Hindsight is 20/20.
- Ciara Gonzales
- Nov 1, 2023
- 6 min read
Updated: Nov 14, 2023
The number one question I've gotten since finishing my show is "Are you going to do it again?".
If you had asked me a week post-show, the answer was more likely to be "yes" (which i'm told is normal).
But almost 5 months post, I can confidently say the effects I've had following don't make show day worth it to me.
Which is unfortunate because show day made prep worth it to me.
I'm definitely not saying everyone experiences side effects post show-- I can and will only speak for myself.
But maybe I can offer a perspective, and hopefully create an open dialogue, that I couldn't seem to find during the start of my shitstorm.
It's probably helpful to start from the beginning, so lessdoit.
Prep began in very early February of this year.
Show day was June 10th.
My workouts stayed the same for the duration of prep-- 4 days of lifting; 2 upper, 2 lower.
Cardio progressed from 5-7 days per week, 20-65 min.
***thank the good man upstairs that the 50-65 min range was only for the last 3 weeks or so cause sis hates cardio.
Although, these workouts and the amount of cardio was quite taxing on my body (in addition to the level of exhaustion I experienced), I wouldn't guess this played the biggest role in why things fell out of whack. My best guess would be the things I took that affected my hormones.
Let me preface this next part with I went into this show (especially because it was my first one) knowing it was my personal preference not to take any performance enhancements.
***No judgement to anyone that does. I can literally not care less about what other people do going into these shows.
Don't @ me, and if you get offended, keep it to yourself :) just being fully transparent about my experience.
anyways.
***we've arrived at the part which I wish I asked more questions.
My coach knew that I didn't want to take any enhancements, and he respected that. However, because of that, my body was holding onto a bit more inflammation than he preferred. Therefore, I was put on Estrogenix, which is an estrogen blocker.
Did I ask what effect(s) this could have on my body?
- you bet your sweet ass I did not.
Did I have blood work done prior to putting any kind of pill into my body to see if all my levels were even sitting normal?
- I. did. not.
Also important to note, was I advised to?
- No.
Something worth mentioning is I came off my birth control in May 2022 after 10 years. To my surprise, my cycle was completely normal right off the bat. And I mean NORMAL.
Every 28 days, ya girl was moody & bleedin'.
anyways.
I really didn't even think to question the potential effects of this until my body started responding funky.
stupid, yes. But also, this was foreign territory to me and I thought I would be led with full transparency.
As I mentioned, prep began in very early February. My starting body fat was probably around 21ish % and I was sitting at 134lbs.
My period started acting really weird after I started taking Estrogenix. I was spotting when I shouldn't have been and my time in between cycles went from 4 weeks to 3 weeks to 2 weeks. My period was completely gone by late March.
Mind you, by the time I lost it completely, I was maybe 18-19% body fat, and 128lbs...which is not typically a low enough composition for that to happen.
When I brought it up to my coach, he told me it was really weird that I was losing it already (because it is normal for many women to lose it during prep when they get to a low enough body fat percentage) and that the Estrogenix probably knocked it out.
This is when I got really uncomfortable.
But to be honest, at the time, my thought was "welp, at this point my period is already gone so I might as well stick with the plan I'm on and keep taking the pills".
So I did.
A few weeks before my show, my coach had me ditch the Estrogenix and start taking Eradicate, which is also an estrogen blocker, but a much stronger one when compared.
The hope was to get as much of the excess water out of my body as possible to give me that more "dry" look.
And it worked.
Sis. was. small&lean.
My stage weight was 114lbs and probably around 10-11% body fat.
So show day came and went and it was great.
I was instructed to simply stop taking the estrogen blockers following the day of my show.
- after talking to a handful of people about this strategy, the majority said I should have weaned off of them rather than cold turkey stopping. I felt absolutely crazy in my head for 2 weeks following show-day. My emotions were all over the place, and my mood was heavily up and down (*thank you to my amazing fiance for being the most stable shoulder ever). I think had I weaned off, my emotions would have leveled out with a smoother trajectory rather than crashing completely.
I began my reverse diet that was filled with lots of healthy omegas and began the wait for my period to return.
Lets get away from the period talk for a second.
The couple weeks following my show, I noticed a considerable amount more hair shedding in the shower.
This went on for almost 4 months.
The majority of the hair that was falling out was from the midline and crown of my head.
Now, let it be known, I've always had ALOT of thick hair so it took awhile before you could really tell. But eventually, you could. About 2 1/2 months into the excessive hair shedding, you could see way more surface area of my scalp all along the midline of my head.
Thus, my research began.
The only info I found that possibly pertained to me was that sudden, rapid hair loss could be caused by
a period of high stress to the mind and/or body
hormonal imbalances.
Although, prep was extremely stressful for both my mental and physical sanity, I knew that as long as I wasn't getting my period, my hormones were still out of whack.
And the longer my period took to come back, the more stressed I became.
See the cycle?
which brings me back around to period talk. (we're almost done, don't worry.)
Two months following my show, I went to my coach and told him my period had yet to return.
At this point, I had already gotten my blood work done and my progesterone and free testosterone came back low and out of the normal range. In other words, my hormones were taking a bit longer to level out back to normal.
He was under the impression he had given me whats called PREP and may have to put me on another round of it. PREP is an Estrogen detox supplement that helps restore hormonal balance and overall health in women.
However, I had never been put on it in the first place.
I began taking it that day and 2 weeks later, I got my period.
Fast forward to now, almost 5 months post-show, my hair shedding has finally slowed down and my period is completely normal.
But the effects of losing that much hair for 3-4 months doesn't just fix itself overnight.
It's about a year process for my scalp to completely fill back in and a couple years process for everything to be the same length again.
***Let me be clear, this isn't the part where I tell you my coach sucked and I can't believe he let this happen.
I should have been more proactive in asking questions and making sure I knew everything that I was putting into my body before I put it into my body.
Making sure I knew all of the possible side effects of said things and the correct way of coming off of them.
I should have double and triple checked that my rebound coming off of my show was exactly how it needed to be to ensure that my body didn't stay out of whack for too long.
My biggest lesson and my biggest advice from this experience is at the end of the day, don't blindly follow someone just because they've been in the industry for umteen years.
its your body.
ask questions to an annoying amount.
know the game plan backwards and forwards, from beginning to end (not finding out throughout the process-- even if its a rough estimate, know from the beginning).
and if you have questions, or ever just wanna chat, i'm all ears :)
stay tuned for my next post about remedies to encourage hair growth and products to use in the interim until you start seeing results :)
Comments