Wrestler’s are elite amongst elite. It’s not boasting, it’s a scientifically proven fact. They have the fastest rise and fall ramp heart rate of any athlete and it’s because to be a wrestler you have to have perfect aerobic and anaerobic abilities. One can run a fast mile or a fast sprint but wrestlers have to do both. One can be a power lifter or be good at lunging, wrestlers have to do both. To wrestle a 6 minute match, one has to essentially run a 6 minute mile while carrying another person the entire time, while that person is doing their best to stop you. But that’s not the toughest part, one also has to have peak nutrition and strength while ingesting the minimal amount of calories to stay on weight.
Having wrestled for majority of my life, and having coached, I got really good at modifying my weight and being in peak physical form. However, as life took over, I began to put on pounds and I started to feel it.
I was 34, 170lb. That’s 20 more pounds than I weighed ten years prior at end of college. I checked my Body Mass Index and it was official. I was overweight. It was time to do something. I was going to loose weight but not kill myself doing it.
There were several life style changes that had to be made: eating smartly. This did not change my died much. I already ate vegetarian at home and meat only when I ate out. What I changed was dosages and times to eat. I started to eat one egg in my scrambled eggs instead of two. So I cut my calories by half during breakfast. Second I bought egg white mix, so that made it even less caloric. That was an easy change, next one would be tough.
Next change was to switch lunch and dinner. I would no longer have a light lunch and a heavy dinner, I’d have a more European heavy dinner, at a time that I needed calories most and have a light supper around five or six. It meant that if I didn’t eat by six, I’d skip supper all together. That was hard, I’d feel hunger pains but I fought through it.
Last was to add at least one run a week. Sometimes two. That wasn’t that big of a time suck but it did wonders. I started to see the weight come off. It took time and I’d see it bounce up. As I recorded my weight at night and in the morning to make sure I saw a fairly accurate account, I could see myself hitting plateaus. Getting to from 168 t0 160 didn’t take that long, only about two weeks. From 160-156 took about a month. From 156-154 took another month. At that point my diet and weight stabilized and I no longer saw spikes that I’d have to bring back down.
At some point I went on a long road trip and to conserve money I ate one meal a day. Because I was driving and not spending any calories I didn’t feel bad but the weight came off so that by the time I finished the 25 days of driving, with splurges here and there with friends along the way, I came down to 149 and kept it at that for basically a month showing that the weight was pretty stable. I’d still run once a week, still try to eat one egg in the morning and a heavy lunch instead of heavy dinner. At this point it was a habit and it was enough to sustain me at 149 and no more. I’d still eat out with friends, drink beers and feel fine having a burrito. But cooking at home and creating a healthy habit got me to my target weight and pretty good feeling as well.
So there you go, that’s how I lost 20lbs or 10% of my body mass in six months.
not-rushin 