By Casey Neill
Nemanja Cvetkovic spent nine months feeling hungry and landed in hospital with malnutrition.
But the Dandenong 30-year-old said taking home a gold medal from the ICN Australian Muscle and Model Championships made the sacrifice worth it.
“I’m currently ranked number one in Australia for men’s physique,” he said.
“You’re starving from the moment you wake up.
“The more you eat, the more hungry you are.
“Your body becomes a fat-burning machine.
“You start slurring words, you can’t function and you get so drained.”
But Mr Cvetkovic kept his focus on the iCompete Natural Muscle and Model Alliance (ICN Australia) event, held in Melbourne in October.
“I lost 22 kilos. I did not know it was going to be that severe,” he said.
“I have no social life.
“I balance between training and work and university.
“It’s very, very hard to sustain a relationship.
“You need a very strong individual next to you, someone who’s going to understand you and be there for you.
“You’re always tired, and always used up.”
Five weeks out from the competition he broke his finger moving a couch and almost had to bow out.
He got sick twice because he was so malnourished.
“I couldn’t afford the supplements. I ended up in hospital in Dandenong Valley,” he said.
His diet and training regimes were meticulously structured.
A desire to inspire other spurred the personal trainer on.
“Going back to the moment when I’m on the stage and when I received the medal, it feels like all that hard work, saying no to all the other foods, doing cardio when I’m pretty much a zombie, being so depleted and not able to function … all that goes away and you feel fulfilment,” he said.
“There’s no greater feeling on earth than that.
“Thousands of people are looking at you, being inspired.”
He said people told him he’d changed their lives just by stepping on the stage.
Mr Cvetkovic came to Australia from Serbia in 1999.
“We had a very hard life,” he said.
Sport and fitness gave him direction and kept him out of trouble.
“My entire life I’ve been an athlete, from soccer to hockey to being a boxer,” he said.
“That led to body building.
“I had to stop boxing, I got quite a bad hand injury.”
He also severely damaged his retina.
“I see a black dot under pressure,” he said.
“It will get worse as I get older.”
Mr Cvetkovic received support from his workplace, Dandenong Genesis, coach Aaron Wood from Core Strength and Conditioning in Hallam, and girlfriend Nadine Planko.
Next year he’ll try to defend his title, and said he’d stick with the sport for 10 years at most.
BREAKOUT
Mr Cvetkovic started his preparations for the competition with a high-calorie diet.
Each day he’d consume vegetables blended with almond milk, oats and protein; chicken, rice and green vegetables; another shake, with kale, spinach, blueberries, mango, kiwi and water; another chicken meal; a beef meal; and 300 grams of Chobani yogurt with 30 grams of peanut butter and a scoop of whey protein.
He’d allow himself a cheat meal once a month up until 14 weeks from the competition and would demolish burgers, fries and donuts.
“Your sugar levels would spark up and then drop back down,” he said.
“That helped me to burn more fat, believe it or not.
“Your body gets used to your diet.
“It needs a kick in the butt to get it going.”
Post-competition he’s “reverse dieting” to reintroduce the calories back into his body.
On a training day he eats three whole eggs with 10 grams of butter; 50g whey isolate protein and 20 almonds; 170g cooked beef, 200g sweet potato with cinnamon and green vegies; oatmeal with peanut butter; and a protein shake.
Straight after training he eats two LCM bars and 50g whey protein.
“It gives you a sugar fix, but a good sugar fix,” he said.
“There’s only 1g fat per bar, it gives you right amount of sugar, and it has 7g of protein.”
From there he eats 170g beef, two pieces bread and 100g cooked rice, and finishes the day with yogurt with peanut butter and a scoop of whey isolate.
