In this day and age, we believe we should eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We are also taught to structure our diet with the food pyramid in order to be optimally healthy. If the average person says they eat healthy, it’s usually because they say they eat a lot of salad, fruits, and vegetables. Similarly, a person who is trying to lose weight and get back into shape will typically say that they’ve been eating salad, fruits, and veggies—you know, “healthy food.” What is healthy? What should you eat to lose weight or get back into shape?

Getting Shredded Takes Time

When you first start your bodybuilding journey, whether you decide to be a competitive bodybuilder or just make bodybuilding a lifestyle, you have to understand that the progress you want to make takes time. Nothing happens overnight. It takes years of consistent training and dieting to result in a professional physique. Have your goals set, and if it’s to be a pro bodybuilder, strive every day to be your best.

Occasionally I’ll stop and think about all of the places bodybuilding has taken me. While I’ve been all over Europe, covered some ground in South America, and even gone as far as Australia and New Zealand, I had never been anywhere in the Middle East. When ANIMAL asked me if I’d be interested in traveling to the Dubai Muscle Show, there was no question that I wanted to go.

Ever since I began my bodybuilding journey, I've trained mainly to pump my muscles full of blood and expand them as much as possible. This has been my number one guiding principle when trying to build more muscle tissue. Although I increase the resistance (weight) when I feel it's necessary, I don't believe more weight is the end all be all. I am not denying that heavy weight builds strength—and a stronger muscle is typically going to be a bigger muscle—but my training has mainly focused on the pump. After discussing training methods with other bodybuilders and power lifters, I noticed that their training methods were almost exactly the opposite. Power lifters train against the pump.