02/06/2026
“The photo says success. My hormones told a different story.”
This was 3 hours in the gym every single day. Every meal weighed, every macro tracked. Months of prep, stepping on stage, then doing it all over again. And I’m proud of it — genuinely. The discipline and dedication it took was something else and I loved what I achieved.
But nobody talks about what it actually costs you.
I lost my period for months. And that’s not just an inconvenience — that’s your body shutting down non-essential functions because it’s in survival mode. No ovulation means tanked oestrogen and progesterone. And the consequences of that don’t just disappear when prep ends. Your bones, your mood, your hormonal health — it follows you.
The relationship with food breaks in ways that are hard to explain unless you’ve been there. When every meal is a calculation, when eating something off plan feels like you’ve failed, when you’re genuinely scared of foods that are just food — that’s disordered eating. It might not look dramatic from the outside but it rewires how you think and feel around food, and for some women that takes years to unpick.
And then there’s something nobody warned me about. Extreme dieting strips fat from everywhere — including your face. I had a doctor look at me and tell me unprompted that they could see I’d done extreme dieting. It’s written in your facial tissue. Reversing that takes fillers, treatments, time and money. It’s not cheap.
I don’t regret my competing years. They shaped me and they’re a huge part of why I coach the way I do now. But I work with women every single day who are still chasing this look, or quietly recovering from the years they spent trying to. And they deserve the full picture before they decide what they’re actually chasing.
Real strength doesn’t punish your body to get there. 🖤