Is Weight-Cycling or Yo-Yo Dieting a Direct Route to Obesity and Bad Health? by Jerry Brainum 7/21

 

A common practice in bodybuilding and other sports is often called "Bulking up." This involves gaining weight during periods of non-competition, then losing weight prior to a competition. The ostensible reason for bulking up in bodybuilding is to gain muscular size and strength. The hope is that all the weight gained while bulking up will allow you to lift heavier weights, which would hopefully translate into size and strength gains. And in most cases, this is exactly what occurs. The trick, however, is to minimize body fat gains while promoting maximal muscular size gains. But the truth is that it's difficult, if not impossible to pack on 40 pounds or more from your best condition weight and not add some body fat. A successful bulking phase would involve gaining muscle size, but not losing excessive amounts of muscle when you diet down to contest or top condition.

Although many bodybuilders make some hyperbolic claims about their body fat levels, such as a recent Mr.Olympia winner, who claimed that he was 0.3% body fat in contest condition and only 3% body fat while weighing 325 pounds in the off-season, both of these claims are sheer nonsense. In males, 3% of body fat is considered "essential fat," which the body is loath to tap into. Such fat offers insulation of nerves, helps to maintain internal organs, such as holding the kidneys in place and does a number of other things that are essential to life. Indeed, studies show that if a man somehow reaches a body fat level below 3%, he will lose a substantial amount of muscle mass. What happens there is that the body will prevent tapping into essential fat stores and instead break down muscle tissue. On the other hand, it's also true that most elite bodybuilders do attain extremely low body fat levels prior to a contest appearance. A bodybuilder who is considered "ripped," meaning that they show no traces of superficial body fat as evidenced by prominent displays of vascularity or the appearance of superficial blood vessels under the skin, attains that appearance with body fat levels of about 5 to 7 percent. In contrast, a man with 15% body fat levels is considered healthy with no excess body fat.

Many people who see elite bodybuilding competitors in the gym a month or so following a contest appearance are often surprised at the appearance of such competitors.  Gone are all the prominent vascularity and muscular definition that they had shown just a few weeks earlier. They now appear "smooth," a bodybuilding term that denotes no apparent sharp muscularity.The truth, however, is that's it's nearly impossible to maintain contest condition with its extremely low body fat levels for extended times. Attempting to do so would lead to adverse effects on both health and psychology. How much weight a bodybuilder gains between contests or in the off-season varies among individuals. As . . .