Jay, what do you suggest for adding thickness to my physique? I've put on a little muscle, but being a beanpole before I got into working out, I lack that big-guy look you have.

I think it comes down to eating and/or not eating enough calories for your body.  I eat up to 10,000 calories spread out over ten meals in the off-season. I'm a high- volume trainer with moderate to heavy weights. I can't say this will work for everybody, but I've been going consistently at it. Obviously, I wasn't always thick like I am now.  Fortunately, I was able to maintain this kind of physique. It isn't from eating like a bird and training like a woman. You basically need to train hard, eat hard, sleep a lot and be focused. This is what I've been doing for 10 years. It took me a long time to build this kind of thickness. It didn't come overnight.  I started bodybuilding at 180 pounds and gained almost 100 pounds within three years. I honestly didn't feel the transformation as much as the gains were noticeable to my family and friends. I remember some days putting on five pounds. I just hit the gym and I hit the food and the physique bloomed while I was a young man.

Genetically, I'm blessed for size, but I had to work hard to bring that out of me. I think heavy free weights are the best way to train. I've always thought it was the heavy compound exercises- squats, bench presses, deadlifts, and that stuff to build thickness and size. I still incorporate all that in my training. This works, so stick with it.

I'm no master of low-calorie dieting. It's discouraging to find myself cheating late at night and being caught in this spiral of success and failure. Do you cheat, Jay, and if not, please outline what it is you do. I'm an avid supporter of yours and anxious to utilize any advice you can provide.

I've never cheated on my diet really. That's how I learned to get in shape. Of course, you are going to feel deprived. I starve throughout the night. Sometimes, I can barely sleep, but I just suffer through it. That's what I do. I'm a professional bodybuilder and this is my career. I take it seriously, and did even before I turned pro.  After doing this for 10 years, dieting is a little easier for me, but I've always got my eye on the prize. I try not to deviate from off-season to pre-contest, where I basically eat the same foods, but just in different ratios. That's my number one rule.  

I don't even know what some foods taste like- Kentucky Fried Chicken, for example- and I probably never will because I don't want to learn how it tastes.  Secondly, I don't keep any food in the house that would steer me from the diet, such as junk foods. My wife, Kerri, eats very healthy, so I'm also able to. When I do get a craving, I'll have a sugar-free Popsicle or Kerri will make a batch of sugar-free Jell-O or something like that. I tend to be a big drinker, up to three gallons of water a day, which keeps me pretty full. I'm also a big vegetable eater. I eat a lot of green vegetables, which don't have many calories, and it keeps my appetite under control.  

I use ISS Research's Lipovar 8, which actually has appetite suppressant properties in it, so when I do get cravings I might add some Lipovar 8 in my program.  But basically, it's all mental. It comes down to how committed you are and staying away from foods that are bad. I know a lot of guys will have one day a week to cheat, but I don't do that or choose to take in high fats in place of carbs. I do 16 weeks of hard-core dieting. I will myself to eat clean and healthy. A lot of guys go zero carbs to get in shape, but I eat anywhere from 300 to 700 grams per day. Remember, I weigh 270 pounds right now and need a little more calories than the norm because of my metabolism. The more lean body mass you carry, the faster and more efficient your metabolic rate will be. People are surprised and ask how I eat so many carbs. Well, I weigh 270 and I'm pretty damn lean. Honestly, I'm fairly lean year-round because my diet is strict even in the off-season, which is a rarity nowadays.  

I'm currently getting geared up for the spring shows, and will use my current diet as an example. Today, for breakfast, I had 15 egg whites and oatmeal. Then I worked out, came home from the gym and had a protein shake with more oatmeal, a banana, and a few rice cakes. Meals three and four were shrimp and rice with broccoli and asparagus. Meal five is in the late afternoon, and I'll have something like fish and green vegetables. The last meal of the day, meal six, will be my ProM3 powder.

As you may know, I will eat 10 meals a day in the off-season. When preparing for a show, I just try to even out the calories over six meals every two and a half hours.  That's six meals during the time I'm awake, because I do nap for 40 minutes after each workout (I train twice a day), and then I sleep at least 10 hours a night. I get the benefits of rest, recovery and recuperation from regular sleep. Staying lean all the time is the key to being able to get extremely lean and compete at a level above most of the guys out there. If I were in your shoes, I would bring more discipline and structure into your bodybuilding endeavors. Through time, you'll be able to do it. If you can believe it, you can achieve it.

     Four days a week, my uncle and I train in his garage gym. He has shown me a lot and I realize how much I love bodybuilding. But he's an old-school powerlifter. He's very big and strong, but eats around 10,000 calories a day to keep his lifts and weight up. Some of it is actually fat, but the "10k way," as he coins it, is his recommendation to me. I'm into bodybuilding more than strength. Is a 10,000- calorie diet useful in a sport of show like it is in a sport of strength?

Yes, I do, but 10,000 calories of McDonalds, pizza and ice cream isn't the same as 10,000 calories of a lot of lean steak, potatoes, rice and oatmeal. If you're eating a lot of carbs, you're going to have a high-calorie eating plan from carbs themselves. I eat over 1,000 grams of carbs a day in the off-season. That's 4,000 calories just in carbohydrates. Then there's a lot of red meat and chicken for protein that have calories from fats in there on top of those carbohydrates. If I eat at least 1,000 grams of carbs, then it's pretty simple to keep my caloric intake high. The off-season foods aren't as clean as the low-fat diet I'm on now. Ten daily meals is the average I eat, and I usually have two shakes through the night, at 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., in the off season.  I'm constantly hitting the food. Every hour I try to put something in my mouth.

I supplement my food with a weight gain powder from ISS. It's actually pretty low in sugar and it doesn't bloat your stomach, so I'm able to use that along with the ProM3 powder. I mix it so I'm able to get more calories that way. I eat oatmeal bars all the time. They are pretty simple to eat and I use those when I travel. I add raisins and fruits to my oatmeal, and put a tablespoon of honey on everything, which adds about 20 grams of carbs every meal. Bigger muscles increase appetite, so the process is both forced by design and natural. It's instinctive to feed your metabolism. My indulgent meals are sushi and frozen yogurt. That's it; no junk food. I detail my diet all the time so guys can understand it's not something that is exclusive to genetic freaks or top pros. I'm sure your uncle means well, and I like to hear about families being close and passing down traditional values. It's absolutely plausible to eat six-, eight- or even 10,000 calories a day from good food that builds muscle, not fat, and provides energy for heavy, hard training.  

What is your calf training like, Jay? Your calves have that beefy stingray shape to them that I would kill for. Please don't tell me it's all genetic because I'm losing hope!

I basically don't do much work for calves. I do one calf workout every five days with chest. Seated calf raises for four sets, and standing calf raises for four sets. The thing with calves is that when I began, I didn't have big calves like other pros who were born with great calves in their family. Genetically, some people just aren't gonna get big calves with low insertions. It's just a given. Building calves is also a timing thing. It took me some time. I didn't always have the biggest calves, but fortunately, now I do. When working calves, I use full contraction, and keep the rep range anywhere between 10 and 12. I treat calves like any other body part by training them once a week. Use moderate weights, full contractions, and stretch in between sets. I spend 15 minutes a day stretching out when I'm dieting. My wife stretches me after training. I do various stretches, and a lot of yoga stretching. One big thing is don't overtrain. You're on those suckers all day long. Overtraining calves is a common mistake people make. In the gym, I see guys hopping up and down, bouncing the weights, and just going too heavy when doing calves. If you're cheating throughout your calf workout, it's a given you're not going to build them to their genetic potential, whatever that may be.