At Recomp Medical we hear from so many women whose health and wellbeing has been destroyed by figure competition preparation based on ‘fitness‘ advice taken to the extreme! Chronic fatigue, unstoppable fat weight gain, water retention, no libido, mood swings etc etc. Hormonal imbalances and insufficiencies arent the problem; they are just another symptom.
Unfortunately there is no quick-fix to damage done by months of multifaceted self-abuse. Correcting the hormone imbalances is a case of trying to hit moving target. Even worse, because the person has so chronically overtrained on fundamental ‘fitness’ exercise, almost any exercise contributes to maintaining the overtraining syndrome. The options are to rest completely, at the expense of basic ‘fitness’ and well-being; or continue exercising, at the expense of ‘fitness’ and well-being! Its lose-lose.
The issue is, Fitness exercise and diet is meant for fixing unfit people; not turning fit people into athletes! Its exactly the same as how anti-biotics are meant to make sick people well; you don’t take 20x more anti-biotics when you are well and expect to become AWESOME! In fact, taking 20x too much anti-biotic will make you sick! Similarly, when you mega-dose on “fitness” therapy, you don’t become an athlete; you get sick! And that is exactly what is happening to so many girls doing Figure comps!
Figure competition is NOT an extension of ‘fitness’ mediocrity. It is the domain of athletes. As I keep harping on: ‘Fitness‘ is only for unfit people. Athletes need sport-specific Coaches and Nutritionists; in this case, Recomp Coaches. Athletes need sport nutrition. Athletes benefit from carbohydrates. Athletes train for high performance. Athletes rest from training. None of these things feature in the ignorant advice of Personal Trainers who aren’t qualified to comment on anything related to athlete development.
So if you get a Personal Trainer to help you get ready for a Figure competition and they plan for you to chronically overtrain on mindless aerobics plus weights daily, malnourish you on nothing but chicken and brocolli, recommend you abuse stimulants, and keep doing this for months on end, then you should expect your body to get very broken for a very long time and have no remedies to fix it.
It is deeply upsetting to see so many girls, making themselves so very, very sick for a sport that, quite frankly, has no consistent or objective judging criteria, and so many federations and classes to compete in that winning doesn’t really mean anything. If you don’t want to get horribly sick and uncontrollably fat for many years (or forever), choose a smarter approach or choose a smarter sport! Unfortunately you don’t have many options once the damage is done!
