Qualy #99 - The steroid controversy: Mark's use of them and Peter's perspective

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
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So for this competition, are you using anabolic steroids or diuretics or any of the sort of aids that one would use?

**Mark Bell** (0:46)
You know, as in bigger, stronger, faster, you know, I talked about utilizing them from the time I was 25
I've been using them. You know, I say in the movie, I'm gonna probably be on and off them the rest of my life. And that's what I believe. It's direction I chose.
When you choose a certain thing and you like the result of it, I don't feel like there's any reason to go back. And for me, for now as well, I get it prescribed, which is kind of an added bonus to making sure that it's like, I guess, more on the up and up. But to me, it doesn't really make any difference whether you grab it from some dude at the gym or whether you get it from a doctor. I actually think that they're not gonna be all that regulated anyway, no matter how you slice it.

**Peter Attia** (1:30)
But what are the, again, I don't know anything about how bodybuilders use steroids. What are the, you know?

**Mark Bell** (1:38)
Clean body mass is the main thing. So people get confused about what they actually do. People get confused about what steroids do. I think people think that steroids automatically make you strong.
And they don't necessarily automatically make you strong. What they do in most cases is they allow people to gain more weight. Now there's some cases where people don't gain a whole lot of weight and they do gain strength.
But if you don't continue to gain weight, at some point that strength will only level up so much. So when you introduce steroids, steroids don't multiply on top of themselves. They only work to a certain level. So you're on level one with your lifting and you progress and your genetics and everything allow you to get to level four. You take steroids and maybe over a period of time you get to like level six, but you're still not gonna be able to get to level eight, nine or 10 Where these guys like Jay Cutler and some of these mammoth people are, because of their genetics, because of their environment as children, because of X, Y and Z, you're probably just never gonna be able to level up to their potential.

**Peter Attia** (2:40)
Which is an important distinction. Because I think a lot of people-

**Mark Bell** (2:42)
Your starting point is what you talked about.

**Peter Attia** (2:44)
Yeah, well a lot of people look at, let's just pick Phil Heath because he's the best in the world today and you're like-
It's all drugs, but I don't think people understand I could inject a human being with every anabolic steroid period. Let's get the world's supply of anabolic steroids and inject it into me. I couldn't look one-tenth of what that guy looks like.

**Mark Bell** (3:03)
And the best coaching and the best whatever.

**Chris Bell** (3:05)
People like to make things easy and simplify it.
And they can't come close to Phil Heath. They can't even come close even with a ton of drugs. So they just wanna say, oh, it's just steroids. It's not like, oh, this guy works harder, this guy's better. And I do think that steroids cloud the sport. I do think that if there was a way to get steroids out of the sport, that it could be more popular across the mainstream.

**Mark Bell** (3:28)
Well, it's part of the reason why it has become more popular because they do have like men's physique and they got some of these different categories now where you're seeing more men and women get bulked.

**Chris Bell** (3:37)
It's gone more mainstream with some of that stuff.

**Mark Bell** (3:39)
There's classic physique. But the body types don't look as crazy, right?

**Chris Bell** (3:42)
Yeah, now there's a category called classic physique.
And it's interesting because in the very first year of classic physique, my friend Danny Hester, he won Mr. Olympia Classic Physique. He's about 190 pounds. He looks awesome.
He always looks awesome. He's about my height, 190 jacked, shredded, looks amazing. And then the next year, the guy that wins, it's like 240 You know what I mean? You're like, this is not classic physique anymore. Yeah, like what happened to the little guys that were in great shape, you know? And the guy that won, he looked amazing. But it's a different look than the bigger bodybuilders, but it's not yet a natural thing. It's not like one guy's natural and one guy's on. It's like they're just on different levels, right?