TRANSFORMED

How Muscle Insider’s Jaime Filer Gained 40 Pounds of Muscle and Regained Her Health

I first met Jaime Filer in 2012 while working at the MUSCLE INSIDER booth. She introduced herself and explained how she was a trainer, competed in natural bodybuilding contests, and had experience working with Bodybuilding.com, the WBFF, and several supplement companies. She was smart, had a positive attitude, and was totally jacked! Jaime offered to volunteer for any writing or contest coverage we needed help with. We agreed to have her on our team, and she made an immediate impact. She had outstanding science writing, social media mastery, and unmatched energy. It wasn’t long before a position opened up and we offered her an editorial contract and we haven’t looked back!

Bodybuilding Mind-Set

Over my 20 years in the bodybuilding industry, I’ve met virtually every top champion. All are blessed with freaky genetics, allowing them to stay lean while eating terrible diets! Most train using awful form yet grow like weeds! But one thing every champ I’ve met has is the ability to focus 100 percent of their mind on a goal while completely shutting out all distractions. We all “try” to balance our lives, fulfilling obligations to family, work, friends, health, fitness, while contributing to our community. But the top champs are able to shut out everything else in their lives and focus exclusively on fitness. Family obligations are put on the back burner, work becomes just a means to fund their prep, and friends who don’t care about their contest are replaced by others who do. This ability to shut out everything is a gift and a curse. It’s invaluable when channelled toward positive things such as a career or relationships. But it can be destructive if channelled toward the wrong things, and I’ve seen more than my share of pros flush their careers away by living an unbalanced lifestyle. However, I’ve also seen champions such as Arnold, Lou Ferrigno, Jay Cutler, Rich Gaspari, Lee Labrada, Nicole Wilkins, and DLB build empires by applying this “bodybuilding mind-set” to business. Jaime has a mind-set that’s almost robotic with an unmatched energy level. She’s able to focus 100 percent of her attention on any goal, while blocking off any temptation. She developed this mind-set as an adolescent, and it catapulted her development in basketball, and later, bodybuilding, but it also led to her being hospitalized on three occasions ...

Anorexia Nervosa

Jaime was an active kid, playing basketball at age four, and maintained a healthy weight. At age 11, she had to attend a new school and start building her social circle from scratch. Getting used to a new environment is much harder on kids than parents realize, and this one placed a lot of stress on her. In Grade 7, she started focusing all her time on basketball. She practiced every waking moment on the sport and eventually made a national team and was on her way to becoming an amazing player. Unfortunately, she became obsessive about her weight, calorie counting, and the pounds came off. During this time she had developed anorexia nervosa, a deadly eating disorder characterized by an obsession to reduce weight at all costs. A terror of gaining weight and a militant regimen of food restriction to get leaner and leaner was brewing inside her. Jaime developed the mind-set to get thinner and thinner and was eventually hospitalized three times because she had lost too much weight! Her family and friends tried to talk sense into her, telling her to stop dieting, stop exercising, and start gaining weight so she could be healthy. Eventually Jaime was placed under daily hospital care because her weight had gotten so low.

First Bodybuilding Contest

At 17 years of age, Jaime was walking around at 6 percent body fat, and at a garage sale, found a box of Muscle Media 2000 magazines. She marveled at the physiques of Cory Everson, Rachel McLish, and Lee Labrada and decided she would enter her first bodybuilding competition! She was already ripped; she just needed to get a tan and learn the poses. The experience was fun, so she decided it was something she wanted to continue, and over the next two years, she competed in seven more contests! The dieting wasn’t difficult as she had mastered control over her cravings, and deep in her soul, her fear of gaining fat had her continually undereating. Show after show, she continued to display a ripped physique, but she was just too skinny, and her body looked unhealthy even by competitive bodybuilding standards. She weighed between 95 and 105 pounds onstage, which wasn’t rewarded by the judges, but she refused to quit. Finally, one of the judges told her he was worried for her health. He added that she looked like she should be in a hospital, not on a bodybuilding stage! This was a hurtful conversation, but it was truly what she needed to hear from someone she respected. This was the turning point for her life.

The See Food Diet

Jaime decided to start following what some call the “see food” diet. You see food, you eat it! This did wonders for her health by correcting nutritional deficiencies while pulling her body out of a catabolic state. Her body changed rapidly, bulking up to 165 pounds while she gained muscle and a new confidence. Family and friends were finally supporting her bodybuilding goals, and she was slowly conquering her eating disorder. Of course, a condition like anorexia shows signs off and on for many years, and healing is a lifelong process. Jaime’s next show took place in 2008, when she stepped onstage at a hard 140 pounds, which was a gain of almost 40 pounds!

Training for a Trophy vs. Training for Herself

When Jaime stepped back onstage, she had great shape, but her love for the competitive stage just wasn’t there anymore. She loved the process of building muscle and getting cut, but when I spoke to her back then, she had become disenchanted with the competitive side of the industry, so she decided to just train for herself. She applied the methods she had learned from her kinesiology degree and from what she had picked up reading bodybuilding magazines. She was able to build even more muscle, while staying lean with a body fat level below 15 percent and abs all year long!

Fitness is a Lifelong Journey

Jaime still lives and breathes the fitness lifestyle but works harder to keep life in balance. She’s not a slave to her diet, calculating her calories each day! She varies her workouts and even competes in CrossFit competitions! Career-wise, she’s become one of the top fitness journalists, having interviewed stars such as CT Fletcher, DLB, Joe Donnelly, and many others. She also makes time to be with her mother, who’s been her biggest supporter, and has been a guest speaker at a college where she lectures on the importance of going after your dreams. Anyone can live in the gym, but a true champion is one who balances family, work, friends, health, and fitness, and contributes to their community. Jaime exemplifies what a champion and true leader should be.

Wanna read more on transformations and what it takes to build muscle and lose fat? Take a read of this post by Canada’s premier fitness expert John Cardillo.