Yeah, you know the drill. It’s 3.30 am and your alarm goes off cause you’re doing cardio. You know you’re on time because the party goers crawl home to bed from the clubs now and that’s when you’re psyching yourself up to bust the crap out of you. You have ONE clear goal in mind, ONE picture in your mind on what you want to achieve. It’s more than 99% of the people want or can ever get themselves to achieve, but you consider yourself one of the elite, one of the strong, one of few who don’t just dream about it. You DO it. You’re just so much tougher than the rest and you have no problem doing EVERYTHING to get what you want.

Food for you is fuel. It’s what nourishes your muscles but famines your fat. You love your “boring food” cause you know it’s the key, your “magic” to melt off every jiggle that covers your hard work. When you’re tired, you don’t stop, you execute your plan. And what energizes you is the reflection in the mirror when you see the muscle definition on your arms, your abs, the cuts and details you have accomplished to get by following your protocol.

Day in and day out you go and work on that piece of art your body is becoming. You don’t try to find easy ways out, you do the hardcore old school squats because they’re gonna give you the legs. You deadlift beause it takes more from you than sitting in a little stupid machine crunching away. You’re in the gym to sweat, you’re here to carve and define. you’re not here to look pretty or to show off your strength. You couldn’t care less about it cause it’s not about THAT. It’s about something else.

The iron has toughened you up. You’re stronger than ever. You have more patience and discipline than most. And you know people wonder if you don’t feel deprived from not eating their cookies or their hot dogs! Well, you wonder too about them: they truly feel happy about their muffin tops and jiggle thighs?

You have standards. you have work ethic. You’re way beyond the rest cause you’re asking for more. You’re higher on the list cause you’re not a simple animal eating, sleeping and then repeat. You feel more alive cause you don’t take things for granted. You’ve been conditioned into knowing you get what you work for. You know that true work pays off. And since you’re so smart you also apply it to all fields in your life, making you hell of a lot more successful than those who sit on their arse all day never pushing their bodies to the limit.

You live for this. You’re here to do this. There is a reason you are doing what you do. It’s called passion. It’s determination. And you know, that if you just do what you know is right, and what’s in your heart, your are invincible, unstoppable, unbeatable.

When I throw trash in the trash can and I have to focus on pointing and looking just at the trash can, it reminds me how focused you have to be to achieve ANY goals….. Defying the odds. Having faith. Consistent commitment. Never regretting, just forgetting. And when I wonder if I’d do it all again had I known the outcome and I say YES I would, I know I did what I had to do, wanted to do and what I was entitled, self-enforced and driven to do. That was the purpose and the goal. Here I am, live here, live now, live then, live life living it.

There are two categories of people: those who dream of achieving something and those who achieve their dreams. I see myself belonging into the second one. My dream and my goal was to create a physical masterpiece, a piece of art of my body, displaying what in my opinion was ‘ a super woman’. Over and over I reinvented myself to achieve the perpetual ideal. It was and is an inner journey, it’s nothing created out of peer pressure or reigning body ideals. Au contraire!

With my blog and my presence on internet I chose to set myself on display for criticism. One of the more common accusations is me having a distorted body perception, that I clearly do not see what others see. I find this quite amusing a statement, because who is to say the viewer has the correct perception? How do YOU know that what YOU see is the true, correct picture? I don’t think you can say you do.

Bodybuilding attracts a certain kind of people. The desire to sculpt a chiseled body is nothing everyone has. The ideal is per se one of distortion since it’s not “natural” to have an excess amount of muscle as is induced by lifting heavier and heavier weights and feed the muscles the right nutrients to grow, but to let body fat melt off in the process. It’s nothing new that us human beings are attracted to extremes. Throughout history repeatedly try to master and control our bodies, we cover them, we paint them, we tattoo them, we dress them, we strangle, tighten and wrap them, all in effort to become that ideal we strive for.

I don’t have a “normal” body ideal what now that is. Most western world women prefer to be thin and slender. Well, I don’t. Many African tribes praise obese bodies. Well I don’t. Some cultures want deformed feet, other a with copper rings elongated neck, sometimes we’ve taken out ribs to make our waist tinier, now we implant curves here and there. What’s healthy and what’s not? Is it all about what’s optimal for the body itself? What about our minds?

We are more complex as human beings than just wanting to look good. And it’s not that we only want to look good for others, because many times ideals are not striven for to attract sexual partners, but to satisfy some deeper emotional and psychological need. We have different agendas, different motives.

Also, what we set up for ourselves are usually higher standards than for others. I believe it must be for trying to push down the competition. Who wants others to be better than yourself? Instead of increasing the demands on ourselves we lower the standards for others. It’s quite genius. But it seldom bites on those who are obviously not striving for something to impress or to get applauds. In my game, I don’t know anyone who trains and diets to be excellent and fantastic for someone else. It’s a selfish act and self-fulfilling practice.

Our bodies present ourselves. A chiseled body signals control and discipline. For most people that is attractive. At least it is to me.

My goal and desire is not to be sexy. Or beautiful. Or fantastic. My goal is to feel I am what I am and I stand for it. When I feel I have accomplished what I wanted, little do I care about what other people think of me. I’m not in this to be so called healthy, I’m in this to feel I am alive every second every minute without dreaming myself a way to some distant dream of what it could be if I looked, acted this or that way. I would hate to be trapped in a body I didn’t feel represented what I am. My body is the mirror of my soul. It’s my temple, it’s my advertising board, it’s mine. And when I feel I own it, that’s when I am content.

A lean, sculpted masterpiece of a body is first created in the mind, then by your actions. It’s a game against your own human nature, it’s going beyond your ideas of what’s acceptable and reasonable to do to achieve your goals. Most people don’t reach to their full potential -not because they don’t have the basic knowledge about the key components diet and exercise- but due to focusing all effort in the gym for working the physical muscles while giving no time to strengthening the mind.

You can have all the desire you want, but it will not take you far enough. You can have all the know-how you like, but without real life application it will not take you far enough. You need to realize you are an intelligent human being, not a simple animal, hence you are in charge of your each and every choice you make.

The difficulty lies in understanding your body. You will need to feel comfortable with being emotionally hungry at times. A lean, muscular body is not a result from starving, it’s a result from eating just what you need and not more. Since very low body fat is nothing the body wants, it will try to make you eat more, indulge more. It’s natural. Your body is doing what it’s taught to do to make you survive. Now, you wonder how you can suppress that annoying hunger? Well, you cannot. Cause usually the hunger is NOT physical, but mental. Your stomach is full, your mouth wants more. If you surrender to strong appetite suppressing medications that are dangerous for your health, what are you going to do the very day they are not working anymore? Or when you must discontinue? Then you stand there with a grueling hunger, stronger than ever to compensate for the time you were not listening to your body’s signals.

The key is to learn discipline, acknowledge the sensations and knowing where and why your brain is trying to sabotage your pursuit. Do not say you cannot help eating, cause you can. Remember that a thought is merely a thought. You do not need to act on the signal. And you cannot if your goal is to lose body fat!

Remind yourself that you will have thousands of meals to come. You will be able to eat every day. You know why you turn down certain foods. You know what it leads to: success. When you give in and fail yourself, you are actually proving you are not 100% committed. You are still not convinced consistency is a key component. You still believe you will get away with it ’cause it’s the last time’. It’s not the last time.

You are never going to be stronger than you are today, so be your strongest today. Learn selective listening: hear the mind’s signals, don’t listen to them blindly. If a rock hard body was created in the gym, all the people going there would be in excellent shape. I’m sure you know it’s far from the truth.

take time to master you mind. Take time to learn to be comfortable with feeling a bit hungry or a bit tired. It’s natural, it’s part of the game. Either you want to play it and win or you will try to bend the rules and fail. In the hunt for the perfect body, you need to play by the rules and accept the rules. And yes, at times it feels like looking at grass growing, but remember it IS a chess game where each move counts for the final outcome, so don’t treat it like Russian roulette.

My drive, my passion and my confidence I got from my mother. But my interest for sculpting the body? It has to be my dad.

I remember when I was a kid. Dad was a bodybuilder. Well, that’s what my sister said. You see, he owned a home row machine. In our eyes that qualified him for being a muscle man. Dad was strong. He had a physical job and his buff body was proof it. I used to do some moves on that machine and told him I wanted to be just as strong as he was and he answered me “no, you don’t want to be like me, that’s hard on the body!”. That didn’t stop me though.

When I was visiting dad he used to grill a steak and make a big bowl of salad. That was his diet when he felt he got a bit soft around his waist. Good, clean diet and working out.

My dad nowadays is still fit. He skis, he’s active and a real health nut. I see now where it’s coming from. I have the same kind of built like he has: athletically built but needs to watch the food coming in or we get a bit chubby! The more I think about it the more I realize where I got my discipline from. My dad. He didn’t complain, he was not lazy, he was vain too and wanted to look good for the ladies. He never let himself get out of shape. And neither will I!

To be a true fitness guru nowadays you shall have more “kudos” and respect if you 1) used to be very fat  2) are a mother of three or more  3) you used to be totally inactive couch potato. When possessing that resume you get tons of admiration: you changed your lifestyle and turned from slob to super fit and fabulous!

I’ve never been fat. I’m sorry I didn’t get pregnant at 16 and literally ate for two as would I give birth to an elephant, nor did I use to be out of decent average shape.

So, in many people’s view I don’t know what I’m talking about. I don’t know what it’s like to be 400 lbs over weight. Hm.. How did it go from leading by example being a virtue to actually being put down almost like less impressive? How come having stayed in shape and improved over time is not as “cool”?

I hate the transformation mania. People love seeing before and afters. They want to find hope seeing fatties turn into slimmies. And all in a few months time. So why am I against it? Rapid transformations take drastic changes. Drastic changes are tough on the body as well as very hard to keep up. Patience to me is sacred and this “got to have it done yesterday” attitude is a turn off. If you used to over eat for years, give your darn body a chance to recover! Don’t watch the Biggest Loser show where the contestants train intensely for many many hours a day non stop and then expect the same kind of results from your one hour cardio a day routine.

You see, transformations don’t really impress me unless the transformations turn into constants. But the reality is this: most go back and regain all the fat again in a matter of months. The advertisements in magazines showing before and afters are ridiculous: get it, the guys and gals dieted for months with tons of cardio and diet, not just with that fat burner pills. You also see they pose by distending their midsection and keep a slouchy posture in the “before” pic, then they get a tan, get makeup to accentuate the abs and suck it all in for the “after” picture. Everyone who’s been competing knows how fast water and fat is added back when show time is over. You can go from ripped to bloated and look like it’s 20 lbs in between the shots if you try to make it that way. It’s easy to manipulate the setting for the photos.

When people go on diets I wonder what’s their plan: what are they gonna do when the diet is over? Are they ok with regaining the fat again or are they in total denial that won’t happen? To me it’s quite reasonable to expect and acknowlegde you will return to the fat former you if you go back to your fat encouraging diet when the fat loss diet is done.

I was never over weight. I was normal. I was normal body fat and normal muscle. I just wanted lots of muscle and very little body fat. Did that take “sensible” diet and moderate workout? No way. It took extreme. And people love to say “oh your diet is so unbalanced!”. That statement usually comes from “average people” with “average bodies” who think they will in some way get incredibly fit and shredded by following a moderate approach. It won’t happen. An extreme physique doesn’t take balance, it takes extremes. Then, extremes are only unhealthy if you’re not educated on nutrition, training and on the effects it has on the body and mind. When people tell ME I am unbalanced I shake my head and say “Hell yeah I am!” and call it a day. Cause I’m happy and content with my “unbalanced” lifestyle. Suck on that you slacker!

When I was 100% determined to build as much muscle as I could without compromising being lean and cut (since that’s always been my number one desire), this is what I did day in and day out;

I had 8-9 small meals a day. Most of them were super small since I had to keep my calories restricted in order not to gain unwanted body fat.

I used nutrient timing before and after each weight training workout: I had a tiny amount of dextrose with vp2, bcaas, creatine and glutamine pre and post workout.

I never missed one meal during many years.

I never drastically cut calories since I never had to diet down fast, since I was always in decent shape. From 2004-2009 I was as meticulous as they come.

I never did cardio post workout. I always separated the two into am and pm session.

I logged every set, every rep, every exercise and compared each workout to the previous one and made sure I did my best to outperform myself.

I planned every workout in detail before entering the gym.

I told myself before each set that if I truly wanted all I wanted I had to complete x amount of reps with x amount of weight.

I never took time off out of boredom or fatigue. When I was unmotivated I kept going and waited til I found motivation again.

I focused on free weights, deadlifts, squats, pullups, shoulder presses and stayed away from machines except for leg press, cable pulldowns etc.

I never did high rep workouts, I always did heavy work.

I squatted and deadlifted every week at as max weights I could handle.

I refuse to believe you couldn’t gain muscle without being a fat offseason fart.

I never worried about getting too big. I work to get as big as I could without eating more than for keeping my weight.

I always listened to my body and took up prehab exercises whenever I felt something awkward creeping up.

I always worked for strength, not caring for pump or isolation work.

I worked all body parts including forearms. I wanted it all.

I weight trained heavy and hard 5-6 days a week and did just as much cardio.

I only did interval cardio, no steady state work.

I never ate junk food from 2005. I didn’t have cheat days.

I was never frustrated and had patience. I was in it for the long run. I was in no hurry.

Everyone who wants a fit, ripped body needs to pay a great detail to what’s on the dinner plate. We need to calculate, keep track, modify, change it up, keep track on body changes, mood etc. It’s the nature of the beast, you see great results don’t come by accident. They are planned and executed. My FD concept features refeeds and I know they scare the crap out of many people. It’s understandable since over feeding is not really what gets you ripped. If it was everyone eating tons of food everyday would be super shredded! Some people think they are more ‘noble’ by never eating anything sugary or filled with carbs. I have also realized that many people believe I am a total health nut who doesn’t eat anything weird or artificial at all. Well, let me tell you this: I am not. When I refeed no way do I want brown rice or rice cakes. No way I want fruit either. I want fat free ice cream, pasta, fat free granola, chocolate sauce some times, other times I am more into huge bowl of oatmeal with brown sugar or tons of kabocha seasoned with cinnamon and truvia. And since I am anal about keeping track of MY body’s changes and response, I must say I get the best results with the more sugary the better. How do I know? Well, my temperature rises (indicates speeding up my metabolism), my muscles get more pumped, I get very happy and all is good. Of course, the day after I have a smoother appearance but that is gone in a day.

Now, do I encourage “regular” people to refeed? YES, but of course in moderation. And refeeds are not really useful unless you are very lean. The leaner you are the more you benefit from refeeds. Why? Cause when you have ultra low body fat your body starts to realize you might not have enough food. Your body makes sure you survive by decreasing your calorie burn. Have you noticed how you get slow and sluggish and unmotivated when you’ve been dieting for a long time? It’s not just YOU, it’s your mind preserving energy! I mean, it would be foolish by a deprived body to keep on having you expend tons of calories by being active and “on the go”!

IYou shouldn’t be scared of food, but usually it comes from lack of knowledge on how the body works. Let’s say you are scared to death to go on that 500 calorie increase day I have on many of my diet plans. Let’s go through it step by step so you know why it won’t break you:

500 calories if it was ALL fat is no more than about 50 grams of fat. 50 grams of fat ON your body AS body fat: you won’t be able to see it.

The calories might increase your insulin response if they are high glycemic carbs, which means you MIGHT hold on to some water. Water is NOT body fat.

Let’s say you expend 2000 calories a day and you go on a 1500 calorie diet plan. Then now with the added 500 you will break even.

It does take time to practice and learn to see and feel comfortable with this. That’s why having a personal coach might benefit you if you’re too worried about the concept.

I love my regular cabbage, wheat bran, shirataki, pink salmon, my mustard you name it, but I also love all the other fun carb foods or nuts. I’ve managed to set my body in spin by being very lean and refeed strategically. Which means I actually have the cookie and eat it:-), no wonder I’m quite happy, huh! You can learn this TOO, but you have to have patience and take notes!  Life is too short to be scared of something you will need to fuel yourself with daily. And you know what? Those who are the most rigid and strict with diets don’t always have the best ripped bodies cause ripped bodies get tired from never filling up…;-)

My training is my passion. I love working out, I love the love-hate relationship to doing what it takes to keep the body I worked so hard for. My training is not my hobby. I never ever perceived it as such. It was always number one. As soon as I fell in love, training and fitness entered top priority position in my life. Nothing meant more to me, nothing gave me more pleasure, nothing taught me more about my life and myself than training. I always had goals, I knew what I wanted to do. I realized fast that my body combined with my brain was my tool, my key to achieve the goals I set up for myself.

A lot of people stop themselves from achieving goals because it requires them to change. In my genre, many fitness women never get published or get model work cause they don’t realize what it takes. You cannot just pound on muscle and hope it’s gonna look great. Not if you want to step out of the bodybuilding trenches and into a broader market…. I know tons of people who struggle to make a living because they are trapped into their routines. They don’t work to get the body that will enable them to follow their dreams, no, they are training for the sake of training.

I remember when I started to change my views on what body I wanted to have. First wake up call: 2003, when visiting America for the first time and I saw the female bodybuilders IRL for the first time. They were not even pros… But they looked like men… And from that day I knew “NO BODYBUILDING COMPETITION for me”. I realized that bodybuilding nowadays on a competitive level took more than hard training and strict diet. I hadn’t realized that until then cause I was young and I had not seen the real thing yet. Good thing the IFBB came out with fitness figure, because that way I could transfer from competing as a bodybuilder in Sweden to Fitness figure in America, having the same size and shape (1 was 110-114 lbs competing in both bodybuilding and fitness, so I was never “BIGGER”;-)….

Then, after a decade of hardcore training, super serious diet control and tons of consistency, I just grew out of my frame. I felt blocky. I didn’t feel feminine anymore. I missed my old Pauline body where I felt like a cheetah: ripped, lean, skinny with clothes, muscular without! I looked at pictures of myself and I didn’t like what I saw. So I decided do cut off some muscle and regain my smaller 110-114 lbs body. That mean 7 lbs of muscle be gone. It took me about 1 year total to achieve the look I now feel I love. I’m at where I love to be. Yesterday I had an important filming. I was tiny. Cut. Shredded. at 50.5 kilos. (I had not had shirataki or veggies day before, so add another kilo and that’s my average weight on any given day).

In my old bodybuilding mindset, I hate when people comment on me being skinny or “did you lose weight?”. Usually those people are the ones who just love the idea of big muscles, but they have a regular job and don’t make a living off their looks. I make a living of my looks. I am a fitness MODEL. I photograph to inspire people to train like animals and not being scared of looking butch lol.

I am NOT sissy training. Of course I lost strength: I don’t have all the muscle I used to! I am also the leanest I’ve been ever on a daily basis. So, my body has gone through major changes.

My body is my key to my goals. My goals are not to be one of those amazon muscle women you see at any hardcore gym, who go there to train day in and day out who hope they one day “get rewarded” for their work…. Most fitness models aspire to reach out to tons of people, and to do that you got to get out to the media. You have to appeal to the broader market. My way of doing that was never to be mainstream. I didn’t tone down to get those informercial gigs. I never got those. Why? I was too athletic, too in shape, too ripped, too cut. I didn’t change THAT thing… I just toned down the muscles instead…Ripped is more important than huge muscles to me lol.

IIt’s important to remember your goals. And really BODY BUILD for what you are looking for. Don’t get stuck in a rut being scared of being too small, and don’t think that just a little more muscle will make you win trophies. When it comes down to it: how do you want to live your life…Is bodybuilding your hobby or your job? It’s a job to me. And I execute my job as a professional. If something requires me to change or to improve and I deeply desire it, there is nothing stopping me for doing it.

To live in the past and to live in the future; two ways to escape seizing the day. To be on top, in your prime right here, right now, it’s like landing an air balloon on a spear. Suddenly, not a marathon, but a sprint where every millisecond counts, either your balloon catches the wind and you glide smoothly to the center spot, or, you miss. You miss the timing. You forgot it was NOW, NOW, NOW, not later or another time. Not missing a golden opportunity is a skill. Golden opportunities some times appear to be rusty, so how do you know, how DO you know, this is the time for YOU…. You don’t.

A curse it can be some times to have a mind. A mind that drifts away to new places, knocks on locked doors, curious to find out what’s behind that wall, beyond that mountain. You might want to take that mind, grapple it down into a box, lock it and throw away the key. Cause it’s exhausting to be aware, to see your actions, your choices and your consequences, having to make choices. Naturally, wouldn’t it be easier to passively be walked through life with someone holding your hand, telling you this is the right path for you, the right walk for you, and all you had to do was nod and do as being told. Many people do, I’ve realized. Many hide behind self created obligations and commitments, they say they need to do this and that despite they’d prefer to do something else. And isn’t that convenient, you can blame your circumstances on other people.

Some times I wish I too was a herring following the stream or had less sense of feeling responsible of my own life. I wish I’d be one of those who go “well, well, it was not meant to be” or “I didn’t have a chance”. But not HAVING a chance and not TAKING the chance are two different creatures. How do you justify to yourself in the end you just didn’t do all you could to do all you wanted to do…I assume the worst is having had the chance and not taken it rather than not having had the chance at all because then you couldn’t regret not taking it…

It would be wonderful to be less adult. Being naive, living for now and not later. How do you sprint a marathon? How do you pace the tempo to be here and be there, to be present and be present in the future… I don’t know at all. Who does?