If you ever got ripped and rebounded READ THIS!

[Quelly]

http://www.possibility.com/epowiki/W...SemiStarvation

frickin amazing how similar my experience was to what was described here....

[Vadim Beliaev]

I think youre concerned with this way too much. I only care if i look good onstage, i would never be able to weigh 225 in contest condition if i only worried about having a sixpack year round. Just eat, you've deserved it, and you may pack on some extra mass this way.
(Ectomorphs need not apply).

[Razmoneyrecords]

fascinating article. Very interesting stuff. I disagree that you are " concerned too much." I've learned in my 2 seasons that the key to natural bodybuilding is being able to control your diet and your BF in the offseason. It's a lot easier to cut off everything and be super strict for 16 or 20 weeks. It becomes much more difficult in the offseason to keep things "reasonable" when you have no deadline, and no concrete restrictions. Plus, after binging post contest you receive that huge rush of hormones and endorphins from all the sugars and fats, and your body craves that high, which encourages more cheating.
I do agree that you should work it out of your system to a certain extent. Then get it down to one cheat/week, and stick to a monitored calorie situation. I had a contest over the weekend and cheated hard saturday night, and all of sunday. Here I am monday morning, and I've just had my 1/2 cup of oats with fruit (which felt like a cheat anyway), and egg whites. Remember to appreciate the foods you get to bring back in, you would have killed for those foods a few weeks ago.

[jason4401]

Sounds like you are going through the same thing I am. I would stay on a normal diet througout the day, but when I got home at night I would go nuts on ice cream, cookies, cake etc., until I was miserably full. I did this the whole week after competition, with the exception of two days where I actually stayed on my diet with no cheating. I woke up Sunday morning and decided enough is enough. I am back on track so far and am actually on a slight caloric deficit for two weeks to try and get some of this fat back off before starting a clean slow bulk. Good luck!

[Quelly]

I think you guys are both right....but you are both making assumptions about what I'm doing in response to how I'm feeling and my uncontrolled binging....basically I've discovered two things...I have to eat alot to get my BMR back to normal...but I also care about my health and I don't want to get too high in BF because the 5 month extreme contest prep is what landed me here...so, (being an ecto) I am just trying to maintain a regular healthy diet until I feel sane again and feel in control...which is happening already....I've never experienced feeling out of control before and I don't like it....having read the article and understanding the mechanisms involved makes me feel better...I'm now trying to do some volumetrics (low energy density foods, and lots of it) to control my cravings, but also keep my total kcals reasonably high for post contest 3k ish, and really have solid workout nutrition....this will only be until I feel like I can control myself, then I'm going to be clean bulking on 4k to start...and may have to ramp it up