Dieting Advice from Dorian Yates

So following on from my previous blog post where I talked about maximising your off season, in this blog we’ll talk about how you can maximise your cutting period.

I’m gonna keep this fairly short and to the point, so let’s get to it.

Nutrition

It makes sense to start with nutrition as it is the most significant change that you’ll make for this period. The number one mistake I see people make is starting with a harsh transition from eating too much, to eating too little straight away… it’s far too big of a jump that isn't sustainable.

What we want to do is firstly look at your diet and how much you’re currently eating in your surplus. Here we want to find your maintenance calorie level, this is the amount needed to neither gain or lose weight, but to simply maintain your current weight. How can you find this? Simply write down on paper or in an app, everything you eat for 5 consecutive days (weigh yourself each day too, in the morning ideally before eating), then add the total calories up and divide by 5 to get an average. If you didn’t gain or lose weight then this is your maintenance level of calories.

Let’s assume your maintenance is 2,800 calories per day, now we want to lose body fat so I recommend reducing your calories by 500, we will now cut into the stored energy we have so from this 500 calorie deficit, I recommend reducing it mainly from your carbohydrates.

There are 3,500 calories in 1lb of fat so we want to be in a 500 caloric deficit daily which over a week equals 3,500 calories.

What about fats and protein?

I kept my protein intake fairly high, roughly 1g per pound of bodyweight and I did reduce my fats too, but I’d recommend not reducing your fats too much as they are essential - get your fats from good natural sources.

What about cheat meals?

You can go back up to maintenance calories one day a week for both mental and physical reasons, you can even go 500 calories over, but be sure to track it. You can have a cheat meal maybe once a week and enjoy it, but just don’t go overboard. I myself had a cheat meal once per week during prep which usually consisted of steak & fries followed by some ice cream.

It’s more of a mental break from the diet, and you’ll be raring to go once again.

Training

So should your weight training need to change since your total calorie intake has decreased?

No, not really is the short answer. You still should be training with high-intensity especially during the early stages of your cut, but what I would say is that as the weeks go on, your energy levels and total body weight will decrease so I’d recommend going just to failure and not beyond. It’s going to be difficult to build muscle as that was the purpose of your off-season, so now it’s all about preserving as much muscle as possible. To be honest you can maintain your muscle fairly easily, so as you’re deeper into your cutting phase, just go short of failure and you may lose a little muscle but you’ve got to accept that.

Do not take any risks, this period is just about preservation and so it’s a different mindset to adopt. You’ve got to be strategic, plus your energy is going to decrease as well as your sleep being disturbed and as a result, the risk of injury could increase if you’re adding unnecessary intensity… intensity is just to stimulate growth.

So it’s pointless and risky when you’re trying to increase the intensity when you’re depleted, as I found out firsthand with my two major injuries!

Cardio

So along with a reduced calorie diet and a weight training program where you’re decreasing in intensity, you can use cardio as a tool to create a bigger deficit.

I recommend performing low intensity cardio as we want to use fat as our energy source and we don’t want to cut into our glycogen stores and affect recovery.

The cardio I performed was usually a fast paced walk with my dog down the canals nearby where I lived, or if the weather was quite bad (I lived in Birmingham UK afterall) I’d perform it on my stationary bike in my garage.

Try to keep your heartbeat around 110-115 bpm, so conversational pace as Mike Mentzer would call it and I’d aim to burn anywhere between 200-500 calories during cardio exercise, but adjust it to your own regime.

And when to do your cardio? I believe it’s best to keep it away from your weight training sessions as it can interfere with recovery, so no cardio before or after your sacred weight training sessions.

Supplements

Everything supplement-wise should stay the same, of course if you’re using our Metabolic Mass Gainer you’re going to want to switch to a lower calorie protein powder like our Tempro Protein. Pre-workouts, creatine, glutamine etc are all fine to keep in your arsenal.

You can also use a fat burner such as our well-known BlackBombs which'll help suppress appetite, give you energy and it also has Berberine which is very important for blood sugar control. Plus it’s made in our GMP Pharmaceutical facility to the highest standards so can use this in your prep.

Time

How long you need to be in a deficit really depends on how out of shape you are to begin with. I can’t give an exact time estimate, but I will say that if someone is already in quite good shape, then they could need 6-8 weeks. Whereas if someone isn’t, then they could possibly need double that time so maybe 12-14 weeks. It really depends on how you’re looking at the start of your prep.

Talking from my own experience, I liked to take my time and cruise into the contest so I took approximately 12 weeks on average for my prep. I could’ve done it in 8 weeks but I preferred to do it fairly gradually.

Posing practice

If you’re dieting down to compete in a show, I recommend practising your posing at least a couple of times per week. But this means dedicating possibly 30 minutes to it. When I competed, I practised my posing 3x per week for 45 minutes each, it was a session in itself!

It’s beyond critical to practice, it’s what the judges will see and could make or break your placing. Plus you’ll be able to control each muscle better and since it takes up some energy, it’ll burn some calories too!

I don’t think they judge the free posing round nowadays, but back then it was 33% of the judging so it could make a huge difference. Master the art of posing and showcase your physique in its best possible way!

If you’re ready to get into the best shape of your life, join my DY Academy and get tailored online coaching with nutrition plans and much more to take your physique to the next level.