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Comment by leshow | Hacker News Reader

> What was left was mostly tilapia and cod, kale, low-sodium broth, and colorless, calorie-free shirataki noodles. Sasha’s rules around food and training, handed down to him from other coaches as bodybuilding doctrine, were inscrutable to me. I found myself living in a world where green bell peppers were OK and red peppers were not

I just want to say that while this is representative of what some bodybuilders do. It's also completely wrong and not representative of how you can diet for a competition.

Modern bodybuilding is not "witch" magic. You count calories, macros, and your exercise output and manipulate those to lose weight. Anyone who is saying one bell pepper type is okay but another isn't doesn't know what they are doing, and it's not fair to judge bodybuilding based on that.

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Yes, the article mentions that later, and she switches to a more sensible regimen:

> My own research had proved that many of his ideas, though common in bodybuilding, were scientifically baseless. ... your daily intake of macronutrients—protein, fat, and carbohydrates—falls within the prescribed ranges, you can eat whatever you want.

> it's not fair to judge bodybuilding based on that

It's bunk, but if it represents a large portion of the population then I'd say it is fair to judge bodybuilding based on that; community and culture are part of the sport.

(I don't know any bodybuilders even from my gym rat days so I don't make any claims as to what the common dieting methods actually are; the ones I knew that did strength sports were pretty much focused on calories and protein and let the rest fall where it may)

> It's bunk, but if it represents a large portion of the population then I'd say it is fair to judge bodybuilding based on that;

Do you usually judge groups based on the worst actors in them?

Part of the problem is that at the high levels of bodybuilding everyone is on steroids and other drugs, thyroid, clenbuterol, diuretics, etc and there aren't any studies to tell people how those should be taken in order to make yourself really lean-- those are the spaces that pseudoscience jumps into the most.

Not the worst actors, but I'd say typical is fair game. And there's a whole lot of nuance there of course, both in terms of what's the scope of "typical" and what you do with that info.

As I said I don't have much exposure to high-level bodybuilders so I can't speak to that specifically. But if you take a look at fittit there's a *lot* of broscience repeated by the majority of posters, and to the extent that the bullshit increases the friction that beginners experience and provide little to no benefit (either in relation to the effort expended, or worse yet in absolute terms), it is detrimental to the casual majority.

I realize we may be talking at cross purposes since I can't speak to personal experience with bodybuilders, just the popular perceptions of their habits.

> Anyone who is saying one bell pepper type is okay...

This assumes that Sasha's only concern with food consumption is nutrition alone, where other aspects of discipline and adherence are likely to also be important.

Asking for red, green and blue but specifically no brown M&Ms doesn't mean that you think brown M&Ms are fundamentally different in any way: there was another reason why Van Halen did that.

It was Van Halen’s unit test for the gig. If there were brown M&Ms he knew not to climb on the equipment as obviously the venue didn’t read his instructions

I don’t think this was one of those cases. The Italians I know have firmly held beliefs about what foods should be eaten when and why that don’t seem at all grounded in science. If the bodybuilding subculture has developed beliefs about food, they’re likely just as firmly held.

The bell peppers in particular sound like believable pseudoscience. nightshades are poisonous and if one is looking to avoid bloating, perhaps it’s a legit concern.

For sure, I have experienced the same thing - and yet, the Italian diet is revered globally and considered to contribute to longevity.

Something about their approach appears to be working.

It strikes me that creating pseudo-science rules might remind you and help you to also follow the really useful rules, through dedicated practice and having multiple fall-backs.

For example, the rule "Eat green bell peppers not red bell peppers" reminds you to always be consciously aware that bell peppers and then vegetables in general are an extremely important part of your nutrition. If you don't have superstitions about bell peppers, maybe you just aren't thinking about them often enough.

That's not why it's done though. It will often be accompanied by pseudoscience justification that doesn't hold up to rationality or accepted science.

Even if that wasn't the case though, what do you expect to be gained by enforcing that discipline?

You have a finite amount of variables you can control, and wasting time thinking about details that don't matter is a massive drain. When training for a show, you should be focussing your effort on the things that make the biggest difference: overall food intake, macros, exercise, resistance training, meal timing, micros, etc.

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