I took these photos yesterday, would you believe me if I said this is the heaviest I’ve ever been? I’ve never been overweight, always been underweight and skipping meals as a teenager.

You might think, “oh she’s lucky”, but in my perspective not so much. It’s hard to grow.
I had one good attempt att bulking up last winter before I decided to step up on stage for the first time and start my career as bodybuilding athlete. I gained some size and I think my heaviest was 65 kilos before I started stripping off in prep.

The problem was that I wasn’t as invested in nutrition planning for performance and hypertrophy then as I am now, so the bulk was like any other person would have done it; eat whatever whenever and just focus on adequate protein. Eating more + training harder will result in some growth, but also a fair amount of fat because that’s the only way to store all that extra the body doesn’t need. This isn’t bodybuilding.

Bodybuilding is about understanding biomechanics, nutrition and metabolism, then apply the knowledge for results.

Getting lean for the competition was easy, fat loss is simple especially when you’re already training on an athlete level.
Eat less + increase protein + cardio = fat loss & muscle maintenance
Having a fast metabolism due to adaptations during teenage years was a bonus.

My stage weight ended up at 55 kilos, most of that weight was stripped of fram waist, back and upper body as I had some fat left on my legs the day of the competition.

Bikini fitness isn’t about seeing muscle striations, in fact you get marked down if the judges can see your ribs, you’re meant to look conditioned but soft. Judges look for proportion, hip to shoulder ratio, thin waist, rounded glutes and so on.

I knew this was not going to be the last time I step up on stage and as it was my first time, I got some insight as to what needed improvement. Shoulders need work, they’re definitely my weak spot. Glutes got a bit lost in transition, I had good tapers until about 8 weeks out, I had some on stage but could definitely do with some more. Quads, legs overall.. I want to be bigger ok.

I told myself to do a reverse diet after competition, because I know my gut is sensitive to a lot as well. Reverse diet helps your digestive system get used to the increased amount of food, carbs and fat as it’s all adapted to starvation mode pretty much, to keep this article focused on bulk I’ll do reverse diet in a separate post. I never made a plan for the reverse, so it never happened, because I need a plan to be strict or dedicated and I think I’m not the only one like this.

So I gained a lot of that weight back quickly, and the comp was in spring so I had all summer ahead of me thinking I’d be really shredded then go on a lean bulk in winter and stay shredded. I had to deal with a lot of stress during summer, so I went in between restricting to eating uncontrolled due to emotions which messed up my metabolism and digestive system to max.

Constantly bloated.
Bloated for eating just about anything.
Restricting even more because of the bloating.

I did get everything under control for a while after I took control of everything towards autumn. I started getting shredded, started losing some fat and growing muscle, but I had hunger and constantly cravings. There was a lot of food and things I’ve been telling myself I can eat whenever I’ve got back in shape again.

The shape never happened, but I decided to move back to Sweden. Having a slow metabolism and life being a total mess I decided to give the restriction a total break for once. I allowed myself to eat anything I wanted to feed all my cravings.