You That The Show Ends And The Lights Stay Off For Months

[VipRoids]

I watched a training partner of mine step off stage in his best condition ever. Placing he was proud of. Photos he still posts. Within three weeks he was a different animal. Not eating properly, not sleeping, snapping at his wife over nothing, skipping sessions he would never have skipped during prep. Six months later he confessed the scariest part was not how bad he felt. It was that nobody in the sport had ever mentioned that this happens.

The physiology explains part of it. Sustained restriction pushes the body into a state where hormones that regulate appetite, mood and drive run suppressed. Recovery eating restores weight fast but the hormonal picture crawls back over months, not days. So you are physically fed and mentally still starving, and everyone around you expects celebration because the trophy is on the shelf.

But the physiology does not explain the silence. Post show depression is discussed in private messages between competitors and almost never on open boards. Maybe because admitting it sounds like weakness in a community built on hardness. Maybe because the guys who are deepest in it are the least likely to type.

Which of those two explanations do you think is closer to the truth, and does it even have a third one.