About

Meet the team

My name is Liam Mailer, but you’ve probably found yourself here on my site because you know me as ‘The Muscle Cook’.
Thanks for checking me out but, firstly, let me give you a little background and explain how I found myself as dedicated to the kitchen as I am to the gym.
In 2011, I experienced the moment almost 99% of fitness enthusiast go through at some point of their journey – the: ‘Wow, do I really look like that?’ picture.
I had just left high school and began working in an office job where the poor standard of food and lacklustre daily habits began to play a major part in the deterioration of my physique.
In short, I was ‘skinny fat’.
I decided to join a local gym and took guidance from one of the trainers who put me on a generic bodybuilding split, along with some cardio, to shift the stubborn fat and bid to build some muscle.
As so many others in that position will testify, the initial results in the gym were great. I was filling out t-shirts and my shape began to really change for the better, much to the surprise of my family and friends.
However, approximately six months into my journey – you guessed it – I plateaued.
My nutrition was always okay, but there was no structure and no real education to warrant the solid and chiselled physique I craved.
As a result, I invested in a coach none other than Mr Dave Ruel, laid down a deadline and entered a men’s physique show.
This would be the major turning point, not only my physique, but also in my life.
In total, I went through 16 weeks of preparation and became educated on effective, wholesome recipes that fitted my lifestyle and completely changed my perspective on nutrition. The confusion of food was removed.
I developed life skills in the form of cooking, dedication and consistency that have fed off into other major aspects in my life and for which many others, not least my fiancée, are now thanking Dave ha ha.

Fast forward five years and I now run a successful gym, Dave an I are now partners within The Muscle Cook brand and the launch of our gourmet cook book is imminent.
It’s not about preparing a week’s worth of chicken and rice, with bland oatmeal and water for breakfast. It’s not about chugging a glass of water just to ensure you can eat your broccoli.
What we have here at The Muscle Cook is access to over a combined 10 years of trial and error recipes, which I’ve learned, developed and adapted with the help of cookery school, food mentors, gourmet chefs and my own culinary efforts.

Not only that, but I will be sharing with you an exact proven formula to track the exact calories and macronutrients your body needs to build muscle. Who’d have thought that…full gourmet cooking and nutrition protocols while building muscle without gaining that ‘bulk’ look? We have created this hub to help not only build your physique, but build life skills in the kitchen you can continue to use for the rest of your life.
I have developed my first cook book in ‘Gourmet Bodybuilding’, which is already helping clients and coaches across the UK to better themselves in key areas of nutrition.
I have a long list of clients who are successfully utilising my strategies to educate themselves on cooking and helping build lean muscle and even healthier lifestyles.

Now let me pass you on to my mentor all those years ago and former Muscle Cook….Dave Ruel!

Dave Ruel here and as Liam said I am the founder of TheMuscleCook.com!

I am a former competitive bodybuilder, an author and more importantly a professional nutritionist.

Before I became a nutrition expert, I went through a lot of personal challenges, and I have to admit that I’ve made a lot of stupid mistakes over the years in my muscle building efforts, especially when I first started. I literally wasted years of progress by not paying attention to my nutrition and listening to other people on bodybuilding forums and websites. While they all meant well, they didn’t have a clue as to what really worked and what didn’t when it came to building muscle.

Growing up, I always was a physically active person, I was involved in competitive sports such as hockey, basketball and volleyball. I did try to pick up weights a few times, but at that time I couldn’t find the motivation to be dedicated to weightlifting for more than a few weeks at a time. I was never genetically gifted, I was your typical skinny-fat kid…

In 2001, after having gained a few pounds during the summer, I decided to join a local gym (the one I am still training at now…) in order to get in shape and gain some muscle. At that time, I didn’t know anything about weight training or nutrition.

However, I kept on reading and collecting info left and right and in a few weeks I was able to create my own training program and basic nutrition plan (and I mean BASIC!). The weeks passed and I gradually fell in love with the sport. I was getting good results and wanted more.

But, after a year, I wasn’t getting the results I was getting at the beginning… and I made the typical #1 bodybuilding mistake of “bulking”… I brought my weight up to 262 lbs, with a lot of body fat. At that point, I realised that I had gone way too extreme and that I would need to work very hard to get back in shape. This is when I hired the person who would become my mentor, a several time local Bodybuilding Champion, who also was a professional nutritionist. This was a guy who had already accomplished what I wanted to accomplish, and I knew that if I was going make a change, I needed to get help from someone who had “been there, done that”. It wasn’t an easy decision; I mean, I was a student at the time, without much extra cash and he wasn’t exactly cheap…but heck, I really wanted to make a change so I saved my pennies and got him to coach me… and that would happen to be the BEST decision I’ve made in my entire life!

He took me under his wing and put me on a 12 weeks nutrition plan that made me lose 50 lbs! I just couldn’t believe the transformation I had made in just 3 months, going from out of shape to an almost competitive physique.

But surprisingly, this nutrition plan wasn’t a conventional basic nutrition plan (i.e. chicken breasts, steamed broccoli and brown rice…), I had to cook for almost all the meals that composed my “diet”… he was giving me recipes and was using those recipes for almost all my meals…

It seemed a bit odd at first because I thought I would have to spend hours in the kitchen in order to prepare all my meals… I couldn’t have been more wrong…

His recipes were so easy to make, and as the time went by, I developed my own little cooking strategies… It was so easy to follow his plan, the meals were so tasty and the results were just incredible!!

Now for the better part of a decade I have been experimenting, learning and creating recipes and meal ideas in the kitchen and I packaged everything into my best seller: Anabolic Cooking, the Cookbook and Complete Nutrition Guide For Bodybuilding and Fitness.

Liam and I want to welcome you to the blog and hope you can get exactly what you need to help you on your way to success in the kitchen and in the gym!