Plant-based bodybuilder –> Plant-based figure competitor, to be exact!

Kalie’s experience:

• She went vegan, reduced her protein intake, and ate a moderately high carbohydrate diet and still kept her strength, muscle mass and lost fat

• She mentioned that compared to trying to diet in the past as an omnivore, she felt much better, had more energy, and basically no food cravings. She was surprised at how much the other competitors backstage were complaining about how badly they felt and all the foods they couldn’t wait to eat

• She didn’t feel any urge to binge after her contest and instead had a reasonable victory meal and went back to healthy eating. This very unusual for most bodybuilders, and her friends noticed!

So, there must be something to this whole plant-based thing!

Kalie started working with us back in April because as a vegetarian who wanted to prepare for a figure contest as a vegan for her 30th birthday (awesome goal right?!).

She started out eating a fairly low calorie diet, so we decided to go slow and easy to avoid any metabolic stall-outs as much as possible. The whole diet went smoothly with very few plateaus in progress, and she stepped on stage at the OCB Battle for Tidewater this past weekend in great shape, earning 2nd in Figure Debut, 4th in Novice and 3rd in Open beating out several from the solid lineup in each class!

Check out her transformation:

The part I’m most proud of though, is that Kalie worked her 🍑 off, stuck to the plan in the face of some serious work, health, and family obstacles and never once complained. During her nearly 5 months of prepping, she had several out of town work intensives, had a fairly serious shoulder injury, beat strep throat, celebrated her 30th birthday (!), and had her grandmother pass away the week before the competition – in fact, she flew to the contest city the night before her show directly from the funeral. If that’s not the heart of a champion, I don’t know what is. During all this turmoil, Kalie dropped nearly 25 lbs and over 10% body fat and nailed her posing on top of all the hard training and dieting, and now she’s already planning her next appearance on stage this weekend! It goes to show that there is never a perfect time to jump into a competition or anything else you want to do – you just have to do it and expect that life is going to throw you curve balls along the way, and that’s what makes me so proud of this prep in particular. Kalie is reppin’ plant-based bodybuilding like a champ already!