Abstract
This article focuses on the relationship between a coach and his group of bodybuilders examined following a long-term ethnographic survey in a weight room in the South of France. The dietary aspects of regimes that are required of those who want to become bodybuilders organize their interactions. Why does the coach systematically impose a weight-loss diet on novices when they come to seek muscle volume? The field survey shows that alternating deprivation and overeating leads weight room practitioners to modify their sensory perceptions (affecting their likes and dislikes) and move away from their usual social environment. The novices’ asceticism through diet only prepares them for the use of steroids, which they ingest as food supplements. This egotistical asceticism can ultimately be read as a paradoxical double domination where bodybuilders experience the sensation of optimizing and controlling their body while being under the social influence of the coach.