By Kateryna Pakhomova
Marcus Thompson eats six meals a day, weighs his food to the gram, and can recite the macronutrient breakdown of virtually everything he consumes.
At six feet two and two hundred thirty pounds of sculpted muscle, he is sixteen weeks out from a regional bodybuilding competition, deep in the metabolic chess match of building mass while maintaining definition.
But unlike the generations of bodybuilders before him who relied on gym folklore and bro-science, Thompson has a registered dietitian guiding his nutrition.
“The first thing my dietitian told me was that I was eating too much protein,” Thompson recalls, still somewhat incredulous at the memory. “I was doing two hundred fifty grams a day, and she said I only needed about one-eighty. In bodybuilding, that's heresy. “
Bodybuilding has long existed at the intersection of discipline and obsession. For decades, the nutritional wisdom of the sport came from a mix of empirical experimentation, supplement marketing, and advice handed down from more experienced lifters - much of it ritualistic mythology.
Increasingly, a new generation of bodybuilders is turning to registered dietitians.
Sarah Lynn Nutrition has worked with competitive bodybuilders, physique athletes, and serious recreational lifters for the past several years. It's a unique challenge in dietetics - clients who are exceptionally disciplined and knowledgeable about training but often misinformed about nutrition, operating from deeply entrenched assumptions.
The protein myth is perhaps the most pervasive. Walk into any gym, and you'll hear recommendations for one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight, sometimes more.
The science suggests otherwise. Research consistently shows that muscle protein synthesis plateaus around point-seven to point-eight grams per pound for most people, even those training intensively. Beyond that threshold, additional protein doesn't build more muscle - it's either oxidized for energy or converted to fat, an expensive and inefficient fuel source. It's like thinking that because plants need water to grow, drowning them will make them grow faster.
Yet convincing bodybuilders to reduce protein intake feels, to many, like asking them to abandon the foundation of their sport.
The implications extend beyond wasted money on protein powder. Excessive protein intake often comes at the expense of carbohydrates—the fuel source that actually powers the high-intensity training bodybuilders rely on. Undereating carbs leads to depleted glycogen stores, reduced training performance, and paradoxically, less muscle growth. Lynn’s team works with clients to rebalance their macros, often increasing carbohydrates significantly while modestly reducing protein, a shift that many find counterintuitive until they experience improved strength and recovery.
Beyond macronutrients, the bodybuilding world is rife with nutritional superstitions that dietitians must gently dismantle. The idea that eating after six p.m. causes fat gain. The belief that meal timing matters more than total daily intake. The notion that certain foods are inherently 'clean' while others are 'dirty,' a moralistic framework that has no basis in metabolism.
Contest preparation - the twelve to sixteen week period before a competition when bodybuilders cut body fat to extreme lows - presents particular challenges. This phase involves severe caloric restriction combined with high training volumes, pushing the body into a state of stress that requires careful nutritional management to preserve muscle mass.
Sarah Lynn Nutrition advocates a more gradual approach, reducing calories modestly and progressively, preserving training intensity rather than adding excessive cardio, incorporating diet breaks to prevent metabolic slowdown. The process takes longer, requires more patience, but results in better muscle retention and easier post-competition recovery. For bodybuilders accustomed to suffering as proof of dedication, this more method can feel insufficient.
“There's a martyrdom culture in bodybuilding,” Lynn observes. “The belief that if you're not miserable, you're not working hard enough.”
Another area where dietitians provide value is supplement navigation. The bodybuilding supplement industry is a multi-billion-dollar enterprise built largely on exaggerated claims and pseudo-scientific marketing.
Dietitians helps clients distinguish between the few supplements with robust evidence - creatine monohydrate, caffeine, perhaps whey protein for convenience - and the countless products that are essentially placebos with clever branding.
The sport demands extraordinary physical discipline but can foster unhealthy relationships with food and body image. The binary thinking of bulking and cutting - periods of deliberate overfeeding followed by severe restriction - can blur into disordered eating.
The constant scrutiny of physique, the pursuit of ever-lower body fat percentages, the comparison to idealized images, creates psychological vulnerabilities that mirror those seen in eating disorders.
Thompson steps on stage in four weeks. His conditioning is ahead of schedule, his strength maintained, his mental state stable. He's eating more carbohydrates (still a microscopic amount by normal standards) and less protein than he ever thought possible during prep.
In the world of bodybuilding, where the pursuit of aesthetic perfection can become all-consuming, dietitians at Sarah Lynn Nutrition offer something unexpected: a more sustainable path to achieving winning results.
The science of sculpting, it turns out, is more nuanced than the simple formulas bodybuilders have long followed.
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