By Rebecca Drew
MEET the super fit woman who shed almost two-and-a-half-stone in just four-months in preparation for her first bikini bodybuilding competition.
Fitness trainer, Julia Gense (22) from Dusseldorf, Germany, had always been into her fitness and used to dance hip hop five times a week in her teens and allowed herself to eat whatever she wanted. At 19, Julia decided to get into bodybuilding and has since transformed her body, going from 13st 5lbs to 11st and from a size large to small.
Thanks to her new muscular physique, Julia is more self-confident, has started modelling and gets positive feedback on her look wherever she goes.
“Before I started fitness, I did a lot of sport but just for fun. But for me it was not enough, so I started to get into fitness to get stronger and more healthy,” said Julia.
“I was slightly overweight and didn’t feel one hundred percent comfortable in my own body.
“Now I am very self-confident and that helps me in all areas of my life.
“Other people are motivated by my weight change and shopping now makes me happy.
“I get only positive feedback and a lot of questions about how I reached this transformation and if I can give them some tips or advice.”
In preparation for her bodybuilding competitions, Russian-born Julia trained seven times a week and kept to a strict diet plan. She now eats 2,500 calories a day and strength trains four times a week and does cardio exercise like boxing, jogging, swimming and trampolining on top of this.
She described what she found the most difficult about her competition preparation and shared her words of advice to others wanting to achieve the same results.
“The last two weeks before my competition were very hard for me. I ate low carb, drunk a lot of water and had to train hard, every morning I did thirty to forty-five minutes of cardio as well as strength training,” she explained.
“At this time it was very hard to concentrate on my work and other things I had to do beside my training.
“For people wanting to achieve the same results, they have to analyse his or her lifestyle.
“They have to think about their eating behaviour and their physical activity.
“Maybe at first it can be difficult but if you start to see the first results it starts to become fun.
“It is important to change your lifestyle on a long-term, otherwise you lose your progress fast.”
For more information see www.instagram.com/julka.gen
