Bodybuilding Baddie - Background
9 months, 3 weeks, 2 days stands between me and my first OCB Figure competition. It feels so far away, like a romanticized daydream. In reality, it is so close. How do I go from where I am now, to looking like the girls plastered all over my social media in just over 9 months? If you're like me, you know Kenzie Vance, Erin Killeen, and the queen Whitney Simmons. Obviously, all different body types but being over 9 months away - I don't even know what my personal fit body type resembles. I currently weigh about 145 pounds. I'm not not muscular, but I am definitely not toned or 'shredded'. I have a comfortable, protective layer of love surrounding all my muscles, and it's never not been there.
In fact, in 2019 I weighed 185 pounds, with no muscle tone in sight. I was your 'typical' overweight girly - I would do little to no physical exercise, complain to my boyfriend Sean about my body image, eat my feelings, feel overwhelming guilt for poor life choices, rinse and repeat. I worked in a toxic environment that left me feeling less than and crying on my ride home most days. I was in a downward spiral to a very dark place. I needed change. Enter Covid.
When Covid hit it disrupted my entire routine. I no longer had to face the bullies at work every day. I got to spend more time with my uber supportive boyfriend (now Fiancé). After some really deep, difficult conversations I made the choice to re-download Beachbody, the workout app I had been paying for year after year, that I never stuck with. I made the choice to set a new routine- walk the dogs in the morning, work (whatever that looked like at the time), Beachbody after work, dinner, walk the dogs in the evening, bed. I promised myself I would finish one entire workout program, sticking to this routine, or that I was the ultimate failure. So I began the 90 Day Obsession. It was so hard in the beginning. I constantly had to pause for a break to catch my breath or work out a cramp. It seemed hopeless but I stuck with it. After time it got a little easier and I didn't need quite as many breaks. After a few weeks I started to feel stronger and going up in weights. I would do weekly weigh ins and the weight started coming off. Within four months I was down to 159 pounds. A fire had been ignited and I wanted to keep the flame burning.
I continued to make the hard changes in life including leaving my toxic job and taking a substantial pay cut to go work for Sean's dad painting estates down on the Mount Desert Island. Not only was the environment so much better for my mental health, but the physical demands of painting (carrying ladders, painting, walking around job sites, etc.) added to bettering my overall self. I rejoined Planet Fitness when the world began reopening as my 90 Day Obsession was complete and I wanted to have more options than what my make-shift home gym had to offer. Cue gym anxiety. Was everyone watching me, the 'fat' girl trying to figure out how to do the one exercise she saw on Tik-Tok? Was I doing an RDL right, or was my back too rounded? What if I saw someone I knew from before my downhill spiral, what would they think of the weight I gained? I forced myself to work through these thoughts and focus on myself, and my mission to become the best version of myself because deep down I knew I deserved it because I'm a bad bitch. I began finding healthier recipes and creating a cheat sheet of healthy swaps and low-calorie alternatives to my favorite foods and drinks and the weight kept coming off fairly steadily.
Until it didn't. One day I weighed in at 150, and then I just stayed there. And I mean for about a year. The scale would move up and down a few pounds depending on the day, but it would always hover around 150. And although 150 was a number I once thought was the goal, I now saw my potential, and craved to be better. I knew that weight loss wasn't the goal, overall health and fitness was. I wanted to push myself in ways I didn't know how. In January of 2023 I decided to switch to a local gym and work with a personal trainer. My first day I tried to chicken out, but Sean encouraged me, and I never looked back. Working with a trainer is something I wish I had done years ago but know I wouldn't have had the courage to do. I learned new exercises and techniques and had someone to tell me I could when my brain was telling me I couldn't. The constant encouragement must have driven me to a point of insanity because I signed boyfriend and I up for my first ever 5K road race. Who was I? I was a shotput and discus thrower in high school track. I dreaded running and did everything to avoid it. But this new me wasn't afraid of any challenge, because I knew I could handle it and push myself through it. My goal was to run the 5K in 35 minutes. I ended up placing third in my age group with a time of 28:20. I impressed myself and accomplished something I once thought was impossible and knew I wanted more of that feeling. I wanted to compete, and place, and feel proud and accomplished.
My trainer, who had successfully coached multiple first place female bikini competitors, kept planting the seed in my head. He would bring it up each time we worked together and told me that none of those women got there overnight and that I could get there if I just chose to commit. Boyfriend unexpectedly proposed in Greece in March of 2023. I said yes, as if it was even a question. One big commitment. I knew that weddings are expensive no matter how small or how budgeted, and that I needed to choose to have a wedding now and enter a competition later or enter now and have a wedding later. We talked it over and in the end he pushed me to commit to myself first as this was something I had been bringing up time and time again that we both knew I wanted. We were already committed to one another and could get married any time, but what better time to get married than when you finally have the body of your dreams? So on June 4th 2023 I said 'fuck it' and texted my trainer right then. I asked how long it would take for me to be competition ready and he said I could be ready by April. Once I said I was down his response was, "Woooohooo!!!!!! Let's GOOO!!!" I'm still not sure who is actually more excited.
So that's how I got here. 9 months, 3 weeks, 2 days away from stepping on stage at my first figure competition. Scared shitless but ready to put in the hard work. If you feel encouraged, interested or annoyed by this post, please feel free to follow along. I will post regularly about competition updates, workouts, meals, and random life events along the way!
Until next time,
The Bodybuilding Baddie
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