Discipline, determination and drive characterize Sergeant Yolanda Harris of the University Police Department. She took her workout routine to the next level a couple years ago and began competing as a professional bodybuilder earlier this year.

Harris placed third during her first competition, the Contra Costa Championships at Chabot College on May 10, and second in her second competition, the Fit Expo San Jose July 12, but is waiting until next year to continue competing.

During her off season, Harris said she is trying to find a middle ground, but she also wants to branch out of the Bay Area, where she was born and raised, and find a competition that is more geared toward what she wants to look like.

“I intend to call this my off season and build more muscle,” Harris said. “Next time I step on stage, I want the package to look exactly how I want it to look.”

Harris said she found herself too big for the first show and too small during the second show.

“It’s actually a science to get yourself to look this way. If you take away too many of my carbohydrates, I just thin out completely,” Harris said.

Sheryl Boykins, chief of University Police, said she wasn’t surprised when she found out Harris, who has been a police officer for 16 years, was competing as a bodybuilder, “because she’s so fit visually.”

After Harris noticed she gained some weight a couple years ago she began working out regularly, but focused mostly on cardiovascular training to lose weight.

“The longer you are in law enforcement, there’s a tendency for you to drop off on your physical training,” Boykins said. “She has mastered that and kept it going.”

Harris said she started out with light weights, but received encouragement to lift heavier weights and kept moving up. At the same time, she started doing more research on fitness and nutrition, eventually becoming a certified personal trainer.

“If you’ve been to work or you got into an argument and you go lift something heavy and put it back down and pick it back up, it feels good, if you’re working out hard, it gets a lot of stress out,” said Harris.

She said people would notice her physique and ask her if she was a bodybuilder, which piqued her interest and eventually led her to hire a competition trainer.

“At some point cardio doesn’t do it anymore, so there was an older man at the gym who told me in order to lose any additional weight or to tighten up you’re probably going to have to start lifting weights,” Harris said.

Harris follows a strict diet and six-day workout regimen, but said she considers working out to be stress relief.

“After I started looking into it and really getting into it I liked it a lot and it became a passion of mine,” Harris said.

She said she gives herself a cheat meal every week or two, but mostly sticks to protein and limited carbohydrates while drinking nothing but water.

“I don’t eat any fast food at all. I don’t know if I tried to eat it right now, what would happen to me. The hardest part is the food. I love ice cream, that was my weakness before,” Harris said.

Boykins recently assigned Harris to a special assignment to help put her in a position where she could expand herself and “be very efficient and productive at the next level.”

“I think if she has the discipline to do that she’ll have the discipline to do other things to help her in her career that aren’t physical,” Boykin said.

Beyond working out, Harris said she enjoys shopping, traveling anywhere the “sand is white and the water is blue,” but right now she mostly enjoys sleep.

There is an upcoming competition, the San Francisco Championships at Chabot College Oct. 11, but Harris said she probably would not attend. If she wanted to compete, she said it would not take more than six weeks of training to prepare.

Harris said competitions are not the only reason she enjoys bodybuilding.

“I meet a lot of people. I’ve gone to fit expos and done pull-up contests. It gives me an avenue to meet new people and do things I’ve never done before,” said Harris.