So some of you might have noticed that I have recently started to focus on dropping somebody weight. The reason being is that im competing in an under 90kg strongman competition in July when I signed up I was 96.6kg, so 6.6kg which is just over a stone to lose. After watching my good friend Liam miss weight in by 0.2 of a kilo last November. As well as marching Georgina through an industrial estate at 6 am covered bin bags to drop the final few lb's of water weight pre weigh in (this is an excellent story perhaps I'll tell it one day). I decided you know what I'm going to make this easy on my self and start dieting now. I didn't go all in, to begin with, I began to tighten up on my food choices by choosing whole foods over crappy junk foods now I did this for two reasons alone. Firstly, I knew I was going to be in a calorie deficit, and that strongman training is brutal. I wanted as many micronutrients to support my training as possible. Secondly, I have a big appetite I wanted to be able to eat large portions while sticking ensuing I wasn't smashing a ton of calories in the process. So I generally cut out the rubbish I'm not insane, so I still made sure I was having a break from the restriction each weekend. This didn't mean just overeating for the sake of overeating. I didn't worry so much about my macronutrients and ate out and had bbq's.
I just made sure I wasn't undoing the hard work by lowering my food intake during the day before going out for a meal by simply cutting it in half no science or maths I just eat half of what I usually would in my first couple of meals. During the very first phase of training, I also increased my cardiovascular work as part of the anatomical adaption phase of training. I did this by adding in cycling, roughly 25-50miles per week. But this was only for the first stage and has since been removed. Following this style It was pretty easy for me to drop the first 4kg and it came of steady, so I didn't bother changing anything until I started to reach a point of stagnation. At which point, all I did was set my calories and break my macronutrients down. They currently look like this.
Training day = 200g protein 75g fat 295g carbs
Non-Training day = 185g protein 80g fat 205g carbs
Now I split mine into training and non-training to allow a high intake on training days to fuel the intense strongman sessions. This isn't something you need to do, and If I weren't competing, I probably wouldn't have bothered. Currently, my diet is made up of mostly these ingredients.
- Bread (who'd a funk it bread on a diet lol)
- Eggs
- Chicken
- Turkey
- Beef
- White Rice
- Sweet potatoes
- Potatoes
- All vegetables (but mostly sweet bell peppers, spinach, asparagus broccoli)
- Skyr Yogurt (Greek Yogurt is dead, Viking yoghurt all the way)
- Honey (that sweet, sweet bee vomit)
- Nuts (mostly cashews because almonds are rank)
I still have at least one day a week off being strict each week but just keep with my calorie window.
I have been following this for five weeks now and currently weigh in at 86.6kg, so I'm well within the weight class and will probably continue to diet down for a few more weeks. My plan here is to gain weight in the final stages of the training, as this should leave me feeling full of energy and strong for the competition day.
Closing this blog
Dieting isn't hard!
A diet comprised of just whole foods is a lot of dam food!
Get a slow cooker; everything tastes great when it's cooked low and slow.