Local among bodybuilding elite

VAN BUREN — Bodybuilder and personal trainer Nicole Walters last month was awarded her Pro Card after winning First Place in the Women's Physique Division in a national bodybuilding competition. Walters won first place at the Collegiate Masters Nationals, in Pittsburgh, and as a result was awarded the IFBB (International Federation of Bodybuilding) Pro Card. That achievement puts her among the elite in the bodybuilding world. Walters, 47, a personal trainer, sports nutrition specialist and owner of Iron Sharpens Iron, south of Van Buren, did it three times: She took First Place in the 45-year-old-plus category, the 40-plus, and the 35-plus category. It was the culmination of 30 years of disciplined weightlifting. "Once it's in your blood, your goal is to hopefully turn pro one day and I achieved that this year," Walters said. Weightlifting is her passion and it brings her peace. "My kids used to joke when they would come home from school, 'You didn't get your work out in today yet, did you? You should probably go to the gym,'" she said. Walters typically works out five days per week: two days of back workouts; a chest-and-arms workout ; one day with a shoulder workout and then "one really, really, re-e-ally, re-eally, really long leg day." "My leg day, on a good day, takes me three hours to complete," she said. Her leg workout includes squats, lunges, leg lifts, dead lift and leg curls. The non-leg workouts typically last an hour and 45 minutes. She does three to five sets of 6-12 reps per exercise. When she went on stage in the competition, she and her rivals were judged in a variety of poses. To make all of her muscles prominent for the judges' eyes, Walters put herself through a strict fat-shedding diet for 20 weeks. She reduced her body fat percentage to 6%. "We go into a depletion. There're no cheat meals," she said. "There's no licking the spoon when you're making dinner for the rest of your family." Her portions are precisely measured in grams and ounces. Oh, and she spends two hours a day, six days a week, doing "fast cardio" on a treadmill before she takes her first bite of food each day. In her 20-week diet, she allows herself six meals a day, eventually reducing to five meals a day. Here's her daily menu: • Meal one: 10 ounces of egg white with one green vegetable — either asparagus, broccoli, spinach, or cucumber. At the start of the 20 weeks she normally has 4 ounces of a carb: jasmine rice, sweet potato or oatmeal. She allows herself 2 ounces of avocado for a healthy fat. • Meal two: 10 ounces of egg white and four ounces of sweet potato. • Meal three: five ounces of grilled chicken breast with a green veggie and rice. • Meal four: "You've got to get a little bit of a guilty pleasure in there so you don't feel like you're in a prep," she said. Her guilty pleasure: 28 grams of a protein powder and 40 grams of oats that she grounds down into a flour. "Mix it together and put it in a waffle iron and make myself feel like I was having a waffle." No syrup on this waffle. • Meal five: Five ounces of venison. On the side: either four ounces of sweet potato or a yellow or red potato, or about a half cup of rice; plus one veggie of choice. • Meal six: Five ounces of grilled chicken and 16 grams of natural peanut butter. As she progressed through the 20 weeks, she removed things, like the carb in meal one, then later a carb in meal five. "By the time I got to the end, at about the last four weeks of prep, I was down to four ounces of chicken, four times a day with a green veggie. And my breakfast was eight ounces of egg white with about a cup of asparagus," she said. "Started at six meals (per day), eventually dropped down to five. Five of those meals in the beginning had carbs. By the time I was done none of my meals had carbs in them, other than from vegetables. "As my husband and daughter and my chiropractor, as well, say, you are like a walking, alive cadaver because you can trace all of your muscles," Walters said. All of the hard work and discipline paid off, however. After a competition, she treats herself. "It depends where I'm at and what's around, but typical is salmon and a salad with chipotle ranch," Walters said. "This time we were near a burger place and they had elk as an option. So I had an elk burger on a pretzel bun with peanut butter cheddar horseradish cheese and a truffle chauvet aioli. "And it was amazing."