Prep stories — 13 weeks of prep

13 weeks of prep and I managed to have a cheat week, spontaneously change the meals every day because I was homeless and couldn’t stick to a routine and still got in shape for my debut in bikini fitness at NPC Sweden April 2023.

I’m one of these people that get dedicated when I really care about something. I have done keto and other cutting phases though the years, they have been easy because I don’t get cravings when I’m dedicated. You can push a pizza up against my nose and I won’t touch it.

So, when I decided to start prepping it wasn’t a hard decision.
It’s a priority, to put your physique in front of calories for a couple of weeks. Those calories will still be there in 13 weeks.

I was in good shape already before the prep, I had done “bulking” for a couple of months, why I say it with quotation marks is because I was mostly slightly above maintenance calories and ate too much of the wrong nutrition, so I didn’t bulk up really. just fluffed up.

So to get rid of the fluff… All I had to do was cut down about 4-5kgs (so I thought).

My maintenance was at 2500 calories -ish in the beginning.
I put myself on a 700 ish deficit, landing on 1800 calories per day.
The meals was:

Meal 1: Oats with protein powder & water
Meal 2: Overcooked rice, boiled chicken in light mayonnaise, piri piri & spices with broccoli.
Protein shake after workout
Meal 3: Overcooked rice, boiled chicken in light mayonnaise, piri piri & spices with broccoli.
Meal 4: Yoghurt, protein powder & banana

I trained heavy weight 6 days per week, did 30 minutes cardio (climbing stairs or walking on treadmill) 3 times per week.

I kept that for about 3 weeks before I implemented refeed

So the new plan was same amount of calories because I didn’t need to cut calories too low so I could keep energy for workouts.

Calories on Mondays - Fridays: 1657
Calories Friday: 2157,5
Calories Saturday: 2157,5

You see the weekly amount ends up the same, but increasing the amount of calories two days in the form of carbs boosts metabolism.

The meals I ate was almost the same

Meal 1: Oats with protein powder and water
Meal 2: Rice, chicken & light mayonnaise sauce
Protein shake after workout
Meal 3: Rice, chicken & light mayonnaise sauce
Meal 4: Rice, yoghurt, cucumber & tuna

Fridays & Saturday’s: I ate the same, but added a big bowl of fruit salad that I ate over the two days. Because I love fruits.

Even brought my boxes to restaurants at times because that’s dedication. 👌🏾

My parents came to visit when I was 9 weeks out..

Parents visiting isn’t something that happens every month or so, so I though I’d have a bit of a “cheat week” 😅

It’s not really a cheat if you’ve planned it tho… what I did was I still made my lunch boxes and ate as planned most of the time so I brought my boxes mostly. But, my parents wanted to go out on a roadtrip to Ronda, and I thought it was a perfect time to eat restaurant food because that’s just a lovely experience that I don’t want to miss, also finally time to eat something different aha!

I had a steak, with vegetables (oh my gosh it tasted better than ever to eat red meat) and I even ate the bread. I love break ok.

We didn’t eat out that much, because I made us dinner twice.

My parents have made me delicious food over the years and I felt like I wanted to do something nice for them, in food. Also, it was my moms birthday. So one time I made mini tacos with seafood, and another time Spanish tapas.

They know I love Swedish chocolates called dumle so obviously they has some with them..and no I couldn’t resist, but I only had 2 or three per day because in the end that’s not waaaay too many calories, there’s 38 calories in one of them.

I knew we were gonna walk up the mountain La Concha so in the end, I thought the extra calories would be burned of in that moment anyway so I didn’t stress too much, but kept it kinda low. I put in most of it in myFitnessPal, just so I had an idea and wouldn’t go crazy munchin on chocolates and other things.

Things I ate while walking up the mountain: Ate oats in the morning. Had a lunch box before going up. I brought 3 litres of water, bacause most important. Then I got some protein bar from the food store, because I needed to keep refilling protein every 3 hours.

The mountain walk was pretty hard on the way up, we had to almost climb a few times. We did the walk on my moms birthday, so in the evening I cooked Spanish tapas. I cooked it all by myself so that must’ve burned off a few calories as well hahah.

I thought I’d just compensate with a bit of extra cardio the weeks after that…BUT.

Me and my friends got scammed and ended up HOMELESS. 7 weeks out.

This is where I had to switch up the nutrition completely, because good luck sticking to a plan when you don’t even have a home.

Luckily, we could stay at some friends place just to have a bed and roof over our heads, they lived up in Al Haurin Grande that’s 45 minutes away from civilisation. So I could not go to gym , I got high fever and was sick for a few days so sticking to a plan and making big batches of boxed up food was just not gonna work.

Rice cakes, tuna, chicken, rice, light mayonnaise, piri piri, cucumber, oats, potatoes

This is also when I decided that carb cycling was a good idea..
How I did it:

Monday MODERATE carbs 80g
Tuesday HIGH carbs 250g
Wednesday LOW carbs 20g
Thursday MODERATE carbs 80g
Friday MODERATE carbs 80g
Saturday HIGH carbs 250g
Sunday LOW carbs 20g

A little bit of luck in the bad luck..

My friend Peet lived not far away from us and he built a gym at his house. So I trined there twice, before I got sick and couldn’t do anything at all besides from laying in bed and die. I was sick for about 3 days. Peet took mw to Iron gym in Al Haurin Grande when I felt a little bit better and could smash a good glute session.

We stayed at Al Haurin G for a few days until we had to move again. I friend of a friend let me stay in a room in Cancelada, which is closer to Marbella but still too far away to go gym every day, We went to some small gym called Buddah gym, better than nothing. I started getting really lean at this point so I wan’t stressed about the situation or anything really.

Still eating whatever I could doing carb cycling.

But then, I found a room right next to the gym!

So, once I moved all my stuff there guess what I did. I went to the gym, that was about 100 meters away I could see it from my window.
I had so much to compensate for so I did 3 gym sessions per day.

Morning 30 minutes cardio; Incline treadmill or stair master
Afternoon weight session
Evening 30 minutes cardio again

I did this for about 10 days, before I had to move again — because the owner didn’t like me, and I didn’t like him either — the room was kinda bad anyway and I lived with 5 other people in the house, I lived in share house earlier also, but 6 people is too much.

I found a room on facebook and moved in, 2 weeks out from my show.

This room was 30 minutes walk away from the gym — I don’t have a car or bike or anything — so the 30 minutes walk to and from the gym. counted as cardio and all I did at the gym was weights, still doing 6 days per week. But I had to ramp up the posing practice.. because the muscles aren’t gonna get any bigger during extreme deficit anyway so training isn’t as important and the calories did do well. Posing on the other hand, is important for stage presence and I did not have time to practice that a lot during all the moving.

Bikini picture was taken the day before I flew out to Sweden a few days before the comp

Dropped from 65kg to 55kg in the end, with cab depletion and loading in the peak week.