here's a few outstanding quotes from ma boy Mentzer regarding "diet"
-"when you’re trying to lose fat and maintain muscle, you need sugar in your diet. As long as you’re eating a reduced calorie diet, you can eat as many carbs as you want and still get ripped.
Theoretically, you can eat pure table sugar and be as ripped as a Mohamed Makkawy"
-"Your bodyfat. That’s, what bodyfat is: stored energy. Now these 2,000 calories can be 2,000 calories of pure table sugar, and you’ll still get ripped.
Theoretically, you can become highly defined eating nothing but ice cream—as long as your daily total calorie intake is below your maintenance need of calories"
-" I woke up in the morning always looking forward to breakfast because I had bran muffins and often cake and cookies, fruits and vegetables.
I ate a wide assortment of carbohydrates; often I would have just carrot cake and coffee for breakfast because I knew I needed that sugar for the workout"
-" I was getting ripped, as a matter of fact.
I was eating ice cream at least four days a week before the Mr. Olympia contest—again, not recklessly. I knew that I had to get under 2,500 calories a day."
-"The best thing is to get lean slowly, and then maintain that lower bodyfat level sanely by eating a well-balanced diet. This going up and down all the time puts stress on your nervous system. Stay lean, and then zero in for a contest"
this last point is a very good one