06 September 2011

To Cut Or Not To Cut #2- Cutting Like You Listen To Texas Is The Reason

So, you've decided to do the meet and now you need to make weight, eh?  If you're one of the half dozen people who've emailed me that these blogs come just at the "right time" because you've got a meet this month, you're probably fucked.  Proper fucked.  Done correctly, weight cutting will require a decent amount of pre-competition experimentation to determine how your body will react, a shitload of dieting, and a hell of a lot of unpleasantness- there's a reason why cutting goes with emo music, as it fucking sucks.  Allow me to explain:
While strength athletics don't generally require bodybuilder levels of leanness, anyone this side of Ray Charles can see a trend emerging amonth the dominant elite in powerlifting and strongman- they're fucking lean.  Take a look at the guys who are dominating these days.Matt Kroczaleski, Derek Poundstone, Mariusz Pudzianowski, Konstantin Konstantinovs, and Stan Efferding are all shredded... I mean, fuck, even Phil Pfister's gotten lean in the last few years, and the world's strongest woman, Aneta Florczyk, is lean (and fucking hot).  This means that before you even bother cutting water weight, you're going to need to drop some fat.  I've outlined ways to do so here, here, and here, so you can check those out for some ideas.  As anyone who is familiar with this blog knows, I'm a big fan of ketogenic diets and I think they're even better when making weight is an issue, as you get some idea of bodyweight when you're not holding water and will thus have a better idea of what's feasible for a weight class.  My bodyweight fluctuates 5-15 pounds after a carb-up, so I'm especially keen on experimenting with a carb-free week, every now and again, just to know where I stand.
The chick on the left is 5 time World's Strongest Woman Aneta Florczyk- notice how she's actually pretty hot, and definitely not fat.

Though it's not necessary that you get ripped to the fucking bone to compete in strength sports, you might as well use a competition as an excuse to bring your abs out of hiding.  They're likely not Jewish, so there's no reason for them to be treating your abdominal fat like's it the fucking attic and their name is Anne Frank.  For those of you who want to remain fat, go read something else and try not to burn any calories doing so- I'd hate for you to develop vascularity or some other indication that a heart attack's not your idea of a normal Saturday afternoon.
Britney really wanted to drop ten pounds for her wedding day.

Skipping forward, crunch-time for a cut starts not a day or to out, but rather a week out.  Assuming a Saturday meet 9Friday weigh-in), as they're by far and away the most common, your immediate weigh-in prep is going to begin the preceding Sunday.  This will go like the standard glycogen supercompensation week, so no matter what diet you had been following, you're going to be low-carbing the shit out of this week like your last name was Atkins and you're a sorostitute the week before her wedding, only without the "fatloss" gangbangs.  Thus, you're going to avoid carbs like Robert Downey, Jr. used to avoid rehab and chug water all the live-long day Sunday through Wednesday.  During this time, I recommend keeping your carbs absolutely under 50 grams a day and preferably under 30 grams a day.  Remember that you hold 3 grams of water for every gram of carbohydrates (Thibaudeau and Shugart).  And try to do yourself a favor by letting your body shed water as easily as possible.  Before you ask, that includes post-workout carbs and carbs from shakes, as well.  As you'll find later, sugar alcohols will also make you hold water, so it's also advisable to skip protein bars.
From the proceeding, if you aren't under the impression that all you'll be eating this week is meat, you are dumber than you look.  Unfortunately for you and your taste buds however, you're going to be avoiding sodium with almost the same cock-fueled determination as the aforementioned sorostitite avoids carbs.  This means that Mrs. Dash is about to become your number one fuckbuddy - she'll take good care of you and the additional potassium should reduce any cramping you might get while shedding water.  Additionally, using Mrs. Dash should also fight feelings of hunger that would otherwise result from your cut if it included salt as the increased salivation and gastric acidity that comes from eating salt can make you hungry as shit (Dukan 35).

Another critical component of this week will be the inclusion of 2-3 gallons of water per day in your diet.  Your pansy-ass sensitive teeth can get fucked - this shit should be ice-cold.  Cold water is an ultra-easy way to burn calories as it takes 60 calories to raise the temperature of 39.2 degree water (that's Fahrenheit, fuck your Celsius nonsense) to body temperature (Dukan 118).  Additionally, cold bath immersion, application of cold packs, and the consumption of cold liquids all reduce core body temperature, which will necessitate an increase in metabolic rate to compensate and result in additional fat loss (Feriss 142).  If your teeth bother you when you drink cold shit, throw on Invasion USA and watch it with your teeth bared for a half hour.  They'll either toughen the fuck up or you will - either way, it's time to chug some fucking water.

Tim Feriss actually has some really interesting stuff in his book Four Hour Body about using cold application for fat loss, and here are a couple of points he made in that regard:
1. Short-term cold exposure (30 minutes) in humans leads to fatty acid release to provide fuel
for heat production through shivering. This same shivering could be suffcient to recruit GLUT-4
to the surface of muscle cells, contributing to increased lean muscle gain.
2. Even at shorter durations, cold exposure with shivering could increase adiponectin levels and
glucose uptake by muscle tissue. This effect could persist long after the cold exposure ends.
3. In the absence of shivering, it is still possible to capitalize on “fat-burning fat” through the
stimulation of BAT thermogenesis. Curiously, even without shivering, there are small but
unaccounted increases in lean muscle tissue when comparing underwater (superior) vs. land-
based exercise.
4. Cold water improves immunity. Acute cold exposure has immuno-stimulating effects, and
preheating with physical exercise or a warm shower can enhance this response. Increases in
levels of circulating norepinephrine may account for this.
5. Not germane to fat-loss, but another reason to use cold exposure: cold showers are an
effective treatment for depression. One study used showers at 68°F for two to three minutes,
preceded by a five-minute gradual adaptation to make the procedure less shocking.  (Feriss 142)
So, by this point, we're one day out from the weigh in.  In the next blog, I'll cover how to manipulate water for a weigh in both the day before and the day of the weigh in, and how to eat and drink after weigh ins to maximize your performance and avoid dying (which can result from a hard weight cut, as Andreas Munzer showed us a few years back).
He was, by all accounts, an exceptional-looking corpse.

Sources:
Dukan, Pierre.  The Dukan Diet.
Ferriss, Timothy.  The Four Hour Body.

12 comments:

  1. Toying with diet definitely takes time! I learned that too many days on an all meat diet kills my energy and strength significantly, and doesn't result in fast enough fat loss to be worthwhile (around 1 lb/wk of actual fat lost, I need closer to 2). I'm on to plan B now, keeping calories and macros in check, complex carbs post lifting 4 days/wk, just over 1g protein per lb lean mass every day, low fat every day. Also doing fasted morning walks, some days in a weighted vest. Just under 11 weeks out. The last minute tips will definitely help, as I imagine the last few pounds are going to be a bitch. Only problem - my weigh in is only a couple of hours before lifting commences. Advice? How is your cut going?

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  2. "I've outlined ways to do so here, her, and here, so you can check those out for some ideas."

    If those were meant to be links, please fix them as I am interested in what's in there. Thanks!

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  3. Ok, the "sorostitite" and "fat loss ganagbangs" is a bit over my head. Forgive my stupidity but I want to understand this concept. I need to be able to translate this concept in a way my girlfriend can understand and will ultimately benefit me.

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  4. Google cuckhold and you'll find something to work out with your girlfriend

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  5. I assume you're leading to a meet with a 24 hr weigh-in. With a 2 hour weigh-in you can't eliminate sodium for 5 days! You'll never be able to put it back in less than two hours. Diuretics and Nubain killed Munzer.

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  6. Excellent!

    In Keto #2 you mention an eBook. Do you still have plans to publish this?

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  7. @Eric- I'll cover the short weighin in the next blog.
    @Lift free- there are multiple books in the works, though none of them are necessarily near fruition.

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  8. Thanos- HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

    Also, I randomly found the Doug Hepburn website Glen MacCharles mentioned a while back.

    http://soloflexforever.com/doughepburn/

    It's a mirror of the website, so some of it is missing.

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  9. If you can withstand the boredom and monotony, not to mention the amount of time involved, Doug Hepburn's training methods were pretty much idiot proof. It's very possible the guy was an undiagnosed autistic.

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  10. Nice article. You didn't state explicitly *how much* water at 39F one should drink to burn 60 calories. i did the calculation myself. First, note two things: (a) a calorie is defined by physicists as an amount of energy required to raise 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius; (b) what normal humans refer to as nutritional calories is actually 1000 calories (a kcal). With that in mind, raising 1 gram of water from 39F to 99F (body temperature) is a change of 60 degrees F, or about 108 degrees C. 1 Cup of water is about 236 grams. Thus, drinking 1 cup of 39F water (forcing your body to raise its temperature to 99F) should burn about 25 kcal (25 nutritional calories). Thus, to burn 60 kcal, you'd need to drink about two and a half cups of water at 39F. A quart of such water burns about 100 kcal. A gallon burns about 400 kcal; and 3 gallons burns about 1200 kcal.

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    Replies
    1. Google dude - http://www.dukandiet.com/Dukan-Coaching/Slimming-Secrets/Cold-Drink

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