Stretching Routine Part 1: Dynamic Stretching

One of the major goals of my fitness program is to increase my flexibility. As long as I can remember, I’ve been a very inflexible person. My arms and upper body show a fairly average level of flexibility, but my legs have always been extremely lacking. I’ve always thought that it might have something to do with the fact that I’m so tall; my dad has the same problem, and he’s taller than I am. Until I started a short-lived stretching routine in my late teenage years, I could barely reach below my knees when reaching for my toes with a straight back. Luckily, I at least managed to solve that problem,  and I can now reach to the ground. Still, my hamstrings and calves permit me an extremely limited range of motion, and that’s something I hope to correct!

Enter Stretching Scientifically by Thomas Kurz. It’s a book I’d heard a lot about, so finally I decided to order it a few months ago. I’ve now read through the entire book several times, and I’ve learned more than I ever thought I’d need to know about stretching. If you’re only going to buy one book on flexibility training, this should be it! I’ve learned the importance of having a planned approach to flexibility training. Before, I was haphazardly stretching whenever I had the extra time, and while that did lead to small improvements, it’s nothing compared to what I’ve already seen in my short time since reading Kurz’s book. I now make time to stretch at least twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. Flexibility aside, I’ve also noticed a huge positive influence on my mood and energy level for the entire day. Just spending a few moments with myself, emptying my mind and concentrating on the way my body feels, does wonders for my focus for the rest of the day.

So, just what have I been doing? Well, the first part of my daily routine consists of dynamic stretching. Simply put, this is stretching done while your muscles are actively moving. You’ve probably done these kind of stretches before– they are a common warm-up used before playing sports in high school gym class. Arm circles, leg swings, and side bends are all examples of dynamic stretches. The concept behind them is quite simple: passive stretching (i.e. stretching with relaxed muscles over a long duration, as in doing the splits) increases your passive flexibility, but does not necessarily lead to large increases in dynamic flexibility. This is of special interest to athletes (martial artists included!), as increased dynamic flexibility translates as an ability to perform at an increased range of motion while actively engaged in their sport. It makes sense, really.  The best way to increase dynamic flexibility is through dynamic stretching!

I usually start my dynamic stretching routine with some light cardio work to get my blood flowing and my muscles ready. A short brisk walk or march usually does the trick for me. I then jump right in to my stretching. I start with my arms, doing 40 reps of each stretch. I then move to legs, for which I also do 40 reps per leg. Finally, I end off with some trunk stretches. I usually do 60 reps for each of these, as there are more muscles involved and more mass to move, and therefore I usually find it takes me a bit longer to reach my maximum range of motion. Here’s my usual routine in detail:

40 x arm circles

40 x arm crosses

40 x arm swings

40 x front leg raises

40 x side leg raises

40 x rear leg raises

60 x front trunk bends

60 x side trunk bends

60 x back extensions

A note for beginners: when I first started this routine, I sometimes found it hard to finish all my reps, especially with the leg stretches. My range of motion would start to decrease as my muscles became tired. I found a helpful solution was to break the leg stretches up into alternating sets of 10 reps per leg, switching legs between sets. This allowed me to alternately rest each leg, and it was very helpful for me.

I do this routine at least twice a day: once just after I wake up (before breakfast), and another later in the evening, close to bed time. I also use it as a warm-up for any physical activity I do.  I’ll often follow it with some static passive stretching in the morning, and I always do at night. I feel invigorated and ready to face my day when I do these streches in the morning, and I love using them as a warm-up before BJJ, as I definitely notice my performance improves due to increased flexibility. In the evening, stretching is a nice way to wind down the day and get myself ready for sleep.

Speaking of sleep, it’s already getting late! I’d better head to bed right now if I want to stay on top of my sleep schedule! I think I’ll leave this post as-is for now. Tomorrow I’ll be starting full speed on my endurance workouts, so I’ll be sure to post details tomorrow!

Good night, Internet!

A long-awaited return!

No, I hadn’t forgotten about my blog. I hope my blog hasn’t forgotten about me!

Well, what can I say? This blog was meant to be a testament to my commitment to a healthier, more active lifestyle. By posting my dietary and exercise information every day, I hoped to stay motivated toward my goal of a total self-overhaul. By and large, I have  so far failed. The beginning was so promising. I was posting every day, and meticulously recording my daily nutritional intake, as well as my physical activity. But, I gradually began to slack off, until soon I wasn’t posting anything at all. I don’t think very many people are reading my blog (yet!), but I”m going to apologize nonetheless. I’m sorry for giving up for the past few months. I’ve let my readers down. Most of all though, I’ve let myself down. I feel guilty and disappointed in myself for falling off the wagon so hard. I’m going to take it as a lesson in the dangers of procrastination and complacency, and do my best to make sure it never happens again.

That’s not to say all has been lost, however. I am still attending Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu classes, now four or five times a week, and I definitely see and feel an increase in my fitness level because of it. Over the past few weeks, I’ve also begun the first phase of a comprehensive stretching program I’ve developed for myself, with the hope of increasing my extremely poor flexibility. I’ve also designed a brand-new workout regimen, with both endurance and strength components, and I plan to bring it into effect full-force starting next week. And while my dietary habits have probably suffered the most since I stopped recording them and posting them here for the world to see, I’ve still managed to maintain some form of discipline in my eating, though there is still room for a lot of improvement.

So, there we are. Now that I’ve realized that it’s all too easy to convenietly “forget”to stay on top of diet and exercise, I’m hoping I’ll have all the more resolve to stay committed. After all, we all face setbacks in some form or another. It’s just a part of life. All we can do is deal with them as best we can. That’s the part that’s up to us, and that’s how we should judge ourselves. Not by the number of setbacks and challenges we face, but by how we choose to work our way through them, and what we learn from doing so.

Without further ado, it’s my bed time! I’ll be waking up bright and early tomorrow to do a trial day of my endurance workout to see just how hard I should be pushing myself when I start up next week. And, starting tomorrow, I’ll be back to posting all the data for my day-to-day nutrition and physical activity. I’ll also post the workouts and stretching routines I’ve come up with, just to serve as examples for those who are interested.

Good night! See you tomorrow, blogosphere.

Back in action!

OK, OK. It’s been just over four months since my last post here. How terrible of me! Never fear though, I haven’t given up on my training or on my fitness program. I’ll have updates up and running again in the near future, so stay tuned for more!

My first submission!

Yesterday was a day to remember! I’ve been going to Brazilian jiu jitsu class for about three weeks now, and at the end of each training session we usually “shark tank”, or take turns sparring with different partners, trying to use the techniques we’ve been working on. As the new guy in class, I’ve been totally trounced every time. Every time except yesterday, that is!

We had been working on armlocks from the side mount all class, and my partner was one of the few guys who’s actuallyy newer than me. He’s probably at least 20 lbs heavier than me, and maybe 15 years older. By the time the shark tank session came around, I could tell that he was tired, and when we started rolling I noticed that his energy seemed to be falling pretty fast. I managed to stay in side mount despite his best efforts to get me off, and so I started looking for a submission. I slowly started working on his arm; I could tell he knew what I was trying to do, as we had been working on just such a situation all class, but I also knew he was getting tired, so I just kept forcing him to exert himself as much as I could. Finally, he seemed to give up on his arm, and I quickly took advantage. I got him into an Americana arm lock (see image) and held on as I felt him using the last of his energy trying to escape. Like I said, he was much bigger than me, and it was tough to hold on, but I just kept cranking on his arm until he tapped out.

It was a great feeling! I know the guy is newer than me, but it’s the first time that I’ve managed to actually get a submission in a full-on sparring session. The fact that I did better than someone who is basically brand new is a good sign: it means that I’m learning something, and am getting to the point where I’m just a teeny bit better than a total beginner. I got completely destroyed by everyone else that I sparred with, but I still felt great about the one tapout that I managed to get. It’s not much, but it’s a start!

Fitness journal: 22-10-2008

Well, I’m making slow progress. Today was a little better than yesterday, and much better than the day before that. My eating habits were very good today, but I’m still a little disappointed with my sleeping pattern (I went to bed too late and then slept in too late for the third time in a row today). It’s still messing with my daily meal schedule, though it’s been slightly better every day. Some improvement is better than no improvement at all!

Sleep: 8 hours. Pretty good. It seems so hard to squeeze in that one extra hour for my ideal amount of 9 hours, but I can’t really complain about 8.

Dietary Information: Today’s the first day that I’ve been bang-on my calorie intake goal, and I feel stuffed! It’s been tough for me to meet my goal every day, and I think I’m actually not used to eating as much as I’m supposed to. Whether that is a good thing or not remains to be seen: I’m hoping that by increasing the amount of exercise I do and at the same time eating a little more every day I’ll speed up my metabolism so that I can burn those extra calories I’m not used to eating. In other words, I’m looking to counterbalance my increased caloric intake with an increased level of physical activity. Here’s hoping it all works, and that I don’t end up putting on more fat by doing all this. Oh well, that’s the great thing about keeping track of everything with numbers! If something isn’t going as I want it to, I have lots of hard data I can use to adjust my daily routine. Here’s today’s breakdown:

• Calories: 2,398
• Carbohydrates: 387g
• Fat: 44g
• Protein: 126%

All in all, I’m fairly happy with the way the numbers look today. I had a 12″ Subway veggie patty sub to start my day (with no mayo, of course). Lunch was some delicious assorted sushi from a place down the street, and for dinner (which was fairly late and closer to a bedtime snack) I had some fat free strawberry yogurt with a banana. So I came up a measly two calories short of my daily goal of 2400-2750 calories, so I’m pleased with that. Not everything was perfect, though. I still ended up eating a few big meals rather than several small ones, which is what I’m trying to avoid. Also, my carb/fat/protein ratio could have been a little better: I could have cut back on carbs a bit and instead added a bit more healthy fats. Overall though, I think I did well today.

Stretching: I have one chapter left to go in Stretching Scientifically, so my self-assigned homework for today is to finish the book and come up with a weekly stretching routine that I can start tomorrow!

Exercise: My jiu jitsu class still makes up 100% of my daily workout, which is something that’ll be changing very soon. I got all the info about when I can use the well-equipped gym/weight area down at the BJJ club, and now that my research into stretching is almost done I’ll be focusing on strength training over the next few days.

Fitness journal: 21-10-2008

Today was moderately successful. The only real complaint that I have is that I stayed up far too late last night, so I slept in until lunchtime again and skipped breakfast. I have to head to bed early tonight because I have school early tomorrow morning, so I don’t have enough time or hunger in my day to make up for the extra meal I lost by sleeping in so late, and so I’m way under my caloric goal for a second day in a row. Just as I thought, it’s going to be really important for me to get a consistent schedule together for my sleeping and eating patterns. Anyway, on to the good stuff:

Sleep: 8 solid hours. Still less than my ideal nine hours, but it’ll do. I just regret sleeping in so late. That’s really something I need to work on, as it’s quickly becoming the biggest roadblock for my diet and exercise program.

Dietary Information: Although I skipped a meal, the food I actually did eat was quite good: a whole wheat bagel with light cream cheese, tomato, onion, and a few slices of ham and a side of 1% cottage cheese for some extra protein was my lunch, and dinner was whole wheat pasta with homemade tomato sauce. I again used the nutrition calculator over at SparkPeople to calculate the nutrition info of the pasta sauce I made, and found it to be quite healthy. I threw in some Yves Veggie Ground Round vegetarian ground beef, which tastes a lot better than it sounds. I don’t particularly like ground meats, and the Yves stuff has no fat in it whatsoever. For a snack just before bed I just finished eating some fat free strawberry yogurt with a chopped up banana. It’s quickly becoming my favourite snack! Anyway, here’s what the breakdown for today looks like:

• Calories: 1,212
• Carbohydrates: 196g
• Fat: 14g
• Protein: 80g

For a second day I’ve come up short on my recommended daily intake of 2400-2700 calories. I feel quite full at the moment, and if I weren’t keeping track I would have probably thought that I’d eaten enough today. It’s all because I slept through breakfast, and that kind of thing is very typical for me. I have nothing that even remotely resembles a consistent schedule, and it’s really bad for my metabolism. I’m starting to realize that it’s the main reason I’ve gotten into such bad shape over the last few years. I need to be more organized.

Stretching: Still nothing in this regard. I’ve read through the first few chapters of Stretching Scientifically now though, and I’m learning a ton about proper stretching. I should be done in the next couple days, and then I’ll be ready to draw up a full plan.

Exercise: All I did today was my one hour jiu jitsu class. It’s a decent enough workout, but I still plan on supplementing it with some resistance training. I should probably add some more cardio at some point as well. My martial arts are going to remain the prime reason behind all of the changes I’m making in my life, so I’m looking for exercises that will have a positive effect on my training. I think the two new books I’ve got are a great start, and I’m only a few days away from having a master fitness plan to follow.

Fitness journal: 20-10-2008

Well, here I am posting my very first entry in the “fitness journal” section here on my blog. This is going to be where I keep track of everything I eat, how much I sleep, and how much exercise I do. I’m not sure how interesting it will be to read, but it sure will keep me motivated. Maybe it will get you motivated too!

Sleep: 7.5 hours. I was actually planning to get more than this, but some guys showed up knocking at our apartment door. Apparently the vents needed to be cleaned with some very loud machinery quite early in the morning. That was nice. Oh well…from what I’ve read, 7.5 hours is the minimum amount of sleep you should get every night, so at least I’m not below that.

Dietary Information: Uh-oh. This is not a good way to be starting off my journal. Well, my girlfriend and I went out for a nice dinner with my sister last night, and I ate way, way too much. I had a whole three course meal with an appetizer, entrée, and dessert. It was way more than I usually eat, and I was totally stuffed afterward. So much so, in fact, that I wasn’t even hungry when I woke up this morning. As a result, I didn’t actually eat anything until around lunch time, when I had two quick slices of peanut butter and jam toast. Again, not a very good meal. I wasn’t hungry when I ate it though, and I was just forcing it down because I knew I should eat something. I didn’t eat again until I got home from my BJJ class at 7:30 or so, at which point I tried to salvage my diet for the day and made some fairly healthy vegetarian burritos. According to the nutrition information on the foods I ate and SparkPeople’s nutrition calculator, I’m rolling in with the following:

• Calories: 1,665
• Carbohydrates: 198g
• Fat: 68g
• Protein: 67g

I’m pretty disappointed with those numbers. The carb/fat/protein ratio is pretty good, but 1,665 calories is only 60-69% of my recommended daily intake. Not surprising that I was under, seeing as I wasn’t hungry for half the day because of my giant dinner the night before. That’s precisely the kind of behaviour I said I wanted to avoid though; eating too much on some days and not enough on others. It’s messing with my metabolism and slowing down my body’s ability to process things at a normal and regular rate. This is going to be an ongoing battle for me, I know it. I’m lucky that I’m not addicted to fatty or otherwise unhealthy foods, but I have a sinking suspicion that getting myself on a consistent eating plan is going to be much harder than it would to just eliminate those foods from my diet.

Stretching: Not much to report on this front yet. Since I just got Stretching Scientifically today, I’m in the process of redesigning my stretching routine. According to the introduction of the book, most people don’t see very big gains in their flexibility because they simply don’t stretch properly. Kurz claims that it’s possible to see drastic results in only a few weeks or months, and I’m eager to test the veracity of that claim.

Exercise: Also not a heck of a lot going on here yet either. I went to my BJJ class today, and we did the usual short (but quite intense) warm up. Class is quite rigorous though and I’m always panting and sweating by the end, so at least today wasn’t a total write-off for physical activity. Like with stretching above, I’m in the process of reading through my new book and setting up a routine to put into action in the coming days, so stay tuned for all that info as I figure things out!

BJJ basics: positions

One of my goals with this blog is to chronicle my advancement in BJJ. So, at times I’ll be writing informative posts containing some of the things that I’ve learned through training. I am by no means claiming to be an expert on any of this material. This blog is not somewhere you should be coming to learn martial arts techniques, as I don’t understand any of them at a level that is appropriate to teach from. Rather, this is meant to be a journal of my own progress– a place for people to come if they are curious how practice and learning goes on in a typical BJJ environment. This is not instructional material, but informative, background information. I’ll say it again: I’m a beginning student, and I’m not out to teach anyone anything.

Right, now on to my actual post. As with any sport or martial art, BJJ has various stances and positions that we find ourselves in during the course of a sparring session or tournament. In my so far very limited experience, there are a few such positions that are commonly encountered, and are useful to know. These aren’t treated as static “stances” that we lock ourselves into, but rather serve as useful reference points to launch various techniques from, and are dynamic entities that are almost always in transition in some form or another.

Since BJJ deals almost exclusively with ground-based fighting, most of the positions we talk about involve at least one partner being on the ground. Firstly, we have the mount, which involves one person lying on the ground, and the other sitting on his torso, facing his head. As these cool camouflaged guys can show you, the mount is considered a very dominant position for the person on top, as he is able to launch a wide variety of strikes and submission techniques against the guy on the bottom. Being fully mounted by your opponent puts you in a very vulnerable position, and it’s something that is almost always avoided when possible. Since I’m a total newbie, I have a lot of experience being on the bottom of the mount, as my opponent can usually get me there without too much trouble. It’s a crappy position to be in, because it’s very difficult to get out of. When we’re working through techniques with more controlled sparring, we usually stop and start over when one person ends up in the mount position; it’s treated as a “mini-victory”.

Similar to the mount is the guard. In this position, one opponent remains on top of the other, facing his head, but instead of being completely mounted, the person on the bottom has managed to get his legs up and around his opponent; he is “guarding” against a full mount by using his legs as a barrier. This is a much better position for the person on the bottom when compared with the mount seen above. There are many submissions possible from the guard, and it is the preferred position of many fighters. It is much harder for the person being held in the guard to perform techniques, though striking is still possible in a mixed martial arts or street encounter. Usually the top priority of the person on the bottom is to apply a choke or submission to his opponent, while the opponent in the guard on top attempts to achieve a more advantageous position, such as the mount or side mount (shown below). This is known as passing the guard. There are many variants on the guard, though we’ve only just touched on a few of them in the classes I’ve attended. I’ll be writing more as I learn it! Again, this is only a journal of my progress in learning the art of Brazilian jiu jitsu.

Another common form of control is the side mount. Like the full mount above, this position is very advantageous for the person on top. He lies with most or all of his weight on his chest, which is pushed against the chest of the person on the bottom. It is called the side mount because unlike the other positions I’ve mentioned, the two opponents lie perpendicular to each other. This position is often the result of a throw or takedown executed by the person on top. As with the full mount, it is a top priority for the person on the bottom to get himself into a better position, such as the guard. The person on top has several options, from strikes and joint locks to achieving the full mount or some other position he prefers.

As I said at the beginning of this post, none of these are concrete, static entities. Positions change rapidly as people vie for better control of the situation and of each other, so these names and ideas are more for pedagogical reference than anything else. These are three very basic and common positions in BJJ, but there’s still much more for me to learn. As it stands now though, I have my hands full just absorbing the techniques taught in class, and I don’t yet have the luxury of planning ahead and thinking what position I want to be in. Things just happen as they do, and I try to do my best in the situation I find myself in. I’m sure that will change with time and experience, though. And, on the bright side, since I’m a total beginner and pretty much end up in the worst possible positions all the time, I’m getting lots of experience trying to get myself out of them. It’s the journey and not the destination, as they say.

Pictures in this post originally posted on Wikipedia.

Mail call!

Well, what arrived for me in the mail today but my order from amazon.com! I’m really quite excited! Here are the books I ordered, in all their shiny new-ness:

Since I’ve only had them for a few hours now, I obviously haven’t read all that much of them, but so far they’re shaping up to be even better than I had hoped! Starting Strength really goes into depth on the hows and whys of training for improved strength, rather than simply for looks. It’s all about using a barbell as your primary weightlifting tool, as it allows your body to lift weight the way it’s anatomically designed to. Contrast that with using a machine at the gym, which only lets you lift weight the way the machine is designed to. It’s backed up with quite a bit of research and expertise, and I’m really looking forward to reading through all the in-depth info on the major lifts that I hope to be doing.

Stretching Scientifically is a book that I’ve heard a lot about, and have been trying to find in used book stores for over a year now, as it doesn’t seem to be carried by any of the major bookstores here in town. I finally caved and ordered it off Amazon, and now that I have it I can’t believe I didn’t order it sooner. I was worried that that book might not live up to my expectations since I’ve been lusting after it for so long, but so far it hasn’t disappointed. Kurz has a lot of experience with flexibility training (as the cover shows he’s very flexible himself), and it definitely shows in the depth of stretching information that he presents in the intro alone. I plan to spend the next few days seriously pouring through these two books and finally coming up with a concrete, day-by-day workout and stretching routine to start whipping me back into shape.

The books have arrived none too soon. I was back to BJJ today after a week and a half off with a nasty cold, and I found myself in a situation that I was neither strong enough nor flexible enough to get myself out of. We’re going to be focusing on self-defense techniques this week, and today we were learning some basic escapes from a headlock on the ground. It’s really only my second or third week of class, so I’m still pretty much struggling just to keep up with the level of the class. I’m absorbing more and more every time I go, and I see definite improvement, but I’m getting destroyed during sparring almost every single time. That was the case today. In the second half of class we were practicing the headlock escapes we had learned against a fully resisting opponent; our partners were supposed to hold onto the headlock as best as they could, and we had to escape. One of the techniques we learned was to move our hips away from our opponent, and then use the space we create to hook a leg over his face, thereby pushing him off and hopefully setting us up for an armbar. It was all working nicely for me when we were just drilling the technique, but as soon as my started resisting it got a lot harder. I found that he would move with me as I tried to make the extra space, making it impossible for me to get my leg up and over his head, because I’m just not flexible enough to do it. I could see that it was possible, and I knew what I had to do, my lack of flexibility was just stopping me from actually pulling it off. So, enter Tom Kurz and Stretching Scientifically. There is a section dedicated to stretches for judoka and wrestlers, and the stretches given there focus on increasing just the kind of flexibility we grapplers need. I might need to skip ahead to that section of the book right away 😉

After that little session of controlled sparring, we went to a more free-sparring setup. One of us started on the bottom, and the other in a position called side mount. Imagine him lying on you chest to chest, with his body roughly perpendicular to yours. The object of our sparring was for the person in on the bottom to either escape to his knees or to pull guard, which means getting the opponent between your legs or knees. The one on top had to try to maintain his position, and apply some kind of submission if possible. I volunteered to start on the bottom, and away we went. Since I’ve been there for a few weeks now, there are no pulled punches, and my partner wasn’t easy on me at all. Again, I found that my lack of flexibility stopped me from doing some things that I thought might work, and my very small library of techniques to use left me with very little I could do. My partner ended up on top of me pretty quickly, and he went for a lapel choke almost right away. He was putting all his weight on me, and at one point managed to get a knee on my chest and put all his weight on it, which made it really hard to breathe. Between his weight on top of me and the lapel of my gi being tightened across my neck, my vision quickly started going black from the sides, and as I tapped out all I could think about was how much I wanted to get home, read Starting Strength, and plan a workout routine for myself so that I’ll soon be able to better force people off of me. Of course, my biggest problem was a lack of experience and a lack of techniques, but I’m certain that more strength and flexibility would have helped enormously as well. It’s all one big package.

So anyway, there it is. I don’t know if I could get any better motivation than I got tonight. I’m really looking forward to the rest of the week in BJJ, and working through some more headlock and other self defense things. My ears hurt at the end of class from all the headlocks, and I asked my instructor about getting some headgear. He said that I should wait before investing in some, just to see if I’m actually prone to getting cauliflower ear. I’ll be sure to go pick some up at the first sign, but like he said I don’t want to wear any if I don’t have to. I did buy a mouthguard today though! I feel kinda special about that actually…it feels like I’ve finally entered the world of real, full-on martial arts. I’ve never needed a mouthguard before, so it’s been like a small coming of age for me. I even took a picture after I boiled it in water and molded it to my teeth. Isn’t it pretty?

Diet update

Well, I’m officially two days into my new eating routine, and I must say I feel great. I’ve come to some very interesting realizations, and learned a lot of new stuff just in these two short days.

My first observation is that I feel full almost all the time. That may sound weird coming from someone who just started on a path to healthier eating, and I’m as surprised as you are. By following the meal guidelines generated for me over on SparkPeople, I’m finally getting the nutrition I need. Because I’ve been a university student for the past six years or so, my daily schedule has been irregular at best and completely hectic and totally erratic at worst. There are no such things as regular meal times in my days, and a regular bed time and set amount of sleep are things I haven’t known since high school. I think that’s been a big factor in my growing waistline. Looking closely at my lifestyle, I realize that for most of the day I wasn’t eating enough, and then I’d make up for that with one or two huge, irresponsible meals. I would often stay up late studying or just wasting time, which meant that I would often sleep in as late as possible and roll out of bed just in time to rush out the door to work or school. Obviously, I rarely had time for breakfast, and I rarely set aside time to prepare myself a lunch to take with me. So what that meant was spending the first part of my day hungry, and then buying something for lunch. The scary realization that I’ve come to is that my body was compensating for my lack of breakfast (probably slowing down my metabolism and storing lots of energy from my later meals as fat), and so I don’t even really feel hungry in the mornings anymore. I’ve had to force myself to eat breakfast for these past few days, as my body really isn’t used to it.

But, by eating a healthy, responsible breakfast, I find that I’m much fuller come lunch time, and I don’t feel the need to eat a super huge meal. Instead, I can eat another meal of a correct portion size and not feel hungry afterward. The same goes with dinner, too. By pacing myself and eating smaller, healthier meals more often in the day, I don’t feel the need to impulsively gorge myself with a large meal once I feel like I’m practically dying of starvation. Plus, this encourages me to prepare my meals at home ahead of time, which is much cheaper than buying my meals somewhere else while I’m on the run.

Another thing that I’ve noticed after plugging in my height and weight into SparkPeople’s nutrition calculator is that, surprisingly enough, on a typical day I was actually coming in at just under my recommended daily caloric intake. That seemed strange to me at first, seeing as I’m definitely slowly but surely putting on weight, but I think I have it figured out. The fact is, most of my days were not very typical. I’ve gotten very good at finding excuses to eat candy, ice cream, and lots of other tasty treats. Add indulgences like those to the slowed-down metabolism I’ve inadvertently ended up with by practically starving myself for half of every day, and you have a great recipe for weight gain. I’ve read all over the Internet and in magazines that the human body is an amazing thing, and it’s quite good at adapting to its environment. I’ve basically been telling my body that it’s starving, and that it needs to conserve nutrients as much as possible. So, when I do overindulge (which happens on an almost daily basis these days), I’m encouraging my body to store as much fat as it can, to see it through my lack of nutrition for most of the rest of my day.

I can combat this whole thing by, as I said, eating smaller meals more often, and making sure that I’m getting enough nutrition in each of them. In doing that I’ll not only be making sure that I’m getting all the nutrients my body needs (which is even more important now that I’m ramping up my physical activity), but I’ll also be speeding up my metabolism and encouraging my body to more quickly process the food that I’m eating. That’s the hope, anyway. As it stands now, after two days of trying it out, I feel much more satisfied and much less hungry all the time, and as a result I can pace my eating throughout the day and I don’t feel the need to overindulge. That, and I’m definitely getting all the right nutrition that my body needs. So far, so good!