There is a little girl somewhere right now, sitting cross legged on her bedroom floor, flicking through a fitness magazine and thinking, I wish I looked like that.
That little girl was me.
I never could have imagined, back then, that one day I would be standing under stage lights with number 15 pinned to my hip, muscles I had carved with my own two hands, in front of an international audience. That the daydream would become the reality. That the girl who wished would become the woman who did.
It looks like a highlight reel, and in many ways it was. But getting there, that is the story worth telling. So today I am going to tell you all of it. The honest version, not the filtered one.
The dream was the easy part
Wanting it was never the problem. I had wanted it for as long as I could remember. The hard part, the part nobody puts in the magazine, is the six months of your life it quietly takes apart and rebuilds.
I trained with weights five days a week and did a full hour of cardio six days a week. I weighed every meal. I went to bed hungry more nights than I can count. I sat through dinners out with my own little box of food while everyone around me ate whatever they wanted. I said no to birthdays, to drinks, to lazy Sundays. And I protected my sleep like it was part of the training, because it was.
The lows nobody talks about
Let me be really honest with you, because I am tired of everyone pretending it is all green smoothies and good vibes. I slipped. Plenty. There was a week I had three full days completely off plan and still ate cake before bed on the Tuesday, standing up, with a fork, straight out of the box, because it was that good.
There were tears. There were mornings the alarm went off for cardio and every part of me wanted to stay in bed. There were moments I genuinely thought about quitting. What got me through was a decision I had made, all the way down, that I was going to walk on that stage no matter what. And every time I slipped, the only thing that mattered was how fast I got back on. Not Monday. Not next week. The very next meal.
The highs that made it all worth it
And then there were the other moments. The first time I saw a muscle I did not know I had. The week the hard work suddenly showed up in the mirror all at once. By the end I was in the best shape of my entire life, and I had built every inch of it myself. No shortcuts. No magic. Just months of showing up.
The doors it opened
Getting into that kind of shape opened doors I never expected. Magazine shoots, modelling, expos with my name up on the big screen. The girl from the bedroom floor, suddenly on the other side of the magazine she used to flick through.
The people I met along the way
One of the most surreal parts of this whole world is the people you end up standing next to. The legends whose posters were on bedroom walls, suddenly right there in front of you.
What nobody tells you about competition day
The tan goes on the night before and you sleep terrified of smudging it. The heels are higher than anything sensible. You are running on nerves and very little food, and somehow you have never felt more alive. Backstage is a strange, sweaty, glittering mix of women who are all terrified and all rooting for each other at the same time.
And then they call your number, and you walk out into the lights, and every single hard morning, every hungry night, every meal you weighed and every session you dragged yourself to, it all condenses into one moment where you get to stand there and own it. Number 15. On an international stage. The girl from the bedroom floor.
What I would tell my younger self
I would tell her that she was right to dream that big. I would tell her it is going to be so much harder than the magazine made it look, and so much more worth it than she can imagine. I would tell her that the slips do not matter, that the scale lies on a daily basis, that her sleep matters as much as her squats, and that the body she wants is built in the boring, unglamorous, repeated choices nobody ever sees.
And I would tell her the most important thing of all. The people who get there are not the ones who never fall down. They are the ones who refuse to stay down.
The exact plan that got me there
People always ask me how I actually did it. What I ate, week by week. How the food changed as I leaned down. How I worked out my numbers. So I have put the whole thing into one simple guide, the real plans, the real food, the real method, written so anyone can follow it and make it work for their own body.
If reading this lit something in you, that is your sign. You do not have to take it to a stage. You just have to decide.
Get The Bikini Body Plan, the exact plan I followed
With love,
Miss Sally