Rob Hope - 3x World Champion, 2x Mr. Universe - Reveals His Ideal Diet Plan
Rob Hope's Universe & World Championship Nutritional Approach
Rob Hope Reveals His World Championship Strategy For Tracking Macros
KR: When you were competing what was your ideal protein target and did you track your macros all year long?
RH: I've always tracked macros, even in the off season, so back when I was competing for the Worlds, I was very dependent on carbohydrates and my protein would sit around 220 grams up to 260 grams, and when I was on my pre contest diet I would cycle my carbohydrates. When it was my low carbohydrate day I would be up to about 260 grams of protein, and in the off season, when my carbs are up I would drop my protein by around 20% and it would stay the same until my carbs got quite low. I think when I started off in my early days I was probably a bit scared of carbs because of all the misinformation that was circulating about carbs, but obviously as I learned more about it, my carbs were probably between 400 and 650 per day.
KR: How about now?
RH: So now I'm on around 220 grams protein and 550 grams carbs per day and I've been on that for the last couple of months, and I got to a weight where I wanted to be and I've just levelled it off, so I don't want to gain any more weight at the moment. I'm just sitting at about 13 and a half stone. I don't track my fats because they just come naturally from from the foods I eat, and my foods are pretty clean for the most part.
KR: Do you have any cheat meals?
RH: I eat two or three cheat meals per week. I don't sweat it.
Rob Hope Shares His Greatest ‘Nutritional Inspirations’
KR: Were you inspired by anyone specifically on the nutrition front?
RH: I pretty much did everything on my own, I would try different things and from quite a young age I was into learning about nutrition. I've got these books from school, and this was way before I was even into bodybuilding, but I have these nutrient databases where I track my food, so I guess I was kind of into it without realizing it, later on when I got into the competition stuff, and as I got to the pro level one of the guys in the BNBF (British Natural Bodybuilding Federation) helped me out a little bit and we would bounce ideas off each other with pre contest, not the diet per say but the prep week and how we would approach that, and we worked together for a bit, but other than that I'd say I read a lot of Chris Aceto’s work, I'm quite into his approach and just the way he does things.
I think Chris used to have some articles in Flex Magazine or Muscular Development, one of the two I can't remember which, and they were always quite useful, obviously he deals with IFBB competitors, I think he deals with some natural guys potentially, but I just found that the stuff he would write and the way he approached things is quite common sense, and not extreme, and you can take things away from that and try them out, he’s got a couple of books that I used to use and I would just try different things out from there. I think coming to the conclusion that obviously you have to have a good consistent diet, but it's also important to have quite a varied diet at the same time because if you just eat the same stuff all the time it probably could put a lot of people off this whole bodybuilding thing If you just gave someone chicken and rice, but that's not all I eat, I eat a variety of different carbs and proteins and they would rotate all the time because if you just eat the same thing you get bored of it, and also it’s probably not great in terms of micronutrients. If you get a broad spread of decent proteins, decent carbs and decent fats, you're getting different elements from different foods and you probably avoid not “pigeon-holing” yourself into a single source of protein, carbs or fats.
Rob Hope Discusses The Importance Of Varying Your Food Sources
I think Lee Williams touched on this, and the importance of just having variety in your diet, It's quite interesting the podcast you did with him because some of the things he mentioned about diet and nutrition really resonate with me, because his approach sounds similar to what I do in terms of - you don't have to be quite restricted to one source of protein or carbs, you can make things taste nice and you can have variety - but still achieve what you want to achieve.
KR: Absolutely, we dedicated almost a whole episode to that, because people do get sucked into these fad diets, and still even to this day within bodybuilding, we have people following very rigid meal plans, and to a fault in most cases, there's no flexibility whatsoever, and it doesn't have to be that way.
RH: That can put a lot of people off the concept of bodybuilding in general, you have to do it a certain way where there is flexibility in it. As much as I track stuff I'm still quite flexible in terms of changing different sources of proteins, carbs, and fats and the way I make my meals, it doesn't have to be the “same old same old” day in day out.
Rob Hope Reveals His Ideal Diet Plan!
