Bodybuilding is a process of building. You’re building yourself, your mindset, your goals, and your life. It’s a very dialed-in process. It has made me feel powerful; it has given me agency. I don’t need to fully change myself or get a boob job to succeed as a swim model, which is what my agent once suggested. Tiny adjustments can make a world of difference. 

Bodybuilding is deeply uncomfortable. I love pushing myself to my limits. The more you can challenge yourself, the more you are going to grow—not only as an athlete, but as a human. Comfort is the enemy of progress. 

Before a competition, we go into a training cycle that we call prep. It’s when you’re pushing your body to the extreme, and you’re pushing mind and your soul, too. We lift heavy for conditioning and to get the gains required to compete, and then in the weeks prior to competing, we go into a calorie deficit phase to get “stage lean”, which exposes our muscles. It’s a short-term state of physicality and it’s not healthy to be like this year-round. I think for women in particular, it’s meaningful to know that calorie deficits should not be maintained. Especially when the narrative has always been towards being so small. 

I use the stairmaster a lot for my cardio. I call it exposure therapy. At first, it’s brutal and it’s a real mental challenge. There are times during my first prep where I’d be sobbing! The longest stint I have done is 70 minutes. Now, it flies by. That’s growth! I also find it’s a good time to catch up on emails or listen to a podcast or scroll TikTok. 

Going into prep comes with mental challenges, as well as physical. I had a moment before I started training again, where I was like, ‘dang, I don’t know if I could pull it off again’. It takes so much out of you to commit and show up every day, no matter what. There are no days off. 

But then I remembered I did it two other times before, so I know that I can do it. And I thought to myself, what if I can push it a little further this time? Bodybuilding is so cool as a sport because each time, you’re asking yourself, ‘how can I show up better?’ You’re always trying to beat the package you previously brought to the stage. Across every other aspect of my life, I am now always thinking, ‘how can I be better?’ 

It hasn’t been entirely easy. After I won the first time, I had a bit of an identity crisis. I lost myself a little bit. For my next competition, I was on stage but I just didn’t feel like myself; I wound up over-compensating with my front pose. Maybe I was performing from a place of fearing rejection, or something. I came in second place. It was a blow to lose, but I think everything happens for a reason. Growth often comes from the moments that don’t go your way. Winners lose far more than they succeed, but they keep showing up and trusting the process. 

Modeling often made me focus on external validation—it could feel superficial at times because I was being evaluated solely on how I looked. Bodybuilding has taught me to focus on personal growth. 

It has changed the way I see myself in ways that go far beyond physique. It has taught me that my worth isn’t tied to a placing, a title, or a look; it’s also taught me resilience, discipline, humility, and grace. I have learned how to take feedback, stay coachable, trust the process, and continue growing through both the highs and the lows. Some of my closest friendships and mentors have come from this space. My physical transformation is obvious, but the mental growth has been far more impactful. More than anything, bodybuilding has taught me that growth isn’t always linear. 

Bodybuilding has challenged me mentally, physically, and emotionally, and it’s helped me develop a much stronger sense of who I am. The person I’ve become through the process is what I’m most grateful for.

As a young woman in this new sport, I want to be a role model. I want to show people that it's possible to build a body that is healthy and happy. I want to show other young women that muscle can be feminine. That we don’t have to be so small to be accepted."