Woman vs Food

Ever seen the film 'Diner'? Remember the scene when one of the minor characters, Earl I think his name is, eats 'the whole left side of the menu' as a bet? Well, Kashma Maharaj loves that film, and as she also loves feeding her mighty muscles, she can often be found in Florida diners recreating that scene.

A muscle woman’s got to eat. Those muscles that we love so much are just as much the result of her diet as they are of her efforts in the gym. If she wants to grow, she’s got to eat, and she's got to eat a lot. Female bodybuilders, it seems to me, are not only great athletes, but they're also great eaters.

While the majority of women who want to lose their extra pounds choose salads, skip meals and generally try to eat less, muscle goddesses not only eat more, but also more often. It may seem counter-intuitive, mainly because most women have fallen for the 'eat less diet myth', but female bodybuilders are living proof that if you eat the right things in the right amounts, you can eat five, six, seven, even eight times a day and have hardly any excess fat.


Yeon Woo Ji has clearly just stuffed her face (and not for the first time that day, I'll bet), but still has a set of abs lettuce-munchers can only dream of.

But she can't eat just any old thing, she’s got to eat right. Muscle women know what to eat and crucially when to eat it. So, again, they're more than just great athletes, they're also expert nutritionists.




And if eating right involves preparing meals for days in advance - as, for example, we learned from Rene Campbell’s description of her travel plans before the Chicago Pro (see Rene Goes Pro) - that’s going to mean eating meals out of airtight containers in hotel rooms, at airports, even on planes.

Frida Palmell has grown to love the home-prepared meals she carries around with her everywhere that she was inspired to pen a poem about it. Entitled 'An Ode to Tupperware and Plastic Cutlery', the poem can be read in the original Swedish and an English translation on her website.

Meanwhile, in her forthcoming autobiography, Mary Hobbs recalls having to flex for a customer officer who was suspicious of the amount of pre-cooked food in her luggage. "After a double biceps and a most muscular he was quite happy with my explanation that I needed all the food to keep my muscles growing," she recalls.

But after months of dietary discipline, and weeks of heroic pre-contest dieting, there’s always the big post-contest blow-out to look forward to. The one day when the muscle woman gets to have a well-deserved treat.

Susan Rydmyr has revealed to FMS that her motivational mantra is 'Muscle=Medals and Medals=Micky Ds".


Meanwhile, muscle goddess Helle Nielsen has more of a sweet tooth, and a big thing for cupcakes. When she sent us this picture for our 'Woman vs Food' week she told us that about fifteen seconds after this picture was taken, all those cupcakes in front of her 'had magically disappeared'.

Enjoy!