fitness
Breakthroughs
Shirley van den Bos is 27 years old. She was
born and raised in the Netherlands and moved to
Florida 15 years ago, which is a beautiful and lovely
state in America to live in. She decided years ago to
live a fit and healthy life and started to lift weights.
Shirley changed her lifestyle, which meant eating
clean, healthy and working out almost every single day
of the week.
“This all became an addiction, then my best
friend Jaimy Maktari came into my life, she introduced
me to the world of bodybuilding and fitness competitions. From that day on she made me so excited to
compete at fitness competitions that she started to
coach me and taught me how to train for competitions.
She is also a beautiful figure competitor herself and
has won several prices. She always gives me this warm
feeling of trust and believes, her support still gives me
the strength to go on and keep fighting for my place
on stage. This all results in a first place and over-all
title as a bikini fitness competitor at the treasure coast
championships in port St. Lucie FL August 23, 2014.”
The feeling that she had and still has is indescribable and priceless. Every day she is thankful for
the good things in her life that embrace her, also her
positivity brought me where she is today. “Anything
you want to accomplish in your life, is possible as long
as you believe in yourself, my dream was to create
a nice, healthy and fit body and to become a fitness
model... And look where I am now”, she shared. She
also said that she feel blessed because she is surrounded with good and positive people. As what they say,
positive attracts positive!
About her training: “I love to hang out in the
gym, it makes me feel physically fit, good looking and
mentally happy.” Fitness really enhanced Shirley’s
life. “Working out is not something I have to schedule
in my day to day life, it’s part of my lifestyle, it’s no
different than eating, sleeping and brushing my teeth
every day. It also a good stress relief and gives me a
good sense of energy.”
When she is offseason, she works out six days
a week and has one rest day. When she is in preparation for a competition, she still works out six days a
week and adds some extra cardio also on her “rest”
day. “When I’m offseason I wouldn’t call my diet a
“diet” because it’s not, it’s just a healthy lifestyle with
clean healthy food, for example: chicken, beef, fish,
rice and vegetables. During my contest preparation my
meals include a lot of fish, egg whites and vegetables”,
Shirley added.
Since she changed her lifestyle, Shirley realized that it’s so important to eat healthy and work out
regularly. It makes our body so much healthier and you
actually feel so much better, fitter and happier. “When
I saw my body change, the progress I made, I became
addicted to the progress and this keeps me motivated
to continue and to say no to fast food and sugars in
during my preparation for competitions,” the fitness
beauty enthusiast shared.
She confidently said that she eats junk food.
On her resistance to food: “And that’s not a shame, it’s
good to eat junk food once in a while but you have to
limit it. It’s good for your body; it will increase your
metabolism and is also mentally good. What I can’t
resist when I’m aloud to eat some “junk food” is my
special handmade stroopwaffle cake, it’s the best!!
And I also have a weakness for cheesecake from the
cheesecake factory”, Shirley enumerated.
Her goals for the future are to earn her procard and to stay fit and healthy. “My advice to all of
you is, chase your dreams and don’t be afraid for the
unknown. Life And progress don’t come easy, you take
one step backwards and two steps forward, the thing
is you have to move on, believe in yourself! My coach
Jaimy always says in Dutch to me: komt goed mop!!
Which roughly translates to, everything is going to be
all right sweety”, she concluded.
“Chase your dreams and don’t
be afraid for the unknown.. ”