“Nutrition is my drug. I am an all natural guy,” Dino Pierce said.

Pierce is from Cut Off and graduated from South Lafourche High School in 1994.

Pierce is now attending Nicholls as a family and consumer sciences major specializing in dietetics, and he is an employee at Larousse’s Gym.

Pierce balances his time between school and being a well-known bodybuilder in the Thibodaux area.

“As a young child, I saw bodybuilders in cartoon characters, and when I saw a bodybuilding competition, I knew at that moment that I wanted to look like them and do what they did,” Pierce said.

While Pierce learns about dietetics, he also practices good nutrition.

“Every second is devoted to my body and bodybuilding,” Pierce said.

As a body builder and a person concerned about his health, Pierce has a daily routine.

“At 4:40 am I wake up and go to the gym to train. I am a personal trainer until 8:30 or 9:00. I then go to classes at Nicholls until 2:00 p.m., and then I train myself. In the afternoon I do school work, cardiovascular work or regular work,” Pierce said.

Exercise training and school work are not the only part of the training experience for Pierce.

“Throughout the day, I try to eat every one to two hours, if I am not sleeping,” Pierce said.

Pierce is now looking for a sponsorship for bodybuilding competition. He is 25 years old and said there are only five more years for “a chance for companies to jump on the bandwagon to see me get up there, up to the top.”

Pierce has many goals for himself on and off of campus.

“I plan to become a Pro Card 30 year of the International Federation of Body Builders and graduate first in my class in Spring 2002 at Nicholls,” Pierce said.

“When choosing for a school to go to college, I chose Nicholls because it was close to home and it was a university,” Pierce said.

When Pierce graduates he said that he hopes that his “grade point average will possibly be a 3.9, but for now it is 3.8.”

However, those are not the only goals Pierce has.

“The reason for becoming a nutritionist is so I can write books and by law, call myself a nutritionist,” Pierce said.

Pierce said the best time of his life is standing on stage at a bodybuilding competition when it is down to two people, and they call his name.

“I encourage others to bodybuild because I would like to see more people doing it, and because it’s a great experience.”

Pierce has established a website devoted to his bodybuilding career, Bodylifting4life.com.

“I do not judge people by material things and people should like me for what I am,” Pierce said.

“My hero is SkipLaCour, the most motivating, hardest working person I have come across. Sometimes I don’t think he is human, but I want to get to his level,” he said.

“My hobbies include reading a majority of nutritional books, hunting, being a Nicholls X-power lifter (weight training) for one year, studying and researching nutrition.”

“At times I am a perfectionist and hard on myself, but I have a humorous personality that makes me who I am,” Pierce said.