“Stay the f*ck away from insulin!”

James Hollingshead Explains Why He’s Against It

Interview by Ron Harris

If you’re a bodybuilder using PEDs, chances are you have either used insulin along with AAS, or you’re thinking about trying it. After all, that’s how the guys today got so huge, right? To get some perspective on whether insulin is something most bodybuilders should or shouldn’t be using, I spoke with Redcon1 athlete James Hollingshead, winner of the 2020 IFBB Europa Pro and British Grand Prix, a rising star known for his dense, round musculature. Here’s what he had to say on the subject.

This all started with a video you put out on your own YouTube channel recently. What was the scenario?

I go to my doctor a couple of times a year to get my blood work done just to make sure everything is OK. We got into a discussion about my current protocols and what I was using, and he asked if I was using insulin. I told him no and expressed my opinion as to why. I’ve created this opinion after being a bodybuilder for over a dozen years. I strongly believe it’s overused, relied upon, and misused. It’s used by a lot of people who shouldn’t be using it. My doctor agreed and expressed his own strong opinions on the matter. We both agreed that few people should be using it. I personally use it far less now than before. My current coach, Patrick Tuor, believes there is a time and place for its use, but even then, it should be minimal.

When did you become aware of insulin use and decide you wanted to try it?

I started using it around 2015. I dabbled in it and it did nothing good for me because I didn’t know what I was doing. That was a time when my progress had stalled for a bit. I’ve used insulin on and off since then, more with certain coaches than others. But with my current coach and my two most recent contests, which were also my first two pro wins, I used it the least. That’s why I have the opinion now about it that I do. I feel it’s important to let bodybuilders know that it’s not necessarily needed.

Why do bodybuilders use insulin?

The meathead approach is, I want to eat shitloads of calories, the majority of them from carbs, and my body is going to have a hard time absorbing that unless I use insulin. I’ll use insulin along with my meals to improve the uptake of glucose and other nutrients, store more glycogen in my muscles, and get bigger and stronger. That’s the basic approach. People think insulin will help you go beyond the parameters of your natural ability to uptake carbs. When people are struggling to add another 10 pounds or whatever, that’s when they turn to insulin to allow them to eat more, absorb more, and get bigger.

Does it work that way for most people?

Insulin can work, but you need to be extremely on point. That’s why I don’t think it’s viable for the majority. I don’t think 99 percent of people can adhere to a plan that’s as strict as it should be. I think it’s too precise and too potentially dangerous if done wrong. It’s not necessarily needed for the results that can be achieved without it. In my opinion, maybe only the upper echelon of bodybuilders who are trying to eke out that extra 1 percent are the ones who should use it, but it should be done under the supervision of a medical professional or at least someone who understands the mechanisms. Too many people think they know all they need to know. They think that for every unit of insulin you use, you simply eat 10 grams of carbs and you’ll be fine. That’s so generic and easy to screw up. What if you get something wrong, like eat a carb that digests slower? Say it doesn’t digest in time, and you go into hypoglycemia? There are many things that can go wrong if you don’t understand the mechanics of both insulin and nutrition. It’s a territory most people shouldn’t be visiting. That’s how I feel as a guy who’s been a pro for four seasons now. I think I’ve been able to develop a level of understanding about it where I can comment about it. Some may disagree with me, but it’s served me well to be more reserved and aware.

I have a real problem with both insulin and diuretics. You could shoot a few full bottles of steroids today, and you won’t be dying any time soon as a result. But if you fuck up and take too much diuretics or insulin, you can die that very day, within minutes maybe. You talk about the need to be precise. Not everyone is intelligent enough to even do the type of calculations we’re talking about with iu’s of insulin, grams of carbs, and the right types of carbs. Yet proponents of insulin use like to reassure us by saying, as long as you know what you’re doing, you’ll be fine.

There’s a danger zone that’s relatively difficult to get into for most, unless they are mistaking cc’s for iu’s or something that bad. But you also have to think of the long-term effects of getting it slightly wrong, where you will possibly be storing a lot of fat. What would that do to you over years? Some people still eat shit food and take insulin, because they think, fuck it, this will make me grow. It’s a storage hormone, so it will cause you to store a lot of what you’re taking in. If there’s a lot of trans fats and other shit going in, which people like to eat in the off-season because they think that’s how you grow, you’ll uptake a lot of those bad nutrients. That’s one factor that bothers me.

The other factor is that danger zone. If you get your dose of insulin wrong and you don’t have the exact nutrients present to counter the effects, you could have a massive mishap. Let’s say you take your insulin after training and you go to have your carb drink. What if you forgot to pack your post-workout shake and there’s nothing else available? If you don’t have those carbs, you will go into hypoglycemia, and that can go very badly. You might fall asleep and never wake up. I just don’t think it’s worth the risk for the majority, unless you’re on that Olympia stage and there’s a chance to win $400,000. Even that’s not enough for me to say go ahead and do it, but no one else in the sport gets even close to that much. So consider what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

There are people using insulin who haven’t taken steroids yet, because of the promise of instant results. It’s a storage hormone, so you get nutrient uptake, cell volumization, and fullness. People see those things happen quickly, and they get convinced it’s new muscle gains. What you will notice with heavy insulin users is that when they stop taking it, their physique reverts back to its unsaturated look. I’m not going to deny that insulin can work, and I won’t deny it’s been part of my process. But there are numbers, there are amounts, there’s timing, guidance, and all those things matter. I’ve seen people pushing insulin to extreme numbers, like using up to 100 iu’s a day, which is insane. Then you can find a coach like mine, who even for a man my size, currently 286 pounds, who has me using something like 6 units. I’m not even saying 6 is something you should do; it isn’t. That’s for a top-tier Olympia-qualified bodybuilder trying to get their calories up and eke out that last 1 percent it takes to be top 10 in the world.

Going back to that hypoglycemic state, there have been a couple of pros in recent years who fell asleep driving home from the gym and crashed. One was terribly injured and lost nearly a year of training time, the other unfortunately died. Every bodybuilder out there was thinking, the guy probably didn’t have enough carbs for his post-workout insulin dose.

That’s what I mean when I say it’s not always about the direct effect insulin has on the body. The results of going hypo can be disastrous. If you lose consciousness behind the wheel, it’s game over. If you’re crossing the street and get confused and have blurred vision, you could walk right into an oncoming car. Obviously, things like strokes happen naturally, but why encourage something to happen if it doesn’t need to? You wouldn’t use a drug that had the risk of possibly giving you a stroke right away. You don’t need to use insulin. If your pancreas is working fine, don’t use it.

I don’t know much about insulin, but I do know there are short and long-acting versions. Most bodybuilders use the rapid one before training with some carbs, and then right after the workout with more carbs. Would a person be safer using the long-acting insulin to avoid that rapid spike?

Some do believe that. In my own experience, the long-acting insulin is harder to control because it’s in your body for such a long time. If you take the short-acting insulin, you know its window and you deal with it then and there. Once its effects have passed, they’ve passed. The problem is that it does hit hard. If you’re not prepared, that can be a problem. In either case, you should be using it under professional guidance or not at all.

Dave Palumbo made a response video to your video, maintaining that using exogenous insulin gives the pancreas a break. His point was that it allows you to eat and utilize all those carbs you normally wouldn’t be able to, without stressing the pancreas. Do you agree with that?

I think you have to ask, if someone is eating so many carbs that the pancreas can’t cope on its own, do they really need all those carbs or are they overeating? Eventually it will get to the point where they can’t eat because they’re backed up, or there will be a negative visual impact. The stomach will bloat, and the look they’re going to get is going to be quite center heavy, rather than a V-taper or X-frame. If you’re consuming so much food that it requires extra insulin, you’re probably eating too many carbs. I don’t think the vast majority of people need to eat 1,000 grams of carbs even in the off-season. Most people don’t need that much, or can hack it. You can up the other macronutrients to get the extra calories, especially healthy fats. It’s probably true that insulin can negate some of the stress on the pancreas. I was taught that by a previous coach and I do believe it. I also believe it should be used sparingly and for short periods of time. You shouldn’t use it all the time because you’re still going to be in that red zone. It’s like keeping your foot on the pedal and not worrying because it’s still in the redline. If you reach a peak in the off-season, you still have three to four weeks left, and your calories are so high that it requires a little insulin use, maybe then it’s OK to use it, because it’s only for that limited time. If it becomes something you use daily, every day for the rest of your bodybuilding career, then I think you’re bound to see some negative long-term effects. Any exogenous drug has side effects, and they usually increase with higher doses and being on them longer. That’s why I keep saying it should only be used sparingly and wisely.

I can’t speak with the level of medical knowledge Dave has, but I do know what my body’s done when I’ve used insulin for certain periods of time. Believe it or not, if you use insulin for too long, the same dose doesn’t do what it used to. It tends to lose its effects like other drugs, and over time you need to use more and more. You never want to be in a situation where you need to take higher doses of any drug to see the same effect. That’s a common issue with insulin. I find most people start on relatively low doses, and because they don’t take breaks or cycle it, they get to a point where the body is quite reliant on it. They’re pushing 50 or more units a day after a while. If they stopped that, number one, their body will have a hard time digesting their food, and number two, their physique will deflate like a balloon that’s lost half its air. That will affect you mentally of course. In that regard, insulin has both physical and psychological effects. So do anabolics, but it’s a more gradual process, whereas insulin is like a switch with that instant drop-off effect. You can come off your gear cycle and still have four to  five more good weeks of training until it clears your system. When you pull someone off insulin, they start shrinking within about three days.

As you said, most guys use insulin so they can eat more carbs, but how much does a bodybuilder really need? Did you experiment to find the threshold where anything past a certain amount wound up leading to body fat storage? Of can you just keep eating more and more carbohydrates and just get bigger and fuller forever?

I wish that were the case, because I would get up at night to eat more meals. Right after a contest, as long as my training was still intense and I kept doing cardio, I could get away with 800 grams a day and make lean gains. After a few weeks, I found I had to take that down to 600 or else I started gaining fat. Eventually that went all the way down to 400. You might have to intensify your training split so your body requires more carbs, at which point you can push the food and carbs up again. You have to cycle it. You can’t just eat all that food all the time. The sheer volume of it stresses the organs. If you stay with 800 grams of carbs year-round, you will be bloated all the time. What does that do to the aesthetics of your physique over time? I will say that the harder you train, the more carbs you will be able to tolerate. It should be obvious that your size matters. A 275-pound man is going to require and utilize more carbohydrates than a 150-pound guy. It’s all individual, but it’s safe to say that if you’re putting on fat, you are taking in more carbs than you truly need.

What about the types of carbs, do they matter?

Absolutely. If you eat more simple sugars versus complex carbs, your blood sugar will spike through the roof. Your body does different things with them. I laugh when people say that as long as your macros are the same, your results will be the same. It’s not true. Your body treats higher glycemic carbs differently than lower. The high-glycemic carbs cause your pancreas to pump out a lot of insulin quickly, and the likelihood of storing other nutrients is higher. I find when I eat a more sugary diet and there’s fat in my meals, I store more body fat than when I eat complex carbs and fats together. If I have white potato with chicken and olive oil, or a cup of table sugar with the same chicken and olive oil, I guarantee you the table sugar meal would be stored differently and my body fat would increase. I can’t tell you the scientific reason why. But there is a real difference in eating carbs that cause you to secrete insulin more slowly as opposed to rapidly. Your body does not treat 100 grams of white potato the same as it does 100 grams of Fruity Pebbles.

I have heard many times that insulin seems to be a better option for those who are naturally thin and lean and struggle to gain weight, whereas those who tend to naturally carry more body fat and gain fat easily seem to only get fatter when using it. True or false?

True, but not entirely for the reasons you stated. I wouldn’t encourage anyone carrying excess body fat to use insulin, because there’s a strong chance those people can’t or won’t eat clean and stick to mostly complex carbs. Otherwise, how did they get fat in the first place? Someone who does eat clean and has a fast metabolism would benefit more from insulin, generally speaking.

Time to put you on the spot, James. Do you believe if you had never touched insulin, you would still have just as much muscle mass as you do now?

I will be honest and say no, but the only reason I say that is because that’s the path I’ve taken, so I can’t comment otherwise. If I’d had a coach like Patrick earlier on who said I didn’t need to use it, I’m sure there would have been another way to get here. There were certainly off-seasons where I used it; it allowed me to consume larger amounts of food, and to put on weight where I needed it. But consider that my stage weight in 2020 when I won the Europa Pro and the British Grand Prix was my highest ever, and there was no insulin in my protocol. I had used it for previous shows.

People use insulin because the widespread belief is that you must. Steroids alone aren’t enough anymore, now you must also take GH and insulin or else you will never reach your full potential for mass. But I also talk to so many bodybuilders from the ‘90s who blame insulin for the loss of the dry, crisp detailed look. Even Dorian Yates said he felt his condition suffered the one time he used it for a Mr. Olympia.

I truly believe that when insulin is present in someone’s contest prep, it hurts detail. I would even say my own detail isn’t as good as it should be, due to my past insulin use. I used to have better separation in certain areas when I was smaller. I think you get a certain type of deeper fat storage that makes you look hazy, and that can hurt you on stage. I also think even if you’re only using low amounts of insulin for long periods of time, it prevents you from losing some of the body fat you are meant to lose. I suspect there is fat stored in the separation that’s the last to go, and insulin use will cause you to hold on to that fat. I would even bet that if you prepped identical twins, having one use insulin and not the other, the insulin user would be bigger and fuller, but the overall quality and detail would be superior in the non-user. I encourage guys to try a mock prep without any insulin just to see how they look. You might be surprised to see you look much better. I really don’t think insulin belongs in prep. I know Neil Hill doesn’t have his clients use it in prep, and you see how hard and dry athletes like Flex Lewis and Alex Cambronero get.

You also mentioned that your coach Patrick Tuor doesn’t like it for prep.

He knows it has to be used at times by the bigger guys because their calories are so high in the off-season, but if he can avoid it, he does. The minute prep starts, it’s gone. Even with me in the off-season, he doesn’t push it past 6 units a day. That’s pretty low, and we don’t add another 60 grams of carbs because of it. It’s more from the aspect of taking some of the stress off my body and allowing the nutrient uptake to happen a little faster in the post-workout period so I can move on to my next meal. Insulin does allow the nutrients you eat to be taken up faster so you can get to your meals with a bit less time between.

I promise you that some people think you’re a liar and that you take tons of insulin both in the off-season and in prep.

Yes, and I get it. My physique is dense and round. When you have that look and especially if you’re a Caucasian fella, people will assume it’s from insulin. It’s rare. Really the only guys I can think of in recent years with really round muscles are Phil Heath, Roelly Winklaar and Justin Compton. To assume it’s from insulin is silly. Millions of bodybuilders have used plenty of insulin, so why don’t they have that same look too? Muscle bellies are entirely genetic. If you have those round muscles, insulin will pump them up to make them even rounder. If you have square, blocky muscles, they will just be bigger versions of that.

This has been a great conversation, even if neither one of us are experts in the least.

I’m just a bodybuilder chasing a dream who is happy to share what I do because I feel privileged to be in the position I am. I’m honored that people even listen to what I say, and I would never say anything that would hurt anybody or be detrimental to their health.

Symptoms of Hypoglycemia

If blood sugar levels become too low, signs and symptoms can include:

• An irregular or fast heartbeat

• Fatigue

• Pale skin

• Shakiness

• Anxiety

• Sweating

• Hunger

• Irritability

• Tingling or numbness of the lips, tongue or cheek

As hypoglycemia worsens, signs and symptoms can include:

• Confusion, abnormal behavior or both, such as the inability to complete routine tasks

• Visual disturbances, such as blurred vision

• Seizures

• Loss of consciousness

James Hollingshead’sRedcon1 Pre-contest ‘Shed’ Stack

Upon Waking:

1 scoop Grunt

1 scoop BTS BCAA

1 serving BTS Glutamine

3 caps Double Tap

4 caps Yohimbine HCL

With Breakfast:

1 serving Med+Kit

1 serving Foxtrot

1 serving GI Juice

1 serving BTS Fish Oils

Pre-workout:

1 serving Total War

1 serving Big Noise

1 serving BTS Creatine Monohydrate

1 serving MOAB

Intra-workout:

2 servings Grunt

Post-workout:

1 serving Isotope

1 serving Cluster Bomb

1 serving MOAB

Last Meal of Day:

Includes 2 servings of Isotope

Pre-bed:

1 serving Med+Kit

1 serving Fade Out

1 serving BTS Glutamine

For more information, visit redcon1.com

Ron Harris got his start in the bodybuilding industry during the eight years he worked in Los Angeles as Associate Producer for ESPN’s “American Muscle Magazine” show in the 1990s. Since 1992 he has published nearly 5,000 articles in bodybuilding and fitness magazines, making him the most prolific bodybuilding writer ever. Ron has been training since the age of 14 and competing as a bodybuilder since 1989. He lives with his wife and two children in the Boston area. Facebook Instagram

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