What's for Breakfast?

“What does he eat?”

This is, without a doubt, the question I get asked most often about Bodybuilder Hubby.

Over the years, his diet has been tweaked and changed, and sometimes has varied greatly from off-season to training time.  But his typical breakfast has probably stayed the most consistent: eggs, oatmeal, and meat.  All together.  In a bowl.

Eggs:   Bodybuilder Hubby eats a lot of eggs (mostly the whites), probably something like thirty kajillion each week.  More than once I’ve had grocery store clerks comment on how many eggs I bought at a time, about how we must have such a large family.  At the time, it was just me and Bodybuilder Hubby.  And I rarely ate eggs.   I’ve always thought it was quite convenient that most of Bodybuilder Hubby’s contests have been in the spring.  Eggs always go on sale for Easter.

Oatmeal:  Bodybuilder Hubby buys rolled oats in 25-pound bags.  He puts oats and a little water in a bowl and microwaves it so that it comes out in a semi-solid disk.  Most often, he crumbles the disk into the bowl of scrambled egg.

Once he tried to turn the oatmeal disk into a mini pizza, topping it with tomato sauce and shredded mozzarella.  I haven’t seen him do that again, though, so it must not have worked very well.

Meat:  Most of Bodybuilder Hubby’s meals include some sort of lean meat.  He goes through massive quantities of chicken breast.  He’s figured out some good ways to get discount prices, including finding out what time the butcher block sections of the grocery stores close so he can show up at exactly the right time to get end-of-day specials.

He sometimes chooses ground turkey instead, or lean ground beef which he drains and rinses to make even leaner.  He cooks the meat in large quantities once or twice a week to make it easier to throw together individual meals.

Flavor:  “Healthy” meals without much, if any, fat or salt aren’t exactly known for tasting very good.  For a long time, Bodybuilder Hubby added flavor with this amino acid stuff.  He said it tasted like soy sauce, but, oh my, the smell… I refused to eat in the same room when he used it.

Now he relies on one of his favorite food ingredients: hot sauce.  When we were dating, we frequented a burrito restaurant that had a “Wall of Fire,” shelf after shelf of different varieties of hot sauce.  In his mind, a good meal is one that burns enough to make his eyes water.

So that’s it: eggs, oatmeal, meat and hot sauce.  All together.  In a bowl.

The breakfast of this champion.



A Bodybuilding Story

Bodybuilder Hubby competed in his first contest less than a year before we met.  We met at Christmas time, the off season, so he wasn’t in his best shape.  He told me about his first contest, showed me some pictures and his trophy, but for some reason I just didn’t get it.

He proposed on a beautiful, chilly spring day in the mountains as we were snow-shoeing along the edge of a frozen lake.  He wouldn’t let me hold the ring because he was afraid I would drop it in the snow.  Which was annoying at the time, mostly because he was probably right.

I started preparing for a wedding; he started preparing for another bodybuilding contest, which was held a month before our wedding.   My parents attended that contest with me, wanting to be supportive of their soon-to-be son-in-law.  When the women bodybuilders walked out on stage to start the show, my mom’s comment was, “I should get on stage and show them what a real woman looks like!”

Over the next several years, Bodybuilder Hubby competed almost every year, and almost every year, he took 2^nd or 3^rd place in his weight class.  His abs, back and arms were always amazing, but he had a harder time getting his legs to “come out.”  At that time, there were two guys in particular who seemed to win every year.  They were big guys, intimidating guys.  I thought of them as being unbeatable.

Every year, Bodybuilder Hubby made changes to his routine, to his workouts and his diet.  He did a lot of research, talked with many other competitors, and figured out what worked best for him.

Then in 2005, everything seemed to just click.  Bodybuilder Hubby looked the best I’d ever seen him: abs, back, arms, shoulders, and even his legs.  He won his weight class that year at the local contest, which thrilled me.  But to win the “Overall” award – the top prize – he would have to beat out the winners of the other weight classes, including one guy who was 50 pounds heavier than he was.

Those guys were on stage posing and turning and posing and turning for seventeen very long minutes while the judges deliberated.  I thought Bodybuilder Hubby might end up with 2^nd place, which would have been fantastic.  But instead, they read the name of the other guy for 2^nd place.  Bodybuilder Hubby had won.

I screamed.  A lot.  I have video to prove it. 

I was so excited.  I loved seeing all the time and effort he’d spent paying off.  Secretly, I also figured this would end up being his last contest.  After all, once you’ve won the whole thing, what else is left?

Then they added the Pro division.

Because Bodybuilder hubby won that Overall award, he can now compete as an NGA Pro.  He again ended up with several 2^nd and 3^rd places in his first Pro contests, but in his last three competitions, he’s won 1^st place every time.

He’s beaten both of those guys I had thought of as “unbeatable.”

Bodybuilder Hubby no longer competes in the big local contest.  Now he runs it.  He took it over in 2009, and it’s already grown tremendously.  It takes an incredible amount of time and energy to put that contest on each year, but he’s committed to it, and, by default, so am I.

I would never in a million years have imagined that natural bodybuilding would end up being such a prominent part of my life, of our life as a married couple.  But I can’t complain.  I have an award of my own.

At my five-year college reunion I won a prize for “Most Unique Experience:” Painting my husband with fake tan to get him ready for a bodybuilding competition.

Benefits of Being Bodybuilder's Wife

I am married to a professional bodybuilder.

Not one of the gross ones, the steroid guys that look like the Incredible Hulk with those disgustingly huge veins snaking around under their skin.

Nope.  I got one of the good ones.  A natural, drug-free one.  A really hot one.

Did you see the cover of Men’s Health last spring with Ryan Phillippe?  My first thought when I saw it was that my hubby’s body is even better.  Oh, yeah.

There are some obvious benefits to being married to a guy with a better body than a movie star, three in particular.

Benefit #1 to Being Bodybuilder’s Wife: His Abs

Bodybuilder Hubby has amazing abs.  Perfect, beautiful abs.  We’ve been married for over 13 years, and I’ve never seen him without six-pack abs.  Sometimes they’re softer and rounder, and around competition times they are rock-hard and chiseled.  But they are always there.

At his 20^th high school reunion last year, some of Bodybuilder Hubby’s old female friends wanted him to take his shirt off and be in a picture with him.  Didn’t bother me a bit.  Admire all you want, I say, those abs are going home with me.

Benefit #2 to Being Bodybuilder’s Wife:  He doesn’t expect me to be in the same kind of shape that he is.

I’m not a total slacker, mind you.  I weigh a little less now than I did before our two kids (now ages 2 and 3) were born.  I have, in my opinion, fantastic arms and shoulders, thanks in part to lots of push-ups (100 in sets of 10-20, twice a week), pull-ups (2, twice a week, because that’s all I can do so far), and the fact that whenever I go on a walk I push 85 pounds of stroller and toddlers along the way.

I flexed for Bodybuilder Hubby to show off my arms.  He sort of chuckled and suggested I work a little more on my delts.  I’ll probably try to do that as soon as I figure out what that means.

But really, he loves me now, and he loved me thirty pounds heavier post-babies.  And that’s a really great thing.

Benefit #3 to Being Bodybuilder’s Wife: Bodybuilding makes him happy.

There was a bodybuilding contest in town this past weekend.  Bodybuilder Hubby spent the entire day there, helping some of his friends and clients (he recently bought a personal training studio), and then getting in a workout himself mid-day.  Since the contest, his phone has been ringing and chirping like crazy with calls and text messages.

The funny thing is, a few years ago, I couldn’t convince him he needed a cell phone, and actually went out a bought one for him without telling him, just to get him started.  He was convinced he would never need to use it.  Now he uses many times more minutes and texts than I do each month.  Which means, of course, that I was right.

I love listening to those post-contest conversations.  He’ll spend an hour on the phone with someone talking about recommendations for their diet or posing or whatever he thinks will help that person do better in the next contest.  It’s absolutely his passion, the thing guaranteed to put a smile on his face.  And when people come to him asking for advice because he’s had success, that’s the icing on the cake.  Even if he doesn’t get to eat it.

All the more for me.