Introduction

What am I doing?

As of the writing of this article, I am 100 days-8 hours-58 minutes (Thank you, Facebook Countdown), from the Online Bodybuilding Federation?s Slamming Spring Spectacular Competition (www.obfbodybuilding.com). The competition officially starts March 9 ? 13, and ends May 31 ? June 3. There are two categories ?Bulking? and ?Transformation?. I will be entered into the Female Transformation category, as I?m planning a serious, 14.5 week cut. Contest prep style, ladies and gents. Just because I?m not getting up on a real stage doesn?t mean this isn?t a real competition. Quite the contrary. This is serious.

Why am I doing this?

Maybe you?ve thought about competing before. Maybe you?ve thought about taking your physique to the next level. Maybe you want to join the ranks for that 1% of people who take their weight training, dieting and cardio so seriously, that they want to show it off to the public by means of a competition. Or maybe you?re already a competitor, and you?re bitten by ?The Bug.? I fall into the last category. I can?t get enough of the stage.

A Little History: Who Am I?

It?s ironic that the pastime that brought me to bodybuilding is the same past-time that
almost killed me 8 years ago.

In the year 2000, when I was 13, I was going through the same thing that most girls were
going through; body image issues, self-esteem issues, boy problems, puberty and all that
fun stuff. My problem was that the body image issues hit me harder than it did most girls. It went from counting calories, to restricting calories, to purging calories through exercise. It was an unhealthy lifestyle that consumed every iota of my being from the time I was 13 until I was 15.

For those 3 years, I was getting progressively smaller and smaller, but no one would say anything because I was still so young and the subject was
taboo. My mother and father begged me to eat, but I was genuinely scared of gaining an ounce. I weighed myself compulsively, and couldn?t walk past a mirror without checking myself out from the side to make sure I was smaller than the last time I looked.

At 15, it got to the point where I was hospitalized for 40 days in an inpatient unit and spent an additional two months at an outpatient clinic. I decided that 3 years of the illness was enough; I thought my demons were banished. Once I got out of hospital, I decided to take up weightlifting. I wanted to turn my new mass into muscle. Unfortunately, I had no
one to mentor me or teach me the rules of lifting. So I did what most women at my gym were doing?cardio.

Every morning at 5am, and every night at 7pm, I would sneak off to
the gym around the corner from my house because my parents didn?t want me burning any additional calories. I also exercised during my lunch hour at school.

Needless to say, it wasn?t the most constructive way to get through grade 11 and start off grade 12. It was in January that I started poking around on bodybuilding.com. I also had to start thinking about what I wanted to major in when I went to university in September. I found kinesiology. It was a match made in heaven. I could learn all day about physiology, anatomy, nutrition, Fitness Assessment and then graduate with a degree that made me a ?Professional? Personal trainer. It was around the same time that my friends, who were now worrying about my health, started telling me how lean and small I was getting. Rather than taking this to heart and doing some productive about it, I took it as a compliment, and used it as fuel for my raging fire.

I decided to compete in a bodybuilding show in June of 2005, my graduating year. I was hard as rock and as lean as a twig. The mirror, which was NOT my friend at this point, had convinced me that I looked more like Jay Cutler than Kate Moss, and that it was my
destiny to shine on-stage. I was 5?7, 104 lbs and 5% bodyfat. I won that show, and unfortunately, was bitten by the competitive bug. I wanted more. So I went on to do 7 more shows in the course of 2 years.

It wasn?t until my last show in October of 2006 that I realized something was wrong; one of the highly respected judges, who had taken the effort to get my cell phone number from the contest promoter, called me to ask if I was O.K., and if I was eating. He told me I had amazing potential for this sport, but people couldn?t see past the frail looking girl
onstage. I just sat in my car with tears streaming down my face, because what I was doing finally hit me. My friends had abandoned me, my parents were scared that they were going to lose me and the sport that I loved didn?t have a place for me anymore. It was time to make a change, for real this time. I promised myself that I would not compete for as long as it took to get myself healthy.

I started on a long and arduous journey, otherwise known as, a bulk. From October of 2006 to July of 2008 I ate an average of 3000 calories a day, mostly coming from clean carbs like oatmeal and sweet-potatoes, and complete protein sources like ground beef and
chicken. I subsequently went from my lowest weight of 96 pounds, with 4% bodyfat, to 65 pounds with 16% bodyfat. I was still relatively lean, but nowhere near where I wanted to be for a competition. It was time to enlist the help of professionals who knew that they were doing.

The Derek Charlesbois section in the bodybuilding.com forums always struck me as something like an Elite club of friends. Everyone was so helpful, encouraging and
dedicated, I was almost scared to approach them, but I did, because I knew that Team Scivation was the best, and I needed the best. Within weeks of my working with Derek, my physique was undergoing changes that I?d never have expected. I couldn?t stop talking about how happy I was to be working with such a solid, genuine Team. I competed in my first show in 2 years at a LEAN 138lbs with 8 ? 10% bodyfat.

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