My First Bodybuilding Competition

In the Summer of 2012, I got a membership to a private gym called The Refinery. I started training there every single morning at 5am and I would lift weights. I had been lifting weights for about 2 years at this point, so I was pretty comfortable with what I was doing. I wrote my own workouts and stayed very dedicated to the gym, even though I had a crazy schedule (I worked from 7am until almost 11pm every single day).

After a few weeks of working out at this gym, I made friends with some of the older members that were always there bright and early with me. They noticed my hard work and dedication, and often asked me why I trained so hard. I always told them I just loved lifting weights and that it was a stress relief for me, and that was all. More than once, I was approached about bodybuilding and how I was a “perfect fit” for it. The older people that always saw me training hard insisted that it was a sport I could be successful in, and kept pushing me and pushing me to consider it.

Finally, one day, I told a few of them that I would talk to one of the trainers at the gym that happened to be a bodybuilder himself. His name was Nick and he was very approachable, so I sat down with him one day, talked about coaching and pricing, and he left me with some homework. He wanted me to do some research on my own, and he wanted me to look into what bodybuilding was, the different categories women could compete in, and everything involved with the process. He said that if I wanted to commit to a competition, I just needed to contact him and we would start right away. That night, I looked up as much information as I could and I was totally intrigued. The muscles, the posing, the tan skin… it was all so foreign to me. But, for some reason, I was hooked. I could NOT get bodybuilding off of my mind.

Nervous, I knew what I needed to do so I picked up my phone, called him, and said I was in! That next day, we started Day 1 of my first competition prep. We sat down and mapped out exactly what competition I was going to do, how many times a week I was going to train with him, we worked on my diet, how much cardio I was going to do, we talked over suits and heels and oh gosh, it was so overwhelming! But I was excited and I was ready to dive in. We decided that I was going to do the OCB Midwest States in Dekalb, Illinois, (about 45 minutes away from my hometown and about 2 hours away from the college I was attending), and that I was going to do Figure!

I trained 3 times a week with Nick, and our workouts were an hour long each. We did supersets for all exercises, and I did a lot of plyometric exercises to keep my heart rate up. He had me run stairs with a medicine ball over my head between exercises at times, and it was pure torture! Especially since I had very bad asthma at the time. I did cardio 5 times a week for 30 minutes, and I switched between the stairmaster, elliptical, and running on the treadmill. I lifted on my own two times a week (so I was lifting 5 times a week total), and I would keep my workouts similar to what I had been doing before prep. I lifted fairly heavy for about an hour long each time, and then I would do cardio afterwards.

My prep was only 12 weeks long, which in my opinion, was VERY short. I went from eating like a typical college girl (I was a sophomore in college), drinking a few times a week, and never doing cardio, to suddenly eating chicken and oats, doing cardio every day, and obviously cutting out all alcohol. I could no longer go out to parties or go to social eating/drinking events, and I had to fit training into my crazy school schedule. I was taking 21 credit hours, and I also worked two jobs, but I somehow managed to fit in the gym. Oh, I also failed to mention that my gym was 5 miles away from my apartment, and I did not have a car! I rode my bike to and from the gym every single day just so I could lift. It was craziness!

My starting weight was around 135lbs, my body fat was probably around 22%, and I was, and still am, 5’6.” Within the first month, I dropped around 10 pounds and noticed huge changes in terms of my body composition. I credit that 100% to my clean diet. I was eating around 1500-1600 calories a day, and I stuck with foods like chicken, tilapia, egg whites, oats, vegetables, lettuce, and rice cakes. In all honesty, I never ever cheated on my diet during the first month, because I was way too scared to go off my plan and I wanted so badly to be successful. It was incredibly hard, especially since I lived with a few of my sorority sisters who ate pizza, ice cream, cookies, candy, and fast food every single day. But I did it and I stuck to my plan.

As my prep continued on, it got progressively harder and harder. My training sessions with Nick got a little more intense, my cardio was to be done at a harder pace, I slowly started removing food from my diet, and I grew weak and tired. At night, I dreamed of burgers and donuts (I wish I was joking), and during the day, I could barely keep my eyes open. I stayed up late cooking food, and I woke up early to hit the gym.

My friends were confused and didn’t really understand what I was doing or what bodybuilding was, and my boyfriend at the time didn’t really understand it either. I didn’t know how to break this to my family, so I didn’t even tell them about my prep for the first month or so. Looking back, I was just extremely scared about what my family would think of me as a bodybuilder and I was worried they would judge me or not support me. It’s crazy that I thought that way because they are the most supportive people in my life, but for some reason it really scared me to tell them. I’m so glad that I finally sucked it up and did, because they were very excited for me and thought it was a good idea to have a new goal.

At about 8 weeks out, I realized that I really needed to get a suit and heels for my show, Having a tight budget, I looked on EBay, Amazon, and tons of other sites for used suits that I could buy. I ended up finding a bright green suit on EBay for around $150, so I took a chance and bought it even though I had no idea if it was going to fit me! I also ordered heels from Amazon (the brand was Ellie), and within a few days I had both items at my doorstep. My suit fit me, but looking back at stage photos, the top was a little too big and I definitely should have stuffed it because I looked incredibly flat-chested (lol).

Having my Figure suit and heels, I was very motivated to start posing. I looked up YouTube videos of Figure competitors and their routines, and I printed off pictures of women posing on stage, too. I bought a long, rectangular $3 mirror from Wal-Mart, hung it in my little bedroom in my apartment, and I posed in front of that mirror a few times a week. I had no idea what I was doing, but I posed and posed and posed.

During the last month of my prep, I was pretty miserable. I would go to the gym, sit on a machine and just cry my eyes out. My hormones were all over the place, I was an emotional mess, I was hungry, I was tired, I wanted to give up, I questioned myself, I was alone, my friends stopped supporting me, my family was hours away, and I was scared. My diet continued to get more restricted, my training continued to get harder, and although I wanted to quit so badly at times, I never did. I trained as hard as I could. I never skipped a workout. I ate according to my diet, and honestly, I didn’t even enjoy food anymore. I had dropped about 20 pounds since I originally started my prep, and I was getting very, very lean (and cold!!).

When peak week came around, I cut all of my carbs at the beginning of the week, and then when I was 3 days out I started carbing up. I didn’t mess with water or sodium or take any diuretics or anything like that. I exfoliated my body all week to prepare for my spray tan, I got my nails done, my hair done, and bought some fun make-up for show day. The night before my show, I got my spray tan and hardly got any sleep that night. I woke up on the day of my show, ate some carbs, did my hair and make up, got my suit glued on me, and headed out to my show (I went home before the competition, so I just drove 45 minutes to the show on the morning of).

The competitor’s meeting was at 8am, where we checked in, received our competitor numbers, found out what class we were in (classes are based on height for Figure), and went over the order of events. Pre-judging started at 10am, and I waited back stage anxiously until I went on around 1pm. I did Figure Novice (Novice is for first time competitors) and Figure Open, which were back-to-back in the line-up. I made first callouts for both Novice and Open, and I was ecstatic! My family, including my grandma, came to support me, so after pre-judging I hung out with them for a few hours until the night show started at 6pm. Around 9:30pm, I went on stage and won First and Overall in Figure Novice! For Open, I placed 3rd.

I was incredibly happy with the turnout, and could not have been more proud with how hard I worked for that competition. The day of my show was VERY exhausting, so when it was over, I just wanted to go home and sleep! I had such a fun time at my show, especially since I met a lot of great competitors back stage. When I got home, I ate some delicious chocolate and slept like a baby.

After my competition, I was completely lost as to what I was supposed to do, especially since I competed in November, when the bodybuilding season was over, so it wasn’t like I could do another show anytime soon. Out of habit, I stuck pretty much to the same diet I had been following, but my training went back to how I had trained before prep. I struggled very hard with gaining weight after this competition, and gaining weight was something that I NEEDED to do because I was so incredibly lean. I was probably around 8% body fat, and I weighed 112 pounds on the day of my competition and for weeks after. Looking back, I wish I had a plan that involved reverse dieting, where I would slowly add in more food to gain some healthy weight, because I was absolutely lost and scared as to what to do.

A few months went by where I was still incredibly lean, and I started having health issues. I didn’t sleep at night, I was weak all day, I had no energy and I was grouchy, and I could not get my appetite to come back. I went to the doctor and found out that my hormones were very messed up, and if I did not gain weight, it was going to only get worse. So, I then went to a dietician and a counselor, and I was put on a meal plan that helped me gain healthy weight back. I went to a counselor just to make sure I hadn’t developed an unhealthy relationship with food, and after a few sessions with her I realized that I had not. It was simply that I needed a plan and I needed some guidance to help me slowly get my appetite back up. After two months of my meal plan designed to help me gain weight, I had gained about 10-15 healthy pounds, all my hormones were back to normal levels, and I felt much better!

This prep taught me so many lessons that nothing else has ever been able to do for me. It taught me things like the importance of nutrition, what it means to be disciplined, how to be organized, who your real supporters are, how your mentality can literally make or break you, and what success tastes like. Bodybuilding is not for everyone, and a lot of people don’t realize that many issues can stem from the sport. Many competitors develop eating disorders from competition prep, and many others develop issues with their self-image when they gain weight back after their competition. However, this doesn’t mean that all competitors have these issues or that these issues cannot be overcome. After my show, I had issues with trying to get my appetite back, but luckily I sought out help and was much better in time. Regardless, my first Figure competition forever changed my life, and it changed it for the better.