The Performance Edge

Build a body that performs as well as you do.

Why Bodybuilders Eat Boring Food to Get Shredded

September 30, 2026•10 min read

THE PERFORMANCE EDGE | ISSUE 002

In this issue: If “clean eating” isn’t required for fat loss, why do bodybuilders rely on it when getting brutally lean—and what should you steal from them?

Do You Need to Eat Clean to Get Lean?

Bodybuilders do something that sounds irrational if you’ve spent any time in modern nutrition circles.

When it’s time to get truly lean, most of them make their diets more boring—not more flexible.

Chicken. Rice. Potatoes. Lean beef. Fruit. Vegetables. Repeat.

Yet we also know you can lose body fat while eating doughnuts, burgers, or practically any other food, as long as your overall diet keeps you in an energy deficit.

So if “clean eating” isn’t required for fat loss, why do the people whose sport depends on getting brutally lean keep doing it?

That question came back to me while watching some of the Olympia coverage this past weekend.

Over the years, I’ve become less interested in modern bodybuilding as a sport.

Part of it is aesthetic. The extreme look that wins at the highest level is so far removed from what almost any normal person actually wants that it has become its own thing. In almost 30 years in this business, I’ve never had a client come to me and say, “I want to look like Mr. Olympia.”

Bodybuilding has also moved a long way from the classic aesthetic physiques most people associate with guys like Frank Zane or early Arnold. Today, the goal is extreme muscularity—muscle stacked on muscle—and that comes with tradeoffs most people would never choose.

Then there’s the lifestyle. For a lot of competitive bodybuilders, food and training become almost religious. Everything revolves around the next meal, the next workout, the next prep.

That’s the opposite of what I teach.

Your fitness should improve your life. Your life should not have to revolve around your fitness.

But bodybuilders are very good at one specific thing:

Getting extremely lean while trying to hold onto as much muscle as possible.

And there are lessons worth stealing from that process.

What Does “Eating Clean” Actually Mean?

First, let’s define the term.

Clean eating has nothing to do with washing your food—which is, incidentally, the dad joke I’ve used with clients for years.

“Yes, I eat clean. I generally don’t like dirt on my food.”

In bodybuilding circles, “clean eating” usually means a diet built around lean proteins, relatively simple carbohydrate sources like rice and potatoes, fruits and vegetables, and fairly controlled amounts of dietary fat.

Think chicken breast, lean beef, fish, rice, potatoes, oats, fruit and vegetables.

So there are really two questions:

Do you need to eat this way to lose body fat?
And if you don’t, why do bodybuilders rely on it so heavily when they are trying to get extremely lean?

Do You Need to Eat Clean to Get Lean?

From a pure fat-loss standpoint, no.

You do not need to eat “clean” foods to lose body fat.

A wide range of dietary approaches can reduce body fat. The main requirement is that the diet produces an energy deficit and can be adhered to long enough to work. [1]

If preserving muscle is also a priority—and it should be—adequate protein intake and resistance training become especially important during that deficit. [2][3]

That’s the foundation.

Technically, you could eat enough protein, stay within your calorie target, fill the rest of your diet with doughnuts and still lose body fat.

You could eat a Big Mac and fries regularly and lose weight if your total calorie intake stayed below your energy expenditure.

I’ve done my own version of this experiment. A few years ago I went from roughly 8% body fat to around 6% while eating a doughnut every day.

The point wasn’t that doughnuts are a great dieting food.

The point was to prove that “clean” and “fat loss” are not the same thing.

Calories and macros still matter even when the food choices aren’t what most people would call clean.

So yes, you can get lean without eating clean.

Why Bodybuilders Eat “Clean”

The leaner you try to get, the less margin for error you have.

Contest-prep literature consistently emphasizes controlling the rate of weight loss, keeping protein high, and maintaining resistance training to maximize lean-mass retention as body fat comes down. [2]

That is where the boring bodybuilding diet starts to make a lot of sense.

1. It makes hunger easier to manage.

When calories come down, hunger becomes one of the biggest problems you have to solve.

Lean proteins, potatoes, fruit and vegetables allow you to eat a relatively large amount of food while keeping calories controlled.

Lower-energy-density foods can increase food volume and improve satiety while reducing total calorie intake. [4]

A plate of lean protein, potatoes and vegetables simply gives you more food for the calories than a small portion of calorie-dense restaurant food.

That matters when you’re hungry.

2. It makes calories easier to control.

Simple foods are easy to weigh, measure and repeat.

Six ounces of chicken is six ounces of chicken.
Two hundred grams of cooked rice is easy to track.
A tablespoon of olive oil can be measured.

Compare that with restaurant food, casseroles, mixed dishes or meals where you have no idea how much butter, oil, sauce or sugar went into the recipe.

The closer you get to the limits of your calorie budget, the more useful that predictability becomes.

Bodybuilders reduce variables because reducing variables makes the diet easier to control.

3. It lets you use carbohydrates strategically.

Resistance training uses muscle glycogen, and carbohydrate intake is one tool for replenishing it. [5]

But this is where the details matter.

Carbohydrates around training are not magic, and the research does not show that more carbohydrate automatically improves every lifting session. In fed lifters doing moderate training volumes, the effect is often small or nonexistent. The benefit becomes more relevant with longer sessions, higher training volumes, multiple sessions in a day, fasting, or depleted glycogen. [5][6]

So when calories and carbohydrates are limited, it can make sense to place a useful portion of them around the hardest training.

Not because it “burns more fat.”

Because the goal during a diet is not merely to weigh less.

The goal is to lose fat while preserving as much muscle and training performance as possible.

4. It keeps digestion predictable.

Contest prep is already uncomfortable enough.

The last thing someone wants is bloating, digestive distress or unpredictable bathroom trips on top of hunger and fatigue.

Repeating meals that you know digest well removes another variable.

Fiber-rich whole foods also support bowel function and overall diet quality, but this is another place where “more” is not always better. The right amount is the amount you tolerate well while still meeting your nutrition targets.

The goal isn’t to make the diet sterile.

It’s to make it predictable.

5. It removes decision fatigue.

This may be the most underrated benefit.

Every client I’ve worked with who has achieved exceptional results eventually developed some version of the same system:

Their nutrition became simple and repeatable.

They didn’t wake up every morning and ask, “What should I eat today?”

They already knew.

The boring plan is often the plan that gets the best results because it reduces the number of decisions you have to make and makes adherence easier.

And adherence is ultimately what separates a diet that works on paper from a diet that works in real life. [1]

What You Should Steal From Bodybuilders

You probably do not need to eat like a competitive bodybuilder.

But there are several things worth stealing from them.

First: make your eating repeatable.

Pick a handful of meals you genuinely enjoy and can eat over and over again.

For quite a while, one of my go-to meals has been a simple turkey-and-rice bowl. We cook jasmine rice, very lean ground turkey and a pile of vegetables.

It’s easy, tastes good, and I know almost exactly what I’m getting every time I eat it.

My breakfasts are usually similar from day to day.

Same with my protein shakes. I may rotate the fruit, but the basic structure stays the same.

That consistency makes the rest of the diet easier.

Second: make leaner swaps when fat loss is the goal.

We eat smash burgers at least once a week. I’m obsessed with cooking them outside on the Blackstone.

I choose 93/7 beef because it keeps the protein-to-calorie ratio high. That gives me room to add cheese and other toppings while still controlling total calories.

The same idea works everywhere:

Chicken breast instead of thighs.
Lean ground beef instead of higher-fat beef.
White fish instead of a higher-fat fish when calories are tight.

You don’t need to eliminate dietary fat.

Fat is essential.

You simply need to understand that fat contains more than twice as many calories per gram as protein or carbohydrate, so choosing leaner protein sources can create a meaningful calorie reduction without making your meals much smaller.

Third: build meals around protein and fiber.

Higher protein intake during weight loss can help preserve lean mass, especially when combined with resistance exercise. [2][3]

Fiber-rich foods—fruit, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, nuts and seeds—are consistently associated with better long-term health outcomes, including lower cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and all-cause mortality risk. [7]

A simple rule is to build the meal around the protein source first, then make sure there is a meaningful source of fiber on the plate.

The Bottom Line

You do not need to eat “clean” to get lean.

Calories still matter.

Protein still matters.

Training still matters.

But when the goal becomes getting very lean—and doing it without feeling completely miserable—the habits bodybuilders use start making a lot more sense.

Simple foods.

Repeatable meals.

Lean protein.

Plenty of produce and fiber.

Carbohydrates used where they are most useful.

Less guesswork.

Less decision fatigue.

You don’t need the posing trunks or the baby oil.

But the boring food strategy?

That part is worth stealing.

Cracking Your Code - What to Do This Week

Pick three repeatable meals. Choose three meals you genuinely enjoy, can prepare easily, and can eat several times this week without thinking about it.
Make one leaner protein swap. Use a leaner version of a food you already eat—93/7 beef, chicken breast, turkey, or white fish—to lower calories without shrinking the meal.
Build every main meal around protein and fiber. Choose the protein source first, then add fruit, vegetables, legumes, or another fiber-rich food.
Put carbohydrates where they are useful. If calories are tight, place more of your carbohydrate intake around your hardest training instead of spreading it randomly across the day.
Track what actually matters for seven days. Pay attention to hunger, training performance, digestion, and how easy the plan is to follow. Keep what works. Change what doesn’t.

You do not need a bodybuilder’s lifestyle.

You need the parts of the system that make your own nutrition easier to execute.

The Performance Edge is my weekly look at the training, nutrition, recovery, and decisions that help build a better-performing body.

Know someone who is trying to get lean but thinks they have to eat perfectly to do it? Send them this issue. For a new issue every Wednesday, subscribe at crestmont.fitness/blog.

Steve Cutler

Founder, Crestmont