Should You Do a Fitness Competition?

I’m all too familiar with the creeping desire to take the “next step” in your fitness journey. What’s it going to be? A triathlon? A marathon? A power-lifting meet?

“No, I know! A bodybuilding competition!”

While having goals are great, this simple quest to continue improving your health status can quickly turn around your entire life for both the short and long-term.

If you’re one of the people that have wishfully explored the idea of committing yourself to a strict diet, a non-negotiable workout routine, and a hope for a “better” body I want to very clearly highlight some of the points you may not understand yet. It’s important you understand what’s required to do a fitness show, and what you will inevitably begin to do throughout the preparation of the show as you start to consume your body and mind with this dream. Here are 5 must-knows about doing a fitness competition.

1. The “before” is hard, the “after” is harder.

As you may have already assumed, getting a stage-ready body isn’t a walk in the park. It takes a strict lifestyle in every single avenue. Your entire life becomes about food and exercise. You have to weigh and measure every bite that enters your mouth, continuously monitor your macros and calories, and partake in more cardio and weight lifting than you most likely ever have before. Yes, this is all tough and all, but it doesn’t even come close to what happens after the show.

Have you ever thought about what happens to competitors after they go home from a show like this? Some (very rare) people take a little time off from the gym, and slowly increase their calories back to an adequate intake amount, but most competitors, physiologically speaking, cannot do this so smoothly. Generally, there is a high amount of weight gain that happens immediately after the competition due to the amount of food the competitor is finally eating again.

Think about it: your body has been starved for the last 12 weeks. Of course it’s going to store every single calorie it gets a hold of! The unfortunate thing is that it’s…well, every calorie. Most competitors gain all the weight they lost back within two weeks post-show but it doesn’t feel so pleasant. Ankles begin to swell, the tummy starts to expand, headaches ensue, and lethargy becomes the new normal.

2. You have to be unhealthily lean.

For a fitness competition, you don’t just “lose” some body fat. You lose a lot of body fat. You can do a competition without going to the extremes, but you’re not going to win. If you want to win or rank high, you’re going to have to push your body to lose an abnormal and unhealthy amount of fat.

Let’s be clear: fat is necessary for many human functions. We need fat on our bodies! Women especially have to get particularly lean to do a bodybuilding show if they want to place well, which is dangerous for so many reasons. Sure, you may get a six-pack and have some new bragging rights, but your body will be unhealthier than it ever was before you lost those extra fifteen pounds off your frame.

3. Healthy could adopt an entirely new meaning.

To eat like a competitor, you’re going to have to think like a competitor. Right now, you may believe healthy means a balanced diet of macronutrients, with plenty of meat, vegetables, fruits, seeds, nuts, and water. But that gloriously simplistic view on food changes as a competitor; you will begin to analyze every single meal from the calories, to the grams of carbohydrates, fats and proteins, to the sodium, sugar, vitamins, and beyond.

Healthy may begin to only mean no-sodium, dressing-free salads with three tomatoes and four ounces of chicken breast. Healthy may begin to mean a gallon or more water per day, and anything short of that is unhealthy. Healthy may begin to mean a high protein, low fat and low carbohydrate diet.

A competition will really mess with your perception on health.

4. You may develop orthorexia.

Speaking of changing your definition of health, another very important key point to know is that you may actually begin to obsess over eating a competition-like diet. It’s also a possibility that you could develop orthorexia, a medical condition where one obsesses over what one considers “healthy” eating.

For example, most competitors eat every three hours with a protein source at every meal believing that this is the way to keep your metabolism rocking and rolling. But what happens when you have to go to a wedding? Are you going to pack your meal in a Tupperware in your purse?

Yes, actually, most competitors become so obsessed with their meal timing and food sources, that packing their food in a bag becomes the new normal.

What’s scarier is that the competitor may begin to see food that’s not competition-safe eating as bad. They may develop a fear towards anything that’s not “clean” eating or low calorie, and this takes a lot of time to mentally unlearn.

5. Your body image may get worse, not better.

One common misconception people have when they sign up for a fitness competition is that they are finally going to love their body. They think that if they could just look like the models on the magazine covers, they would love their body, have the relationship of their dreams, wear clothes they like, have the perfect job and all would be right in the world.

But what really happens is that your body image becomes misconstrued and you begin to push yourself to look leaner, and leaner and leaner. Once upon a time you may have thought losing five pounds would bring you a better body image, but when that happened, you quickly changed the standard for a better body image to ten pounds; and then after that it became fifteen pounds, and so on. It’s never enough!

Confidence does not inherently come with weight loss after a particular point. A perfectly health woman at 135 pounds does not gain any more confidence finding herself at 115 pounds, contrary to what she may believe.

The desire to get leaner and leaner is contagious in the bodybuilding industry. Not many competitors are truly satisfied with their body because the incessant desire to go just a little further is consistently nagging.

Find yourself at peace right now and you’ll learn something that most all body image perfectionists never will: how to enjoy your body…no matter your size.

Thinking about doing a fitness competition? You might want to read this first. #bodyimage