Hello all!
So I have 4 days and 17 hours to go! Yes I am counting down!!! The last week has been an emotional and physical rollercoaster. My body weight as of this morning was 70.65kgs, so I have 1.7kgs to go! I can see vast differences in my body shape! I guess that’s what happens when you lose almost 5kgs! I am very nervous about not making it!
Training despite the large loss in body weight has been going surprisingly well though. For those who do not know, in November last year, I had to stop training because I had 3 bulging discs in my lower back. I stopped training until the end of January, and started back February doing only upper body movements. I only picked up a barbell probably halfway into March, so considering I have only been working my lifts I am pretty happy with my current progress.
Prior to my injury my PB’s for snatch and CNJ were 62.5 and 75kgs. But I am pretty sure in weightlifting my 75kg wouldn’t have been cleared as a good lift. Over the last few days I have hit a 60kg snatch and 70kg CNJ a few times! Which makes me very excited to have gained my strength back! This is the most I have lifted since my injury. My squats are getting stronger and am gaining more mobility in my squat! So even if I don’t make 69kg and am soo happy with my progress.
BUT I am going to make it. I have come this far, I will make sure I make it!
From tomorrow, I will be changing my diet again and will start to follow a low residue diet. Basically this means I will be cutting out a lot of fibre in my diet to about 10g. My current diet is about 25g, so I will be even more hungry than what I am currently am, which really will suck! Low fibre foods include, white breads/rice/low fibre cereals, fruits and vegetables cooked well without seeds or skins and high protein based foods, such as eggs, lean meats, dairy foods.
A low residue diet will decrease the transit time of food sitting in my gut, so basically when Sunday comes around I will have very little sitting in my intestines, which should hopefully help me lose another 500g to 1kg. However, because I have to follow a low FODMAP diet, there are many foods that are included on a low residue diet that I cannot eat! So most of the high carb based and dairy foods are out. As well as I am trying to glycogen deplete my stores also. A total depletion will result in about a 2kg loss. I know I am already depleted. But if I remove all carbs from my diet for a couple days, it should decrease my body weight even moreso.
So my diet will look like this for the next four days.
A protein shake with frozen banana in the morning Then twice each day I will have 100g of chicken breast or kangaroo with mashed pumpkin, baby spinach, cucumber and zucchini without skin or seeds. I will have some kind of caffeine source going into training and a piece of fruit. I am not meant to have either of these on this diet. But I still want to train well, so I will add it in if I need it to function well!
I have to say though the last week I really have struggled and had some weak moments. Particularly last Thursday. I had no motivation to train. I probably only burnt about half of the calories I normally would in a steady state session, and I ate way too many carbs. My training sessions the following two days again were not as long as normal and as a result I gained about a kilo :( We all have weak moments, and unfortunately I broke to mine again. Fortunately I have lost what I have gained plus a little more by training even harder over the last few days.
I think the worst part about this process is that I have been so emotional. I have almost cried so many times, become easily angered with friends, family, and clients. This has been a very big learning curve. I have worked with many clients who have struggled emotionally to make weight. There have been times when I thought they have just needed to toughen up because this what they have to do to compete. But it really has made me realise how hard my athletes work not just in training but with their nutrition and I can understand why they have weak moments. Now I can at least sympathise with them before I tell them to suck it up haha.
But this truly has been very difficult and is something that I never want to do again. Weight loss at a slow rate that doesn’t affect your mental state, training is the best way to see good long term results.
Next week I will talk about what to do for nutrition post weigh in, how I went and what my plans are for nutrition and training post this competition, because I obviously do not want to regain any fat, only glycogen and food weight!
Talk soon :)