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The Bodybuilding Dietitians

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Jack Radford-Smith
June 1, 2026

The Bodybuilding Phases That Actually Determine Stage Outcomes

Jack Radford-Smith
June 1, 2026

The muscle that determines stage outcomes is built during improvement season, which requires 12 to 24 or more months to work effectively. A dietitian explains the multi-phasic structure of bodybuilding and why most competitors do not prioritise the phases that matter most.

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Jack Radford-Smith
May 29, 2026

How to Lose Fat While Keeping Muscle: A Four-Skill Framework

Jack Radford-Smith
May 29, 2026

How to lose fat while keeping muscle: a framework covering energy balance, protein intake, dietary adherence, and progress tracking, with practical targets for each skill.

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Jack Radford-Smith
May 27, 2026

How Accurate Is Macro Tracking? The Sources of Error You Should Know About

Jack Radford-Smith
May 27, 2026

Macro tracking is an approximation. Food labels can legally be up to 20 percent off, whole foods vary with ripeness and source, and cooking changes macronutrient concentration per gram. A dietitian explains how these errors stack up and how to calibrate tracking precision to the goal.

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Jack Radford-Smith
May 25, 2026

Why Progress Stalls: A Framework for Identifying Training and Nutrition Plateaus

Jack Radford-Smith
May 25, 2026

A stalled scale or a stuck lift is a symptom, not a diagnosis. This framework identifies nine plateau causes across four categories, with the signs for each and the appropriate response, so the intervention matches the actual mechanism driving the stall.

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Jack Radford-Smith
May 23, 2026

Contest Prep: Five Factors That Determine Peak Conditioning on Stage

Jack Radford-Smith
May 23, 2026

Most of what decides how a competitor looks on stage is determined before the deficit starts. Starting body composition, underlying muscle mass, rate of loss, timeline, and psychological readiness are the five variables that shape a bodybuilding prep from the inside out.

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Jack Radford-Smith
May 20, 2026

Nutrition Priorities: What to Focus On First for Body Composition and Performance

Jack Radford-Smith
May 20, 2026

Nutrition decisions are often approached in the wrong order. A dietitian maps six common pairings where effort is frequently directed at the lower-return variable before the higher-return one is consistently managed, and explains the right priority order for body composition and performance.

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Jack Radford-Smith
May 18, 2026

Which Foods Give You the Most Fibre and Volume Per Calorie?

Jack Radford-Smith
May 18, 2026

A scatterplot of over 50 foods mapping grams of food and grams of fibre per 100 calories, showing which options best support satiety and fibre targets simultaneously.

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Jack Radford-Smith
May 15, 2026

Why Every Popular Diet Works Through the Same Mechanism

Jack Radford-Smith
May 15, 2026

Every popular diet, from keto to intermittent fasting to paleo, produces weight loss through the same mechanism: a calorie deficit. A dietitian explains the common mechanism, why adherence determines outcomes more than diet type, and what this means for choosing a dietary approach.

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Jack Radford-Smith
May 13, 2026

Diet Fatigue: Why Dieting Gets Harder Over Time and How to Manage It

Jack Radford-Smith
May 13, 2026

Diet fatigue is a predictable physiological and psychological response to sustained energy restriction, not a sign of inadequate motivation. A dietitian explains the mechanisms behind it, how to recognise the signals that warrant action, and the strategies that help a fat loss phase keep progressing.

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Jack Radford-Smith
May 12, 2026

Food Volume vs Protein Per 100 Calories: Which Foods Do Both Best?

Jack Radford-Smith
May 12, 2026

A scatterplot of over 40 foods mapping grams of food and grams of protein per 100 calories, showing which options best support hunger management and protein targets simultaneously.

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The Pre-Prep Phase: How to Set Up a Successful Contest Prep

A pre-prep phase is the 4 to 12 week block that sets up a successful contest prep. Here is what the phase is, why skipping it costs you the early weeks of prep, how to run one across body composition, systems, mindset, and health, and the few variables that should be left to shift once prep actually begins.

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How to Sleep Better | The Nine Factors Most Worth Addressing

Most sleep problems come down to a few everyday inputs. Here are nine factors that influence how well you sleep, from caffeine timing and evening light to room temperature, alcohol, and the truth about melatonin, with the mechanism behind each and how to decide which to address first.

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5 Nutrition Facts Worth Knowing: Protein, Grains, Hydration and More

Some nutrition ideas are repeated so often they harden into rules, even when the science is more nuanced. Here are five worth understanding properly: protein absorption beyond the 25g myth, what the processed meat cancer classification really means, why grains contain similar calories, how dietary fat aids vitamin absorption, and where hydration actually comes from.

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The Best Food Groups for Protein and Fibre in a Calorie Budget

Protein and fibre per calorie is a different question to protein and fibre per 100 grams. Here is how major food groups compare once calorie budget is the actual constraint, why legumes earn a consistent place in a calorie-conscious diet, and how to build meals that cover both targets at once.

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What Makes Coaching Different From Just Following a Plan

Anyone can hand you a plan and tell you to follow it. Coaching is a different skill. Here is what separates being told what to do from being coached through the process, and why the distinction is worth understanding whether you are looking for a coach or evaluating the one you already have.

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Hunger vs Appetite: A Quick Test to Tell Them Apart

Hunger and appetite can feel identical in the moment. Here is the difference between them, a simple apple test you can run before you eat, and what to do with the answer, whether it points toward physical hunger or something else.

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Fish Oil vs Omega-3: How to Read a Label and Dose It Properly

Fish oil and omega-3 are not the same thing, which is where most of the confusion around supplements begins. Here is the difference between ALA, EPA, and DHA, how much omega-3 is worth aiming for, why the combined EPA + DHA figure on a label matters more than total fish oil, and what the cardiovascular and recovery evidence actually shows.

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Peak Week for Bodybuilders: The Errors That Cost Conditioning

Peak week is one of the least researched areas in physique sport, which is exactly why it is so easy to get wrong. Here are the physiological and psychological errors that most often undo a good prep in the final week, and the calm, tested approach that protects the conditioning you have already built.

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What Is a Mini-Cut? A Guide to Faster Fat Loss That Protects Muscle

A mini-cut is a short, more aggressive period of fat loss, usually two to eight weeks, whose main purpose is to extend a building phase rather than to get stage-lean. This guide covers what a mini-cut is, why the building-phase logic matters more than the fat-loss framing, how to set the deficit and protect training while you run it, and the practical considerations (calorie headroom, dieting experience, motivation, and a productive end point) that determine whether it is the right choice for you at all.

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The Most Nutrient-Dense Foods Per Calorie: A Ranking Reference

Some foods deliver substantially more nutrition per calorie than others. A composite ranking of common foods based on their combined delivery of iron, calcium, magnesium, potassium, zinc, B12, folate, vitamin E, and fibre per 100 calories, plotted alongside protein per 100 calories so both physique-relevant and general-health density can be compared at once. Includes the specific caveats about absorption, serving size, and the limited nutrient panel that shape how the ranking should be interpreted, plus practical guidance on comparing foods within categories and identifying specific gaps in a current food rotation.

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Why Am I Not Building Muscle? Five Common Profiles Behind a Plateau

Plateaus are rarely caused by one variable in isolation. A typology of the five most common lifter archetypes when physique progress stalls: the Under-Fueller (training and nutrition quality high but energy intake low), the Overtrainer (excessive volume compromising recovery), the Chronic Dieter (too long in a deficit), the Junk-Volume Lifter (adequate volume but low training quality), and the Burnout Risk (everything covered except sleep). Each archetype has a specific limiter and a corresponding fix, and identifying which pattern applies matters more than adding new variables to optimise.

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Eat the Rainbow: What Each Colour Group of Plants Actually Delivers

Different coloured plants deliver different phytonutrients, micronutrients, and fibre types. A guide to what green (vitamin K, folate, lutein, sulforaphane), red/blue/purple (anthocyanins, lycopene, resveratrol), yellow/orange (beta-carotene, vitamin A, bioflavonoids), and white (allicin, quercetin, allium compounds) plants actually contribute nutritionally, and why building variety across the spectrum matters as much as the total volume of vegetables and fruits consumed.

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Are You Actually Ready for Contest Prep? A Readiness Framework Before You Commit

Wanting to compete and being ready to compete are not always the same thing. A structured framework for assessing your readiness across five dimensions before committing to a contest prep: physical readiness (muscle base and time), behavioural readiness (established fundamentals in training, nutrition, and sleep), psychological readiness (personally meaningful reason for competing plus stable relationship with body and food), relational readiness (communication with partner and family), and practical readiness (realistic understanding of what prep actually looks like day-to-day).

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