10/04/2016- Park Inn Hotel, Walsall, Birmingham’s Arsehole

Just a quick post, written in-between training sessions at a national squad training weekend, to document a few slight changes I’ve trailed, on and off the mat, over the past few weeks.

After competing over two consecutive weekends in South America at the beginning of March I made a conscious switch my eating habits on returning to Britain. I feel I can become my own worst enemy sometimes in the week directly after an event; eating very clean & lowering the body fat levels to make my fighting weight, usually followed by 3-5 days of overindulging. I don’t see any problem with a blow out if there is a lengthy amount of time in-between fights, however, when aiming to compete regularly in a weight controlled sport, piling in unneeded amounts of calories can result in obvious complications.

So, on landing back in London, I decided to try a method of eating I was told about by my friend and Camberley team mate, Dru Oakes, that of Serge Nubret, a highly successful bodybuilder in the 1970’s. As opposed to eating regularly, Nubret would eat only twice in a 24 hour period, consuming his required quantity of calories over 2 meals instead of say 5 or 6. I gave it a go for a good few days and felt great, both physically in and out of training and, more importantly, mentally. I maintained a lower body fat percentage and felt little need to overeat/binge. I also noticed that I thought about food a lot less throughout the day, when eating 6 times a day you are never really out of the kitchen for little more than a couple of hours at a time. I am someone who likes to have my fill when I eat, so I found this process made meal times a hell of a lot more enjoyable, as opposed to eating small portions regularly, usual still feeling hungry once I’ve finished!

I did find, one Saturday that was filled with coaching kids sessions, I did have a few snacks around my meals, which annoyed me. So, I have played around with the number of times I have been taking food on board since, and I do feel eating twice a day Mon- Fri works best, however I have been giving myself a calorie, protein, carbohydrate limit at the weekends and choosing how many meals I will consume this over, depending how I’m feeling on that day, it may be 1,2,3,4,5 or 6! So, in conclusion, I think that I will continue to push the two meals a day method for sometime more, however if I’m becoming bored or waking up hungry on certain mornings I will react and adjust the days eating to suit how I’m feeling.

To finish, I fought out in Turkey last weekend. In the five days prior to weighing in I completed my usual water loading programme that consists of a minimum of 5 litres a day, using a dandelion root extract supplement 3 times a day, and 2000mg of vitamin c every 2 hours on the day of weigh in. I decided to try and keep my sugar and salt consumption at an absolute minimum during the final week. I also split my carb intake up, normally I would only have carbs with the first 2 meals of the day, however I decided to spread the same quantity equally throughout the day, i.e. smaller portions of carbs but with every meal. I found I was slightly less hungry and my body weight dropped noticeably quicker. I will say I experienced some cramping towards the end of a couple of the weeks more intense sessions but nothing horrendous, more than justifiable to see the scales showing more favourable numbers. There were no baths in the competition hotel so we had to hit the sauna to remove the last little bit of weight, I tried a new method of covering my whole body in thick coco butter immediately before stepping in the sauna. I began sweating straight away and was down to 73.0kg in just 15 minutes, definitely one for keeping!

Thanks for reading.

D