Why I Gained 25 Pounds After Winning a Bodybuilding Show

Nikkiey: My name is Nikkiey, and this is the story of how I went from hating how I looked in the mirror and wearing baggy clothes everywhere to building the body I used to dream about. I became a pro-level athlete, healed my relationship with food, and built a business that's helped over 18,000 women over 40 do the same.

Getting there wasn't easy. I made every mistake. I chased extremes. I rebounded and I crashed hard. But I learned what actually works, and by the end of this video, you'll know the biggest mistakes I made and exactly how you can get started building your dream body, regardless of your age. Let's get into it.

Let me take you back to where it all started. From an early age, I was always athletic. I played basketball and ran track in high school, and even though I did all of this, my body never showed it. No matter how hard I trained, I hid in baggy clothes. I hated mirrors. I hated wearing shorts. And every gym session ended in frustration. Worse, deep down, I felt like a failure. But I knew I had no other choice than to keep going, or else that failure feeling would only grow.

So between 2010 and 2014, I was doing the not-eat-anything diet until I hit my ideal weight. But here's the problem: I never could stick to any of it. I'd start strong, meal prep on Sunday, hit the gym on Monday, and then by Thursday I was skipping workouts and grabbing takeout. The cycle was always the same. Try hard, burn out, feel like a failure. And after years of that, I started to think maybe this was just my reality.

But then there was a turning point. Let me ask you something. Have you ever looked in the mirror and thought, I can't keep living like this? That was me on New Year's of 2015. I was sick of feeling invisible. Sick of feeling like I didn't belong in my own skin. I couldn't take one more year of this. So I made a promise to myself: this is the year I show up for myself and transform my body. No more starting diets I couldn't finish or covering up in every photo.

But the way I went about this was the biggest mistake I could have ever made, and it almost set me up to fail. After this promise, I showed up every day and signed up for a gym, and maybe it sounded like I was doing it right. But behind the scenes, I was just winging it. I followed Pinterest workouts, Googled high-protein meals, and ran on the treadmill for hours. I avoided the weight room like it was cursed. And at the time, sweets were my downfall. I would have a bag of Smarties like it was nothing.

I saw a little progress, but I wanted faster and better results. And this led me to the same situation as many of you watching. I felt more lost the harder I tried. It's not that I didn't try hard enough. It's that I had no roadmap.

But then, out of nowhere, something happened at the gym that completely flipped the way I saw myself. A gym manager came up to me and asked, "Are you training for a bikini competition?" I literally laughed, because at first I thought he was joking. I wasn't confident. I didn't even wear shorts because I hated the way my legs looked. But that one question planted a seed in my head. What if I actually could look like the women I admired? What if I stopped guessing and actually had a plan?

Just a few days later, I hired my first coach. This was the first time I stopped trying to do it alone. I went all in on my new vision. I wanted to compete in a bodybuilding competition for the first time ever. And I know that sounds crazy. The girl who wore baggy clothing and never showed her legs now wants to step on stage and compete, from one interaction with a gym manager? Yeah. I was determined to turn my body around.

The day before, I ordered a milkshake and a bunch of candy as a last sugar meal and never looked back. My coach had me quit sugar cold turkey. I prepped every meal. I trained like my life depended on it, all while in nursing school and caregiving for my grandmother. I followed a strict meal plan for the first time and finally saw how to fuel my body with structure. And for the first time in years, I wasn't just trying. I was building real momentum. I wasn't relying on motivation. I was following through.

But the momentum didn't mean it got easier. I had to be around environments that challenged my goals. Family dinners where people teased, "Oh, are you bringing your meals again?" I fought old habits every day. Sugar cravings, self-doubt, pressure from every angle. I questioned whether I was built for this. But I was lucky to have a good support system around me. I held myself accountable every time I thought about going off track, and I was progressing faster than ever.

And just like that, after months of hard work, it finally happened. Eight months after setting that goal for myself, I stepped on stage for my first competition. I was disgustingly lean. I was very nervous. I had never followed through on anything this big in my life. The moment my feet hit the stage, I felt an overwhelming sense of pride. I had finally kept a promise to myself. And not only that, I actually won the show and beat the professionals who were competing against me.

But shortly after this, I went on to learn the biggest lesson when it comes to transforming your body. Just like that, the crash came. Within one month, I gained 25 pounds. Why? Because I went from being on a restrictive meal plan, thinking that I had reached this goal with my body and my body would just stay like this forever, to eating the foods I had restricted myself from for so long, and eating too much of them. And I gained 25 pounds.

I was bloated and exhausted. I remember being on a 12-hour nursing clinical, walking on my feet for that long, and my shins feeling like they were going to split apart. I was mentally spiraling. I went from my proudest moment to feeling like I had completely lost control. I hit an emotional rock bottom. But it would become the most important low of my life.

From this point on, I understood the biggest misconception beginners have: progress towards your fitness goals isn't linear. So I got back up and planned to compete again. This is where I thought the only way I would be able to get to that body composition again was by going through the regimented routine of following a strict meal plan to compete again. I thought I had to eat the same meals every single day to achieve that goal. So I told my coach, "Let's go. I want to do it again. I want to get my body back in order." I hadn't yet learned how to incorporate the foods I wanted to enjoy regularly, on a daily basis, into this world.

But I was still determined to get my body back. So finally, in May of 2016, I stepped on stage for a second time, and I won again. I became a pro in a well-known natural federation, the OCB. More importantly, I started pushing myself again.

But there was still one problem. Even after winning two bodybuilding competitions and becoming a pro, I couldn't stay consistent. This inconsistency looked like me yo-yoing back and forth, because I was going from what I knew, which was following a restrictive meal plan, to also wanting to eat what I wanted to eat. So it was back and forth: crash, gain, restart. I felt trapped in this all-or-nothing mentality of having to follow a restrictive meal plan and not knowing what the world outside of it looked like. For the longest time, I heard about people eating, tracking and following their macros, but I didn't know yet what that meant. It was like I knew how to get results. I just didn't know how to live with them.

Despite the struggle, I managed to get back in shape for the stage again. I competed one last time in 2018, and I won for the third time, making me an undefeated champ. But in my mind, I still knew this lifestyle wasn't sustainable for me.

So I had a choice. Do I live with it and keep living my dream of being a bodybuilder? Or do I figure out how to make it more of a sustainable lifestyle? Honestly, the decision wasn't easy. I had built my identity around being the girl who competed. The one who was disciplined. All or nothing. Always pushing. But that came at a cost: missing out on life, constant food anxiety, always feeling like I was one slip away from losing it all.

But I made the decision that changed not only my life, but thousands of other women's lives too. I decided to build a more manageable lifestyle, which I've sustained from 2018 to now. Ever since I made that decision, I've had a deeper mission to help other women do the same. So I created WarriorBabe with one goal in mind: to help women over 40 escape the same struggles I had. Since 2018, I've helped over 18,000 women transform their lives too, because I was once in their shoes. Exhausted. Ashamed. Believing it's too late.

And not only that, but once you turn 40, your body starts working against you, making the transformation you want even harder. Your hormones shift. Your metabolism slows down. Your muscle mass naturally decreases. But even if you've failed before, this is the same roadmap I give to every single woman inside the WarriorBabe program to help them build and sustain their dream body without letting age hold them back.

And no, the goal isn't to lose weight and get as skinny as possible. Stick with me. It's to build lean muscle to help you get stronger, burn fat, and transform the way your body looks and feels.

Start with your true intake, what you're eating on a daily basis. Do not guess. Do not try to make it up. Do not try to be good. Just track seven full days of it. Hit one gram of protein per pound of body weight every day. Then increase your calories slowly, 50 to 100 calories a week, while lifting heavy weights. Don't skip tracking. Reverse dieting is a precision game. Measure your wins weekly: your mood, your energy, your strength. Not just the scale.

Like I said, this blueprint is proven to work, because it's helped people like Lisa lose 15 pounds in seven months and Ashley finally build her dream body. If you want to be the next WarriorBabe and get coached through the entire process, click the top link in the description. Thanks for watching. I appreciate your time, and I'll see you in the next video.