Topic: Trouble making my weight!! Please Help.

[AlekoKouva]

Ok guys here is the deal.....i have a competition on saturday to qualify for the world juniors.... i have to be in -105...i weigh 108.5 now....two days ago i was 106.9....two days ago i also cut my carbs...today i didnt eat past 6...liek my coach told me...i weight myslef at 10.30 and i am 108.5...its driving me crazy....i kno i can loose atleast 5kg in the sauna friday night...but my comp is late on friday and i dont kno if i would be able to go till 3.30 in the afternoon without eating....so here is what im thinking I have two more day b4 sauna time what can i do to drop my weight..... tmr i cant eat past 7 and i cant drink to much water.... im also thinkign of maybe doign soem sauna on sat b4 the comp but im not sure how it will effect me in the comp...or i can take exlax and liek clean my system iono...can somebody help me... thnx

[Matt Erdman]

You should always weigh yourself in the morning. After you do any bathroom business, but before you eat or drink anything. If you actually gained 2kg in body mass after dieting, then something is messed up. Stick with low carb and see what you weigh in the morning.

Don't sauna the day before if you have a choice. Being dehydrated for that long isn't good.

[Jim Hooper]

Aleko, first, relax.   You can make it and lift well. Get your coach to help you through this hour by hour if he or she will do so.  Listen to your coach and ignore anything I am about to suggest to you if your coach tells you to do it differently.  There are many ways to shed 3.5 kilos in 48 hours -- this is just how we do it.

I coach a bunch of wrestlers and weightlifters and we do this drill for a few athletes twice a week early in the season until everybody has stabilized at their competition weight.  If you were 5 kilos over, I'd be worried.  3.5 kg or less with more than 48 hours to go is no big deal.

If you were my athlete, you'd already know exactly how much water weight you lose overnight (we call it "the float") -- it is the weight of the water vapor that we exhale and perspire overnight.  You need to know that number to know what you need to weigh when you go to bed Friday night.  (I assume your comp is SATURDAY afternoon.)  Thursday night, weigh yourself on an accurate scale immediately before you go to bed.  When you wake up, urinate, do not drink anything, and get right back on the scale.  The difference between your go-to-bed weight and your waking weight is the float, and it will be within .1 kilo or so every night.  It should be about .5 to .7 kilos or so for you.  Know what it is.

First, you would be planning to go to bed Friday night weighing 105 PLUS your float -- let's say 105.6 or 105.7 -- so you need to get from what you weight Thursday morning to that weight -- 105 PLUS your float -- when you go to bed Friday night.  You should wake up, pee, and be within about a tenth of a kilo of 105 the morning of the comp.  Get there and you are not going to have to do any severe sweating in the sauna the day of the comp.

There are three ways or things we want to do get from whatever you weigh Thursday morning to 105.7 at bedtime Friday -- with as LITTLE SAUNA involved on Thursday and Friday as possible -- ideally, none.

1.  Crap all or most of it out (defecate).  You probably caused your body to start holding water and to become a little constipated when you cut your carbs two days ago -- let me guess:  you quit carbs and ate mostly meat.  The weight of that meat sitting in your gut, plus the water your are probably retaining, took you up to 108.5 I would bet. Your body sensed the loss of water intake, because carbs are "hydrates", i.e., wet, and it will react to any sudden imbalance by latching onto whatever you are suddenly depriving it of.   If you take a giant dump Thursday, that probably gets you 1.5 kilos or so closer to 105.7 right there.  If you are constipated, I would not take a chemical laxative -- you may make things worse or make yourself sick.  Instead, if you still have not taken the big crapper by Thursday noon, do this instead:  drink a cup or two of black coffee and eat two or three cups of salad -- we just want fiber-laden lettuce with vinegar and lemon juice, nothing else -- that will give your intestines something to latch onto and help push the giant wad of dung lounging in your gut.  We got to get that out of you tomorrow.  Fiber is better than a drug (even an over the counter laxative like ExLax can produce some bad results).
2.  Eat several tiny meals Thursday and Friday, and drink a cup of ice water between meals.  At this point, its not calories, but what the food itself actually weighs, that matters most.  You need to make those several small meals food that is low calorie, high fiber, and that you can eat very, very slooowwwwly.  We like to go to nothing but (1) a cup of diced melon (watermelon, canteloupe, etc.) -- that's a "meal."  (2)  rice cakes with a very thin smear of peanut butter or jam -- two of them with one smear is a "meal" (3) handful of raw almonds -- that is a "meal" (4)  a small bowl of steamed vegetables -- that is a "meal" (5) sipping 8 oz (about .25 L) of skim, nonfat milk -- that is a "meal" (6) one big piece of fruit -- banana or an apple -- that is a "meal."  We are trying to get little parcels of light, low calorie food in you every few hours just to trick your body into thinking it is being fed without putting a lot of weight into your GI tract.  You do not need to worry about protein intake at this point -- you have built all the muscle you are going to build at this point.  Meat is heavy and takes a long time to digest, which means it may be sitting in you like a thumb on the scale on Saturday -- not good.  Eat very little or no meat between now and weigh in.
3.  Control your fluid intake.  You will lose several tenths of a kilo every few hours just by being alive and breathing and sweating.  Controlling your fluid intake means being just barely thirsty, but not dehydrated, from now to Friday bed time.  If you want to drink .5 L of water, you must WAIT UNTIL your weight drops .5 kg.  When you have urinated out X tenths, you can replace all or part of that weight with water intake -- drink the same amount you just lost -- and do that through Friday bedtime.  We are going to keep your water weight the same and focus on getting the 2 kilos or so you need to lose out of you by limiting the weight of what you put into it and hopefully crapping a bunch of it out the south end.  Get it?
4.  Thursday night we want you to go to bed UNDER 107.  Go to bed Thursday night somewhere between 106.5-106.9.  You will wake up Friday morning at 106 or 105.9 and you are going to be feeling good about the whole thing.  Keep the food-weight intake down with those 4-5 small meals.  When you drink those small amounts of water, try to make it ice cold water, and sip it slowwwly. 
5.  Thursday, late afternoon or evening -- if our goal of going to bed under 107 Thursday night is looking iffy -- say you are weighing 107.5 or more late in the day, I would put you in sweats and ask you to walk (don't run -- that will kill your legs) at a steady pace for one hour.  Then strip, wipe off the sweat, and weigh.  You should be 106.5 or less and make our Thursday bed time goal no problem.  If you need to lose some more, put your sweats back on and walk some more.  Go to bed at 106-something Thursday night.
6.  Friday -- more of the same -- our goal again is going to bed at 105.7.  Now go to bed and get a good night's sleep. 
7.  You will wake up Saturday morning right at 105, give or take a tenth or two, or maybe even 104.5 depending on how your bowels have moved -- more is good.  You are going to weigh yourself every hour that day (if you can, on the official scale at the meet, or one that you KNOW is accurate), sip a little water as you "float" off more water vapor during the day, and eat no more than a bite or two if that's what it takes.  Just glide right onto the scale at 104.7 or 104.8.  Be a little under.
8.  BACKUP IS THE SAUNA SATURDAY MORNING.  If you for any reason weigh 106 or more on Saturday morning, don't worry -- NOW is the time where the sauna comes into play.  Sweating off 1-2 kgs can be done safely and will not hurt your performance.  So, if the scale says 106 or 107 Saturday morning, you need to go on over to the sauna with your favorite comic book and a smile on your face and just get in there and sweat it off.  No big deal.  Get there, dry off, and sit around with a dry mouth until weigh in.  Suck an ice cube.  Keep weighing yourself every hour or so.  If you pee, you can drink a little, but check the weight as you do. No room for error.
9.  When you step off the scale, we need to use every available minute between then and your opener to get you rehydrated and get the minerals that matter to your muscles back in your system.   If you can, be first in line. No problem here either.  Don't get carried away and stuff yourself.  In your training bag is going to be a couple of liters of either a good sports drink you like or something like orange juice cut with water (half juice, half water).  A banana or two is good, and a peanut butter sandwich is good -- eat it right when you come off the scale.  You'll get a little sugar fluctuation over the next hour, but it will even out, and you should be feeling good when you start your warmups.

My athletes and I have done this drill hundreds of times and it has never failed and never hurt anybody's performance lifting or wrestling.  It is important that you consult and follow your own coach's advice.   If he tells you to do it differently, do what he says, not what I have said.  He and you are responsible for you.

You are going to make it.  Good luck in your meet and please let me know how it goes.

[AlekoKouva]

Wow, thank you very much.

[Eric Vaillancourt]

That's bad Alex. I hope you can make the weight.

Just teasing you, i'm at 105.9. It's never being so easy to make weight 


See you on saturday !

[AlekoKouva]

lol...It is going to be a fun competion

[Shaun Le Conte]

I see you made weight, Alex, and good lifting too - 130 + 160. Hopefully Jim's post was helpful because I am reading it very carefully for this weekend. I'm 1.6 kg over my current class's limit.

[Andy Dick]

Chris is there a way we can keep this thread stickied up, I think it will be very helpful for people making weight?