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DOES JULIAN SMITH USE STEROIDS?
Steroid use in the bodybuilding community is running rampant, and it is easy to see why. The most appreciated physiques are those that are not only shredded but also have a crazy amount of muscle mass as well.
Unfortunately, that’s just not how the body works. To be big, you need to eat big, and this means consuming absurd amounts of calories each day. This means that you’ll end up gaining a considerable amount of fat, as well. When you decide to cut the fat, the first step is to reduce your calorie intake, and this puts your body into a catabolic state, where it not only consumes fat for energy but your muscle tissues as well since they are too ‘expensive’ to maintain when the body is at a caloric deficit.
Therefore, if you were to bulk up then cut down naturally, you’ll more than likely end up with an impressive physique, but not nearly extraordinary enough to write home about.
With steroids, however, you’ll be all muscled-up and shredded, without using nearly half the effort you would naturally.
This is why most people are quick to accuse any big and shredded individual of steroid use any chance they get.
However, advancements in nutritional sciences have given us products that enable you to pack on muscle much more easily than in the past. Thus, today, it isn’t easy to tell whether someone is on steroids just by looking at them.
Nonetheless, there should be a limit to the amount of muscle you can pack on naturally, right? Julian Smith is one of those people who claim to be ‘natty’ (natural), but people are finding it hard to believe. So, is Julian Smith on steroids? Let us try and find out.
Who is Julian Smith?
Julian Michael Smith is what you could best describe as a ‘social celeb,’ with his over 1.3 million Instagram followers. His claim to fame is his unbelievably shredded physique, especially his legs, which has earned him the moniker, ‘The Quad Guy.’
Julian is 29 years old, stands at 6ft tall, and weighs in at 200 pounds. Before we proceed any further, 200 pounds for a 6ft tall guy isn’t that hard to fathom, irrespective of how lean he is. Most professional bodybuilders are well below 6ft, and they typically weigh in between 240 – 270 pounds on stage. Some, such as Big Ramy, compete at 300 pounds. Therefore, right off the bat, it is highly plausible that Julian could be natural as he claims to be.
Since he was young, Julian had always been interested in bodybuilding, with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Platz being huge sources of motivation and inspiration. This is what led him to start working out as a teenager, and hasn’t looked back since.
Julian has competed in the NPCs twice in the natural category, of which he has dominated and won both.
Today, he doesn’t use his physique to compete but, rather, to motivate and sell his training programs to his over a million followers. A couple of things need to be said though; while Julian insists that he’s just 200 pounds, he looks way bigger than that. Additionally, being that he’s a sponsored athlete in addition to using his fan-base to make a living, it would make a lot of sense for him to use steroids.
Nonetheless, opinions are not facts and, therefore, if we are to determine whether Julian does use steroids, it is best to compare him against the signs that most steroids users exhibit.
Signs of Steroid Use
The following are the most common signs of steroid use. Let us see how Julian Smith matches up to them:
- A massive increase in muscle mass
The rate of muscle building varies between individuals. For example, if a person with a stellar work ethic and good genetics got an effective workout and diet plan, they would obviously build muscle at a much faster rate than an individual who doesn’t have those attributes.
Nonetheless, no matter how gifted you are, there’s a cap to the amount of muscle mass that you can accumulate naturally within a given time. When using anabolic steroids, all limits are off.
It is not unheard of for a new anabolic steroid user to gain as much as 30 pounds of lean muscle within just a few months. Comparatively, even with the best genetics and work ethic, you will need more than three years to accumulate the same amount of muscle mass.
As such, if you know of an individual who suddenly became ‘The Hulk’ within a few months, the chances are that they are on the juice.
As mentioned earlier, Julian Smith has been actively sculpting his physique since he was a teenager. That is well over a decade of dedicated bodybuilding. If we are going, to be honest, if you dedicated over ten years to building your physique, the chances are that the results of your endeavor wouldn’t be far from what Julian has.
- Stretch Marks
This is tied in with the first point, where steroids allow you to make massive gains within a brief period.
When that happens, stretch marks are bound to happen since the skin did get enough time to accommodate the sudden changes.
If you go at it naturally, the rate of muscle growth will be gradual and deliberate enough for the skin to adjust to the increased muscle mass. This is why it is rare to find the presence of stretch marks in natural athletes unless they were overweight then trimmed down to their current size.
Julian Smith does not have any signs of stretch marks on his body, meaning that the rate at which he grew was gradual enough for his skin to adapt to the changes. This further strengthens his case for being a natural fitness athlete.
- Gynecomastia
Also known as ‘gyno,’ or as bros at the gym call it ‘Bitch Tits’ or ‘Man Boobs,’ it refers to a condition characterized by the abnormal development of breast tissue in adult males.
Gynecomastia regularly happens to males during adolescence when their hormones are stabilizing. You probably know of dudes who were apprehensive about taking off their shirts during gym class due to their nipples looking somewhat like those of a female. Fortunately, however, this condition usually rectifies itself naturally in teen males who are unfortunate enough to go through it.
The condition usually results from having abnormally high levels of the female hormone, estrogen, in the male body. Estrogen is the hormone responsible for giving women their feminine physiological traits, such as enhanced breast development.
Steroid users are prone to developing gynecomastia. As mentioned, most muscle building anabolic steroids are synthetic derivatives of the primary muscle-building hormone, testosterone. As such, high testosterone levels in the body enhance the rate of muscle building tremendously, and that is how anabolic steroids achieve their objectives.
However, your body cannot distinguish between natural and synthetic testosterone. As such, having high levels of the hormone coursing through your system creates a hormonal imbalance within your body. In an effort to attain an equilibrium, the body converts some of the excess testosterone to estrogen through a process known as aromatization.
This results in elevated estrogen levels, and it, therefore, begins manifesting its effects, such as breast tissue development. This is why gynecomastia is very common among anabolic steroid users.
Throughout his years in the spotlight, Julian has never displayed any signs of the condition.
- Body Acne
You can almost always bet on it. An anabolic steroid user is very likely to have a case of body acne.
This is another result of having excess testosterone in your system. It usually stimulates the sebaceous glands on your skin into releasing sebum. Sebum, on the other hand, is the thick, waxy material that the skin produces to protect itself from bacterial infections.
Nonetheless, naturally, we do not produce nearly enough of it to result in any adverse effects. Anabolic steroid users, however, are constantly releasing sebum, thus making their skin pores more prone to clogging with the substance. When that happens, the skin is unable to excrete waste products, thus resulting in a buildup of toxic materials just below the skin pores. This is what causes acne.
Almost all cases of acne in bodybuilders occur on their backs. This is because they are unable to reach their backs to wipe away the sebum. Blame it on the gains.
Julian Smith has not displayed this common sign of steroid use either.
Conclusion on Julian Smith & Steroids
Unless you perform a test on Julian’s blood sample, it is incredibly difficult to accurately determine whether he’s on the sauce or not. Being a fitness model, his livelihood depends on him being jacked and shredded all year round, which is incredibly difficult to do naturally. Therefore, it wouldn’t exactly shock the world if we were to find he was on the juice.
Julian’s physique, however, does seem achievable if you put the work in. Also, there’s a high chance that Julian Smith uses legal steroids. These are safe alternatives to anabolic steroids in that they offer the anabolic (muscle building) benefits of anabolic steroids but without the dangerous side effects. They are very effective, and that’s why more and more people in the bodybuilding community are opting for them over other supplements. If Julian Smith isn’t on anabolic steroids, chances are he has used legal steroids.
