Are All Fitness Competitions Bad?

“I’m going to compete so that I can get my body back…but an even hotter one!” she says.

“I’m going to compete, but I’m going to do it in a healthy way because I have a super safe coach who says he always puts health first,” she says.

“I’m going to do a fitness competition but I’m only doing it because I want to prove to myself that I can!” she says.

“I’m going to compete but only this once. I was told that it was too tough for me to do it so I’m going to prove them wrong!” she says.

I’ve heard it all. Every motive. Every mission.

I’ve seen the most innocent of reasons for doing a fitness competitions completely transform by the end of the twelve weeks of preparation, workouts and dieting.

Yes, it might start as an admirable goal or as something that you simply want to be able to check off your bucket list. And while that’s all fine and dandy, it’s the nitty-gritty details of a fitness competition that are really troublesome.

Yes, it’s the before period that can be stressful but it’s also the during and after.

What happens when your innocent dream of doing something “just for fun” turns into a laser focused mission for perfectionism?

I know this feeling too well.

The question is WHY. Why do fitness competitions have the ability to turn the most social of creatures into hibernating, body-shaming, self-care neglecting beings that live and breathe solely for their body.

HOW does this happen?

It’s pretty simple actually.

You start to care.

You start to care that the other women you see training alongside you are getting leaner by the minute, while your “progress” seems to have stalled. You care that you’re putting in two hours at the gym every day, while your family is relaxing and spending enjoyable time together.

You care that while everybody else gets to eat the appetizers at the restaurant, you have to hold your breath and look away.

You care that you missed your birthday cake and had to eat chicken and broccoli out of a Tupperware in front of all your houseguests.

You want to believe that it was all worth it.

And who can blame you? Who wants to make sacrifices unnecessarily? Who wants to eat food they hate day after day and weigh themselves religiously?

When the competition comes to a close and you realize that you’re a mere week or so away from the show, panic starts to happen. You start shaming your body more than ever, and eat less than your ten your old.

You put on your competition swim suit every day just to make sure it “still” looks good, even after you had one too many bites of brown rice.

Once the actual show day roles around, what happens when the judges tell you that your body doesn’t compare to the others?

Do you still remember then that you were only doing it for fun? Do you still remember that this was just something to check off your bucket list?

Or, maybe, it’s a lot harder to remember this all of a sudden. Maybe all you can see is the body that’s viewed as less than by the rest of the world.

Well, you’re left with that but also a broken metabolism that will now take months of “reverse dieting” to build back up.

You may need to go to a body image bootcamp as well so that you can finally realize that there was nothing wrong with your body in the first place.

You’ll have to train your digestive system to metabolize foods that you haven’t had in a long time

You’ll have to train your mind to relax and know that it’s okay to not count calories or eat a meal plan anymore.

You’ll have to relearn what else you like to do besides lifting weights and eating clean.

You’ll have to begin again.

So are all fitness competitions bad? Well let’s take a closer look at three of the most common outcomes of a fitness competition…

1. You damage your metabolism and you don’t place satisfactory.

This is the most common outcome. You work so hard, you screw around with your perfectly functioning body and you realize the many sacrifices you had to make for the sake of your body image didn’t place you where you wanted to be. You may even be left with a huge list of fear foods, or in my case, a severe eating disorder known as orthorexia. So therefore in your mind, none of it was worth it (or healthy). In this instance, yes the fitness competition is a bad choice.

2. You damage your metabolism and you do place satisfactory.

Okay let’s say you enter a competition, train your butt off and get a gold star from the judges. Let’s say they prefer your body to all the other women and you win the show. Awesome! You walk off the stage with your trophy, go home and eat a feast, feel sick, and wake up the next day to realize that it’s over. The satisfaction was fleeting, and you are now left with a damaged metabolism, an infertile body, and you probably still have a negative body image even though your body was deemed “the best” by a panel of strangers. Self-worth comes from the heart, not from a judge. The worst part is then watching your “perfect” body change every day as you try to eat a more appropriate amount of calories for your body. You think it’s not normal to put on weight. You think you’re a failure for not sticking to your meal plan. In reality, you’re doing the healthiest thing you possibly can by eating more, but your brain can’t understand that. In this instance, yes the fitness competition is a bad choice.

3. You don’t damage your metabolism, but you damage your mind.

It doesn’t matter if you place well or not in this instance, the minute your mind is damaged and you’ve been brain-poisoned to believe that fitness means leanness than you’re going to have to do a lot of unlearning. Fitness competitions can really mess with one’s perception of their own body as well as the purpose of food. I know this because I suffered for years. I thought my size 0 frame was the only frame that I should ever come in. I thought that other people were allowed to be any size their body needed to be at in order to be healthy, but I couldn’t. I had to be a size 0 or I was a failure. I was (fill in the blank with any negative connotation that exists). I thought I could only eat lean meats, dark leafy greens and complex carbs six times a day or I would blow up like a balloon. I thought sugar was the devil and salt was his mistress. Hurting your body’s ability to metabolize food is a doozy, but hurting your self-perception and idea of nourishment is even worse. That takes time to build back up and reclaim. In this instance, yes the fitness competition is a bad choice.

Those were just 3 of the outcomes, but I have many more, including:

• Hurting relationships with spouses or family members

• Anxiety / panic attacks

• Loss of sleep

• Developing Irritable Bowel Syndrome

• Exercise Addiction

• Social media addiction (using social media as a means to share your abs and receive instant admiration)

• A loss of money (competitions are expense, yo)

• Feeling chained to a label (the clean eating gal, the six pack dude)

• Loss of friends

• Isolation

• Eating disorders

And so much more.

Most competitors accumulate some type of disordered relationship with food and their body after a fitness competition and this is why I don’t believe fitness competitions are healthy. Period.

I believe our bodies AND our minds are made for more than comparison. I think comparison is the very last thing we should ever focus on. And unfortunately, fitness/bodybuilding competitions are exactly that: a fight to see who has the “best” body.

So before you go down this very dark path…take a moment to see what you have now. Are you ready to gamble that?

Are all fitness competitions bad? The answer may surprise you. #fitnesscompetitions #health