Becoming a Bodybuilding Bikini competitor has been one of the most exciting and liberating experiences of my life. I became something I only dreamed I could become. I became physically strong as well as mentally strong. My confidence increased not just because of how I looked, but due to the trials of prepping. Prepping for a competition is more mentally challenging than physically challenging. It is about being 1000% committed to a goal, staying focused and not swaying from the task at hand. It impacts all aspects of your life in one way or another, and the strength comes from balancing all of it at the same time. I thrived on this.
Prepping became something that I looked forward to doing.
I first starting prepping for a show in March 2011. I had never prepped before. I was the type of person that hated “leftover food” and needed change daily in what I ate. Now here I am prepping food for a week, eat the same meals every day. I went from eating 2 meals and1 snack a day to eating 6-8 meals a day. My initial goal was to “look toned” and step on a stage a bodybuilding stage. If someone would have told me that year before I would have laughed.
I really just wanted to “get toned” and look fit. I have always been a “skinny” girl, but never had the muscle definition that I thought would be nice to have. So, I gave it a go. I was 100% on board. Never cheated outside of my meal plan. I thoroughly enjoyed meal prepping and training day in and day out.
When I prep, nothing gets in my way. I am 1000% committed and dedicated to that prep...I have goals to meet. As the bikini division became a bit more defined, the prep process changed. The typical 12 week prep for most was no longer reasonable. Prep became 16-20-28 weeks long. Prepping in 2017 was the hardest and most challenging year yet. It wasn’t the workouts, it wasn’t the meal prepping. Something changed in my mind, where my passion became an obligation. I was obligated to myself to reach a goal that wasn’t promised. I put myself in a mental situation that I had never put myself in before and it fueled my drive, but drained my passion.
At the end of my season in 2017 I knew I needed to take time off, physically yes but I needed it mentally more-so. During that year off, I had a bit more flexibility but still tracked my food daily and weighed myself a few times a week. Stuck to a 80/20 diet and never really did a complete reverse diet to the point where it should have been.
Summer 2018 I started looking for a new coach. I interviewed a few and eventually made my decision. I started prepping at the end of summer 2018. My prep was for 5 months and was the easiest preps ever. I didn’t do anywhere near as well as I hoped for so I decided to try for another show. I took a week off and started prep again. This prep was the complete opposite. My body stopped responding and with only 6 weeks until my next show, I didn’t have much time to reach my goal. This put a lot of stress on me mentally and I wanted to drop out of my show almost every single day. I initially wasn’t stressed out at all, at least not the way I am typically stressed out. The stress I put on myself was focused more towards how I wanted to place at that show. This negatively impacted how my body responded to my prep. Never in 8 years did my body ever respond this way. It was frustrating.
Show day comes, and I get two, third places awards. I was thrilled with my placing but knew mentally I needed a break. Now, three months later, I have this completely different outlook on prepping and tracking my food and my “status”, “progress” what-have-you. At this point in my life I knew that I needed to completely step away from what I have known for the past 9 years….the slavery to structure….to prepping….to the scale (both food scale and weight scale...the Sunday-Meal-Prep routine). I needed to allow myself some normalcy away from that.
9 years ago, when I made the decision to start competing I was 100% in, nothing was going to stop me from my goal of stepping on stage. I went 9 months without a single cheat, no re-feeds, too much cardio and a whole lot of dedication. After my first year I chose to find a more suitable coach. My drive and desire to compete increased each year as a competitor and I craved that “Pro” status.
After years of hard work, I finally achieved and exceeded that goal. Each year, I would strive to continue to improve my physique and shape it into something I never believed was possible for me. But I did it. With that, came prep after prep, and show after show. This was my life. I loved and lived every moment of prep and competing. It was my passion. Prepping for a show was never difficult for me. Following a strict meal plan day after day and month after month was not a struggle. Nothing about prepping was hard for me, other than finding the energy to go to the gym after working all day, but I still did it.
But by the 7th year of being a competitor, something changed. My passion for competing changed and my heart was not where it should have been nor did it align with my goals any longer. I took a year off because out of 7 years, I had never taken more than 5 months off. I knew that I needed to refresh my mind, and step away for a while. Find that passion again.
With my last show I went from enjoying prep to struggling with it. I didn’t stop or give up. I made it and in the end turned out to be a very successful competition. I went into that show thinking, this is my last show. But after doing so well, and having other competitors tell me “don’t stop” I decided “okay, one more”.
Nine days into the 3rd prep (May 2019), I sat on my couch and told my husband “I’m done”. I hate prep, I hate every moment of everyday and my fire is gone. I felt the weight of the world lifted from me. It wasn’t my coach, it wasn’t the sport, it wasn’t anything but the fact that I felt like a slave to being in prep. It hit me, after all these years, that I was tired of being deprived. Tired of saying “I can’t miss the gym”. Although I still participated in family functions and events, took my food with me, all of that, I still felt left out. I would not have admitted it at the time nor did I believe that at the time but looking back I felt that inside. I began to feel like my friends and family and God were second choice. I let that absorb into my mind and I hated that feeling. I never want my family, friends or God to be second. We as athletes can say “oh family and God come first” but in reality they aren’t. When everything we do, every part of our day revolves around “prep” we in turn are true slaves to prep. I don’t want that, ever.
So for now, I am done competing. Will it be forever, possibly. Maybe, it will be for a year and then I will gradually move back into it, but it will never ever be the same. My first prep with my newest coach, was the first time ever felt “normal” in prep. I didn’t even feel like I was in prep. That is the only way I will ever do it again. If not, then I am done for good.
I am not sharing this with all of you to tell you that you are a slave. You have to determine what you want out of life. This is how I felt, 8 ½ years into being a competitor. I will still be a coach, I will still be an advocate for health and fitness. But for competing, the shoes and bikini are hung up.
I don’t regret anything.
I would do it all over again if I had to.
I wish some paths could have crossed sooner than later as that may have impacted the end result of this journey of mine. But it is what it is and it all happened for a reason.
I use those experiences to build my coaching practice and share with my clients and build a program based on these experiences so that my clients can have a positive and exciting journey.
My passion for competing has ended, at least for now. But my passion for something new has begun and I am excited to go down that new path and face a new challenging journey.
