Wow I'm tired...

Recently I have been trying to lose fat, so calories have been a bit low. I have also been trying to get stronger, so have really been hitting the strength work. I have ALSO been trying to get fitter, so have been hammering the interval work. I have ALSO been working lots of hours and training in Muay Thai/MMA. Being the best at giving advice and the worst at taking it, I have been trying to push on through despite the fact I've been getting tired and my workouts have been grinding recently. This is a great sign of what's known as over-reaching, which is basically pushing the body beyond what it is capable of recovering from in the short term. While this is not bad, I have to finally accept that it's time to back off, have an easy week, have fun and not strain. This time will allow me to recover and hopefully *supercompensate*, a cool word meaning to improve on the situation I was in to start with. If I choose NOT to back off the training, I will just feel worse and worse, and bad things can happen. Muscle tears, viruses, depression etc etc - the likelihood of all of those and more is much higher if your body is constantly battling a huge stressor such as hard training. If you're like me and hate to have time off, do what I am doing and force yourself to listen to common sense. You will come back stronger soon, and able to kepp making progress! Remember that training is a stressor, and the body cannot take heavy stressors indefinitely. Consider the gasoline (petrol) analogy, courtesy of 'The Thinker' on www.elitefts.com -

"Dosage and duration
Dosage and duration
Dosage and duration

One eye drop of gasoline on the tongue won't kill you. Drink a litre at once and you'll die.

This is an example of dosage.

One eye drop of gasoline on your tongue every 5 seconds will kill you in rather short order. Ration the litre out over the course of 60years and it won't kill you.

This is an example of duration.

The gasoline is an irritant not so dissimilar to a jump, squat, bench, clean, fight with the girlfriend, etc.

It is the characteristics of the irritants and their effect on various biological systems that deserves our most special attention."

Junk food is delicious!

Wow, junk food is great! A nice burger and chips, some pizza, fish and chips, mars bars, jelly babies....mmmm, lovely!

Or not.

Recently I've noticed that junk food SEEMS nice, but rarely is! The nice burger and chips becomes, in reality, a soggy lump of sub-standard meat in a bun that falls apart with a sauce of dubious origin. The pizza becomes either a floppy mess or overcooked (or if you're particullarly lucky, both). The fish and chips is horrible, batter so fatty you can see the years coming off your life as you eat it and half-cooked oily chips that normally resemble wilting celery. Sweets look good until you eat them, then are normally far too sweet or chewy.

This, however, is a good thing. The more bad experiences I can have on my 'cheat' meals the better, since next time I will probably remember that it wasn't really worth it. I just had a lovely meal of salmon fillets, spinach, peppers, tomatoes, radish and olive oil which was much nicer than any cheat meal I have had recently.

So remember, next time you are thinking of ditching your nutrition plan and going for that tempting junk food, it's probably not worth it in reality. And as Alwyn Cosgrove says, "Nothing tastes as good as lean feels!"