I'm sitting here hungry and I weigh 159.4 pounds so I thought I'd write a quick something that's just about the diet, weight, cutting.
I'm now at the right weight. I don't want to lose or to gain. That's annoying and hard, in itself, because we all lose and gain. I'd rather not have to not drink water, or sweat out a yoga class, day of the fight. So I monitor that.
I'm listening to Kindred, the new Passion Pit album, as I write this. It's good.
Here are some pictures to help tell this story.
What is this? You know what this is. Ignore the cat food on the right, things aren't that crazy around here. It's a bunch of protein bars of various kinds, because these are a really good tool to know exactly how many calories you're getting, get some sugar in, and also get a good dose of protein, which --as I've written previously--is really key for me to not kind of get into a really dire place.
What is this? An object lesson in how crazy you can kind of get during this. I did not get my hair cut because of the fight, or rather because of weight cutting. I'd been meaning to, and wanted to. did ask them to sweep it up and let me take it home and weigh it because I was curious how much weight I was "buying" myself by getting my haircut. You can't see the decimal but you can intuit it from that front-zero; the answer is 0.11 lbs. In other words like nothing. Really disappointing: I had pretty long hair! Imagine if you could drop like a half-pound just cutting your hair! Oh well.
But I
I include this not as humor or as oh ho-ho, look how extreme. My experience with the MyFitnessPal app is that it is very useful as a database and therefore for tracking calories, but that its models for how many calories you should be eating are way too low and should be viewed with caution or ignored totally. So if it is telling you this... man. I am not at all worried about hurting my long-term health at the level and the amount I do this; I don't cut that much weight, for that long, and pete's sake I've done this a handful of times over the last couple years in an amateur way, just for fun. But it does make me feel, in the pit of my stomach, a sympathy for men and women who really fight competitively at professional or near-professional levels. Honestly, the weight and eating stuff must totally screw up some people's lives, and I hope it doesn't impact their health too negatively.
On a happier note, some food recs:
-- I have mentioned these burritos. I mention them again, because the sponsorship is taking a minute to come through or something. You, reader: you should eat these. I mean just in general. They are good.
-- I now mention this bread. It it also so good, and yeah yeah, lower calorie than most breads which is nice but I SWEAR it is also just good. I am going to continue eating it after this whole thing is done.
Here's another thing you really learn when you're counting calories and working out pretty hard: chew your food. I forget to do this all the time, in general; not like literally, but I find I've eaten half of my whatever in bolted bites, big boluses (plural? sp?) going down my throat without any savoring or enjoyment. When you're aching for every calorie, you really chew, really savor. Actually, possibly to a weird degree. Probably, it's pretty weird to watch me eat right now.
I've learned two things: have a schedule and an idea of it, but also eat when you're hungry. This is in a sense contradictory, of course, and definitely goes into that category of thought when people are like "don't push yourself" but what they really mean is "don't push yourself, so long as basically all the time you are really pushing yourself." But it's pretty commonplace to hear diet-advice-givers dismiss the idea of skipping meals as harmful, and this goes with that. If I let myself get really hungry, I'm (a) miserable for that length of time, which sucks, and (b) more likely to just not gauge right when I do eat. Versus eating when I'm hungry, and by "eating" I mean a reasonably solid meal (300 - 500 calories), not a little snack. I also basically just eat mostly before training, as I've told you guys, because a "benefit" of training until you're very tired is that you're not very hungry after that, usually. Whereas before my body is pretty acutely aware of its calorie thresholds, and it's very happy for the food I give it.
And, last thing! I'll also observe--and just observe and be done here, because why belabor this kind of thing, but hey--what you want to know during this whole process is what you weigh. You and whatver the parts of your food your body has turned into you; i.e., you're not interested in water weight or stuff that's just passing (really: because why overestimate? that's eating that you could be doing!). So, within reason--and I mean that, like I've done it once in this whole process I've been through with you guys: laxatives.
And with that: out.
I'm now at the right weight. I don't want to lose or to gain. That's annoying and hard, in itself, because we all lose and gain. I'd rather not have to not drink water, or sweat out a yoga class, day of the fight. So I monitor that.
I'm listening to Kindred, the new Passion Pit album, as I write this. It's good.
What is this? You know what this is. Ignore the cat food on the right, things aren't that crazy around here. It's a bunch of protein bars of various kinds, because these are a really good tool to know exactly how many calories you're getting, get some sugar in, and also get a good dose of protein, which --as I've written previously--is really key for me to not kind of get into a really dire place.
 |
| without all that hair! |
But I
I include this not as humor or as oh ho-ho, look how extreme. My experience with the MyFitnessPal app is that it is very useful as a database and therefore for tracking calories, but that its models for how many calories you should be eating are way too low and should be viewed with caution or ignored totally. So if it is telling you this... man. I am not at all worried about hurting my long-term health at the level and the amount I do this; I don't cut that much weight, for that long, and pete's sake I've done this a handful of times over the last couple years in an amateur way, just for fun. But it does make me feel, in the pit of my stomach, a sympathy for men and women who really fight competitively at professional or near-professional levels. Honestly, the weight and eating stuff must totally screw up some people's lives, and I hope it doesn't impact their health too negatively.
On a happier note, some food recs:
-- I have mentioned these burritos. I mention them again, because the sponsorship is taking a minute to come through or something. You, reader: you should eat these. I mean just in general. They are good.
-- I now mention this bread. It it also so good, and yeah yeah, lower calorie than most breads which is nice but I SWEAR it is also just good. I am going to continue eating it after this whole thing is done.
Here's another thing you really learn when you're counting calories and working out pretty hard: chew your food. I forget to do this all the time, in general; not like literally, but I find I've eaten half of my whatever in bolted bites, big boluses (plural? sp?) going down my throat without any savoring or enjoyment. When you're aching for every calorie, you really chew, really savor. Actually, possibly to a weird degree. Probably, it's pretty weird to watch me eat right now.
I've learned two things: have a schedule and an idea of it, but also eat when you're hungry. This is in a sense contradictory, of course, and definitely goes into that category of thought when people are like "don't push yourself" but what they really mean is "don't push yourself, so long as basically all the time you are really pushing yourself." But it's pretty commonplace to hear diet-advice-givers dismiss the idea of skipping meals as harmful, and this goes with that. If I let myself get really hungry, I'm (a) miserable for that length of time, which sucks, and (b) more likely to just not gauge right when I do eat. Versus eating when I'm hungry, and by "eating" I mean a reasonably solid meal (300 - 500 calories), not a little snack. I also basically just eat mostly before training, as I've told you guys, because a "benefit" of training until you're very tired is that you're not very hungry after that, usually. Whereas before my body is pretty acutely aware of its calorie thresholds, and it's very happy for the food I give it.
And, last thing! I'll also observe--and just observe and be done here, because why belabor this kind of thing, but hey--what you want to know during this whole process is what you weigh. You and whatver the parts of your food your body has turned into you; i.e., you're not interested in water weight or stuff that's just passing (really: because why overestimate? that's eating that you could be doing!). So, within reason--and I mean that, like I've done it once in this whole process I've been through with you guys: laxatives.
And with that: out.
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