Tag Archives: fruit

Extra Fat and Happy

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I’ve been eating a lot, working a lot, enjoying life.

The food is healthy (veggies, lean meat, some fruit) but the quantity is what I’m not limiting.  I want to give myself a breather, before diving back into it for the fall.

Before I finish writing this status update, let me go grab a random snack. Why? Because I can! That’s a damn good feeling. Oh and I’ll be competing in the local tournaments in the extra fat divisions. No real cutting until September.

The problem with the “diet” I was on before is that I never quite followed it seriously enough. When I competed at Worlds, my carelessness with food resulted in me being 2 lbs overweight. I ran it off in just 10 minutes and that served as a good warm up, but still this was supposed to be my fat division (middleweight, ~177 lbs). A “fat” division is one I should be able to make without cutting at all or even thinking of cutting.

Competition is stressful, and my goal for this year is to reduce that stress as much as possible. I want to not have to think about any tournaments (except the really big ones) until the day of the event. A strict diet plan leading up to each competition is part of that. While I’ve been very systematic about learning jiu jitsu. I’ve been a complete white belt meathead about learning dieting, and dieting is the thing that breaks many competitors who have demanding jobs (and/or other responsibilities) outside the sport.

Another random rant comes to a close. PS: I had beer with my coach yesterday while watching judo. We should make that a regular thing.

Healthy Foods: Keep Your Enemies Close

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I guess that if you were to look at my “diet” in the context of how most people eat, you would say that I follow a very strict boring diet. I eat the same thing over and over. It’s simple to make, it tastes good to me, so I see no reason to change. The diet includes:

  • Steel-cut oats
  • Veggies with lean ground turkey/chicken
  • Tuna from a can with veggies or salsa
  • Protein shake

To me, the most important part of any diet is portion control, or just control in general. Eating anything in excess is bad. I have an addictive personality and I find that there are certain foods that I just can’t successfully control portions with.

Of course, there’s delicious food that has a ton of sugar, fat, and usually both. But because I know that they are clearly bad, I tend to have much less trouble staying away from them (examples: ice cream, fast food, beer, wings, etc). These are the “enemies” that I refer to. I don’t mind keeping them close.

It’s the healthy “friends” like fruit that cause the most trouble for me. Because they are “healthy”, I tend to overeat them. There is literally no limit to how many lbs of cherries I can eat. This basically applies to all carb-heavy foods that one would consider healthy. Oatmeal or whole grain cereal is a good example. In fact, I have to separate the oatmeal I eat into measured portions in order to help avoid the all destructive decision of “should I have more?”

It’s all a little OCD, but it works for me, at least better than the alternatives.