight Cycling
- Insulin Sensitivity & Nutrient Partitioning
- Different Approaches to Periodization
- Limitations
- Conclusions
Author Note: This articles is based on a manuscript I submitted to a journal. It was rejected after peer-review for good reasons. I decided to address the reviewer comments, reformat it, and then post it here in hopes that it would benefit more people instead of being stuck behind a paywall. This article goes well with my recent article on Nutrition for Muscle Growth and our publication on Nutritional Recommendations for Physique Athletes.
Introduction
Nutrition periodization is the planned, purposeful, and strategic use of specific nutrition changes to maximize the positive adaptation to one’s training, performance, and or appearance in the long term. While there are recommendations and guidelines for strength (37) and endurance (26) athletes in and out of season, there are not any practical guidelines for physique athletes.
Physique athletes use periods of weight cycling, known as bulking and cutting, to improve their physique. Macronutrient manipulation occurs during these periods, mainly with changes in fat and carbohydrate intake to induce caloric surpluses or deficits (7, 8, 22, 42). Couple a surplus with a good training program and viola — muscle growth.
Let’s dive in.
Calories
Energy intake and expenditure dictate the direction and magnitude of body weight changes (21). In a recent review of male physique competitors, most of the athletes increased their calories during the bulking phase, with the idea that it supports greater muscle growth. To achieve a hypercaloric state, they mainly increased carbohydrate and protein intake, and kept fat intake relatively constant (29). The idea is that we need adequate energy intake when bulking to support an increase in training volume or intensity during this phase since low energy availability could slow muscle growth (16, 18). Thus, during the off-season, physique athletes want to have periods of surplus to improve their physique. Since it takes much longer to increase muscle mass than reduce body fat, bulking should occur over longer periods than dieting.
Macronutrients
Macronutrient tracking is common among physique athletes and is necessary to reach your physical potential — even if only completed for short periods of time (25, 41, 42). Therefore, it is essential that athletes understand basic guidelines for bulking and cutting phases which focus on protein, carbohydrate, and fat intake.
Protein
General guidelines recommend that athletes who resistance train consume 1.6–2.2g/kg of bodyweight per day (36). Recently a series of studies by Antonio et al., has indicated that higher protein intakes may be beneficial for increases in lean body mass if used as a caloric surplus (3, 4). When dieting, it is also recommended that protein intake be high (1.8–3.5g/kg per day) (40). Fortunately, most physique athletes do not have an issue with adequate protein intake, but if they do it is the first thing they should change (7, 29, 46).
Carbohydrate
Carbohydrates are used fuel exercise performance and increase recovery. In the physique literature, guidelines range from 4–7g/kg (28, 44). It is recommended that once protein and fat are accounted for, the rest of the caloric allotment should be used for carbohydrates (23, 40). From a bulking perspective, it may be better to overfeed with carbohydrates since it increases carbohydrate oxidation and increases total energy expenditure, so less energy is stored as adipose tissue (70–75%) compared to overfeeding with dietary fat (90–95%) (20). For more information about why this might be more beneficial you can read my previous article on nutrition for muscle growth.
Fat
Fat is an essential macronutrient for overall health and vital functions in the body. Current recommendations for physique athletes are 0.5–1.5g/kg or 10–25% of calories (23, 40) and because the range is so wide most athletes fall within it (7, 29, 46). From a practical standpoint fat is one of the easiest macros to overeat and not realize it.
Below are the guidelines for bulking and dieting:
Weight Cycling
Weight cycling consists of repeated weight loss or gain. While the overall evidence is mixed (32), weight cycling may predispose athletes to health risks such as obesity (43).
In the general population, the rates of weight regain after dieting are very high and regaining weight within 1-2 years of initial weight loss is normal (31). Yet, unlike the general population, physique athletes purposefully engage in multiple efforts of increasing and decreasing bodyweight over roughly the same 1–2 year period. In order to keep professional status athletes often have to compete every year or every other year. This creates continuous cycles of weight gain and loss over time if an athlete wants to stay competitive.
The general population should be cautious of the overshooting phenomenon, while physique athletes do this on purpose in hopes that they will gain muscle (43).
The overshooting phenomenon is gaining proportionally more fat than lean body mass (for scientific reviews read this and this). An article from Jeremy Braude, Ph.D. describes the theory : “Until you recover all the lean mass that you lost, you will feel plagued by increased hunger and appetite. So, as you eat and your body weight is recovered, excess levels of fat continue to be deposited away. This fat deposition can persist well beyond the point you were at before you even started dieting and until lean mass is fully recovered (Dulloo et al., 2018).”
Contest preparation has multiple physiological effects such as reduced testosterone (in men) and psychological issues that can linger months after competing. In fact, significant weight regain is typically observed within days of competition (50), and binge eating episodes may occur (2). Weight gain can be extreme in some athletes with reports in the literature of >5 kg in the first few weeks following competition (27) and I’ve anecdotally seen up to 10–12kg in some bodybuilding competitors. Things like pre-occupation with food and binge eating could conflict with long-term physique goals (2, 12, 52). Thus, physique athletes need to accumulate fat mass to return to physiological homeostasis, but how much fat or at what rate is currently unknown.
The time course of weight restoration from physique competition varies in the literature. It seems the timeline of recovery would be accelerated by consuming a large energy surplus to cause more rapid weight regain. In some cases, physique athletes return to their baseline weight within nine weeks post-competition (49), whereas others may have reduced weight for a full six months after competition (42). Typically, returning to normal is observed after 4–6 months following competition (22, 39).
If competitors are in a caloric surplus after competition they can restore a large portion of the weight lost and some hormones can approach baseline levels within 3–4 months following competition (22, 39, 42). However, leptin and testosterone levels may not fully recover until 5–6 months post-competition (39, 42).
After recovering from a competition, athletes should begin to bulk if they want to gain sufficient muscle mass to improve their physique in time for their next competition phase. The current guidelines for off-season bodybuilders range from <0.5% to 2% per week, depending on training level. However, there is no published recommendation for how much weight or fat a physique athlete should accumulate before cutting.
Insulin Sensitivity & Nutrient Partitioning
Claims have been made that we do not want to exceed a certain body fat level when bulking due to insulin sensitivity. These changes are said to alter nutrient partitioning. Nutrient partitioning is the portion of nutrients consumed that are deposited as fat mass or lean body mass. It is important to note that lean body mass consists of organ tissue, glycogen, and skeletal muscle. Furthermore, one of the best tool for determining these compartmental differences is using a four compartmental body composition model — to which most athletes do not have access (14).
As coaches and athletes, we should not dismiss anecdotal evidence, yet there are no studies that have specifically investigated nutrient partitioning as the primary outcome in physique athletes, so to determine if this is a possibility we must extrapolate from the literature with caution.
Overfeeding can induce insulin resistance (11). However, higher muscle mass (relative to body size) is associated with better insulin sensitivity (47). Some studies of overfeeding have found an increase in insulin sensitivity and altered metabolic responses after three days of overfeeding in skeletal muscle, but not total body insulin sensitivity (9, 10).
Long term experimental trials with high protein intake — like that of a physique athlete — provides more data. For example, in a study where participants were overfed by ~40% for 8 weeks, fasting glucose and insulin were significantly increased by overfeeding, suggesting that there might be insulin resistance (6). Yet, using the gold standard measurement of hyper-insulinemic euglycemic clamp, there were no changes in insulin sensitivity (6). This clamp data is consistent with others, who overfed volunteers for 8 weeks but did not observe a change in insulin sensitivity using the clamp procedure (1). Another study found that insulin sensitivity is not predictive of abdominal subcutaneous/visceral fat gain in normal weight individuals, which suggests that insulin sensitivity is not directly causative in the development of fat in normal weight people (51). However, none of these studies have been completed with those who are resistance training so it might be important to know how it changes insulin sensitivity.
Resistance training can improve glucose tolerance (5, 48) due to increases in peripheral insulin sensitivity (33). Physique style training can increase insulin action by 20–48% and occurs independent of training load (13, 24, 33, 53). Furthermore, resistance training can improve insulin sensitivity independently of changes in lean body mass (19) so it may not be only related to skeletal muscle because several organs are involved. Some data indicate bodybuilders have better glucose tolerance and improved insulin action compared to subjects who are untrained and lean (53). Taken together, this data indicates that physique athletes likely have much better insulin signaling compared to those who are untrained and/or lean, which would improve nutrient partitioning and allow them to bulk to higher levels of body fat.
While the idea of using a specific body fat percentage to stop bulking is interesting, there is currently little evidence to support that nutrient partitioning changes in physique athletes, or those who are well trained, as they accumulate body weight. Yet, we can’t bulk forever. Plus, having an upper level of body fat is important to avoid long-term health complications (38). To make things a little more complicated physique athletes seldom have access to reliable ways to measure body fat, so it’s important to use different methods to assess progress.
The only recommendation I can give is: don’t become obese as a natural physique athlete (>30 by BMI). An exact percentage cut-off at this point is not supported by much scientific evidence. The difference between stopping a bulk at 16% or 22% probably doesn’t matter much. Do what you feel will help you adhere and support your long-term goals.
Different Approaches to Periodization
There are several different approaches that you can take to plan an off-season. Some are more ideal than others. It’s great if you can squeeze out every last drop of gains during an off-season, but it may come at a cost. That could be tracking nutrition more stringently than you want or pushing past a body weight you’re comfortable with.
Opportunity Cost
Opportunity cost are the benefits you miss out on when choosing one alternative over another. People often emphasize the “ideal” in terms of nutrition and training, but I think it is more realistic to think in terms of opportunity cost. Where is the equilibrium point for each individual in which they feel comfortable with what is being given up for what they are receiving? That is a decision that you — the reader — must make.
The Idealistic Approach
I recommend this approach if you want to maximize muscle growth after a competition (or hard diet phase). It puts you in an ideal position to gain muscle for a long time. This puts you in a great place to grow muscle because you never have to diet, and you don’t lose any time dieting between competitions. If you’re going more than 1.5 years between competitions this might be pretty difficult. The down sides are that it takes really good adherence, doesn’t have a great checkpoint to compare to your past physique, and could be too long for some athletes to focus on one goal.
The Stepwise Approach
This method is a little more practical for because it has settling periods. Settling periods are not physiologically beneficial from a “resensitization” standpoint, but they can help psychologically. They offer a break from pushing yourself in the weight room and eating in a surplus. You still have the benefit of not dieting, so less time is lost than the typical bulk/cut cycle. However, it can be difficult to maintain and you’ll probably give up a little muscle growth in return for more long-term feasability.
The Single Diet Approach
This approach is more typical of what most physique athletes do. They might bulk for ~8 months, then cut for 3–4. It’s rewarding because you get to see your progress at the end of each cut by comparing yourself to the same weight a year earlier. However, it is less time in a surplus and you can waste time transitioning between phases. Do it for the gram?
The Personalized Approach
You can, of course, make your own variation from these examples. Here’s one that I like to use for college students. It demonstrates times when they want to be leaner (summer) and times when it’s more fun to bulk (fall/winter), but has a maintenance phase to account for bulking fatigue after the winter holidays. Summer happens again, so you diet, then head back into a bulking phase for the Fall. I’ve found this works really well and allows some freedom to enjoy life. Yet, it’s probably not the optimal approach.
Limitations
Individual variation will play a role in the rate of gain or length of bulking/cutting cycles between competitions. The law of diminishing returns applies to muscle growth, so that once natural athletes reach a certain level they may not be able to gain weight at the rate of the examples given. This could mean more time in caloric maintenance phases, smaller surpluses, and more focus on the dieting phase so they can retain muscle mass.
Conclusions and Practical Application
Physique athletes have been manipulating nutrition for a long time. The concept of periodized nutrition is only beginning to be studied in the physique literature and has appeared in several case studies and surveys of natural bodybuilders. The nutrition phase for physique athletes should be matched with the athletes training and competition goals. While there are many different sub-classes of physique athletes, there really isn’t enough data to have separate nutrition guidelines for them. So this data applies to most divisions and classes within the physique field (bodybuilding, figure, physique, etc.) Hopefully, we’ll have more information soon.
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