Can Restrictive Dieting and Overtraining Hurt Your Body?

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I get myself on the Stairmaster, and I have an hour-long session that I have to do. And I am exhausted. Exhausted. And so there's 10 minutes left of this session, and all of a sudden, there was the worst pain that I have ever experienced in my life shooting in my abdomen.

What's up, you guys? Welcome to The WarriorBabe Show with Nikkiey Stott, co-founder of WarriorBabe. On this podcast, we talk about mindset, methodologies, and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident. I am your host, Nikkiey Stott, and welcome to episode number 70, where I am going to share with you how I was hospitalized for restrictive dieting and overtraining.

I just recently shared this story on my Instagram page with a before and after photo attached to the post. That before photo was taken just a couple of days before I landed myself in the hospital for restrictive dieting and overtraining. And the after photo is today, 2023. It was so crazy to look back at that before photo and then to where I am now, and to think about that state of mind and what I was doing and why I was doing it at that time.

So that's what I'm going to elaborate on a little bit, because even though my story was from my competition days, when I was in bodybuilding, I'm sure it will resonate with some of you. I know because I've gotten over a hundred comments on that post on Instagram about how it did resonate. Regardless of bodybuilding or not, there are women out there, maybe it's you, who go to extremes, who push themselves in ways that are just not healthy, who overtrain, restrictive diet, all of the things. And that's essentially what bodybuilding is in this sense. Looking at it five years later, it's wild to think about that whole journey that people go on.

From my perspective, and this is my opinion, I think bodybuilding is so stupid. I do. I think there are some amazing disciplinary things that you learn from it, and there's some reward, obviously, from that journey that you go through. But fitness in general is a way that you can learn so many disciplinary things and form such good habits without needing to go to extremes like bodybuilding does. And all for standing on stage for 20 minutes.

What I mean by extremes is the people who go 100% all in with bodybuilding and that sport and do the things to a T, which is exactly what I did. That's an extreme, to get the type of result that you need to step on stage and win. Mind you guys, I was undefeated in my time. I went three shows undefeated and then won the pros. It was an extreme era of my life. And I am thankful for it. But at the same time, I think it's so stupid to step on stage for 20 minutes max, yet you put your body through all of this hell for six months on end. Okay. And that's what I want to talk about today.

So in that photo, if you guys do go look at my Instagram, you will see that the before photo was a few days before I was hospitalized. And like I mentioned, with competition, man, I was training hard. I was doing a super restrictive diet combined with up to three workouts a day. And let me tell you guys, it was working. It was working. I was lean. I was tapped in. I was strong. But you guys, man, I suffered so hard for it.

The way I suffered was not just the hospitalization, which I'm going to talk about in a second. It was the fact of getting up for, I said six months. You start prep pretty early, at least I did, to get ready and be dialed in. But it was from around the eight to the 16 week mark where I went too far.

I remember waking up in the morning and it was like 4:35 in the morning. I'm half asleep putting my clothes on. One eye full of sleepies, the other one half open, trying to make sure I don't fall over something in my apartment at the time. I grab my gym bag, grab my keys, and literally drag my feet down the hallway, get in the elevator, drag my feet to my car, drive to the gym half asleep, walk in the gym, and drag my feet to the Stairmaster.

This is one day specifically, the day all this happened, when I ended up in the hospital. But I did that. I did those cardio sessions, and I'm going to elaborate a little more on exactly what it looked like. I did that every day for upwards of eight to 16 weeks. Okay.

And so this day, I get myself on the Stairmaster and I have an hour-long session that I have to do. And I am exhausted, exhausted. There's 10 minutes left of the session, and all of a sudden there was the worst pain that I've ever experienced in my life, shooting in my abdomen. And you know what ran through my head? No joke. You know what the craziest thing is in this moment? I was doubled over on the Stairmaster in this pain, and I'm like, I have 10 more minutes left. I need to finish these 10 minutes. Yet I'm in the worst pain of my life. Doubled over. And I'm going step after step after step trying to get through it. Looking back, that was so fucking stupid.

I didn't last the 10 minutes, because that pain was so excruciating that I ran to the bathroom. I am in the stall of the bathroom, and I am fighting between passing out and staying conscious, passing out and staying conscious. Because I have a nursing background, I'm like, okay, let me put my head below my heart, because maybe my brain just needs oxygen. I don't know. I remember this so vividly, you guys. I'm going back and forth, and then in that state of being back and forth, I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to get sick. And there's nothing. It's five o'clock in the morning. I'm fasted. There's nothing in my stomach right now. I have nothing to throw up. And so I'm just sitting in the stall on the toilet, doubled over in pain.

This one day, all of the things I had done in the previous weeks and months had suddenly compounded on themselves, and it became way too much. And before I knew it, man, this is where I was. Trying to breathe through the worst pain that I've ever felt in my entire life. I was exhausted. I was burnt out. I was entirely malnourished. And my body had finally said enough.

At this point, I somewhat managed to gather myself and I walked out of the bathroom. A friend at the time was like, are you okay? And I probably said, yeah, I'm fine. That's so me. But actually, I vaguely remember saying, we need to go to the hospital. Something's wrong. We need to go to the hospital. This is where my body said it was enough.

So we rushed to the hospital. I remember grabbing the car door handle and just sitting hunched over in my seat, doubled over in pain. I literally felt like my stomach was going to split open.

And this was the wild part. After they ran a bunch of tests, we discovered that it wasn't appendicitis, which I thought it would be. It wasn't some ridiculous food poisoning that I was being a baby about. It wasn't any conventional cause of why I would have blistering abdominal pain. It was way, way, way simpler than that, which is just so crazy to think about.

Once I discovered the reason, I kept asking myself, why didn't this happen sooner? Why didn't this happen a couple of weeks ago or a couple of months ago? I had been in the extreme this entire time. I knew at this point it had compounded over time, and I was entirely exhausted.

Let me paint the picture of what my workout routine and my nutrition looked like. At this time I was doing two cardio sessions a day. Okay. So 60 minutes in the morning, 60 minutes in the evening, six days a week, on top of five to six days of intense strength training. So literally my day would be waking up that early, going to the gym, banging out a 60-minute fasted cardio session, going back later in the day and doing my strength training workout, and then after the strength training workout, doing another 60-minute cardio session on the Stairmaster. The literal worst piece of equipment made on the face of the earth. If you know, you know.

So I was entirely burnt out, because I never gave my body a rest, thinking that was the only way to reach my peak form and to win. And I know some of you will resonate with this. It may not be a competition that you're trying to compete in, but you do this to an extreme because you want X result.

So maybe you overtrain, which is exactly what I was doing. Or you undereat, like I was. I was malnourished because I was eating way too little. After I was done competing, I actually went back and looked, because what I did was just follow meal plans. I've shared this previously in podcasts: macros aren't what got me the results. They're what sustained my results. I'm going to share some things around that in another podcast. But macros aren't what got the results. I mean, they kind of did, but I wasn't tracking macros at the time.

I was doing this basic-ass boring meal plan. No joke. Fucking egg whites in the morning. Toast. Chicken, rice, broccoli. Chicken, rice, broccoli. Chicken, rice, broccoli. And then tilapia and some freaking vegetables. Okay. So I was literally following this meal plan exactly, to the T. Which is why I freaking hate meal plans now. It's because you're so limited to those specific things on that piece of paper that you get from a coach. Screw that, man. There's so much more to life than following that exactly. Not just so much more to life, there are so many more options for you to choose from with food that you have available to you. But you're limiting yourself to the specific list that you get from a trainer. Okay.

Anyway, I was entirely malnourished, you guys. When I went back and tracked to see how much food I was actually eating, oh God, it pains me to say that I was eating like 900 calories a day. 900 calories a day. And keep this in mind, just keep this in mind right here before I share with you exactly why I was hospitalized: I was eating 14 grams of fat a day. That's it. 14 grams. Let me put it in perspective for you. That's one tablespoon of olive oil. Okay. It's so crazy to think about. And I did that for upwards of 16 weeks, at 900 calories.

And man, there are some people out there who go longer than that and do insane cardio and insane training sessions on top of that. All for an X type of result, when you can get the same result. You don't have to. I'm going to share a little more on that.

But anyway, I believed that the only way to keep my weight and keep my body composition just right was to continue to eat as little as possible, just enough to keep me going. So it should paint a picture in your brain. If I was thinking, I just need to finish these 10 minutes on the Stairmaster, I literally would do anything just to keep going.

And so the actual reason that I was doubled over in pain and in the hospital...

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Remember when I said that I was only eating 14 grams of fat a day? The reason I was doubled over in pain on the Stairmaster, and then went to the hospital and had a bunch of tests run, was because I couldn't poop.

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Seriously. I worked in the ER at this time, so I was very fortunate to have family around me at that point, all the people that I worked with. And the doctor came in, I remember it was Dr. Clark. Shout out Dr. Clark. And he was like, Nikkiey, you're full of shit. It was a nice laugh to have after this whole thing that had unfolded during the day so far. You're full of shit, no pun intended. Because I was full of shit. Literally, on the x-ray, one whole side of my abdomen was just packed with poop, and it was now overflowing into the other side of my abdomen, because there was nowhere more for it to go on that side.

And that's why I had the literal worst pain. That is the worst pain that I've ever felt. It was even worse than the kidney stone that I endured without medication and had to fight through for 24 hours. This was so sharp and so localized in one area for about 30 minutes, until I was able to get to the hospital and get some pain medicine.

Freaking wild. And it's a literal, actual thing. I probably wouldn't have believed it, although working in the hospital at that time, I had seen people be constipated before. But I never knew how it happened. And it was because I wasn't eating enough. I wasn't giving my body what it needed to move everything through. Right? Fat is a huge component of your digestion and your bowel health. When you don't have enough fat coming into your body, this is what happens. You get constipated, because you don't have the macronutrient that is so responsible for all of this stuff internally, and your hormones and all of that jazz. And I had 14 grams of it a day, when normally 60 or 70 grams is a good average for individuals. Obviously it depends on the individual, but no joke, 14 grams a day.

So this is why I'm telling you guys this story. I've shared before that I haven't been able to poop because of this restrictive diet, but I've never elaborated on the entire story and what actually happened that day.

And let me share what happened right after. I had to go get mag citrate and pump myself full of mag citrate. If you guys know mag citrate, let me say in layman's terms, you want to make sure that you are next to a toilet within 15 to 30 minutes after taking it, maybe upwards of an hour. Because you will just explode. Not to get so graphic, but no joke.

And immediately following that, on top of getting mag citrate, I was like, my body needs food. Screw what I'm doing right now. My health became the most important thing in the moment, and competition didn't matter. I think at this point I was four or six weeks out from the first show that I had committed to that year, which I didn't end up doing, because it was a warm-up show. The bigger show was the championship. And it's a crazy thing: I did go through all of this, but I ended up winning the pro show coming up, though. This is what I had to go through when I became the world champ in the women's physique division of natural bodybuilding.

So anyway, right after the hospital, I went to a local cafe for breakfast and just stuffed my face with food. Pancakes, eggs, toast, hash browns, all of the things. Syrup. And let me just tell you, man, I birthed a child. I birthed a child. It was the biggest relief and such a great feeling after that.

But look, the reason I tell you this is because you can restrict yourself in the short term. You guys can, and I know people have done this, because I read the comments and it resonated with a lot of people. You can restrict yourself in the short term, and you may even see some tangible results from it. But the longer that you suppress your body's natural needs, you guys, the harder you'll crash, and the faster that weight will come right back on.

If I hadn't had a goal of having to compete in a couple of weeks, I guarantee you I would have spiraled out of control after that. No joke. No joke. I have very, very strong discipline. I am very good with self-discipline, very good with self-control. But if I didn't have that goal, that why I was working towards, which is so important for everybody because that's what will anchor you back in to staying the course, I would have spiraled. And so I think that's very important for you to have as well.

The longer that you suppress anything that your body naturally needs, like fat or rest, you will land in the hospital. No joke. You may be like me. I pride myself on my willpower, and I have a hell of a lot of willpower. I have a hell of a lot of discipline, like I just said. But even though I have all of that and I think it will last forever, your body will eventually just shut down, and it'll be like, dude, what the fuck are you doing? It's enough.

And you do not need to take that path to get in control of your body composition for good. You do not need to eat 900 calories. You do not need to fear eating more food. Because look, you guys, I'm eating the most food that I've ever eaten in my life. If you go look at that after photo on my Instagram, I am eating upwards of 2,400 calories a day. And I am doing four days max of strength training. I am on no piece of equipment for cardio. I focus on steps daily. And I am in the strongest physical and mental shape of my life. I have never been healthier in my life. And I have such a better relationship with balance in my life. I have Crumbl cookies. For the last three weeks, I have had a Crumbl cookie once a week.

And I don't fear food. I don't look at food in a scarcity mindset. I look at it as fuel for my body. Not just at a results level. This is fuel for my body internally, to make sure that everything functions properly. Because of that day, I look at it that way. Food does such an internal healing for you, mentally and physically. It is so much more than just the results that you see on the outside. Sure, the physical is great. But the way that you feel when you fuel your body the right way is priceless.

So that day literally changed my entire life. After I was done competing and put competing behind me, this is where the true journey began: searching for macronutrients, understanding macronutrients, and finding a path that supported and celebrated my body and still allowed me to build the physique that I had always wanted and dreamed of. That is what led me to where I am today. And to my love for macronutrients, and not looking at it as another diet. It's literally a skill set that can serve you for the rest of your life. Seeing the abundance of food that you have, the opportunities with food that you have, and how you can really have whatever you want with wholesome foods, in balance with the things that you crave.

I am so thankful for that experience and that journey, because the last five years of my journey have been the best yet. The first three years were rough. And I'm so thankful for that right-hand picture that you'll see if you go to my Instagram. Not only have I built so much muscle in that time, which was really cool to see, it's from eating a lot of food, you guys, and from not depriving myself of what my body needed. Because I always had the goal of building. You guys know building muscle is my thing. Building muscle is my jam. Building muscle is what I get down with on a daily basis and what I preach to all the women out there.

And the biggest difference between that left and right photo is food. And strength training. Strength training was a part of the first one, but I was overtraining in that aspect and doing way too much cardio to achieve what I was working towards, getting on stage. But the biggest reason I have so much more muscle than in that photo, through the years of strength training, is because I had food to help me get there. And I had all the good foods, man. All the good foods.

Okay, so I say this because I know you guys can do this too. I know that it resonated with you guys so much, and some of you were like, can you please elaborate on this story on the podcast? So here it is. You don't have to do all those extreme things. You don't have to fear food. You don't have to live by the limiting beliefs and stories that you're playing inside your head about what food is and why it's scary. However you got to that limiting belief or story, it's not real. It's not true.

You also don't have to go to the extremes of pushing your body. At a conscious level, just think about it. Those things that I did were not healthy. And in that time, mentally, I was so attached to a result that I didn't give a shit. Now looking back, it's like, wow, Nikkiey, you were so naive and silly and didn't put your health as a priority. And so here I am today in 2023, and in the last five years I have put my health as a priority through food, through strength training, by not overtraining, by not restricting myself. And you can do the same thing.

I hope that this story inspires you. And this is what we do inside of WarriorBabe. I have literally taken all of the mental frameworks, the training, the things from how that day changed my entire life and what I searched for afterwards, and I have now helped 15,000-plus women implement them into their world. To do it the right way, and to do it in a sustainable way. The WarriorBabes fearlessly embrace sustainable practices. And if you're not yet a WarriorBabe, let's go, come on inside.

All in all, I hope that this podcast inspires you. I hope this podcast lets you know that you don't have to go to the extremes. You can nourish your body and your health in such an empowering way. Okay, so I appreciate you guys, and I'll see you in the next podcast. Peace out.

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