Post show - I need help.

[jigglyjoe]

Did my first competition this year at 17 years old (September 24th) and since finishing, up to this point, have pretty much eaten whatever I want and haven't been able to stick to a diet for longer than 5 days. For my competition prep I dieted from March - September.

Now there's a background, I'd like to say I don't care but it honestly ****ing sucks and eats away at me everyday, I had so much control and rigidity all throughout my prep and now it's all gone. My lowest weight was 137.4lbs compared to present day where I sit at 170lbs (32lbs in just over a month). I need to bulk to progress and do better for my next show (whenever that may be) but I just feel as though I've gained too much fat already and it's ****ing with my head. Post show is the hardest part of prep and no one told me how hard it really would be.

I'd like to say im now "skinny fat" but let's be real I've just got fat, from chiselled abs, leg separation, veins allover my chest and shoulders, to looking like a ****ing bean bag. I'm unsure as to what I should do. Part of me wants to just stick with +200 cals maintenance and try to effectively bulk, but the other part thinks I should go back into a strict deficit and pull as much fat off as possible. (For reference, the lowest my cals got during prep was around 1400 at 2 weeks out).

Any advice I would genuinely appreciate, no matter how harsh it might be.

[smokinal]

First and most important=You need to realize and remember that you can't stay in contest shape all year long!! Those fitness models we see on TicTok etc...train for months for that photo shoot, just like you did for your show. If you don't consider this, you'll end up with a disorder bro. You did what we all do after our first and second show...eat whatever the fuk we want, and as much of it as we want. We starve ourselves for so long, it's very difficult not to.

But, there's good news to all this...and that is that you know how to get there again! You did it once, you have the knowledge to do it again.
Stop beating yourself up, eat at maint for a while and accept yourself for the awesome person that you are...very few can get into show condition. If it were easy, many more would do it. You accomplished something very few can accomplish.

Then, when you're ready, go on another cut, just like your show prep cut, and get back to where you want to be.

In the future, if you do another show or just diet down for summer, remember a couple things:
Turn the corner very slowly! Meaning, don't just stop the cut and go into a surplus. You've got to "reverse diet" extrememly carefully so this doesn't happen again. When you stop your cut, just go to maint for about 2 weeks. Just doing that is going to put 3-4 lbs on you in water. As you found out, it's extremely easy to add weight very quickly after a long cut. You need to reverse diet carefully and correctly so this doesn't happen again.

And speaking of long cuts, it's not good to go on an extended deficit for that long without a coule of refeeds; did you do any refeeds during your cut?

But again, don't beat yourself up about this man. You're so young, you can correct this in a wink in time.