Nebras Hayek on Using Challenges to Give Life Meaning

This month we’ve got an enlightening interview with award-winning bodybuilder and former Miss Arab USA, Nebras Hayek. In 2019 Nebras joined the Army National Guard. Shortly after completing training, she began prepping for her first bodybuilding competition, placing in the top 10 among 71 top-ranked women in her height class. Today, she shares some of the things she learned during that journey.

Dennis Postema: Nebras, can you give us a bit of your background of where you’re from and what’s going on, what your backstory is?

Nebras Hayek: I was born and raised in Iraq. My dad is a nuclear physicist for the Iraqi government and the U.S. government brought us to Chicago on an asylee status, a move that changed our lives. Even though the natural thing would’ve been for us to go to Germany, where my parents had previously lived the majority of their lives, we came to the U.S. I think that was a really good decision, especially due to the opportunities that me and my brothers have here in the U.S. versus what we would’ve had if we’d lived elsewhere.

Dennis: Tell us a bit about your career.

Nebras: When I was in Chicago, I had a really good job as VP Assistant Development for 16 nursing homes in Illinois and 16 in Indiana. I earned the respect in healthcare marketing really quickly, because people used to always say I was like a dog with a bone—really persistent with a very good work ethic. About five years ago, I moved to North Carolina because I wanted something fresh and new, because things had become too easy in Chicago.

When I came to North Carolina, I assumed I could get started right away and just pick up where I’d left off. But the beautiful part about my life is that I always struggle a lot, and it makes me appreciate what I get a lot more. I struggled for three years trying to get a job that I felt like I deserved, until one day I was in tears and I contacted the owner of the company that I’d worked for in Chicago. I don’t know what made me call him, but I said, “I need help.” He told me on the call, “I’ve got you. I’ll take care of you. In a couple hours you’ll have a job.”

Sure enough, I got a call from my current employer offering me a job. I never sent my résumé, I never had an application, I never even had an interview. He called to offer me a job, and I got the chance to say, “Can you tell me what this job is about? And how much does it pay?” It kind of made me feel like I regained the power in my life again, which shows that when you do so well, people don’t forget. The owner of the company that I used to work for told my new employer that I’d brought them numbers they’d never seen before, and that I’d gotten four promotions in eight months. And I’m still having the same success with this company, so I feel like I’m making him proud.

Dennis: What do you think makes you crave challenges?

Nebras: I guess because I’ve overcome so many difficult things that when there’s nothing difficult in my life and things are just happening, instead of me having to work for them, I get complacent and it becomes depressing. I need challenges to appreciate life.

Dennis: So mundane does not work for you, and you get bored easily. Is that what attracted you to bodybuilding?

Nebras: I never considered myself athletic, but people in my life would say, “You’re crazy for not saying it.” I just feel like athletic is somebody who does cheerleading or plays football, but I’ve always loved lifting weights. I’ve

been doing it my whole life, but bodybuilding came as a surprise. I was working on this fitness show a while back. When I first moved to Charlotte, I’d go to new yoga studios or AIR Fit, where you have the curtain hanging from the ceiling and you do yoga on it, and I started taking on new fitness challenges and having people record them. I’d post the videos on my YouTube channel just to tell people experiences I’ve had for the first time.

Then one person told me, “Why don’t you just do bodybuilding?” That was in, like, 2018 and I was like, “No, that’s not for me.” Because when I thought of bodybuilding, I’d think, “I don’t want to look too muscular and masculine, I still want to look feminine.” Then the person said, “You can do bikini.” So I looked into it and said, “Actually, that’s exactly what I do. I like lifting,” so that became my thing.

I did my first show as part of the challenge, and I looked really good, but onstage, compared to everybody else, I was overweight. And it was funny because I wasn’t overweight but compared to everybody else and how lean they were, I was. So I thought, this is going to be my new challenge. I need to do this. People told me I would be hooked and I didn’t believe them. Did a second show and I placed a lot higher, but still I wasn’t there. Once I shipped out for the army, I came back completely lean after not having lifted any weights there. That was because all the lifting I did before was revealed.

I was in a national show, and that’s when I placed ninth, so top 10, and I was really proud. I was like, “I need to continue doing this,” because I felt really good when I was training, when I was dieting. It felt like I had a purpose.

Dennis: How long did you prep for your first show?

Nebras: The prep for my first show was about 10 weeks, and that’s why I didn’t place that well. The second show was probably about 10–16 weeks. But the national show, I came back June 5 and the show was August 26. When I prepped for that one, I didn’t start right away, because my coach and I wondered if I had enough muscle tone. For that last show, it took 10 weeks of prep to win the top 10. And the other competitors had been prepping for, like, 11 months, and I felt like, “How am I gonna win against them?” But I was happy with my placement.

Dennis: That says a lot for muscle memory and having those years of working out. I always love that because people don’t understand how important that is in working out. How do you go about managing time with a full-time career and fitness? How do you do that?

Nebras: It’s really funny, because I just told one of my colleagues who happens to be my good friend that you have to pick what matters to you, and if you know fitness is

a top priority, you’ll always have time for it. Because you’ll have time to stop for Starbucks, you’ll have time to watch a Netflix show … fitness is my escape.

I travel a lot and stay in hotels, so I started looking for hotels with a good gym—not just a treadmill. I would actually look through the galleries and reviews for every single trip, and then plan accordingly to work around my meetings, maybe doing cardio at night and weight lifting in the morning. If it’s important to you, you’ll make time for it, and that’s really with everything in life.

My cardio time, people will say, “You do an hour of cardio in the morning?” and I say, “It’s one Netflix show. If you’re going to watch it sitting down, why not watch it on a treadmill?” It’s really not that difficult. It’s all a mental game.

Dennis: Can you give our viewers a little bit of nutrition advice on how they can make a better plan to work for them?

Nebras: I’ve tried so many things, so it’s hard. If you’re on prep, then your nutrition is so much different than if you were just going to live a healthy lifestyle. I always tell people if you’re trying to lose weight, you have to be at a calorie deficit. It’s a no-brainer. What you’re putting in your body versus what you’re getting out.

A lot of times people think that if they don’t eat, then they’re going to lose weight. But you have to feed your muscles, because your body has to be taken care of. If you’re not feeding your muscles, then your body’s getting weaker. The main thing I tell people is that you have to make sure you always hit your protein intake every single day. Every single meal that you have, you have to have a good portion of protein, whether it’s breakfast, lunch, dinner, or the two “snackers,” always have a protein.

So for me, breakfast would be egg whites. I love Muscle Eggs—I just make a crepe out of it, put a tablespoon of peanut butter on it, and it’s my protein for breakfast. It tastes delicious and it doesn’t feel like I’m depriving myself. Lunch can be chicken breast. Dinner can be a turkey sandwich. In between lunch and dinner, I would have a shake with protein. That should be it—it shouldn’t be complicated. People a lot of times feel that they have to deprive themselves but also complicate things in order to eat right. Just make it work for you.

Dennis: What do you tell women who are afraid of lifting weights? How does it compare to just doing cardio?

Nebras: Well, first of all, I wish that women could get muscles as fast as those who are afraid think we can. Because it is a struggle for us to get the raw muscles, like, in the shoulder. It takes a lot of work and a lot of reps. If it was that easy to get masculine looking, then I would love for that to work out for a competition. But it’s not.

Also, women need to lift weights a lot more than men. Our bodies tend to get weaker, our bones tend to get weaker, especially when you hit your 50s. By the time women hit their 40s and 50s, their bodies are very fragile. When you have muscles, it protects your

bones. When I went into basic training, I was older than most of the people there. They were all 18 or 19, and I got concerned when I saw everybody around me dropping from hip injuries. But when I talked to a doctor about it, he said, “You have a lot of muscle around the joints that everybody is getting the injuries in. You’re not going to get injured.”

Women who train their arms and legs don’t have to get really bulky. It doesn’t work like that. But you are going to get stronger. You are going to protect your bones and you’re going to look a lot leaner because there is such a thing as skinny-fat.

Dennis: Do you think that during basic training, it was your weight lifting and your muscle building and working out that kept you going?

Nebras: That, but I also think it’s the mindset. A lot of people who left basic training gained a lot of weight. A lot of the women gained 20 to 30 pounds. I lost 20 pounds. I think it’s the mental determination when you go in. I went in knowing I wanted to be a certain weight and I want to look a certain way.

There were times in training when we’d be told to hold a plank for a minute until every single person, out of 150 soldiers,

stays upright for a minute. We wouldn’t be able to drop until everybody held the plank for a minute. Soldiers were sagging at the hips and knees, crying, falling, and I just thought, “Okay, you can do this. This is what needs to be done, because you’re now lifting weights. This is what you’re doing.” Those are the things that helped me when I went through basic training. I focused on using whatever we were doing to actually better my body. Dennis: How did you develop such a strong thought process for accepting a challenge? Where does that come from and how do you keep that mindset all the time?

Nebras: I truly believe that when you go through a lot of struggles in your life, you begin to learn that you’ll always be okay, that things will always turn out the way they’re supposed to. So you either accept them and embrace them and build yourself through the process, or you just sit down and cry. I told one friend who was going through a lot in her life, “You can put the victim hat on. It’s very comfortable when you have it on, because people don’t expect much of you.

But do you want to be that person that people don’t want to be around? When you call and your name shows up on a caller

ID and people say, ‘Not her again’?” I don’t want to be that person. I want to be that person where people see my name like, “It’s Nebras, answer the phone!” Or, “Nebras is coming to this party!” “Nebras is visiting!” and “Nebras is talking to us, what did she say?” You want to be the person who brings joy and happiness and positivity to people. That’s basically what happened. I just felt like, with every challenge, I became stronger and then I have more stories to tell and I can motivate more people.

Dennis: What kind of advice do you have to help people enjoy going to the gym instead of seeing it as a chore?

Nebras: Pick whatever workouts you enjoy. But let’s say it’s zero. Let’s say there’s nothing that you enjoy doing. When you go to a club or a party, you buy a dress or buy heels and you get your hair done to get yourself excited about going. So do the same for the gym. Dress up for it. When I’m in prep, I buy really cool shoes that help me with the different aspects of my workout. Like, for deadlifts, you need to have Start with small goals. That way, you’re always accomplishing something. If you sit there and say, “I want to compete on stage in two months,” and that’s your goal, then it’s not going to help you. You’re always going to feel defeated. But if you say, “I want to be strong enough to do a pull-up or a push-up the proper way.” Or “I want to be able to run, to walk, to do cardio for 30 minutes on a treadmill without being completely out of breath.” Start really slowly, but make it so you have a simple goal so you can celebrate it and say, “I accomplished a goal.” That allows your brain to say, “I have accomplished something,” instead of always saying, “I’m working toward something.” This way, you’re always working toward something, and you accomplish it as you go.

Converse. If I’m running or more cardio, then I want Nikes. So you dress up yourself.

Then you have music. Listen to whatever music you want. You can listen to a podcast and completely zone out. And go to a gym where people won’t care what you’re doing and what you’re wearing. The gym is just for you to zone out and be in your own world. So to make it fun, you have to find out what it is that you look for, what makes it fun for you. If you like to watch movies, then play something funny. Sometimes I listen to the show “Friends.” I don’t even have to watch it, because I’ve watched it so many times that I can imagine the scenes, and as I’m doing a set, I’m laughing like a crazy person. Sometimes I listen to my work calls and it takes hours and hours and people just talk and everything, and I get a workout while I’m listening so I’m not wasting time. You can do whatever works for you.

To find out more about Nebras, find her on social media by searching. You can also check out her new show on 2Inspire TV! Here’s some advice from Nebras for people who want to start working out or who need to get back into it.