So as I was scrolling through my news feed I saw that a friend of mine posted pictures of our high school body building competition. Of course I viewed the pictures. I still think I looked absolutely great in all of my the body building pictures. But at the time I had a skewed image of myself and actually thought that I was overweight! I know... I was letting ED tell me how I looked.
Looking back at the pictures from my competition I cant help but feel a little sad. I'm proud of what I looked like but the way I got there was very unhealthy. I was under eating, by the end of each day I was at about a 1000-2000 calorie deficit. I was using a calorie counting app that told me every single day that I was not eating enough. I took each notification I got from that app and plastered it to my face in the shape of a smile. I was exercising sometimes three times a day with no rest days. Three days before the competition I started drastically lowering my water intake so that my muscles would "pop" I don't even know if that's possible! Talk about nuts! On top of that I started lowering my food intake even more for the last couple of days because I was terrified that since I wasn't eating much that the food I was eating would get stuck in my stomach and make me look fat. The day of the competition I ate nothing but dry oatmeal and maybe 3 table spoons of trail mix. Every single person with any type of expertise in health and exercise told me that I was doing it all wrong and endangering myself. I was told horror stories of competitors passing out on stage because they were so dehydrated or malnourished. But despite the warnings and the horror stories I did it my way because I just wanted to look good. It didn't matter to me that through this training process I probably lost muscle mass. In fact I might say that every pound I lost trying to be a body builder was probably from water or even muscle.
Muscle takes more energy to keep than fat does so if you aren't eating enough and working out to much your body will start getting rid of your muscle and keep your fat... its the cold hard truth. If you don't believe me, look it up.
I went about body building all kinds of wrong. I should've been eating more and exercising less! I would've looked even better than I did in my pictures.
I remember being so irritable after the competition that when my friends were taking pictures with me I got so fed up and hANGRY that I almost cried and bolted for the first water bottle I saw. Everyone was telling me how great I looked, how well I did, and what a good sport I was but I couldn't even appreciate my fifteen minutes of fame because my body was starving.
CONTINUED IN NEXT POST!
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