Dedication to training without obsession
Dedication is the foundation of every competitor’s success — without it, you won’t get results. But when dedication becomes an obsession, your work, family life and the physique you bring to the stage all start to suffer. I’ve fallen into this trap repeatedly myself, so the following tips come from personal experience. They’re especially useful if you’re preparing to step on stage for the first time.
The competition season is already underway, and I should have written this article long ago. But better late than never — every year, you see the same signs that someone is slipping from dedication into obsession.
Dedication vs obsession — where’s the line?
The first test is simple: if your daily life starts revolving around just one thing, you’ve already crossed the line. Work, school and relationships suffer. Your friends don’t understand you, and you can’t understand why they don’t. In reality, they understand perfectly well — you’re the only one who doesn’t.
Dedication is a good thing. You need a routine; otherwise, you won’t get results. But balance is the key. If you’re sitting in a restaurant watching everyone else eat, still trying to smile as though everything is fine — then nothing is fine.
Food and weighing: dedication without obsession
The first classic trap: you think about food constantly. What should you eat? At what time? How should you spread your macros across the day — or, better yet, across the week? You weigh every last spinach leaf and cucumber slice. You avoid eating out because it means losing control.
The honest truth: nobody can calculate their daily energy expenditure with one hundred percent accuracy. Nor can they calculate their energy intake with one hundred percent accuracy. There’s no point weighing lettuce leaves when we’re very likely to be off by around 100–200 calories every day anyway.
How so? It’s simple. Work out how much sugar different apple varieties contain. Work out what percentage of an egg was yolk. You won’t, because you can’t determine those things precisely. What matters is having a broad idea of your energy intake — the mirror and the scale will guide the remaining adjustments anyway.
One example. During contest prep, my wife has sometimes secretly fed me extra carbohydrates, or I’ve made a huge miscalculation myself. And wouldn’t you know it — my weight has actually dropped the next day. Your body doesn’t read Excel.
As for eating out, you can always talk to your server. You have every right to ask for your food without sauce. It’s perfectly reasonable to ask whether the roast potatoes have been deep-fried. If you weigh your food every day, you’re also capable of making an objective estimate by eye. Just choose foods that are easy to estimate. Eating out with loved ones or friends two Sundays a month won’t harm your physique. In the long run, it may even help.
Excessive control over every mouthful causes stress, and stress is the last thing we need when we’re in an energy deficit. Cortisol has a very powerful effect on fat burning. That’s worth thinking about before you start weighing your next pea.
Dedication to training: listen to your body
The second classic trap: you go full throttle from the first week. You immediately cut calories by 1000 and do cardio every day. A week goes by, then two — and you hit a wall. Where do you go from there? Your only option is to add even more cardio and cut your food intake further.
Do the opposite. The higher your starting calorie intake and the less cardio you can start with, the more room you have to make adjustments later. You don’t want to force a body exhausted by several months in an energy deficit through five strength workouts a week and ten hours of cardio, all while restricting food. Trust me.
Cut calories as little as possible and see how your body responds. Increase cardio as little as possible — even raising the treadmill incline by a few degrees can be enough. You need to leave room for further adjustments. NB! The best solution, of course, is to avoid eating like a pig in the off-season. Easier said than done, but worth a try.
Keep your training weights as heavy as possible for as long as you can. Those weights are what built your muscle. There’s no need to train to failure in the 1–5 rep range and tear something. But there’s little point in doing more than fifteen reps either. Losing strength during contest prep is inevitable, but extremely long sets only speed that up. Include lighter workouts from time to time — your body will thank you in your next workout.
One coach, not a hundred advisers
The third trap is overthinking. An endless stream of questions comes up, each seemingly with hundreds of answers. What should you eat on competition day? What should your macros be in the final week? One person says you need to carb-load. Another says you need to eat zephyr sweets. A third says something else.
The honest answer: these questions really do have 100 different answers if you ask 100 different people. Forget all that. If you have one coach, stick with that one coach. Talk to them about your concerns. Trust them and don’t second-guess them. Often, it’s easier to let your coach call the shots without having to think it all through yourself — especially when you’ve already started losing your mind.
That doesn’t mean you can’t ask anyone else for advice. But once you’ve chosen a coach, they have the final say. Picking up bits of advice from one person after another only adds to the confusion and makes your life harder.
The final week: calm down
The final week is when the real world championships in overthinking begin. What should you eat on the day? When should you schedule your workouts? Should you carb-load? Igor from Jõhvi said you now need to eat 800 grams of carbohydrates. Some people pump up to the point of injury; others don’t pump up at all. One person takes a hot bath in the morning to sweat. Another hasn’t drunk water or eaten salt for 3 days.
You know what? Calm down. Eat the way you’ve been eating all along. It’s sheer stupidity to start playing around with your diet or training in the final week. If you’ve put in the work, there’s nothing to worry about. Stick to your usual, familiar food. The main thing is to avoid a bloated stomach on stage.
One more thing about the number on the scale: don’t let it fool you. Your weight keeps dropping, and everything seems to be going well. But you often can’t judge your own physique objectively. Competition day arrives, and it turns out you’ve lost a lot of muscle while the unwanted fat is still there. This is where an objective coach comes in: someone who gives praise when it’s deserved and tells you honestly when things aren’t looking good.
Dedication and relationships
To finish, let me return to where I started. Don’t withdraw from social life. Don’t forget your friends and acquaintances. You need support and understanding from those close to you. If you’ve done everything you can to push those people away, you have no reason whatsoever to expect their support later.
I achieved my best condition when I was fully committed 95% of the time. I weighed my food, but I didn’t take it to extremes. On some days, I let myself have 1 beer with friends — but only one. When I went to a friend’s birthday party, I didn’t bring my own food in a container. I ate what was on the table, but I was sensible about it. Besides, it’s pretty great when your slightly tipsy friend offers to boil you some eggs at their own birthday party.
Your life doesn’t depend on this, and stress is often what determines your final condition. If you live in your own cocoon, that way of life will eventually wear you down, and your body will refuse to let go of fat. If you start crying because you left your training shoes behind, or accidentally put vanilla sugar on your potatoes instead of salt — you’re very likely burned out or heading that way. Cortisol kills your ability to burn fat, and you can only dream of being in great shape.
Dedication FAQ
How can you tell when dedication is becoming an obsession?
If you start avoiding social situations, getting irritated by little things or feeling unable to think about anything other than food and training — that’s a warning sign. A balanced approach to dedication leaves room for everyday life too.
Do you have to weigh all your food to the nearest gram?
No. The overall picture is what counts. One hundred percent accuracy is impossible, and trying to achieve it only creates stress — which is bad for fat burning.
Should you change your diet in the final week?
Generally, no. Keep eating the way you have been. The main work is done by that point. Playing around and experimenting in the final week usually does more harm than good.
To wrap up, everything I’ve described above is human. I haven’t made any of it up — I’ve been through it all myself, and these problems are actually very common around the world. Just a few things to think about. Don’t push your loved ones away, spend time with people, treat yourself to something nice, don’t overthink things, train sensibly — and everything will be fine. Don’t stress.
Wishing everyone a great contest prep and plenty of water under the skin.
Author: Peep Reinart
Come work out! ArtGym
