A Different Approach to Bodybuilding

Well hello ladies and gents, Robert Sykes, Keto, savage.com And today I've got special guest Scott Mize Lenski on the line and we dive super deep into his recent endeavor which is a bodybuilding competition. He just he's about two weeks

post show now. He just did his first bodybuilding competition and I wanted to peel the curtain back on what that experience was like, what his motivation was behind doing one, what it what it was like relative to what his expectations were at the onset, what his post show experience

has been like. And I really appreciate Scott, he has gone the enhanced route as opposed to the natural route with it. But he did not leave anything unsaid, like he peeled the curtain back on that and talked about everything that he's taken. I talked about the pros and cons, how to do it the right way, how to do it the wrong way, pitfalls to watch out for, and was just incredibly transparent with going about it with that approach, which I really, really and truly appreciate.

So I've got no doubt that y'all will take something from this conversation without further delay. Sit back, relax and do the podcast with Scott and we are live. Scott, How are you brother? Good, good. Thanks, Robert. Thanks so much for having me on. Hey man, I'm excited to chat with you. I love talking with other competitors, especially ones that have just recently completed their first competition because it is quite an endeavor and you are not even 2 weeks post show yet man.

Yeah, Hell yeah. Yeah. It was an amazing experience. I absolutely loved it more than I thought I would. And yeah, I'm. I'm just riding on a high right now. Well, what? What? What was the initial motivation for doing this, The prep, doing the show in the 1st place, man? Yeah. So I started training for bodybuilding somewhere in 2020 or 2021, probably halfway through 2020, and was just trying to, you know, look better, basically. And I started off in, I would say not a great place

physically. I was like 165 lbs skinny fat. I was like 20% body fat on DEXA. And I, you know, saw a lot of improvements over those years and got more and more into it and just more invested in it, more obsessed, just living the bodybuilding lifestyle. And then last year around the same time, so kind of late April, I did a photo shoot and Alberto Nunez actually had a really excellent like four or five minute video about why you should do a photo shoot 1st and

not a contest prep. And I was like halfway through my photo shoot prep at that point. So that was very validating and I agreed with a lot of the points he made and I had a great experience with that. It was really fun getting lean, obviously not show lean, but really enjoyed the process. And then you know, I was kind of thinking about my next goal and of course, you know, you get people in the gym and online saying you should compete, you

should compete. But I never really had a desire to. And then I just bit the got bit by the bug. I was just really excited to test myself to go through that journey. You know, following along your your comp preps has been super inspiring, Robert, seeing the amount of growth you've gotten from it mentally, spiritually. And I wanted to test myself.

I wanted to see, you know, just on a personal level if I could do it, if I could get to stage and I wanted the challenge and I wanted something, something to work towards and the stars kind of aligned. We were getting a our second dog, our puppy, at the end of the year and so I knew we weren't going to be travelling for the first few months of the year because we wanted to be with her as she grew And yeah, it it just worked out really well to do a show in early April. I love it, man.

I love it. The the thing about doing a prep that a lot of people that have never done one don't realize until they start doing one is that it's so much more of a psychological sport than they realize. I mean when you're when you're deep into a prep like your months into a deficit, your calories are low, your sleep is deprived. I mean it it it is way beyond the scope of just going to the gym and and and working out

hard. Like there is a total mental component to it that I feel like doesn't really get talked about enough. And that's the beauty of the sport, in my opinion. Not so much the the figure on stage, but like the actual transformative mental growth. 100% Couldn't agree more. So when you were going through, how long was your prep in totality?

So I started kind of like a clean up phase in December where I went into like a minor deficit but wasn't really like going full gung ho. And then around the start of the year, January is where I I really started to dig in. So it was like 17 weeks of deficit in total. And yeah, it it, it was, it was great.

I probably needed last time and probably my next prep will be shorter, but that worked out well because there was a week in January where I got COVID and was actually in the hospital for a week. So that was a very intense, I couldn't breathe. My blood oxygen level was like 90, if you're at all familiar with that. The order ring has it actually. Below 95 is when you're supposed to go to the hospital, so 90 is really low. My resting heart rate at one point was 160 and I was having

fevers. I was sleeping less than an hour a night. I was in a lot of pain. I was the sickest I've ever been. And then later on in the prep I had some really bad digestion issues for like a week and 1/2, so it was helpful to have that extra time. Well, I want to, I want to peel the curtain back on all the different stats, man. So when you started the prep, what was your weight, calories, macro distribution like? What did that look like?

Yeah, I I was 225 lbs And I was, you know, decently lean. I don't think anyone would call me fat. I definitely had room to bulk more, but I also carry body fat really well. I'm 5 foot 9 1/2 official height from the show and I was probably around 5:00 or five and a half, 1000 calories and I follow a more traditional bodybuilding style diet now where it's basically chicken or beef and rice and some zucchini and some fruit and not much else.

So I was probably consuming around 250 grams of protein, you know, 60 grams of fat and the rest coming from carbs. So, you know, 809 hundred grams of carbs. And what did, what did that look like as you get deeper and deeper into the 17 weeks that when you get to the show day, what was your calories like there at the at the depth of the deficit? Yeah, the deficit didn't get lower than like 3300 calories. So I burned through food and I was losing a good 2 to 3 lbs a week for most of prep.

And we were also doing refeeds one to three times a week where I would go up to 900 or so grams of carbs. So very high food all the way through. And that's mostly coming from rice you said? Yeah, white rice. And what was your digestion like? You know when you would have those massive bolus of carbohydrates? Very good, very good. I I can tolerate white rice very

well. And you know, going all the way back to my carnivore days, I was strict carnivore, you know, No cheats, no, practically no cheese, even for three years. And then at the end of 2019, actually just after I got married, I was having issues where I couldn't maintain my weight on just eating carnivore foods, and I couldn't digest more than 150 grams of fat a day for any consistent period of time. I would get bloating. I would get really bad burping in the middle of the night, very

far away from meals. And I tried everything. I tried switching fat sources, only consuming suet. I tried, you know, different meal timings, meal frequency, and regardless, whenever I went above 150 grams of fat I felt great physically. But then after like a week of doing that, it would consistently get to, I get those those issues. And so I that just meant, you know, if I need 4000 calories to maintain my, my weight at the time, I would need to consume massive amounts of protein.

You know, if you're only consuming 100 grams of fat, no carbs, you can do the math on how much protein that is. And that comes with a whole host of issues. You know, having that much protein consistently, You're peeing all the time. You're sweating a lot. You just don't feel great doing carnivore with that high protein long term. And so that's when I started working with Seamland. You know him. Yeah. Yeah. And he advised me, you know, try having like a banana before bed

and and some honey. And I tolerated that very well and basically went through a whole 30 diet style food reintroduction protocol where every three days I would test a new food, not a food group, but a single food like strawberries. And I would have one serving of strawberries once a day for three days. I would note down my digestion, how it made me feel, my energy, all those things.

And I would keep strict log and then after three days I would return back to baseline diet, carnivore diet, and then I would try a new food. And I did that very slowly and I found the foods that agreed with me and didn't. And my digestion of a lot of foods was better than before I

did car in 2016 when I started. And I found the ones I could tolerate really well, like white rice and Greek yogurt and certain fruits and the ones I couldn't tolerate so well like broccoli and cruciferous vegetables and oatmeal and stuff like that. So that's how I kind of made the switch from carnivore to eating more carbs. Man, it's kind of crazy if it's been three years since you were

strict carbon. I think that was the last time you and I were on a podcast together when you were doing strict carnivore. So that just blows my mind. That was three years ago, man. That's. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah, crazy. So do you have any idea now, like any theories hindsight now, as to why your body was having so much trouble digesting more than 150 grams of fat? I think it was just insufficient bile production. And you know, I tried everything.

You can imagine lipase, digestive enzymes, like I said, changing fat sources, things like that. And I could probably, if I did it again gradually, I could work my way up to tolerating more fat and maybe I'll do that in the future. But I worked a lot with Judy from nutrition with Judy, and we just couldn't solve the the fat thing. And I was in a lot of pain and, you know, not sleeping well because I'd be all up all night

burping. And so the solution at the time was to introduce some carbs so that I could eat enough without having those issues. Out of curiosity, do you ever drink carbonated beverages or no? No, not really. Because I was having a little bit of indigestion and I I just cut out drinking like Xevias and carbonated waters and that totally solved my problems because I yeah. When I when I do, it definitely makes things worse, but I I avoid them.

Yeah, it's so strange, man. Like, it's really just goes to show that people can be so highly individualized when it comes to nutrition. I mean, I'm taking in like 450 grams of fat a day on average right now and my my digestion has been pretty solid. Like I haven't had any issues whatsoever. That's all. I can't imagine being capped at 150 grams wanting to maintain a carnivore diet and then have to consume the excess in protein to hit 4000 calories and that would be a ton of protein.

Yeah, exactly, it was. Yeah, no bueno, we'll talk to me a little bit about the, so the prep itself you're you're getting down, you didn't have to drop below 3000 calories, which is nice. What did you do with regards to like cardio and resistance training throughout that time? Yeah, so I I in the offseason, I was training six days a week. I was doing push, pull leg, not in this particular order, but push, pull legs, push, pull legs.

And as I transitioned into prep, I switched it to five days a week, just adding a rest day but keeping the same split. So rotate like push legs, pull, push legs one week and then the next week would be pull, push legs, pull, push, etcetera. And that worked out really well for me. And then cardio. I just increased steps for like the first ten weeks of prep. And then once I got to like 14,000 steps, I started doing cardio on the elliptical 2 days

a week. And I started at 30 minutes and I gradually got up to 50 minutes. A pretty low intensity and I probably didn't even need to do that realistically. Like I probably could have just done it with food, but that's what my coach had me do. Yeah, well, there's always trade-offs. I mean, if you can do more cardio but eat more food, like some people find that more sustainable versus less food, do more cardio. Lots of different ways of skin a cat. But I think only doing two days

a week of cardio is good. I mean, some people, they're doing cardio like seven days a week, man, which to me I think is definitely a point of diminishing returns because then it's just going to be harder to recover from the weight training and that's what you want to prioritize. Absolutely. And I I enjoy cardio. I I love doing it. I feel good doing it. So part of it was also a mental thing. It was nice to on the days I was not weight training to get on

the elliptical. But yeah, absolutely. I'm nowhere near the people who have to do like split cardio sessions every day or something like that. Yeah, totally, totally. What about like peak week itself, like with you doing more of a carbohydrate based approach? How did you kind of go about your peaking strategy? Yeah, so like two weeks out, we started adding back in more food.

We were still doing the refeeds the whole time, but it went down to like one or two refeeds a week towards the end. And then at like 2 weeks out, we started refeeding and just started gradually increasing my base calories too, because I was just ripping through food like I said. And you know, by the last week it was just my base diet got up to like 700 grams of carbs a day and we didn't do any like big

carbohydrate load days at all. We just increased the food to the point I wasn't losing weight anymore and kind of tried to hold it going into peak week. So no, no special tricks really, just trying to maintain where I was because the look was really good and then you know, kept water nice and high above 5

liters. And then the day, I think Thursday I went down to like 3 liters either Thursday or Friday, the show was Saturday and just was a little bit, a lot more cautious with water leading into the show to get a little bit of a drier look. But still pretty hydrated. I mean 3 liters a day. Like you weren't cutting water

at any point. I felt that felt like very little water to me. Yeah, 3 liters is not much, but I mean, I I've heard some horror stories of people like literally no fluid consumption at all 48 hours prior. And to me, that's just actually for disaster. No, no, I think that's pretty dumb. Especially when you're using carbohydrates. You know you need water to help help fill up and store the

carbohydrates. I don't know what it's like with fat loading if it's similar, but yeah, I I definitely needed some carbs to need some water. Excuse me to help carry myself into the show. Yeah. I mean, you think about it like a lot of, I mean, it's like water is what fills out our muscles.

So like these competitors that are trying to actually, you know, take a bunch of diuretics and and dehydrate themselves in hopes that they're going to look, you know, leaner, crisper and drier, It's like they wind up just looking flatter and flatter, which is not a good look either. Exactly, yeah. And I I'm definitely a guy who has a tendency to look flatter. Like I said, I burned through food so we weren't aggressive with the water manipulation and

I am enhanced. I'm not a natural athlete, so I but I didn't use any diuretics. Nice. Well, what's that happening to that man? I mean, if you're open to talking about it, I feel like there's a lot of controversy and confusion around the whole natty or not topic and last stance as a as a natural bodybuilder has always been like look to each their own. I'm not here to judge anybody. I want to see what I can do

naturally. But I mean, I've got multiple friends that compete in enhanced shows that are enhanced. And it's like, I mean, I obviously don't hold anything against them. It's like like I said to each their own. So what made you go that route? What are some of the changes that being enhanced brought to the prep itself? I just kind of walked me through that. Yeah, so I have utmost respect

for natural bodybuilders. I think it's so cool seeing guys like you and Alberto Nunez and all the people you coach compete at Colt and everyone. I think it's awesome. But for me, I was hypogonadal coming out of rowing in college and actually had to go on testosterone replacement therapy medically before I even started bodybuilding. So I I didn't have any hopes of competing in natural shows

because of that. And then, you know, just being the scientifically minded, curious person and wanting to experiment and try to see what I could accomplish. I started doing more than TRT back in like late 2020, early 21, and I was very conservative with it. You know, I worked with very intelligent coaches who use the least amount you need to continue to make progress. And then, yeah, when it came time for the show, it was just

continuing with that path. I'd say, like I said, I think enhanced bodybuilders can get away with shorter preps, especially someone like me who leans out really quickly like natural bodybuilders sometimes have to do 20 to 25 week preps, but that's definitely not the case for most enhanced bodybuilders. And you don't want to expose yourself to to drugs for that long too. So yeah, I was, I went through the prep. I used some drugs I hadn't used before.

Drugs that you usually only use in a contest prep like like trend blown. But I only used them and my coach only implemented them when my progress was stalled and I needed them. It was never, you know, you're going to take all these drugs right from the start it was OK we're at this point progress is where it is. We're going to introduce a little bit of this to help speed things along and we just gradually increased going into

the show. And then, you know, when you get like, oh, two weeks out, you start cutting a lot of those things out too, to drop some of the inflammation, drop the fluid and come in with a a more relaxed and healthy physique. Yeah, totally. This is honestly an area that I

have very little knowledge. I enjoy listening to podcasts that dive deep into it. I listen to a lot of, you know, more plates, more dates, Derek's podcast and like on Rogan talking about the different substances and kind of what their use case scenarios are. So I'd love to just peel the curtain back on that. Yeah, because I want to learn more about this. Not because I'm going to use it myself, but I want to be able to just be more versed in the

subject matter. Sure. So before we dive into that though, I know you've got a puppy. I've actually got a puppy right now, too. He's chewing on my foot. You gotta let your dog out. I gotta let my dog out. So let's reconvene. At 5. Cool. Sounds good. Thanks. All right, bud. Boom, we are back. A quick little deviation here. What kind of puppy you get? I have a cockapoo. She's 11 lbs and she is crazy. She terrorizes both me and my wife and our older dog who's a 30 LB Labradoodle.

Cockapoos. That's got to be a Cocker spaniel and a what? Poodle. Poodle. OK, nice, nice. We had a Cocker spaniel when I was a kid. My mom's dog. Super sweet little dog. I've got a Connie Corso now. So he's going to be like 150 lbs. He's probably 40 lbs now. He's 12 weeks old. Oh, wow. So quite the beast indeed. Well, sweet man, let's just get right back on track here. So talk to me a little bit.

You said when you got done with rowing you were you've taken TRT there, so was that just a simple, you know, biweekly testosterone shot? Yeah, yeah, So preface anything I say that this is not medical advice and you should talk to your doctor before taking anything and only take things

that are legal in your country. But yeah, I So when I finished rowing in College in 2013 and coming out of that, I had a lot of digestive and hormonal issues and I was, you know, working out and eating well, you know, paleo, then keto, then carnivore. Excuse me. And I was just pretty tired a lot of the time. Wasn't sleeping well, felt a lot better on carnivore than anything else. But still experiencing not great

body composition not great mood. And I had a DEXA scan done and I was three Z scores below the mean in terms of bone mineral density. So I had below osteoporosis levels of bone and so that prompted an endocrinologist to test my testosterone and all my other hormones and my testosterone came back extremely low. It was 100 nanograms per deciliter. Consistently over the course of the year they retested it, it was always around 100 to 150 and normal for a man of any age.

The range is like 350 to 900. So I had the levels of bone mass of a 8 year old grandma and the testosterone levels of a woman. Not ideal for bodybuilding. Yeah, not ideal for bodybuilding or for health. And so I spent a lot of time researching and understanding my options, talking to a bunch of different doctors. And eventually they suggested that I needed to go on TRT because you need not only testosterone, but more importantly estrogen to have good levels of bone and bone mass.

And that's a big reason that women get osteoporosis when they're post menopause, cuz your body doesn't produce as much estrogen. And so I went on TRT starting in 2017, and my body composition improved. I was sleeping better. My mood went from Scott, You never smile. You're always flat. You're so stoic to, you know, having more of a zest for life and enjoying things and actually being motivated to do things both professionally, personally, in the gym, everything.

And I felt way better. And within three years, I gained on DEXA 28 lbs of muscle and I lost 16 lbs of fat. So I improved a lot, eating carnivore training, you know, four days a week in the gym and just living, living healthily. And yeah, that's that's kind of what got me started.

And that as far as like dosage goes, I've had several different hormone specialists on the podcast and the unanimous consensus now seems to be that, you know, a a moderate dose every few days is significantly better than like the hero dose that used to be prescribed like on a monthly basis or then it was like every two weeks. But now it's kind of like you want to have a relatively consistent intake. That way your body's never having these massive spikes in

valleys. Yeah, ideally you do daily injections, some kind of like micro dosing, testosterone because that mostly closely mimics your natural production. And a normal TRT dose is anywhere between 100 and 200 milligrams per week. And I was a bit of a hyper responder. I was on 125 milligrams a week and I was at the very top of the reference range for testosterone at 100 and. 25 milligrams a week dosage, Yeah, nice.

And then you were just maintaining that throughout the prep And then did you change that dosage at all throughout the prep just with the test? No. So that was, that was when I was on TRT and then when I started getting into using more and using other drugs, you know, I I brought up my base testosterone to like 250 to 300 milligrams a week. And I would layer on other other drugs too on top of that over the course of, you know, 2020 to when I eventually competed this year.

And what, what, what works? Like I'd. I'd love to just kind of peel the curtain back on that to the people that are looking into this from a performance standpoint, like what drugs are doing what to the body from a standpoint, from a strength standpoint, from a hypertrophy standpoint, like where you find the benefit and what is likely

not necessary. Yeah. So if you followed more plates, more dates or if your audience has, you may be familiar with the idea that it's much there's no such thing as safe in using PE DS. But a safer approach and a more effective approach in terms of results is taking the minimum effective dose of a lot of drugs versus just hammering 1 pathway. So there are different pathways

that you can use with PEDs. There's the anabolics pathway, there's the growth hormone pathway, there's the insulin pathway, there's the ARB pathway, angiotensin receptor blocker, which is like blood pressure drugs. And when you use a little bit of each of those to get the most out of each pathway, it's safer and also more effective than just using a ton of anabolics, just one pathway.

And so going through each of those anabolics, it's always smart for the base of any cycle or or anyone using TRT or otherwise to start with testosterone. Testosterone is technically not an anabolic steroid. Anabolic steroids, the technical definition, is anything that's a derivative of testosterone. So testosterone is what's called bioidentical, meaning it's the same as what's produced in your

body. You produce testosterone as a natural human being, and so it makes the most sense that you would use that first, because that's what your body's used to, it's what it produces. And there are things that testosterone derives into, that your body needs. Testosterone turns into in your body estrogen, which you need for cardio protection, you need for brain health, you need for fat loss, you need for muscle building, you need for joint health. All these things.

It derives into DHT dihydrotestosterone, which is important for mood, for sexual function. It's also what nukes your hair and makes you grow body hair nukes the hair on your head and then it also derives into free testosterone, which is the most anabolic piece. So when people get their testosterone checked, they usually get total testosterone, which is just the total amount of testosterone your body is producing, and then free testosterone, which is what it's derived into.

That's most important for hypertrophy and and building lean tissue. Did you so? Testosterone is always the base. Did did you by chance get your labs drawn at the depth of your cut to see what that drop in body fat and just overall caloric intake did to impact that? Or did you try and offset that to maintain a certain level exogenously? Yeah, so I I I get my lab work done every two to three months. Most people on drugs or on TRT get it twice a year.

But I'm like neurotic about knowing what my blood work is and trying to do this the healthiest way possible. I'd say the other thing that I do is I check my blood pressure multiple times a week. When people think about, you know, what are the risks with taking performance enhancing drugs. Some people think, oh, it's going to affect your heart, it's going to affect your liver. But what most bodybuilders get sick from or some die from is actually kidneys. Your kidneys are super

important. And I'd say kidney health is also a risk for even natural athletes who bulk up to really high body weights. They're eating a lot of food. They may not be managing their blood pressure and it may actually be high and that's that's putting a ton of stress on your kidneys and your heart. So I I check that regularly as well. And I also get echocardiograms

done every couple years. I get my calcium score, all those things to try to make sure everything is as healthy as possible and thankfully it it has been. But with checking testosterone, it's almost not necessary when you're on TRT or on drugs because you're supplementing that, right? So you don't need to know what your testosterone is unless you're on TRT and you're trying to keep it in like a normal range.

But because I'm taking more than TRT, my testosterone is always going to be out of range, but it's going to be too high. So it's not going to drop when I'm on prep, it's never really going to be in range. So that's actually the one blood

marker I don't get. My, I was trying to keep tabs on mine throughout the prep because you know anytime like like body fat levels are going to be close related to or tied to you know what what your hormone levels are doing, the amount of dietary fat you're consuming etcetera, etcetera. And I think at the depth of my prep, my total tea was down to 86 which was just crazy man, but was was wild as I felt really

good. I mean, I definitely felt depleted and hungry and all that stuff, but I didn't really have this massive drop in just like zeal for life, for energy. I felt like I was mentally aware and just on top of things from performance standpoint. But functioning at the rate that I was with a total testosterone of 86 was was kind of eye opening. Yeah, that's that's crazy low. Yeah, some people say enhanced prep is healthier than natural prep, and I think that's what they're talking about.

Yeah, yeah. I mean they're it's it's so strange man because like in natural body building they they ban depending on what federation you're in. Like they ban so many things many of which would. I mean research is now coming out to say that hey look, this would be incredibly advantageous to take, especially as you age, to promote longevity, overall bone health and just overall function. And a lot of, I mean most of that is not going to be allowed in natural federations.

So it's kind of like like I get the stance of being completely natural, that's the the the road I've taken. But the same time it's like there is a point when I'll reach an age at which do I want to just simply maintain natural status to be able to compete naturally or do I want to just focus on improving health and longevity. And I feel like, you know, I'm going to have to hit that tipping point at some point or another. Yeah, absolutely. So it's interesting.

So, so you've got the you're kind of doing a myriad of things in a healthy range as opposed to like a massive bolus of any one thing. That is definitely the right way to go about it. From what I've read and and researched as well are, are there anything like, were you noticing any decline in any health markers as you went through the cut and we're implementing more of these

exhaust substances? Yeah, so I I for the first time, some of my blood markers did get on a range, and it was through trying drugs, using drugs that I hadn't used before. And so I found out very quickly because I check my blood work so often that those things don't work for me. So for the first time ever I used Winstrol, which is a drug that's usually used at the end of a prep it.

It creates a really dry look and makes you look like very crispy at the end of prep and you can either take it orally or injectable. I was using injectable and that threw my liver enzymes sky high. My GGT. The the problem with liver enzymes which most people when they think about liver enzymes they think about ALT and AST, which is what comes back on a standard metabolic panel. But those are heavily influenced by resistance training.

So if you train hard even like 2 days before getting your blood work done, your ALT and AST are likely to be high. And that's not a reflection of liver damage. It's just a reflection of inflammation from hypertrophy, right. And so the more accurate marker to get is actually GGT, Glucagon, glutotransferase or something like that. And that doesn't get elevated by resistance training and it's a more accurate measure of your liver health. So that was still normal.

It, it elevated from what it was normally for me, but it was still in the normal range. But my ALT and AST were just skyrocketing and I consulted with some people I trust in the space and they said, yeah, that can happen with windstrawl, it's normal. It'll go back to normal as soon as you pull it out. But I didn't want to continue on in the prep with that in even if it wasn't doing any liver damage, I just don't like seeing my blood markers that high.

So I pulled it out immediately and you know, two weeks later my liver enzymes were were closer to normal. Nice. Nice. What about the trimbolone? Yeah, the Trembalone didn't have any negative side effects on my blood work, and I didn't get a lot of the side effects that a lot of people experience increased aggression. Some people, on really high doses, they get like paranoia, insomnia.

I didn't experience any of that. I did have one side effect, which was really the only side effect I've experienced from any PD I've taken in a long time, which is I had night sweats, so I would wake up in like a pool of sweat, and the sweat smelled disgusting. It didn't smell like normal sweat and so that was pretty gross to just like wake up. Your sheets are soaked, your pillows soaked, You have to,

like, change. And you know, my wife wasn't very happy about that, so that was definitely annoying. And it went away after like three or four weeks of being on it. But yeah, that was that was the one side effect I experienced. And and people are mostly using trend from a thermogenic standpoint, right? Yeah, exactly. It's not like really a muscle builder. What it does is it works on the glucocortisoid receptor, so it like lowers your your stress

response. And it actually is really good at maintaining muscle in a deficit. So if you're on trend, it's pretty much impossible to lose muscle when you're in a calorie deficit. And you know, some people use crazy doses, you know, 500 milligrams a week, a gram a week of trend. I was using like 25 to 50 milligrams. I was using like 25 milligrams a day, which works out to 175 a week. So it's really like the minimum dose to maintain muscle tissue and get an effect without having

a myriad of side effects. Gotcha. When it comes to diet and just macro manipulation and just adherence to a deficit, while in the context of a prep if one is taking exotic hormones you you're. I don't want to speak out of turn, but I would imagine you have a little bit more flexibility with your food consumption because you can be a little bit more fast and loose with your consumption like with natural bodybuilders like I'm.

I mean, natural bodybuilders are freaking counting rice grains and like everything is accounted for, but you can probably get away with a little bit more from a food dietary standpoint. Yeah, you can be a little more aggressive with fat loss. That's why you can often do a a faster prep. But you know, I I was still extremely precise.

I was tracking everything. And you know, I think if you're taking drugs and you're being and you're not tracking your calories or you're not training hard or you don't have recovery variables all in place, that's just a total, totally stupid move, in my, my opinion, very irresponsible. So you should have everything else dialed before you even think about using any PDS. And that's the way I treat it.

And I'll also say hunger. You're just as hungry on, if not hungrier on anabolics as you are as a natural athlete. One of the differences is that's that's interesting is you have to be really careful with refeeds because if you are using anabolics and if you are using thermogenics like clenbuterol and thyroid and stuff like that, you can your your metabolism can run away from you. Meaning you can start getting really flat and just losing fat too quickly, and then it's hard

to get like fullness back. So refeeds become even more important for an enhanced athlete. Gotcha. Gotcha. What about post show man? Like what did you do post show with regards to like celebratory meal? What'd you do with regards to supplementation posture? Like I'm assuming you'd, you'd probably want to taper these drugs off in a similar fashion to how you incorporate them, as opposed to just cutting them completely.

Yeah. So for me, I and my coach, he had me cut out all anabolics and trend, including trend like 8 days out. And that's for a few reasons. One, to to dry out. Two, to make sure you don't accidentally have any bumps or bruises from injecting. And three, to just like lower inflammation and stress going

into the show. And you also over the course of peak week you drop things like clenbuterol which which helps you burn fat increases your metabolic rate again because it can sometimes make you hold water or make you it can increase inflammation. And I also I use growth hormone so I dropped that like 10 days out because growth hormone definitely makes you retain water. And so then post show I I didn't add back in any of the

thermogenics. I didn't add back in trend I'm I'm not using that anymore and really that's like reserved for the last 6 to 8 weeks of the contest prep. And yeah, so I went back to, I added back in testosterone as well as the other anabolic I use is Primabolin and anabolic

steroids. Just so folks understand what they are is they're medically and scientifically manufactured derivatives of testosterone that were made by pharmaceutical companies in like the 70s and 80s to try to create a version of testosterone for very sick people that had the least androgenic side effects. So androgenic side effects are like things that make women into men when they take it, so deepening of voice, hair, acne, things like that.

So it's basically like trying to create a super testosterone is what these other anabolics are and over time they got more and more refined as they as they manufactured these in the chemical structure. So the most advanced of those with the least side effects is premabolin and their studies on women taking up to I think it's like a gram and a half of premabolin a week for months on end with no negative side effects. So for a man who's bigger, you can definitely tolerate it very well.

So the base of my anabolic stack, if you will, is always testosterone. But then because I don't want some of those other effects, I fill in the rest of the milligrams that I need to make progress with Prima Ball because it's the safest, doesn't impact my blood work at all, and it's just like pure hypertrophy. So I went back to a lower dose overall of milligrams than I was on during prep, probably half or less. And it's just testosterone and

prima ballin after the show. And I'm going to ride that out for the next 8 weeks because especially in enhanced bodybuilding, you know, in in natural bodybuilding, post show is all about recovery. It's about getting back to healthy body fat and then making progress from there.

For enhanced bodybuilding, there's really this magical rebound you can have post show where you're extremely insulin sensitive, you're in the best possible place to grow, and a lot of enhanced bodybuilders make as much progress in the eight weeks after their show as they would in a normal, like year long offseason. So if you do it correctly, you don't eat like an asshole and you know you you use drugs safely and you train hard, you can make tremendous progress in

those eight weeks. So that's what I'm doing right now, and it's really fun. But yeah, so that's what I went back to. I had the the, like, days leading up to the show. I was eating so much food to try to fill out that I wasn't really hungry post show, you know, I had a couple bites of like a cookie and like half a cinnamon bun on show day. And then the next day, my wife and I, we went to this fancy bakery we really like and we split two sandwiches and then that was about it for me.

And you know, since then I've just been eating my normal diet, a lot of meat and protein, and then white rice and food is very high now. I'm already over 5000 calories again every single day and training like an animal. So that's that's my post show. Nice. Nice. I'm about 5000 calories right now too. Man, it feels good to eat when you have. Yeah, weeks and weeks and months and months. Not eating as much as you'd

like. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm still very hungry, which is the crazy part. No for sure. Appetite is still good, still plenty of runway to go in this offseason and body composition is great. Still have lines in my glutes. I'm about £10 above my show day weight, which was pretty dehydrated to be fair. And like I said, I pulled out growth hormone and things like that which lowers your weight as

well. So I'm in a very healthy spot and yeah, just progressing gradually From here I'm going to gain like two 2 lbs a week probably and monitor pictures, monitor body composition and try to try to move up. I want to be like 10 to 15 lbs of true muscle heavier before I compete again, and I think I'm set up well to do that. I love it, man. So we totally lost over the actual show day itself, man. What were the results of the show? What was that experience like?

Yeah, the show is great. So in I don't know if it's the same for naturals, but in enhanced bodybuilding at so this is an amateur regional show so not a national show. No. You know pro cards given. But you can qualify for nationals and at the at the NPC level they have in in every in every division. So there's open bodybuilding. There's classic physique, which is so open. Bodybuilding is like the freaks

everyone anyone can compete. You can, They have different weight classes, but you can be as big as you want to be. Classic physique is supposed to be more of like a streamlined look, looking like the bodybuilders of like the 80s and 90s, like Arnold and stuff like that. The poses are slightly different, There's fewer poses and there is a weight cap that's based on your height. So at 5/9 and 1/2, I think my weight cap is like 190.

I think it's like 202 actually. And I weighed in on show day at 193, So I still have a good amount of room to go there. And that's with like you said, not a ton of weight manipulation and water cutting. So I can definitely stay in that category if I choose to. So I did and and then there's Men's Physique, which is like the board shorts, only two poses. You're basically trying to look like a beach model. I didn't compete in that.

So in class I competed in Classic and Open bodybuilding, and in both of those they have Open, which is just anyone. They have Novice, which means you haven't placed in a show before and they have True novice, which is you've never competed before. True novice, a lot of people say is like kind of just paying for a trophy. But you know, I had the COVID thing, I had the I I went through a week in the hospital during prep. So I was like, I'm doing True novice and I'm getting my

trophy. So I did true Novice and Open in both. Classic and Open bodybuilding. So for four cat 4 categories I won True novice in open bodybuilding and then I went to the overall for True Novice open where I competed against the guys in the other weight classes. I won the overall. I won True novice and Classic Physique and the overall True Novice and Classic Physique. I won my class in classic bodybuilding, which is there are three classes. They're based on different heights.

And then I went to the overall in classic bodybuilding and got second to this guy Anthony Mantello, who's like an influencer big in the bodybuilding space, like trains with Chris Bumstead and Nick Walker. And he has been competing for years. He missed his pro card by one spot at nationals two years ago. He's a great kid, amazing physique, great genetics. He's been competing a lot longer than I have, so it was really awesome to to battle it out with him.

But he beat me and so I got second there. And then in open bodybuilding in the light heavyweight category, which is up to 197 lbs, I got third. And so yeah, I won two of my classes or I won two of my categories. I won my class in another, got second in the overall, and then I got third in the third category. I computed him. I'd say it's a pretty, pretty freaking awesome first showing man like that that sounds like he walked there with lots of hardware. Yeah, I was extremely happy with

the results. better than I could have imagined. And more importantly, I just felt so much love and support from friends and family. I had 12 people there on show day supporting me. They made signs for me. They were cheering me on. They were hanging out with me in the hotel room between prejudging and finals. And yeah, it was just such an amazing experience and I had so much fun being on stage and posing.

It was really cool. The head judge of the show is this legend in bodybuilding named Steve Lineberger. He's been judging for 30 years. He he's the head judge at the Mr. Olympia, at the Arnold Classic, at all these international pro shows and and domestic pro shows, and he was the head judge of the show. So it's really cool to be judged by him and I had a blast. That's awesome man. Did you go to the judges table and get any feedback from him afterwards? I did not get feedback.

I I did go up and shapes shake Steve's hand. But you know, I know what I need to improve on. I I just I need more size everywhere. And I need especially need more size on my quads and a little bit of hamstrings. Yeah, very cool, man. So you you've got the bug to do it again, huh? Absolutely, absolutely. I still need to, you know, have the talk with the wife about competing again, and that'll

come in a couple weeks. She wants me to, you know, take some time to reflect and talk about why it's important to me and you know what I'm doing. But my goal is to, like I said, gain a good 10 to 15 lbs of stage weight and compete either in a later show next year and hopefully win at the regional level and then go to Nationals. I did qualify for Nationals this year, but I'm definitely not ready to be competitive at that level, so I'm not going to go to Nationals just to get my butt

whooped. So yeah, I I want to win a local show next time I compete and go to Nationals and be competitive there. So I'll either compete in like the late spring, early summer next year or take another full year and compete in 2026. Awesome, man. Speaking of your wife, what'd you think about the whole ordeal? Was she totally on board with it? Was there times where she was

like, what are you doing to us? Yeah, there are definitely times where she like, you know, she was very unhappy about the night sweats piece. When I had the digestive issues, she was like freaking out, getting, trying to get me to go

to the hospital. And she wasn't super happy about, just like, you know, I could have done a better job communicating expectations at the outset of the prep, which I think a lot of bodybuilders do about, like how I would feel, how it would become, you know, a little more emotionally distant, lower energy. And I didn't do that super well.

So some of those things she she wasn't necessarily expecting, so she wasn't super happy about, but she loved seeing me compete and she had such a blast on show day cheering for me. She was so happy for me. She was like crying. So overall, I think she was very happy that I did it and extremely proud of me. That's awesome, man. Yeah, that the, the spouses and significant others are

competitors. I mean, they they deserve like their own, you know, moment of appreciation right there because like we couldn't do what we do if it weren't for having solid, you know, crew in our corner. And like, when I, when I think back on some of the things that I put Crystal through this last prep, it's like she's a freaking Angel, man. Like she's an Angel. Yeah, she is. Yeah. They they they definitely support us in so many different ways and deserve all the praise

for that. 100%, man. Well, I'm stoked for you. I'm proud of you. I looked at the pictures. I mean, I saw the signs. I saw all the stuff. Look like you were having a blast. You look freaking incredible. I'm glad you're taking such a detailed approach to all of it because there's definitely guys out there that go the enhanced route that just like you know, they'll stick anything in them and they don't.

They throw cost to the wind. And you've always been a very meticulous, data oriented person. I think that's the only way to be when you're going around. Yeah, that's the only way My wife trusts me too, you know. She knows how seriously I take the health side and how how meticulous I am with not just doing all the health stuff and having a good coach, you know, knowing it all myself and

educating myself. You know, if I just told her, oh, I'm doing what my coach said, she would not be happy about that. Yeah. So, you know, she knows I'm on top of it myself. I take personal responsibility. And yeah, I I think there's definitely smarter and Dumber ways to do it. And I tried to do it the smartest way possible. And yeah, my goals going into the show too, by the way, were one to come in peeled. I think I accomplished that.

Two, to not embarrass myself with posing, cuz I did a lot of posing practice and got a lot of posing coaching along the way, which I needed, so I think I accomplished that. And three, to not drive my wife crazy, which she'll tell me how well I did at that one. And then four, to just enjoy it and make it a celebration. So I had no expectations or goals regarding placing or anything like that. It worked out very well. But that wasn't that wasn't the

point. The point was to do my first show, to experience it. And yeah, I'm I'm very happy with how it all went. Well, The thing is about, I mean it's a subjective sport. So I mean you may look totally better than the next guy in your opinion, but the judges may not

agree. So like if you go into it with that with that 4 criteria approach of like being as lean as you could possibly be, you know, not driving your wife crazy in the process, enjoying, enjoying the process and you know, doing it this healthy way you possibly can. I mean like that that's that's the best thing you can do. And then after that, I mean let the chips fall where they may and then be at peace with them. Yeah, absolutely.

I think it's good to have internal, internal, focused goals rather than just external, especially in a subjective sport. 100% Well, what else is going to pop up for you, man? What? What else is exciting for you now that the show prep is done? Obviously you're going to be focused on putting on more size and you know, being competitive at the national level the next time you do compete. But outside of competitions, where? Where's that freed up bandwidth going to go now?

Yeah, I mean a lot of it's going into my my family and my friends and you know seeing them and being more social with them than I could on prep, going on dates with my wife once a week. That's really important. Spending more time with family. You know my my folks came in from few states. They came in from Massachusetts to the show in New York. So that was really nice. And they're coming back for Mother's Day to stay with us for a few days.

We have some trips planned over the summer with her family, and then we have a big once a year we like to go on a big trip with just the two of us. So last fall in October, we went to Utah and went to 3-4 different national parks for a week. And that was amazing. And this, this year, we're going to London and Paris together. So we're really looking forward to that.

And then a lot of my time and focus is going back into work, you know, really excelling at my job and my career, which is very important to me. And then, you know, dedicating time to my dogs, my, my children, if you will. So yeah, that's that's where my focus is now. And you're still rocking the podcast too, right? Yep, still doing the podcast in episode a week at about 300 episodes. Now that's been going for five years, so really enjoying that too.

Did you change the name of the podcast recently? Yeah, I did. So about a year ago I changed from Carnivore Cast to the Scott Mize show and experienced a pretty significant drop in downloads and and followers from doing that. But I still have, you know, Carnivore related guests. Every other week I've had Sally Norton on. Recently I had George Eade back again. I've had Suzanne Alexander who's been doing these awesome trips to visit native peoples in Southeast Asia and most recently Africa.

You know she stayed with the Maasai and and other tribes, so I've had her on SO trying to maintain the carnivore aspect, but I wanted to be able to branch out to more bodybuilding and bodybuilding related topics. So right now I'm doing a Carnivore episode every other week, and a more Bodybuilding episode every other. Week. Nice. Nice.

Yeah. I don't even pretend to understand the the podcasting algorithm, but I feel as long as you're recording the kind of content that you want to record, I mean, you can call it whatever you will. You can appeal to whatever demographic you want, but as long as you're recording content with guests that you want to interview and it's interesting to you, that's going to be like the the make and break factor. That's going to be what allows you to sustain a long term. Exactly, Exactly.

It's just about enjoying, like doing it this long. You couldn't do it if you you weren't having conversations you found interesting and enjoyed. And so that's been really key for me. And you know, I've of course gone through times where I didn't want to do it as much and I was kind of dreading it. But you know, I stuck to it. I stuck to my one episode a week. And yeah, I I mean, I get to have all kinds of guests on.

I had this past week, I had a psychedelics expert on, which was really interesting diving into that. So yeah, it's it's been really fun. I love it, man. I love it. Well, Scott, what am I going to see you next, man? Are you going to be going to these conferences this? Year. I'm not going. Don't have plans to go into any of the Keto or Carnivore conferences this year, but maybe I will. I'd love to make it back to Austin.

I know there's a lot of great conferences there and amazing BBQ so. There is amazingly down for. Trip to Austin. You and I are both putting down about 5000 calories a day right now, so I think if we went and got like, you know, 3 beef ribs ought to do it for. Us. Yeah, we'd have to do like, an eating challenge. That'd be fun. Yeah, I'd be all about it, man. We got to get a lift in sometime too. Yeah, that'd be great.

I'd love that. Well, Scott, always a pleasure brother and thoroughly enjoyed talking with you. Thoroughly enjoyed seeing you go to the prep. I'm excited for you on all fronts, man. Where do people go to find out more about? You. Yeah. Just look for Scott my show Scott dot Mize dot show on Instagram or search Scott my show on wherever you listen to podcasts or YouTube and you can find me there. Awesome, man. Well, I'll link out and make it

easy for people to find you. And Scott, if there's anything I can do for you, brother, you just let me know. Thank you so much Robert. I love all your content, your podcast. I think you're an amazing person, you're one of the best people in the industry and I've always looked up to you and and really, really appreciate you having me on. Hey man, that means the world to me. I really appreciate that. I just kind of we were talking about earlier.

I just do what I love doing and that's granted me the opportunity to interact with people that I love learning from. So thanks is all you, man. I appreciate this conversation more than you know. Awesome. Thank you. Take care, bud. You too.