Fisher had tried to enter the hole in the clouds six or seven times- but kept finding
herself back in her body, the wooden raft pressing impassively against her
shoulderblades. –The Hole In the Clouds
I'm feeling incredibly frustrated with weight right now. Yesterday I ate nothing but six shrimp, and a turkey sandwich (a little horseradish mustard at 5 cal per teaspoon, no mayo) and did two classes plus sparring after one of them, and still didn't lose anything. How is that even possible? Six shrimp and a turkey sandwich proves to be "TOO MUCH FOOD" on a 2-workout-day. Unbe-freaking-lievable. And that wasn't even horrible food- true it wasn't chicken breast or eggs, but it's not as if I was eating lasagna and Twinkies. It's starting to really piss me off- which is probably good, since being pissed is a good way to amp up the willpower. But I'm looking ahead with horror and dread to a life full of days restricted to two tablespoons of food per 24 hours, since it's starting to look like that's the only way I'm going to see any results. I think there must be hidden calories in my tap water or in my oxygen. This doesn't even make biological sense.
Tuesday lunchtime, Bellevue. Not that I had any lunch.
Two new ladies, one of whom I worked with- Tone. She has potential! I hope she comes back.
Setup to the straight ankle lock. Be mindful of changing level; and of using just the toe on the mat with that outside foot, heel on the hip.
Then finishing straight ankle lock.
Then defense: With the arm that is on the OPPOSITE side as the leg being attacked, grab opponent's cross lapel. Now place your other hand on opponent's ankle (the one s/he has on your hip) and press it to the mat. Post on it and scoot your butt to the outside of it. Now stand up. Shake/pull your leg out. At first we used the technical lift to stand up, then we used the lapel grip to pull ourselves to standing or into front mount.
Spars with Casey, Ram, and Dave. I told them all to be nice to me because it was my first day.
Kitsune (grabbing Casey's ear): "Is it legal to pull ears?
(Grabbing fingers): "Are we allowed to bend fingers back?"
(Monkey-slap to face, pulled at the last moment): "How about this? Can I do this?"
I tried to Del a Riva him several times but could not control the near foot. Finally I tried grabbing my own lapel to cinch it in place, and that had a bit of success. Need to play with that some more.
I asked Dave to attack my feet and legs. As I had previously learned with Luis, when you ask a brown belt to attack your lower body, they do not mess around. I felt like I was trying to turn back the ocean tide. It just washed right over me no matter how frantically I worked, and left me lying there sodden and drowned... with legs broken in about ten different places.
I got a big laugh out of Ram by asking in exasperation, "How many knees do you HAVE?! about twenty???" Because that's what it seemed like. Here a knee, there a knee, everywhere a knee, knee.
When we lined up to bow out, Carlos made me move from the end of the line. I said, "Wow- I'm getting a huge promotion on my very first day!" Everyone started applauding me.
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4:30 basics in Bellevue. I rolled with Casey again for a while to warm up.
Kitsune: "It's my first day. We're not going to get sweaty or anything, are we?"
JP: "No, there's no sweat in jiu jitsu."
Kitsune: "Oh good. I don't want to mess up my hair. Hey, we can do heel hooks in here, right? At my last school, we did heel hooks. This must be a wussy school."
These techniques were a little frustrating.
Opponent is in your closed guard. Grab behind hir elbow and get a pants grip at the knee with your other hand. Use your legs to pull hir forward and load hir up. Sweep. Keep guard closed till you get over- don't open up like a pendulum or scissor sweep.
Besides the fact that I generally suck at sweeps, the only available partners were gigantic- I couldn't even get my guard closed, and the idea of trying to pull them forward with my legs was laughable. They had to be nice to the extent of diving into the sweep.
Same thing, only underhooking the leg and using opponent's knee like a phone. Keep both leg and arm when you mount (I had to go to S mount in order to be able to do this on my larger partners).
Then, that same setup but transferring to an armbar. I struggled even more with this one. If the guy was loaded onto me at all, I could not swing my leg around because he was crushing me half to death. Once I was tipping him off of me, I could not swing my leg around because his body was now in the way.
Adrian then showed us some nifty grip breaks for when the opponent is resisting the armbar. You thread your own gi tail through hir folded arms and cinch it up nice and tight. Your hand that is nearest opponent's feet needs to be on the bottom of your double grip. Move the elbow to the other side of this arrangement to clamp it up. Now look at the opponent's clasped hands. You want to pull in whatever direction the back of the hand is facing, instead of just cranking randomly when you might be setting yourself up to be resisting hir strongest possible grip.
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Advanced class.
I rolled with Crisanne for 10 min to warm up. She remembered my upa lessons, my KOB escape lessons, and my choke defense lessons. I let her triangle me a few times, but I made her work for it.
Straight ankle locks again. This time, when we did the escape, we sat right on the opponent's foot instead of moving our butts to the outside. Added detail- when you shake/pull your foot free, give a hearty yank on the lapel at the same time.It is distracting, at the very least.
Some positional sparring from the straight ankle lock setup. Ron was clumsy at first, and complained that he hasn't worked any attacks/defenses below the waist. I hear ya bro. After a while, though, he figured out how to get his evil little omnipresent knees and muscley little legs jammed in the works, and I could no longer do anything.
Hedge got his purple belt! That was fun to see. He was distinctly glisteny-eyed when he stood for the photo. Lord, but Ron is still running around in a blue belt. I was certain he'd get promoted at the big promotion orgy in Seattle last weekend.
Spars with a few different people, including Hedge- whom I congratulated, teased, and then went hard on.
Kitsune: "Come on- do you want to look back on your very first night wearing a purple belt and say you got choked by a white belt girl?"
I had to watch the capoeira class for a while- in fact I watched till the teacher stopped and addressed me where I was hanging on the doorframe, and told me to come in and take a chair if I wanted to watch. I've always wanted to try this, but I fear that my weakness at memorizing choreography- as well as my bad knees- would scuttle me. It sure is pretty, though. And I do such nice kicks.
I had damn well better be a pound down in the morning, or I'm going to just start sawing body parts off.
On the weight thing:
ReplyDeleteOne, I notice that sometimes the scale gets stuck for a day or two (even if I'm being perfect) and then suddenly it jars itself loose and I will lose two pounds a day for a day or two. So be patient and keep up the good work. (You may consider cutting bread, pasta and other carbs out though. Try the turkey wrapped in romaine.) You'll never hear the whole "You're not eating enough!" bs from me, either. My resting metabolic rate is about 900 calories a day so if I'm wanting to lose, I have to eat that AND work out. I feel your pain sista!
Two, you might look into an endocrinologist who does thyroid work (most are just treating diabetics.) Look at a website called Stop the Thyroid Madness. I was an undiagnosed hypothyroid for years, because my TSH level fell within the "normal" range... but it's just a range, and if you have hypo symptoms (like a retardedly low RMR, fatigue, losing hair, mental fuzziness, cold hands/feet) then it shouldn't matter whether you're technically "normal" for TSH or not. I found a great endo and she put me on 50mcg synthroid a day, and it has made a WORLD of difference-- AND I can actually lose weight and eat 1100 cal a day! Email me if you want more info-- georgettejitsu at gmail.
love ya :)
You may be overstressing your body, causing it to freak out and retain water to an unusual degree.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to lose weight, eat a little bit less than you use (something like 100 or 150 calories less) every day. Seven days of this will put you about a pound down.
After your body calms down and gets used to having its needs met and the wants somewhat met, you can try out a better version of an intermittent fasting diet, which is kind of what you're haphazardly doing.
Best of luck.
There's a ton of opinions about losing weight, but I'll add my two cents.
ReplyDelete1. I'm guessing your BF% is already pretty low, which obviously makes losing even a small amount of weight pretty hard. If that's true, why are you trying to drop anyway?
2. If you are calorie restricted, yes, you should be losing weight. BUT, if the intake is too small, it's possible your body is hording what fat it has b/c it thinks you aren't going to feed it sufficiently.
3. I don't think bread is inherently evil, but I'd avoid it if I was trying to cut.
I don't know how on earth you can do one class (much less two) on shrimp and a turkey sandwich. Oh wait, you're a purple belt now. You don't have to exert like the rest of us. :P
Nice pic. :)
My ideal weight (the weight I compete at) is 124. I tend to walk around 8lb heavier when I haven't been competing regularly. I exercise a lot- but I've been depressed, and picked up some poor eating habits, and I'm up to 139- which is too fat for my frame and height. I'm reasonably content at 132, but I do not like 139. At 5 feet tall, it really makes a drastic difference.
ReplyDeleteWhen I'm trying to lose, I reduce food amount gradually (and include more chicken breasts and eggs) until I start seeing results. I don't try to starve or fast or anything nuts.
I remember the last time I was getting ready for a tournament, I was eating almost nothing but chicken and eggs for quite a while, and *still* not losing weight- I had to drop from one plain baked chicken breast to a HALF of a plain baked chicken breast per meal to get the scale moving again. So yeah, it seems to take pretty drastic measures. I'm sure my advancing age has something to do with it too.
I did not consider my shrimp and sandwich day to be quite to the level of "starvation rations" that ought me make my body hoard. Maybe it was just in shock, though. "HEY! Where's all the crap food??!?"
When I make a sandwich, I use 100-calorie oat "thins", chicken or turkey, a slice of cheese, and horseradish mustard. Not perfect, but not a Big Mac.
After yesterday, when I did jiu jitsu pretty much all freakin' day and ate only 1 can of soup with some cheese and a little less than 1/3 cup of beans and franks, I ****GAINED***** half a pound. I only had one Dr Pepper yesterday, too (down from something like 6 on my worst days). Isn't that wild? Can't believe it. Usually if I do 3 classes, even if I eat fairly poorly, I'll be at least a pound down in the morning.
I'm going to give it another couple of days and hope that the body is simply trying to adjust to new diet restrictions- but if I don't start losing, I guess it's back on the chicken-and-egg track. Sigh.
I really don't know how you can roll on that intake. Soup, cheese, beans, can of soda?? My stomach would start eating itself. Granted, I'm ~20lb heavier and a bit taller, but still.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying your body is going into all out starvation mode, but there isn't a great deal of nutrition being consumed for the output.
Are you dropping for a tourny or just to trim?
And I can't believe I used "hording" as if it were a real thing.
Evidently, I can not only roll on that intake, I can gain weight. >:(
ReplyDeleteAt least if famine hits the planet, Georgette and I will survive long after everyone else has starved to death.
You can gain weight because your body refuses to let go of the weight it has. It's likely feeling too freaked out by the sudden changes.
ReplyDeleteThink of a toddler who is told to let go of a precious blanket because it's all raggedy and needs a washing. That toddler is going to kick, scream and cry if you try to pull away the blanket right away. A gentler strategy full of distractions and easing the blanket away will work better.
Wait and see the results after a couple weeks.