future tips + what NOT to do

Last year, Mike passed along some advice for what he used to do, just to help me out. :D

• Ped E is a drink that’s given to babies who’ve lost a bunch of fluid from vomiting or diarrhea; it works wonders for rehydration and replenishing lost electrolytes, so his team (well, all the teams) used to always drink it right after weigh-ins. It’s kinda expensive in my book though, so he brought up what his ex phys professor had mentioned about Gatorade. On its own, it’s too sugary, but if you dilute it in equal parts water:Gatorade, it basically has the same effect as Ped E.
• If for some reason I am still over my weight class the night before, if I’m staying in a hotel, I can make my own sauna/steam room of sorts by turning on the hot shower + sealing the cracks of the door with towels so I can sweat out the rest (tis an option I would take over putting on a bunch of clothes and walking a couple miles because that would take time, and running would waste my energy).
• If I cut to about 4 pounds above what I need to be and just sit on that until the week before, cutting the last 4 to meet my weight class will be a piece of cake.

He used to wrestle competitively and would regularly have to lose 8 lbs in a single night (…). Granted, he’s obviously bigger than me, but still. Holy crud. :O So you can see why he’s the one I chose to call upon when I discovered that I still wasn’t at the weight I needed to be.

For the record, I asked about eating a lemon because it’s a natural diuretic/laxative. Desperate times call for desperate measures!

He called me to pass on some crash-course tips for me. I am in no way condoning any of this on a regular basis for crash-course dieting/weight loss or anything of the sort, but if you have a morning weigh-in and are sitting just above what you need to be at / being in the weight class above you would be a wildly distinct disadvantage, these might help!

• Eat a bulky salad (e.g. something that takes up a lot of space but has next-to-no calories)
• Take as hot a bath as you can stand
• Gross as it may sound, chewing sour gum to stimulate the salivary glands and then spitting into a cup on the drive over
• Putting on a bunch of clothes and walking 2 miles
• Sleeping in a bunch of clothes under a ton of blankets
• If you’re a little bit under, weigh yourself holding the food you intend to eat to see what that’d be so you don’t put yourself over
• If you have a headache from dehydration, take an NSAID

Cutting weight was definitely not a piece of cake for me, but I know full well everything that I was doing wrong, haha. In addition, I’m hoping that next time, my training will not consist of several months’ worth of detraining/deconditioning followed by 5 weeks of starting up lifting again.

Lori also found this Joe Rogan podcast with Mike Dolce (fitness trainer who was named the 2013 MMA Trainer of the Year)!

Body fat percentage-wise, I have no idea where I am anymore. Back in early 2010, I got to have that calculated since I very enthusiastically volunteered to be the subject in the hydrostatic weighing tank. I was sitting at around 21-22% back then.

According to my usually-super-reliable-source (wikipedia), “fitness” is 21-24%. Since this said calculation, I’ve run a half marathon, gained a couple pounds from a fairly terrible (in my book, anyway) lifestyle while I was in New Jersey, lost it all and then some in 2013, and then gained back a bunch whilst boards study hibernation, so who knows where I’m at now!? The lowest I’m willing to cut to is probably 17%. :O

As promised… this is my post on:

What NOT To Do When Prepping For A Competition

_{More specifically, I’m talking about when it happens to involve cutting weight.}

• Not weighing yourself semi-regularly when you’re trying to cut to a certain weight class
  Especially when you know that, as of 3 weeks beforehand, you’re still about 5-6 pounds over
• Not watching what you’re eating despite knowing that I was 5-6 pounds over
  I am still, above all, a wildly frugal medical student whose interest on her student loans alone total up to the payment of half a car, so I remain a slave to free food. Drug reps would come in twice a week to feed us a ton of food, and no, I did not turn that down.
• Sleeping only 2 hours the night before
  I have a tendency to put others’ needs before my own, so this was done knowingly; Linda (who runs Please Save A Cat) is like another mom to me, so I like to try to help her out whenever possible, and it’d been so long since I’d seen all the cats!
• Powerwalking 4 miles at 3:30 a.m. while wearing a whole bunch of clothes to cut the last pound before driving the 2.5 hours to get there
  Imagine if I’d been at full strength!
• Overtraining/Overdoing it on the cross-training
  I chose to take the fall for this one too, because I really wanted to take BJJ/TKD at Phil’s and partake in the boot camps that my hospital gym offered
• Try not to hurt yourself 2 weeks before.
• Not maintaining a consistent workout plan
  I was very loosely following the 5-3-1 program, but kept changing stuff up and not fully adhering to it. I’m not sure how much it would’ve helped if I’d actually stuck to it.
• Not adhering to the commands!
  I started to rerack before the judge gave the “Rack” command for my first attempt in squats, so that lift didn’t count. This non-hearing may or may not have been due to the lack of sleep.