For me at the moment my body fat percent is just under 10%. I mean, I wanna get that down to about 3%, ready for show day and I’m really pleased, I’m really pleased, I put on some good muscle and the definition is coming through already. And I haven’t started dieting yet. The food that I eat and the way I prep it is purely functional. You need to know exactly how many calories you’re hitting in a day.
You need to know exactly how many calories are in each meal that you’re eating. I see my meal times as fuel times. My name is Rene and I’m a professional female bodybuilder. When I’m on stage, the judges will be looking to see that I have a total package, so they wanna see what your.
Presentation is like.
They wanna see what your condition is like. What your fat percentage is. And how thin is your skin, is your vascularity coming through? And is your body in proportion. So they’re looking for symmetry.
I was 32 when I started bodybuilding. A group of friends and myself went to support somebody that was competing at a show. When the heavyweight women lined up on stage, instantaneously I knew right then and there that that’s what I wanted to do. I went from somebody who was eight stone, that’s 36 kilos, to someone who’s now 89 kilos. Just on 14 stone.
In a day, I would consume about 4,500 calories. And that will slowly go up in the year, according to what gains I want to get, so it could possibly go up to about 5,000 calories a day.
And this is when I won the amateur world title. Because of this trophy I then was awarded my pro status which is a very revered thing in the bodybuilding world. I’ve managed to do really well in my bodybuilding career, but that’s just down to the consistent hard work.
Hard eating and sacrificing so much. At the moment, in my off season, I train at least six days a week. These are my friends Sam and Will, my training partners. When we’re training together, we’re not friends. We’re friends after training.
When we’re training, it’s very serious to a add a third love-hate relationship.
I hear Rene has a nickname? Yes, Captain Campbell. Why does everyone call her that? We just do as she says, basically.
When I do my, what I call my big cook, is food that I prep up that will give me enough food for two weeks. I’ll have five cabbages. Cabbage is a really good fibrous carb that you need to keep your system moving and everything flowing smoothly. Could I please have ten kilos of chicken? Chicken breasts?
Chicken breasts, yes. You want ten kilos? Ten kilos, yeah. All right. If you do it this way, the food’s really clean.
It’s nutritious. It’s exactly what you need in terms for your muscle building, muscle repair. And it’s quick and easy. I would go through five kilos of rice when I do this big cook.
Rice is a very good carbohydrate to have when you’re bodybuilding it’s a slow release carb and it’s what, what we call a clean food.
In a week, I’ll have a 150 eggs. I’ve got my meals at the freezer and I’m prepping them. For the day then I’ll add fresh eggs to each meal. I use the egg whites because they’re really, really good source of protein, really low in fat. Of course, I don’t use the egg yolk cuz that’s where all the cholesterol is and the fat.
How long have you been eating like this? I’ve been eating like this now for. Six years. This is the beginning of my seventh year. It does get boring.
But what you do is you see it more as fuel for your body, because I eat every three hours.
It really does need to be quite plain. You need to get the nutrients that you want for your body, for your muscle growth. Get it into the system as quickly and efficiently. As possible.
To prep enough meals for two weeks will pretty much take four to five hours, but if you think about it in the grand scheme of things, if you had to cook every day it’s gonna take you a lot longer. In my typical day I’d have a breakfast. Then three of these meals, a protein-type meal after training so it’s five, then I’ll have a sit down meal at night which I’ll prepare separately so it’s more exciting. And then a protein meal just before bed. There aren’t very many professional female bodybuilders in the U.
K. I think there’s at least three, possibly four that are still currently competing. For a female it’s, it’s such a hard sport for a female.
Even for men but, for a female is even harder, because of the nature of the. The body.
Yeah it’s it’s a lot harder for a female to pack muscle on because we have naturally occurring estrogen so, you gotta work even harder than most guys. The diet and training comes first before anything else. I believe Rene the best female bodybuilder in the U.K. She did work and she train really hard.
I’m really proud of her as a friend. My personal experience is that it has been, it has been really difficult to get to the top.
You have to be prepared to sacrifice a lot. I’ve sacrificed going away on holiday with family. I’ve sacrificed.
Celebrating my birthday. I mean, it’s been years and years in a row where I’ve not spent time with family over festive holidays, for the very reason that I’m dieting for a show. Not being in a relationship, that’s been a big sacrifice because I need to be, in a way, quite greedy with my time, quite selfish, and I need to dedicate any time that I do have. To the sport. So in each one of these bags I’ve got a 130 grams of rice and a 130 grams of chicken.
And the cabbage will be 50 grams. That will be frozen. In the morning when I prep my food, I will empty the bags into a blender.
Add water and blend to a consistency that you can drink it. It tastes like chicken soup gone a bit wrong.
But, you know, I’m so used to the taste. It is very bland and it can smell a little bit, but, it’s really good for you. You gotta ask yourself well why are you doing it? As I imagine myself on stage. I imagine the end result.
What is it that I want? I wanna build this physique that I can be proud of. I do get a lot of male attention. I have a huge fan base. I get a lot of mail all the time from male admirers and I’m in the street as well.
You get guys in the street whistling at you, or saying, wow, you know, you look absolutely great. You’ve got a great set of legs, or you know, a really great ass. So, you know, you do get comments like that, they’re random. I absolutely love coming to the supplement stores. Like a candy shop to me.
There’s just so much to choose from, you just wanna try everything. What your goals are will determine what products you take.
And for me personally, when I’m off-season, I would use something like the mass gainer, okay. Fantastic for putting on some good muscle mass. Then in my competition season, I would use something with less carbohydrate in.
So, just those small differences can make a huge impact on your physique. These are my morning tablets. These are my post workout tablets and these would be my bedtime tablets. That is a lot of tablets everyday but, all of these play a specific role.
And they’re taken at very specific times.
You put your body through a lot of stress when you train at the level that I’m training at, so these are just gonna ensure that you’re keeping yourself as healthy as you possibly can. Talking about the use of steroids in the sport of bodybuilding can be quite a tricky subject, it’s something that you’ll find most athletes won’t. Discuss too much in much detail. I think everyone knows that this sort of thing does go on in the sport. But not just the sport of bodybuilding.
It’s every sport. You hear of Tour de France cyclists, you hear of sprint runners, track runners this all does go on. Are you allowed to do steroids to a, a certain extent? The federations would like to say that we don’t. I’ll absolutely always keep my muscles.
I’ll do my best for as long as possible. I think with this sport what’s great is that I’ve seen some elderly people in their 60s, even in their 70s still training, still doing bodybuilding. I’ll be walking along with my Zimmer frame doing a few curls.
At the post office. But absolutely, I’ll always keep training.
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