This is the second article in our new series called “Ask Obi Obadike”. Obi Obadike, known in the fitness industry as “The World’s Most Ripped Fitness Expert”, is an internationally published fitness celebrity. In this weekly column, Obi will discuss his views on training, nutrition, and general health. You’ll get it exclusively on Muscle Prodigy!

You’ve been ripped up for as long as I can remember. Did you ever fall off your regimen for a period of time where you ate bad and didn’t train for a long stretch? If so, what happened and what made you get back into it?

Obi: I eat bad and indulge like the next person. I think it is just a matter of how much do I indulge next to the average person. You are not going to see me at McDonald’s or Burger King or KFC every-day. Those types of fast food restaurants are really once in a blue moon for me.

My cheat meal is like a chicken soft taco and French fries which is not that bad. And sometimes I have my moments where I eat cookies or Little Ceasars crazy bread but that is not every day. I think the reason I look the way I do is because I don’t indulge every day like the average person and because I exercise consistently, doing high intensity training with weights. And I’ve established a long consistent base in terms of maintaining my conditioning all year round that it would be very difficult for me to fall off physically. Everything I do in terms of exercise and eating is very routine, monotonous and honestly boring at times, but that is what works for my body.

I think if you incorporate a physically active lifestyle, eat healthy moderately at least 70 to 80% of the week (indulging about 20 to 30% of the time), and if you have decent genetics then you should stay in reasonably good shape.

Like I said before, many people tend to have this mentality to not exercise and just eat junk food all the time. I have those same thoughts in terms of wanting to do all those things but the difference is that I don’t act on them like the average person. When you have been training for half of your life it can get boring and sometimes you lose that motivation and you tell yourself that you don’t want to go into the gym today.

But I always find a way to make myself go in there. I don’t do as many magazine photoshoots as what I used to do in the past so that used to be more my motivation. So now my motivation is a little different now because my focus has been on business and TV stuff but there is still motivation to want to be the best I can be physically and health wise. People think because you see someone shredded that they are healthy and that is not necessarily true. I don’t really measure my body fat anymore and I don’t really weigh myself every day. I just use the mirror as my gauge and see how my clothes fit. The mirror is my scale and the mirror doesn’t lie!

How do you muster up the motivation to keep yourself going daily with the training, healthy eating, photo shoots, and the TV shows?

Obi: Before the motivation was being on a fitness magazine cover and being featured. Now the motivation is to motivate mainstream America as a fitness expert which I have right now with the two TV shows I am associated with. I have more motivation because my platform is so much bigger now than magazines. I have a much bigger reach now which is in the millions as opposed to thousands, and the people that I am reaching is the average American.

I will motivate that person that watches Spike TV and wants to get in better shape. Hopefully when he or she sees me they will gain that extra motivation to want to exercise. Earlier in my career I used to do photoshoots every month to prove to everybody how fit I was and now I rarely do those types of photoshoots anymore unless I have a magazine cover opportunity. I guess I feel I like I don’t have anything to prove in that physique world.

The number of people who are suddenly becoming fitness models is exploding. This is going to spark some controversy, but to your estimation, what percentage of people in the industry is resorting to performance enhancing drugs to help achieve their bodies? What are your thoughts on P.E.D.’s and steroids in sports?

Obi: Anybody that has a social media account and posts images of themselves is a fitness model. The word fitness model doesn’t have much validity or meaning anymore because everybody is a fitness model that can post a selfie or two.

Steroids are such controversial issue because there are still some people that will surprisingly defend the use of steroids which is absolutely crazy and makes no sense. #1 it is against the law and it is illegal and you can actually go to prison as it is a felony if you are caught with possession, #2 it is very unhealthy and can cause so many health issues especially if there is long term use associated with it. It is hard to really put a percentage of how many people in the fitness industry are taking PED’s but when I went to the Olympia Expo last month I was surprised how many people I thought were on some form of PEDs.

I think the percentage is really high especially among male and female fitness physique competitors that feel the need to take PED’s to attain that classic old school bodybuilding physique and many of them feel they have to resort to PED’s to build that type of muscle. I think it is sad that an average consumer that picks up a fitness magazine can’t really trust 100% that the person on the cover sculpted their body without taking PED’s and that includes women too, not just guys.

I think PED’s send a wrong message to young kids and I think the reason why that mainstream has never really cared about bodybuilding or physique competitions is because they assume that everybody is on steroids so people can’t connect or relate to that. And many of them look at the industry like a freak show. You will never see any TV network cover physique competitions because of the wrong message it sends to people with so many competitors that are on illegal drugs. It is far from the epitome of what being healthy is.

I think also what the average fan of the fitness industry doesn’t like or appreciate is the person that will publicly state that he is natural when most people know that you can’t be natural and weigh 250lbs, 240lbs or even 230lbs at 6’2 or shorter and have a body-fat of 5 to 6%. If your shoulders are bigger than your head, it’s more than likely that you are on some form of PED. I think when you have people that will publicly promote themselves as drug-free when they’re not is misleading, fraudulent and shows you have no integrity or ethics. Unfortunately, there are many people in the fitness industry that do just that.

I think the human body is amazing if you do all the right things and trust it will do what it is supposed to do. I’ve seen some people achieve phenomenal things naturally when they look like they are on something but they are really not. I think a lot of people that take PED’s come from a lack of confidence and have a lot of insecurity issues. They are not comfortable or secure with themselves in terms of building their body the conventional way of just old fashioned diet, exercise and basic supplements. I am against PED use in any fashion and I will always speak against it publicly or anywhere. And I have no fear in fighting against the use of it publicly.

About Obi Obadike

Obi Obadike is a nationally recognized Celebrity Fitness Expert/Trainer and nutrition expert. In 2014 he was metrically recognized as one of the top ten most influential fitness experts on the web by Dr Oz’s Sharecare.com. He was 2012 Writer Of The Year for Bodybuilding.com, the largest fitness website in the world. He has graced over 50 fitness magazine covers and has been published in fitness magazines over 100 times. He was a Top Division I collegiate star track athlete at Cal State Fullerton where he was the school record holder in the 100, 200 meters and 400 relay.

He is one of the most educated fitness professionals in the fitness industry where he holds a B.A, B.S and M.S degrees and is certified with the ISSA as a nutrition specialist,(SFN) and Trainer (CFT).

He is the new co-Judge of a new reality fitness competition called Sweat Inc. which airs on Spike TV on October 20. The show is hosted and judged by Jillian Michaels and co-judged by Randy Hetrick, founder of TRX.

He currently co-hosts a national syndicated health TV show called Lifestyle Magazine which airs on several national syndicated networks across the country.

If you want to learn more from Obi or reach out to him, please check out his Website, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.