day 2 of 7
I woke up super grumpy today. I'm really not sure why. I don't think having extra food including a big dinner helped as I have this weird feeling of going backwards. I know thats impossible in 24 hours, but still, it worries me.
I walked the dog. She was annoying me this morning, just like every other thing in the world. The only positive thought I could muster was for the lunch time boxing class. There is a special guest coach on Monday and he's excellent. There usually aren't many people training at lunchtime, so its a really good opportunity for me to learn. Bigger clasees are fun, but you don't get as much technique specific coaching.
I came back form my walk and decided to get in the pool for some cold therapy. I'm fortunate to have access to an unheated swimming pool. Currently its sitting at around 20 degrees, but it will get down under 10 in the next few months as winter arrives. The water is excellent for so many things and I need to make a point of using the pool more for both training and recovery. Today I hopped around and focused on hip movement and moving my shoulders. I was a bit sore this morning, which I guess didn't help my mood. after 15 minutes in the cold water, my body felt a lot better. As an added bonus, my mood has lifted a little too. I didn't shower after the pool as its better if the body can raise its temperature naturally.
The lunchtime boxing class ended up being a PT session. I love it when this happens - 1 on 1 attention from the coach. She was excellent too. Worked on slips, hip movement and pivots. I have a slip, body rip drill I will now practice. My rips felt a lot better today when I was focused on turning my hips into them. I can feel my form slipping especially when i get tired and a regress back to arm punching. But hip movement is the focus and hip movement is what I'll get better at until hopefully it becomes natural. It wasn't so long ago I had a awful jab, but thats significantly improved, my hip movement can too.
I came home and had my shake, followed by a slightly larger lunch. I added some sweet potato and carrot to my rice slaw and steak. This left me pretty full and kinda sleepy. The afternoon wasn't the usual floating on air after boxing afternoon I usually have after a good lunchtime session. I still felt tired and a bit grumpy.
I did some investigation on my sleepiness and bad mood as I figured it had to be die related. I was right. I've been eating clean food for the last 6 weeks tilted towards high protein and fat with limited carbs. Specifically, limited carbs in the evening. On Sunday I ate oats with yoghurt then a good portion of sweet potato in the evening - this is a lot more sugars than I've been used to processing. My body triggered a reaction to process this quickly which caused my blood sugar to drop rapidly to below its normal levels. This caused my fatigue and grumpiness for most of the day.
I also felt full and heavy after the fiber rich food. Not the good kind of full, but the bloated slow kind of full. High fiber food draws a lot of water into the gut to process it, so I felt grossly full for the next 24 hours after my special oats bowl.
I've also had an insatiable appetite for the day. I guess this is to be expected with high fiber food - I get the same reaction when I eat bread usually. Which is why I've cut almost all bread from my diet.
In summary, I think my experiment with additional calories has been a failure so far. I don't think I went too far over my 3k target, but I certainly chose the wrong foods. For the rest of the week I'll focus on hitting the 3k target, but adding the additional calories from lighter, more calorie dense foods. I'll add back some olive oil, avocado, almonds / walnuts on my salad, maybe even some cheese (I need to look into this one). I'm already eating a few eggs, but I might try adding 1 or 2 with my steak lunches.
The lessons here for a re-calibration week:
When we add extra fuel to the diet, it should be mostly coming from fats or additional protein. Keep the high fiber carbs to a minimum.
Keep your meals and food timing the same as you've been doing, just add more calories.
I didn't get an evening walk in today as it was pouring with rain (6k steps total for the day). I'm OK with that for today as I kid of enjoyed sitting in front of the TV for an extended period. Tomorrow will be better