Cutting Weight, Healing Leg: Part 4

I weighed 163 pounds this morning. I ate approximately 2,153 calories today, and burned approximately 676 calories doing exercise (yoga, muay thai).

Leg: So now I have these weird bruises on both knees. But honestly I'm just talking about them because there's a "leg" space. They're the sort of thing you'd usually ice and forget about; not like the contusion in my thigh that's the point of concern. Anyway: bruised knees. Not sure how the right one got bruised, as I've not been kneeing it because of the thigh. Left: very clearly know how.

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Eat Protein.

This is my advice to you. To myself.

I know it is trendy and paleo to go on about protein. And I know that a macronutrient balance is essential to health and happiness; I sometimes even, in fact, wind up being the carrier of this very message to people who need it (I am thinking in particular of a few young women I've tutored, and "cleanses").

BUT, when you are counting your calories, and are still using your body, for me, every meal that I don't optimize protein is one that I kick myself for.

It's partially of course about indulgence, but also just calculation. A chocolate croissant does not have that many calories. If you are working out hard, even if you are cutting weight, it is not a big deal to eat a chocolate croissant. But it is, because you are using up your 290-or-whatever calories on something with practically no protein, and if you're me you will be hungry weak sad and tired because of that.

As opposed to, say, these. No I am not a paid rep for these people. Yes I would work as a paid rep for these people. Sweet Earth, hit me up. Their "functional" breakfast burrito is amazing, because it makes you not hungry for a long time.

What I'm saying is, to avoid the kind of cavernous dire hunger that I'm feeling right now, eat protein. Don't eat the chocolate g.d. croissant. Eat. Protein.

Last food thing: kind of interesting. While it's hard, not-eating to cut weight while training is really different than not-eating in general. I thankfully have very little experience not-eating in general, but in my experience it involves lots of will-power and this and that. Cutting weight for a fight involves will-power, too, but I guess you're so in it that it feels as much like an acquiescence to what is. Do you want to make weight for this fight? I.e., do you want to do this fight, that you are busting your ass for, and that other people are investing time and effort in your doing? Okay. Then you are not eating more, right now/today, or whatever. It's just fact.

It also helps that you train so hard that you're not hungry after, usually, although if you screw up your timing on eating & training gosh that makes training harder and way way less fun and effective.

Cutting Weight, Healing Leg: Part 4 (Training Videos!)

So, this is round... I don't know, I think 3 of 5, of pad work with Coach Vik from tonight.

I'm going to approach these training videos as an explanation for those who don't know the sport, on the assumption that if you're reading this, you know me, probably, and therefore probably you don't know the sport. If you're still watching and reading and those conditions somehow don't attain: thanks for watching and reading.

In training for Muay Thai, you do lots of stuff, but an anchor activity is "pad work." Pad work is the coach (or whoever) holding pads, calling hits or combos for you to do. That's kind of the long and the short of it. Obviously what you do, how advanced the techniques are, how many are sequenced together, whether or how much you're asked to defend yourself -- all that is largely up to the pad-holder.

Coach is a very good pad holder. I've trained at not that many gyms, but not that few: 6 or 7, on different cities and continents, and by "gyms" I don't mean fitness muay thai classes but gyms that make fighters (although of course not everyone at even such a gym is there to be that). My point is that I have a non-zero comparison group, and Coach's specificity of technique and demanding pace, in particular, are admirable and daunting. There is no doubt that in fight prep the pad work is what's most grueling; you ramp up from the usual 3 3-minutes rounds, to 4, to 5, and it just leaves you empty.

You can see me kind of empty, here; slow both in how I sequence attacks and in the execution of each attack, and slow on my feet, and struggling. To some extent that's on me, but to some extent that's what happens: the goal of this work is to drive you to that point, so that you're trained mentally and physically to still operate there, to still do something, throw something (jab jab kick, go go go) even when it's all empty.

Anyway, enjoy me being tired and a bit rubbish. Thanks, Coach.

Cutting Weight, Healing Leg: Part 3

I weighed 163 pounds this morning. I ate approximately 2,560 calories today, and burned approximately 210 calories doing exercise (yoga).

Leg: y'know. Right direction. Glad it came out of yesterday fine, there was one sec I was worried, but fine.

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"What part of your past are you trying to atone for?"

I don't remember if those were S the novelist's exact words, but that was her sentiment. Everyone around the table, in a sun-dapped backyard in Venice (Los Angeles, not the other one) went ooooohhh; like "burn", I guess.

She'd asked this, S -- who was (still is! I am sure!) winsome and red-headed and gracefully accepting/deflecting another member of our party's probing personal questions about her, which was partially why the big ooooohhh: role reversal, the questioned now asking tough questions.

I had been sitting there, kind of spaced out, and everyone knew it was cuz I was hungry because I was cutting for the fight. Etc.

I'm actually not going to rattle on with this anecdote; that's the nub. The nub really being a return to the question that is animating this series, at least here at its start. "Why do this?" I don't think, as S cheekily posited, that I'm exorcising (exercising. har.) some angry / scared / compensatory inner thing. WELL. Maybe the last one; it could be that there is something in some people that when your life is so good, so rich, you feel that you have to test something. But even writing that frankly it feels like obvious bullshit, and even sort of wasteful (if things are so good, shouldn't you build on them to make more? And that's more what this feels like). So, that's not it, either.

I do think there's a sometimes hard-to-bridge gap between people who derive deep pleasure/satisfaction from challenging, pushing, and yes-sometimes-hurting their bodies and those who do not. I'm not saying S is a "does not". I don't know her. I'm saying that part of it is just really simple: net-net, I like it. It's hard sometimes, but I like it.

But I also take her point, and I'm asking myself the same question in less pointed terms. What are the particularities of this: the little rushes of fear, and excitement, that overtake you every day; the fact that I am at this point always mentally and emotionally (nevermind physically. obviously physically) affected by hunger, mild to not-so-mild; the fact that you could get hurt (probably not. but you could.); the fact that you could hurt someone else (ditto)? What are the things in me that makes me want to do this?

It's actually a rich and complete feeling, facing these questions in myself.

I have no idea how to answer htem.

It's also a good lesson, and maybe that's what I'll close this on, so I can offer something a little thought-ish instead of just questions. I have, for a long time, had an itch to fight. Not in my life, never that, but as sport. I've done 2 so far; this will be the 3rd. I know that there is an end to my road with this sport, somewhere not impossible to imagine; I'm 35, I want to be active for years, and if you're as bad as I am at fighting you should not be fighting much past my age if you want to stay healthy for other activities at a good level. I know all that. Et cetera et cetera.

But right now what it is is that I'm doing the thing that I was itching to do but was hard. And scratching that itch.

It would be a terrible bummer if my leg got re-screwed-up and I had to drop this fight; that's looking okay touch wood. It would be a terrible bummer to get hammered and injured again in the ring, as I did in my fight last October. It would be a disappointment, but a noble one, to have a good fight but lose. It would be a glory to have a good fight and win. But whatever happens I am doing it. I'm doing it.

The things that we want and always wonder if about, do not have to stay if. We can do them and, in so doing, relax the threads that pull some of us (it can't just be me) many ways. Satisfy desires; answer some of the questions. They lead to others, unavoidably--thanks, S--but still: we can forward ourselves through more than just time.

Cutting Weight, Healing Leg: Part 2

I weighed 165.4 pounds this morning. I ate approximately 2,036 calories today, and burned approximately 880 calories doing exercise (Muay Thai - Saturdays are 4 real).

Leg: DID NOT GET HURT DOING MUAY THAI. But I only boxed, so. Bridges still to cross.

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Wuwuuut! This is a feeling good entry. I hope it's not the only one!

So the thing about the days that feel good in training is that they feel GOOD. What it feels like is this: you have the quiet, contented, delighted exhilaration of having really pushed your body.

You have the equally amazing feeling--touch wood--of having gotten banged up and dinged up but NOT injured, which if you're like me is one of the best feelings you can have. It's like the moment on a downhill mountain bike ride, when you skid out but then get it back, and you laugh and you laugh.

That's... actually that's about it. There's a third thing, on days where training is hard and goes well, which is that after a couple of hours you are really hungry in a way that's pleasurable. But, alas, none of that for me today.

Not much to say--being happy, as has often been noted, makes me a lot less thoughtful and reflective. These workouts are grueling; that's great, they should be. Coach is being great about working around my leg, and everyone in the gym is pitching in a helpful, generous way. And I'm falling asleep as I write this.

So... rest. Don't worry: I'm sure I'll have some low-points soon, and write some really deep stuff.

Cutting Weight, Healing Leg: Part 1

I weighed 165.4 pounds this morning. I ate approximately 1,951 calories today, and burned approximately 260 calories doing exercise (yoga).

My leg feels kind of tight, with a golf ball in the inner thigh muscle, just above the knee, but also pretty okay--getting better.

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I'm going to try to write a short thing every day as I prep for a fight on May 9th. Each will be accompanied by a little video. The whole point is radical honesty, which means if I express some extreme-sounding feelings they should maybe taken with a grain of salt, as I'm just riffing. Also I am hungry. All the time: hungry.

Because I am going to be cutting weight, down from 165.4 this morning to fight at 160; and my leg got hurt again, NOT like the corked thigh that kiboshed everything last fall, but a contusion on the same thigh and it's just SO ANNOYING. It's annoying being hurt, and it makes you wonder why you'd do this: some thing that you are not particularly good at, that makes you be SO HUNGRY and DAMAGES YOU so you can't do other things.

I'm not actually as mad as those caps; not nearly. I'm trying to outline the logical train of what's going on with me, more generally.

It sucks to be cutting weight. I can feel my brain be less good; I'm tired in a sad, animal way that feels oriented towards survival during the lean winter months or some shit.

I'd also say, as I do in the video, that I don't write about all this to glorify or somehow perversely brag about it. You, reader, can believe that or not. I write about it because I think that it's interesting: that a thing whose extremes can feel so good, entails so much feeling bad, and what that means about things and effort and reward and happiness. I believe absolutely that there is often some pain/discomfort/unhappiness on the road to fulfillment; i.e. I have a kind of settled and (I'd say, based on my subjective experience, so maybe nonsensically but still I'd say it) empirical contempt for people who think that the point of things is just to be comfortable, particularly if they are sad but won't even go for, you know, long walks. But there are of course extremes, and fighting sports seem obviously to be at the far end of the extremes.

I don't have a ton of insight into why I do this. I'll be honest. I have many thoughts, and maybe some of them will come out over the course of these entries.

Let's see.

Standing Desk Monitor Stand-ery

It's like always worth it to spend $80 and seventy minutes (always longer than you expect) on this stuff.

Before

Before. On a f***ing box, reinforced by tape.

After!

After! The desk space! The lines!

The keyboard is still on a stupid box-- I know, I know.

HliAT, #3

How long it actually takes to...

walk from a spot kinda just outside my apartment complex to the neighborhood restaurant where I'm meeting my sister, after texting her that I'll be "There in five": 7 minutes, 51.57 seconds

bonus: In casual conversation, I would probably describe this restaurant as "2 minutes away" from my house