Ten months of dedicated working out, counting every calorie, practicing poses and taking to fake tan has paid off for Southern River College PE teacher Caitlin Berry after she took home the 2022 Bikini Open bodybuilding title at the I Compete Natural national championships in Brisbane.
This result came off the back of taking home five medals at the ICN state championships in her first bodybuilding competition.
The Seville Grove resident started her journey in 2018, going to the gym while studying at university because, as she puts it, everyone else was going.
“I trained for three years going to the gym casually like a normal person, I guess I’m a bit abnormal now,” the 22-year-old said.
“I noticed I started to build muscle really well, I was a gymnast for 10 years so maybe it had something to do with that.
“A friend I did gymnastics with is a PT also noticed and offered to train me, so I started training five days a week.”
Another friend competed in a bodybuilding competition in 2021, and seeing her on stage, Caitlin thought she should have at least take a shot at competing.
“I thought maybe that was something I could do, and in November 2021 I contacted Nicole Tan, she’s an International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness [IFBB] Pro, asking her to train me online and she agreed, so I’ve been training since January 2022.”
The most important part of bodybuilding is arguably diet, and looking back on her experience, Caitlin said there were days the strict food intake definitely got to her.
“We started a bulk initially, lots of food and lots of working out until Nicole said I was ready to compete.
“It was a 22-week prep, my calories started off pretty high, I checked in with her every week and I’d have to weigh my food and track everything to hit the calories she was giving me.
“Each week they’d go down and down and down and my cardio would go up.
“I love pasta but I had to cut that out, and it was incredibly hard, there were days where I’d wake up and be weighing my food in tears, crying, wanting to eat something but I knew I had an end goal and I didn’t want to regret anything.
“The last two weeks, I was having egg whites, chicken and the tiniest bit of rice, spinach, pumpkin and sweet potato, my source of fats was an almond spread, and then oats. That’s it for two weeks.”
That calorie deficit paid off at the ICN WA competition, where Caitlin took home second place in the first -time division and the under 23 division, third in the rookie division and novice division, and third overall.
The job wasn’t over yet and with the National titles in Brisbane just one week away, Caitlin received feedback from the State judges that proved crucial to her success.
“I was going to Nationals for the experience more than anything, but I got feedback from the judges that said I needed to come in just a little bit more conditioned, cut some more fat off my legs.
“For the week before Nationals I was on 1200 calories a day, training five days a week with an hour of cardio on top of training.
“It was the hardest week of my life.”
The 1200 calories and the cardio paid off that week.
“I stepped on to stage peak perfect, I felt like I was someone else on stage, it felt like I was meant to be there, my posing was perfect and that’s a crucial part of it.
“You have to tense very muscle while breathing, while smiling, in high heels, with a ridiculous amount of fake tan on to highlight your muscle under the stage lights.”
Caitlin said her colleagues at Southern River were incredibly supportive, as were her friends, who did her a favour by not asking her out to dinner.
“Towards the end I didn’t talk, I had to save my energy for the classes and they knew that, they were so supportive.
“My friends stopped asking me to go out because they knew I couldn’t eat the food, and you know that’s nice, it doesn’t seem like it is but it definitely helps, you realise how much food is associated with socialising.”
Now a pro in ICN – meaning she can only compete in pro shows – Caitlin has plans to take on the IFBB in 20224.
“I’ll go into an off season, so basically I’ll be bulking up and when I compete again I’ll need to shred all that weight off, so I’m thinking maybe 2024 I’ll take on IFBB.”
