A TOONAGH man spent five months weighing every item of food that passed his lips in a regime so strict, he said it tested his physical and mental ability. The gruelling, and lengthy, process was to prepare him to stand in front of an audience, wearing little more than fake tan and a smile, with every muscle in his body aching.
“It is not for everyone,” Jason Morris told The Clare Champion, after coming second in his class at the Natural Bodybuilding Federation of Ireland competition held in Cork recently.
The 31-year-old is understating matters. “I had to diet for 20 weeks to get my body in the shape that I was in on the day of the competition. This involved weight training, cardio, weighting out and keeping records of every piece of food that I put in my body, right down to a single salad leaf. The last six to eight weeks of the prep tested me, mentally and physically, in a way I never thought possible but to hear my name called out in second place on the day made every bead of sweat shed worth it,” he said.
“Physically and mentally, I can’t stress enough what I went through – I can’t describe it. The respect I have gained for my mind and body to be able to get up and train and do that when I did on such low food. You are only giving yourself enough nutrients to maintain muscle and to give you the energy to train, with the intensity to maintain that muscle mass but there has to be a deficit of calories to bring down the body fat and to get the condition,” he explained.
“Every day has to be planned out with surgical precision. Every day I have macro nutrients, protein, fat and carbohydrates that I have to hit. It is a matter of weighing out all your different foods to make sure you are hitting the numbers, so your body is getting enough of what you need in each category. If you know you will be going somewhere the next day, you could be up for hours the night before, weighing rice, weighing pasta, weighing salad leaves and calculating it all out on the computer. Everything, down to putting a squirt of ketchup on your food, has to be accounted for. It is not for the faint hearted. I love it though, I don’t’ know what it is about it. I have kind of an addictive personality around this sort of thing but I love it. I must love the misery,” he laughed.
Jason doesn’t take himself too seriously, something that is vital for some of the elements of his chosen sport.
“I am quite light-hearted so I got a laugh out of the tan and oil and that. A friend of mine did a full body wax on me before the competition last year but I shaved this year because I couldn’t do it again. I was so dark last year and I have a red beard and red hair. The competition was on in Cork and I went down to get some food and I think I stopped everyone in their tracks. They were all looking at this guy with his bronze face and red beard. It doesn’t bother me. I don’t really care. If you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at,” he said.
That said, he takes bodybuilding very seriously indeed. “There were some days when you would question is it actually worth it, because there is no prize-money in this, it is just about a love of the sport. It affects everything, like your sleep, your mood – ask my family or friends, I was a pain in the behind some of the time. The competition preparation really pushes you at certain stages. You have to take a step back and ask ‘how badly do you want this’?
“If anything came up, like a wedding, you couldn’t eat the dinner. The thing about the preparation is if you can’t weight it, you can’t eat it. It gets to the stage that if you walk past the chipper and smelled the chips or tasted it on your lips, you would have to account for it. There are times I would arrive at friend’s house and they would be laughing at me because I’d land in with a bag of food and a weighing scales,” he outlined.
Jason took up bodybuilding about four years ago.
“I was always quite thin. It is not that it bothered me or affected me but I decided that I would go on a holiday with friends and one of my mates was in to going to the gym, so I just got onto him and went along and was bitten by the bug,” he recalled.
“When I took it up I just loved it from the start. I loved pushing myself and seeing little changes in the mirror every couple of weeks and learning new things about bodybuilding, like new training methods. As time went by then I started to grasp the nutritional side of it and how important that side of it is. I just became rooted in it. It became a lifestyle. It is a way of living, not just a matter of going to the gym for an hour a day. It consumed my life, I loved it so much,” he added.
Last year, he entered his first competition but realised quickly that he was utterly unprepared.
“I competed in the same competition last year but, as it was my first time, I made many mistakes and didn’t get anywhere near the condition I had hoped. But that experience drove me on to train even harder for this year,” he said.
Surely this year, Jason’s approach to the competition was easier because he had done it before and knew what was required?
“It was not! It was way harder this time. Last year I didn’t get near the condition I needed. Last year was hard but it was hard because it was so unknown to me. I didn’t have anything to gauge it against. I thought I was pushing myself last year but, this year, it was just a different league. It was like from amateur to pro,” he outlined.
“The posing element of body building is massive. You can put in all the effort in the gym but if you can’t portray yourself properly, then what is the point? The difference between bodybuilding and other sports is that all the work is done before the event. It is not like scoring a last minute goal in a game of football – it is done in the weeks and years of training before that. On stage, you are trying to show yourself off and show what you were working so hard for all those weeks and if you can’t pose and present yourself, it is like painting a masterpiece and not having a gallery to present it in, with proper lighting and displaying it off professionally. You have to stand on stage and squeeze every muscle on show and do that with a smile on your face. Your body is aching, your muscles are cramping; there is no mirror there to reflect what you are presenting to the judges,” he explained.
The competition is run by the Natural Bodybuilding Federation of Ireland and Jason claims the natural element is very important to him.
“The thing about natural is that it is a drug-tested competition because, obviously, in bodybuilding there is a steroid link, which I have nothing against because, drugs or no drugs, you still have to put in the work. This just levels the playing field for us guys who want to do it naturally and gives us the platform to present our physiques on,” he said.
According to Jason, the change in his physique was steady but for those who haven’t seen him in a while, it is still dramatic, especially ahead of competition.
“My family never really looked at it as anything different. They thought I just ate quite healthy. It was more noticeable this time around because there was such a dramatic change, in my face especially – I was losing so much body fat that my mother was saying to me I look so ‘gaunt’ and asking was I okay because I was losing so much weight. To be honest, she was saying it more about me than to me,” he laughed.
“At the start she would have seen me and I would have been quite healthy looking but, when you start to get rid of all the body fat, it is different. You have to do that coming up to competitions to bring out the muscle. This time, I started my preparation five months before the competition. Over that time, you increase cardio and decrease your calories so you slowly strip the fat away, so you are not crash-dieting,” he added.
“When I put the pictures up on Facebook a lot of people were taken aback that I was even doing this thing but the response I have had…I have never been so humbled because of the comments and the interest I have got and the feedback,” he continued.
Jason’s love of the sport is as evident in the way he speaks about it, as in the sacrifices he makes to improve at it. It is something he wants to see grow in Clare and across the country.
“Bodybuilding is a rapidly growing sport in Ireland and the dedication and commitment it takes is huge. It is a full-time lifestyle commitment. I hope to get my own personal training company up and running soon and anyone that has any questions for me can contact me on Facebook anytime, or simply just approach me – not while I’m training though,” he joked.
“I’ll be more than happy to try and help anyone that is interested in just making some healthy changes to their life or advice on training. The great thing about bodybuilding is you are always learning. It never stops. You are always learning more about your body and the food and the training that works best for it. It is that kind of sport. If I can help people in any way, I’d love to,” he continued.
“You need to enjoy life and not just go around eating salad leaves for the rest of your days. That is the big thing for me. I know it sounds like a lot but you don’t want bodybuilding to consume your life, you just have to make it part of your life. I wouldn’t be in the gym six hours a day and the rest of time cooking – I do have a life outside of that,” he concluded.
Nicola Corless
A native of Ennis, Colin McGann has been editor of The Clare Champion since August 2020. Former editor of The Clare People, he is a journalism and communications graduate of Dublin Institute of Technology.