It’s early January, and I have had a fairly major blow out over my Christmas break. What does this mean? I’ve gained too much weight and I have lost an appreciable amount of fitness. And it seems my usual skills have departed as well. When a fighter gains weight, it can feel like the end of the world.
I have spoken previously about gaining weight in the off season, and being better at handling this emotionally. However on this occasion, I overshot the threshold I wanted to gain by a significant amount.
I went to sparring on Monday and gassed out entirely-something that never happens to me. My old habits had returned (my right guard was dropping, I wasn’t relaxed enough, my balance was too far forward). I felt like I did not belong there at all, and could not wait for it to be over so I could get out of the gym and go home.
The sheer effort involved in just moving my larger body around was incredibly taxing. I am a boxer who prides herself on her lightness in the ring, but with an extra 5 kilograms on my usual walk around weight, I felt like I was battling through quick sand. Folks-my training shorts were cutting off my circulation around my tummy.
I had a rough few days of getting going again, where it felt like my old doubts returned ten fold. I experienced a lot of anxiety about returning to the gym, for a whole host of reasons.
It’s now day five back to a more typical training load. Here are a few things that helped me get going again and back in my groove.
1. Lean on your fellow fighters
I reached out to my fellow fighters. A group of us girls have a chat going where we look out for each other, share memes-the usual. I messaged in the chat about how I was feeling and was immediately supported and encouraged to just get back into it. They get it. Other team mates, your friends who fight have all been in the position of blowing out or being away from training for a period of time. They understand how it feels to have to start from what feels like ground level again.
Let them be your cheerleaders when you are feeling the doubt monster creep on in.
2. Refresh your vision and your plan
As this is early January, this is the time I would usually be refreshing my vision anyway. Leading on from that, I would then work out my plan for the year to achieve that vision.
Human beings like planning-it makes us feel good to have a goal. Without goals and plans, we can become depressed, aimless, and lacking in motivation. When you start to pull together what you intend to achieve over the course of the year, it can spark a feeling of positivity. It helps you to get over that initial bump to get your body and mind turning over again and back into the zone of training hard.
Remember that your vision should be a future view of yourself and your achievements at a point in time. Your plan is a set of ideas to get you to that future vision. I like to have behavioural changes in my plan (e.g. meditate every morning before work), as well as specific, time based goals that build up into the end of year vision.
3. Return to what you know
What are the systems and processes you have used in the past to assist in managing your weight? This can be practical planning approaches, or your usual routine. Or things that you know help you to feel good about yourself. For me, this means things like:
- Planning my week each Sunday night so that I know when I am training and resting
- Going back to my tried and tested meals that hit the right macro split (and taste good)
- Meal prepping and buying foods that make it easy to stick to my macros
- Having my supplements each day- magnesium, creatine etc.
- Waking and going to bed the same time each day
- Increasing the dietary nutrients I consume by adding bulk greens to my meals (Spinach, salad leaves, Pak choy). This also helps keep me full on a deficit.
4. Be objective about the blow out
What I am most concerned about is the unintended weight gain, and when I hopped on the scales and saw I was 5 kgs over my intended walk around weight I went into a bit a of a tailspin. After I digested this (ha ha no pun intended) I then asked myself why I was so far over. I know the bad food and drink habits I had slipped into obviously. But what were the triggers to cause such a big behaviour change for me?
Well-we had a death in the family. I am on long service leave after nearly 15 years at the same company. It was Christmas time. I have had house guests and been hosting people. Added to this my boxing gym closes for a couple of weeks over the festive period. So even though I was still running and strength training, a huge portion of my weekly movement was reduced, whilst conversely my caloric intake skyrocketed.
If you are able to be practical when you are experiencing difficult or stressful times, it does actually help to remove the guilt. My nutritionist uses the phrase “give yourself some grace”. When you are less guilty and emotional it’s easier to swing back into action.
As soon as I was more objective about the circumstances that led me here, it helped me to get on with my plan and stop wallowing.
Three photos of my family on Christmas day, enjoying the food and the company. It was worth blowing out over this.
5. TRUST THE PROCESS
This is so important. I felt quite panicked about the prospect of being so far over weight, and about having to rebuild the fitness I had lost in the last few weeks. However, I know that if I just relax and follow the process I have used in the past, I am guaranteed to get back to where I need to be. I know that I can change my body and my performance through the right combination of movement of nutrition, as I have done so before.
It’s not a magic secret formula, as much as people on Insta and You Tube would have you believe. The things that will get me there are adhering to a calorie deficit, being disciplined and sticking to my planned training sessions. As long as I maintain my consistency, the rest will take care of itself.
There is no need to over think anything.
6. Don’t flog yourself to death on a starvation diet
Don’t be tempted to badly undercook the calories to get back to your previous self instantly-it just won’t happen.
A small voice inside was saying to me “Cut your carbs. Go really low on your calories. Just until you see a drop on the scales.” DO NOT LISTEN TO THE VOICE!
It’s a slippery slope to ending up on too few calories and ending training sessions burnt out, fatigued and miserable. Also, I had a call with my nutritionist Liana today. She reminded me that I’ve just put in a lot of time and effort doing a heavy lifting phase with my strength coach in the 2 months leading to Christmas. If I cut too hard, all that work will be wasted as I will just drop muscle.
I’ll say it again: There is no need to suffer by running on a minuscule caloric intake. Get into a realistic and maintainable deficit. Just trust the process.
7. Acknowledge that it’s normal and ok to have a blow out
All of this really amounts to reminding myself that it’s ok to have a blow out and have a few weeks of low activity. In a weight class sport like boxing or Muay Thai, this can feel especially damaging. But there is no need to jump straight into being hyper critical or beating yourself up. No one needs to be punished for this.
Lean on the good people in your life who understand this, execute those systems that work and trust the process.
The more objective and measured you can be in how you speak to yourself about this, the more quickly you can get back on the path to training and getting fight ready again.
What have you tried in the past that has helped to get you back into training mode? Comment below!
