Contest Prep Mistakes: Where Bodybuilders Go Wrong and How to Fix It

This week on the Bodybuilding Dietitians Podcast we’re ranking common fat loss strategies into a tier list. Tracking and pre-logging, mindful eating, fasting, managing food focus, protein intake, diet drinks and chewing gum, and working with a dietitian or coach. Some of what you’d expect to be S tier isn’t, and some of what gets dismissed deserves a lot more credit than it gets. We go through where each strategy actually sits, why we ranked it that way, and what to think about before you decide which ones belong in your approach. ⸻

How do you know whether your nutrition and training plan is actually working? Scale weight can be useful, but it only tells you part of the story. Changes in training performance, measurements, progress photos, health markers and your relationship with food may reveal progress that the scale completely misses. In this episode of The Bodybuilding Dietitians Podcast, you’ll learn which metrics are most useful for fat loss and muscle gain, how to make your measurements more consistent and why relying too heavily on a single number can lead to unnecessary changes. You’ll also learn how to recognise psychological and behavioural progress, including becoming less reactive to weight fluctuations, handling unplanned meals more calmly and developing a healthier relationship with training and food. As always, we wrap up with what we learned this week.

How do you continue making progress when you have already been training for years?In this episode of The Bodybuilding Dietitians Podcast, we share what our training and nutrition currently look like, the physique goals we are working towards and which variables we are adjusting to keep progressing.We discuss when adding more training volume may be useful, when execution and intensity deserve more attention, and why doing more work can become counterproductive if training quality or recovery begins to decline.We also compare our current approaches to nutrition, including eating without tracking, managing low appetite during a gaining phase, structuring food around early-morning training and knowing when a strategy such as fasting is no longer supporting the primary goal.As always, we wrap up with what we learned this week.

You may have started lifting to build muscle or change your physique, but the benefits of resistance training extend far beyond how you look.In this episode of The Bodybuilding Dietitians Podcast, we explain how lifting can support metabolic health, bone density, cognitive function, mental health and physical independence as you age. We also discuss how much strength training may be needed to gain meaningful health benefits and why building muscle earlier can provide a greater reserve for later in life.As always, we wrap up with what we learned this week. ⸻

Which popular fitness trends deserve your time and money, and which are mostly surviving on hype?In this episode, we rate some of the most discussed foods, supplements and training methods as overrated, underrated or fairly rated.We cover creatine dosage and the growing interest in its potential brain benefits, whether greens powders can replace anything meaningful in your diet and why many pre-workouts may be little more than expensive caffeine.We also discuss whole eggs, sardines, potatoes, lentils and legumes before moving into Bulgarian split squats, antagonistic supersets and forced reps.Rather than giving every topic a simple verdict, we explain when each one may be useful, when it becomes overhyped and what may provide a better return.As always, we wrap up with what we learned this week. ⸻