Let me start this post off by saying that nutrition is the key to everything to this sport. I don’t care how hard your workout, or how much cardio you do, if your nutrition is sloppy you won’t see any results. That being said, nutrition is actually one of the hardest things to plan. There are generally two types of phases in a bodybuilder’s diet:

The offseason diet

This basically refers to the “mass building” stage, where a person will generally consume a surplus of calories in order to build muscle.

The pre-contest diet

This, like the name implies, refers to stage where the builder will take off the extra fat he put on during the offseason in preparation for the contest. However, not everyone doing a diet will be going into a bodybuilding show. Although not technically considered a pre-contest diet (it is a contest for some people ) , some people just want to diet to look good during summer, photo shoot, etc. It all the same principle.

The main factors of a diet

The main things you have to plan out are: