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UKB Power Club Week 381 12th - 18th June 2017 (Read 14212 times)

abarro81

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can see why it might not help or even hinder powerful short climbing or even max hangs

Last year I was the lightest ever and bouldering by far my best ever... so I'd disagree  (though there was the conflating factor of being on a full time trip for an extended period too).

For those above saying that you should only start to diet when close to success - that only works if you're only losing a small amount of weight. If you just want to drop a few lbs then that's fine, but if you fluctuate quite largely (e.g. my light mode is now about 1.5 stone lower than my heavy mode) then that won't work as it takes too long to lose that weight without digging yourself into a giant hole. Plus, when I'm close to a route is when I don't want to be tired and hungry from dieting.

Yossarian

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can see why it might not help or even hinder powerful short climbing or even max hangs

Last year I was the lightest ever and bouldering by far my best ever... so I'd disagree  (though there was the conflating factor of being on a full time trip for an extended period too).

For those above saying that you should only start to diet when close to success - that only works if you're only losing a small amount of weight. If you just want to drop a few lbs then that's fine, but if you fluctuate quite largely (e.g. my light mode is now about 1.5 stone lower than my heavy mode) then that won't work as it takes too long to lose that weight without digging yourself into a giant hole. Plus, when I'm close to a route is when I don't want to be tired and hungry from dieting.

Do you mind sharing the details?

I'm 6ft3 and getting down to 80kg is what I'm aiming for, but the nearer to 90 I get, the harder it seems to become.

Moose - I generally drink far too much. When I gave up completely earlier this year (3 - 4 months or so) I could close my eyes at 10pm and open them at 7am. And basically all the weight I've lost this year - 17kg ish - was done in that period. Whenever i drink now, I wake up at 3am and it requires major concentration on nothing at all to get back to sleep.

Ever since, I lose weight during the week, and then put it back every weekend (with a few boozy treats). I am absolutely convinced that if I'd pushed on longer with the abstainence I could've got down to a much lower weight that I could then bounce above and below depending on the ratio of exercise to gin consumption.

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can see why it might not help or even hinder powerful short climbing or even max hangs

Last year I was the lightest ever and bouldering by far my best ever... so I'd disagree  (though there was the conflating factor of being on a full time trip for an extended period too).

For those above saying that you should only start to diet when close to success - that only works if you're only losing a small amount of weight. If you just want to drop a few lbs then that's fine, but if you fluctuate quite largely (e.g. my light mode is now about 1.5 stone lower than my heavy mode) then that won't work as it takes too long to lose that weight without digging yourself into a giant hole. Plus, when I'm close to a route is when I don't want to be tired and hungry from dieting.

Do you mind sharing the details?

I'm 6ft3 and getting down to 80kg is what I'm aiming for, but the nearer to 90 I get, the harder it seems to become.


I know, when I hit 40 I really started to find it hard keeping the weight off. Must be desperate at your age.

T_B

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Seriously though, I suspect Alex applies the same mindset to losing weight as he does to training stamina or whatever. He works hard at it consistently. Although losing 10Kg (as he suggests above) cannot be healthy or sustainable, or have a positive effect on your libido.

If you want to lose weight, eat fewer carbs or do more exercise. There's no magic formula.

Yossarian

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can see why it might not help or even hinder powerful short climbing or even max hangs

Last year I was the lightest ever and bouldering by far my best ever... so I'd disagree  (though there was the conflating factor of being on a full time trip for an extended period too).

For those above saying that you should only start to diet when close to success - that only works if you're only losing a small amount of weight. If you just want to drop a few lbs then that's fine, but if you fluctuate quite largely (e.g. my light mode is now about 1.5 stone lower than my heavy mode) then that won't work as it takes too long to lose that weight without digging yourself into a giant hole. Plus, when I'm close to a route is when I don't want to be tired and hungry from dieting.

Do you mind sharing the details?

I'm 6ft3 and getting down to 80kg is what I'm aiming for, but the nearer to 90 I get, the harder it seems to become.


I know, when I hit 40 I really started to find it hard keeping the weight off. Must be desperate at your age.

Yes. I thought long and hard about typing that k and that g, but what with this interminable heat I just couldn't be fucked.

abarro81

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What details are you after?
Kinda what Tom said, although I don't necessarily find doing more exercise helps as much as the being hungry and eating less part. E.g. If I come home from work on a rest day and want to go for a run I'll eat more to get through it and then have energy to stretch or whatever, so I doubt it actually makes me run any more of a deficit than just lying on the sofa and not eating.
My default dieting tactic is "eat healthy, be hungry, go to bed a bit hungry". Works pretty well as a general principle. Obviously there's other stuff too but pretty standard e.g.Timing: diet harder on rest days and not immediately before/during/after climbing. In general, sack off high-calorie density food as much as possible and replace it with veg/lean meat. Don't drink (I don't drink anyway really so that doesn't change much between dieting or not) etc etc...

When I was 18 I was about 12.5 stone, but trying to get bigger/get muscles. My 'heavy' weight since then is a bit over 12st, but that's self imposed - if I see myself get to that kind of weight I reign it in. From when I got more obsessed and started weighting myself (maybe 21ish?) I had a long period where I thought of fighting weight as being 11st 4lbs to 11st5. A few years ago that dropped a bit to more like 11st2-11st3, just as a function of realising I could get to that weight without it being debilitating. Then last year I went away ~11st3 and didn't weight myself for a few months in Australia. When I did weight myself I was down at ~10st12, which I never thought I could get to. Interestingly I thought I was going to be much heavier than that - I think getting to that weight was mostly done inadvertently as I'd invariably run out of food and spend the afternoon cold and hungry. For me living and sleeping outside in the cold rinses through calories like nothing else. Doing nothing but climbing and resting helps too, dieting at work sucks and training after work it's much harder to get timing right - if I diet really hard during the day I can't 'fix' that by suddenly eating before a session, I might still feel tired, whereas eating/climbing in the morning and then dieting in the afternoon/evening feels a lot easier to me. That said, on my previous mega-trip I never got light like that. Anyway, somehow (possibly partly related to experimenting with fat adapted?) I held that weight for the next few months and was climbing really well. Gradually put it back on in America and then when I came home.

I think part of the reason I got light when away is actually that I wasn't weighing myself - instead of seeing that I was light and indulging I just assumed I was fat and shouldn't eat that cake. My new tactic will thus be to weight myself much more infrequently when dieting e.g. weight myself everyday for a week (to get a realistic average) but only do that every 4-6 weeks maybe.

Whether I can get back down to <11st whilst dieting at home is something I'll have to tell you in the Autumn!

Warning for those easily influenced to get anorexia: I don't think that staying at fighting weight is sustainable or a good long-term strategy. I've seen plenty of people make gains by getting light, but those who've got really light and then stayed there for years have generally seemed to get sucked into a downward spiral of performance, or at the least stagnation. I prefer to get light for trips/projects/seasons and then get heavy again in the meantime. Train heavy n all that. The exception perhaps being that if I were going away for another long trip I'd maybe try to maintain a light weight for that period given that I now know I can do it.
« Last Edit: June 20, 2017, 03:32:57 pm by abarro81 »

Yossarian

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That's really interesting, thanks. You're what, 6ft4?

Yeah, the getting used to being a bit hungry has got to be the key.  I think a lot of evening hunger is down to boredom / routine. I never feel as hungry the following morning as I thought I did the previous evening.

abarro81

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About 6ft 3 I think.
Yeah, getting used to being hungry is key - basically realising that if you don't eat for a while the world wont end! In a concerning way, it feels kind of empowering too... probably not psychologically healthy!

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Yeah, the getting used to being a bit hungry has got to be the key.

For sure. As a friend, who find it really easy to add muscle to his already quite impressive frame said: “I panicked real bad the day I realised I'm going to be hungry every day for the rest of my life”

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Great post Alex, I've always wondered about briefly losing a bit of weight to enable me to climb harder. Say I wanted to lose 1/2 a stone for a few weeks in October  what would be a good time to lose it?

Doylo

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Great post Alex, I've always wondered about briefly losing a bit of weight to enable me to climb harder. Say I wanted to lose 1/2 a stone for a few weeks in October  what would be a good time to lose it?

A month before if you're good  ;)

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I've posted about weight loss before and the incredible effects it had on my climbing. In short I lost loads of weight in 2016 and went from struggling to climb 6C and managing two in a week in font, to climbing my first seven 7As in a week on a trip to font a year later.

The addendum to that story is I kinda got off the wagon towards the end of 2016 and over a few months put most of the weight back on. Became an unhealthy cycle of feeling sluggish and crap generally and therefore eating more, culminating in a multi pack mince pie binge over Christmas of fat bastardesque proportions. Clearly unhealthy although not quite to eating disorder territory.

I started 2017 with a trip to Spain, weighing 82.9kg, unfit and unmotivated. By the end of two weeks I had achieved little of note, but I had got back to eating healthy and I'd stopped drinking. I was much happier and fully motivated. Was like flicking a switch back and breaking the cycle. Cutting the alcohol has the biggest effect on my mood of anything. Surprisingly stopping consuming large quantities of a depressant makes me happy.

After getting back from Spain I started training again, kept the booze out (occasional glass red wine) and continued to eat properly. I got down to 72.9kg at the start of June, being around 75kg by April. I'm 182cm so it's not ridiculous.

The weight swing was clearly unhealthy, but mostly because of the implication of all the shit I was eating/drinking in the fat period.

I haven't been primarily targeting weight loss this year, just being healthy and letting it equilibrate. I don't go to bed hungry and it's never unpleasant. I actually never felt more hungry then half way through six mince pies (although 20mins after I'd feel pretty sick). I guess I've basically trained myself to a certain diet rather than 'dieted'. I feel more hungry if I eat breakfast than skip it for example.

Anyway, now I'm hovering around 73-74kg with scope to actually diet and shave down a bit to get to 'fighting weight' for trips, I'm much happier with life in general and climed first 7B last week.

abarro81

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Great post Alex, I've always wondered about briefly losing a bit of weight to enable me to climb harder. Say I wanted to lose 1/2 a stone for a few weeks in October  what would be a good time to lose it?

I normally work to approx 1 lb per week though it usually goes a bit faster than that at the start

monkoffunk

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I was pretty spot on then!

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Nice one, I'll give it a go this august, be interesting to see how it goes.

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Hold the fuck on, Barrows you're saying you're 6'3 and got down to 10st12lb? Jesus.

tomtom

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This year I've pretty much cut out booze - well from avge 20 units a week to 2-3 units a week.

Aside from sleeping better from a weight perspective, I've gently dropped from 11st 6lb to 11st 3lb with no effort whatsoever. Previously, I had to be 'careful' with what I ate - some portion control and avoiding big plates of carbs. Now, I eat pretty much what I want and weight stays off or as above slowly drops. I'm not going crazy - but have unhealthy deserts (and had a mahoosive fish and chips tonight)....

tomtom

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Hold the fuck on, Barrows you're saying you're 6'3 and got down to 10st12lb? Jesus.

I'm 6'3" and tickled the high 10's earlier this year...

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I've gently dropped from 11st 6lb to 11st 3lb with no effort whatsoever.

I frequently lose almost that amount with no effort whatsoever... my mystical method is called "going to the toilet".

Seriously though, I weigh myself daily, and whilst the weekly average is pretty steady, the daily reading varies wildly within a 2 - 2.5kg band (i.e. around 5lb) - yes, I am frequently, quite literally full of shit.  A 3lb drop, unless that is a proper rolling average, could conceivably be a blip.

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Same for me. My morning weigh varies within a 2 kg band without any apparent logic.

monkoffunk

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A lot of it is likely to be varying degrees of water retention. More after a lot of carbs for example.

abarro81

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I'm typically more like +- 1lb or so around an average

tomtom

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Within a 1lb. Weigh myself after the morning piss.

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Thanks for the Kilnsey suggestions.

It would be useful to detatch the weight loss conversation.

I'm frequently 0.5-1kg heavier the day after intense exercise. I sense this might be especially true if I have DOMS. This is predictable and resolves quickly so I now don't bother to weigh myself after a day trip or big bouldering session. Muscle microtrauma? Fluid retention? Some suggest lack of hydration, any actual evidence behind this?

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Hold the fuck on, Barrows you're saying you're 6'3 and got down to 10st12lb? Jesus.

I'm 6'3" and tickled the high 10's earlier this year...

Depends on your frame though doesn't it? I'm also 6'3 and for the first time in 20 years on Monday morning weighed in at less than 13 stone (it was a cheat though as I was still dehydrated from Sunday). I'm not exactly skinny, but nor am I fat.

 

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