Your body weight is simply the sum of the weight of bones, muscles, water, and fat. Wrestlers can often cheat by dropping water weight by sweating off water weight a couple days before a meet. Problem is that this weight is impossible to keep off as one has to re-hydrate at some point. This is why the best weight management is done by taking the long-term approach, by tackling the fat.
Fat is created when someone consumes more energy than they spend. This often happens when people eat high calory foods that do not give nutrients like cookies fried foods, fatty meats or sauces. This is why proper nutrition is key, because even with the high-calorie spending workout of wrestling, the calories will not balance out and the excess calories will be converted to fat.
Fat cells cannot be destroyed. Once they are created, they are there for years. However, they can be shrunk when converted to energy or heat or starved. When a person consumes fewer calories than they spend, the fat cells shrink as they are used by the body for energy.
Where to Start
So to lose weight, one can first calculate the calories they eat. This is hard. An easier way is to cut out processed, fatty and junk food and eat smaller portions of healthy low-calorie food and combine this with exercise. A normal person needs around 2000 calories per day. So by cutting portions by 25% one can theoretically get to 1500 calories. Combined with high-intensity workouts, the weight should come off. Of course 25% is drastic and unrealistic. However, by slowly reducing the portions by 5% one will start to get to the calorie intake of the target weight while also doing so in a way that isn’t unhealthy or not too difficult on the most fickle of all muscles: will power.
One important thing to remember is that no matter what you do, the weight will not immediately start to go down. It takes about a week for the body to convert the metabolic rate, or the rate at which your body is burning energy. So it is common that the first week there will be no loss of weight (which is why this is a long term strategy).
To help one lose weight and keep it off it is important to keep track of it. One should weigh themselves in the morning and at night. This is important because it helps to gauge progress and see if the diet and exercise are optimized. You cant fix that which you don’t measure. So if you measure and the weight is not coming off, then either exercise is not sufficient, food is too high in calories or both.
What To Eat and When?
What to eat of course should focus on the needs of the body. A wrestler is working out a lot and so needs the protein for building muscle. So the diet should be high in protein for muscle growth and carbs for the energy. Fiber helps absorb nutrients but also “clean” out the system. So chicken or fish with pasta or brown rice are great meals because they are digested quickly, have lots of nutrition and are not too heavy.
Almost as import as what you eat is when you eat it. The Europeans are known for their “supper” and lunch. This is the perfect way to eat because it reduces the number of calories taken in when one is least active. This means avoiding meals after 6pm while eating the largest meal during lunch. The “simple way” to do this and still get all of your nutrients by cutting my breakfast and dinner in half and increased my lunch by 2x.
This is the hardest part of this process as being hungry in the middle of the night is no fun. The good news is that takes about a week or two for the body to adjust. And then you simply get used to it. Your family on the other hand, not so much.
More details on what to eat can be found on this Healthline article.
How and When to Work Out
When I wrestled in high school, I would go for a morning run or swim to get my body going. Then I’d have school and a practice afterwards. The nice thing of doing this is that the blood starts going and then I was able to do some homework when all was quiet and I was at my peak. This works out well because after practice it is a lot harder to study on a hungry stomach. But if you wake up, run, have a breakfast, then studying can be more motivating.
Working out two hours after a meal is also good for burning calories. The body actually burns more this way in part because it is not spending energy on digesting. In fact the body will often continue to burn energy for an hour or so after the workout.
How much should you work out? That depends on your goals. To lose a few pounds a week you can run a couple of short runs and a long run a week. To lose more exercise more, but here common sense prevails. More is not always good. So keep it to a reasonable amount and have a rest day. Unless you’re Michael Phelps, he swam seven times a week just to get 52 extra practices a year.
Conclusion
Once you have arrived at your target weight, you can either relax the work out regiment or increase the food intake by a few percent. The important thing is you can’t do both, or the weight will start to slowly creep up. So make sure that the diet is something you can do and the workouts are realistic. Remember, you’re doing this long term (4 months for a wrestler), so take your time, easy does it.
One thing that I like about the Healthline article is it talks about “cheat meals”. The way I look at those is that you should give yourself a pass if you are doing 75%. If you can do a C, you will lose weight and stress less. And stress leads to fat storage, so even more reasons to relax and have fun with the process.
To Calculate Your Weight Schedule Follow the Link
Image credit Prince Mik
Henry-Wrestling 