Day 66: Recovery from a Weigh In

Today, I woke up and weighed myself. Weight is: 81.4Kg. Yesterday I consumed 293 calories below my BMR and did 709 calories of exercise above my BMR. Total deficit is 1002 calories.

New blog commitment to myself: 5 days a week, Monday through Friday. I wanted to cut down the number of posts I make, and since weekend days are different, then it makes it easier to not do blog posts on those days.

Yesterday was a fast day and I went for a run. It is pretty easy to come up with a large deficit on a day like that. Can I sustain it?

Recovery from a weigh in is a balance between replenishing your water as quickly as possible, and accommodating the fact that we cannot absorb food and water at the same pace as we can consume it. At one point in time, MMA athletes were going on intravenous to recover, but various athletic boards banned it, and then so did the MMA promotion companies.

Essentially, you need to slowly consume calorie rich and not very dense foods and liquids. What you consume needs to be easily and quickly absorbed by your digestive system, while at the same time providing the nutrients you need to recover. Liquids to consider for a weigh-in recovery are Pedialyte, Gatorade, and watered down fruit juice. Foods to consider are fruits, carbohydrate tabs, and chocolate milk/milk replacement. These options will replenish the electrolytes you lost while cutting weight and give you some quick calories. Do not guzzle or gorge on anything. You must take slow, measured amounts.

Once you have your fluid levels back to where they should be, and have a few calories under your belt, you can consider eating a meal. You really should stay away from heavy meats and heavily spiced/flavoured food. If you compete early in the morning, bland, simple, low in protein, and easily digested is the theme for your supper. If you have up to 24 hours to recover, then you could opt for more protein, but you should still go with a smaller portion size. Carbohydrates will quickly go into your glycogen stores and be available as the energy you need to compete. On the other hand, high protein foods take up to 12 hours to fully digest and it takes a while for your body to process the protein for muscle rebuilding. You don’t want heavy food running through your digestive system while you’re trying to compete.