The real reason bodybuilding is difficult

Not everyone knows this, but I've started moderately-serious bodybuilding. That is to say, compared to real bodybuilders, not serious at all; but compared to the average guy on the street, pretty serious.

Diet is the most important part of bodybuilding. Not many bodybuilders will argue that fact: you have to eat properly or your body just doesn't put on muscle. For me to have the maximum chance of building muscle without the calories turning into fat, I need to eat about 3000 calories per day.

That's HARD. I never expected it to be so difficult to eat a LOT. Of course, I could just eat greasy, crappy food and get the calories from saturated fat and everything else, but there's two reasons not to. The first is that I want to maintain overall health while building muscle.

The second reason is turning out to be a nightmare. In order to give my body the right fuel it needs to build muscle without putting on fat, I need to eat 175 grams of protein a day. If you've never done this before, you should look around at how much protein is in the various foods you eat. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Anyway, because the weather was so unseasonably nice today, I decided to take my bike out and ended up riding 17 miles. Lovely day for it.

Since I burned an addition 900 calories and it's a lifting night so that's on top of another workout I have coming up, I figured I'd treat myself for lunch. I went to Steak-n-Shake, because I really dig those jalapeno burgers they make. And I figured, it's a burger, it's got lots of protein ... right?

Bull. Check it out, a Steak-n-Shake burger has 25 grams of protein and 700 calories. Which means that if I eat nothing but them, I'll have to eat 7 a day to get my required protein, but will also be hitting almost 5000 calories. This is why you hear stories about bodybuilders eating nothing but boiled chicken all day long. It's not that they're avoiding fat or anything like that, it's just that it's really hard to get all the protein you need each day without making yourself sick. I mean, even ignoring the calorie surplus, who the hell can eat 7 burgers a day without being ill?

Working out is difficult. To build muscle effectively you basically have to repeat a specific exercise until your muscles can not do any more, then somehow force your muscles to do one or two more (this overload is what triggers the growth response).

But (for me at least) eating in a way that gives my body the correct materials so that it can actually build muscle once that growth response has been triggered has been way more difficult. When I started, I figured that eating 3000 calories a day would be fun ... hell, I'll be eating all the time! Fact is, I am ... eating almost constantly, and sick of it.

So, between trying to eat more than my stomach thinks is wise, and trying to get enough of that food to be protein to be effective ... well, let's just say I'm challenged.

The "misunderstanding" lie

There's an oddity that people are more likely to believe that "there was a misunderstanding" than to believe that one of the parties in a disagreement is lying.

I don't understand where this comes from. In my experience, liars are very common in the world, and misunderstandings generally sort themselves out pretty quickly.

"Misunderstanding" is a tactic used by practiced liars. They're going to tell you a lie that they know they can be caught in, but in the event that they are caught, they're going to claim "that's not what I said, he must have misunderstood me." It's a good tactic, especially when the conversation is verbal and the exact wording can't be proven.

It's also a good tactic when the third party in a disagreement wants to take a particular side, even though he knows that side is lying.

Take the following example: we have four parties, employees A and B, and a manager (X) who both of these employees report to. Y is another manager who is not directly involved with A or B, but has authority in such a way that B occasionally takes orders from him.

For both scenarios, let's assume that A is an honest, hard-working fellow; and B will lie whenever he thinks it's to his advantage to do so.

Let's assume that the manager has instructed B to assist A on a project and B doesn't want to help A for whatever reason. B tells A that he can't help because Y has him working on something important and he can't take time for anything else. This is a lie, Y doesn't have him working on anything at all.

This may seem foolish on B's part. The lie will be easy to uncover, right? Not really.

First off, B is assuming that A will just take his word for it and not talk to Y.  This is unusually common, as many employees are intimidated by the thought of talking to a random manager. Some corporate cultures actively discourage it.

But let's assume that A is a persistent type, or for some other reason isn't intimidated by Y. He contacts Y, who informs him that B isn't doing any work for him. B is caught, right? Wrong, B still has a number of outs.

The first one is that a percentage of people won't bother to pursue the issue further. B and Y aren't being helpful, so A might just buckle down and work extra hours to do all the work himself, allowing B to get away with the lie.

But, let's assume that A is still the persistent type. For whatever reason he goes to their mutual boss, X, and reports the deception. B is caught, right?

Probably not. The typical manager will try to resolve this in the way that managers are taught to. He'll most likely get A & B in the same room (or on the phone) and ask what the problem is. This is where B pulls the "misunderstanding" card. There are two approaches he has to do this.

1. He claims that A misunderstood him. He never claimed that he wasn't able to help, he only suggested that A would have to ensure that Y didn't have any more important work.
2. He claims that he misunderstood Y. And that he's sorry but he thought he was working on something for Y that he couldn't stop.

#1 is generally the go to excuse, because it makes A look bad for not paying closer attention, and it's nearly impossible to prove that the issue was actually a lie. But #2 works equally well, especially if B is concerned that A and X might have the kind of relationship that X would trust A's judgement.

Of course, you'll say that it would never work because Y could contest that there was no reason for any confusion, but you're missing the point that B is an experienced liar. He would never have chosen this tactic in the first place if he didn't know there was something he could hold up as a point of confusion: "What about project Z? I thought you said that was important?" Despite the fact that project Z was explicitly put on hold, it's extremely difficult to disprove B's claim that it was all a misunderstanding.

In the end, A's project is now behind schedule because he spent time pursuing this, manager X assumes the whole thing is just a misunderstanding (and possibly his opinion of A's communication skills has been lowered), and B is now smarter about A's behavior and knows to use a different tactic next time.

How could the problem be avoided?

• Don't communicate verbally with B. Insist that all communication go through email or some other traceable method, which avoids the "that's not what I said" argument.
• Manager X needs to keep track of these sorts of problems and look for patterns. If B is really a liar, the pattern will repeat.

Of course, one possibility is that B and X are on good terms and X is more likely to take B's side when the facts are difficult to prove. In such case, X can even be the one to initiate the claim of misunderstanding. If such is the case, A would be advised to seek a transfer; and if that's not possible, simply keep his head down to avoid raising X's ire against him.