I need to cut 20 pounds.

[z1ggy]

I am going to be fighting march 13. I weigh 190 right now and need to be 170 by that date. Obv. training I am burning a lot of calories, but I also eat a lot, too. What are the foods I SHOULD be eating lots of, and foods I SHOULD NOT be eating? Clearly I don't eat junk foods and soda, but I have a slower metabolism, so I find it fairly challenging to drop lots of weight. I want to be as close to my fight weight as I can be before I have to sit in a sauna for hours and hours.. Loosing 10 pounds the day of the fight is never a good idea.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

How much extra fat would you say you are carrying? I ask because you need to decide how much weight you want to diet off in the next few months, and how much you want to cut in water weight in the day or two before the fight.

 

[z1ggy]

I would say I normally walk around at 180 to 185 when I am lifting 2 times a week or so eating normally. So I would say 10 pounds of what I need to loose is pure fat, maybe 15, but I dont know if I can loose 15 pounds of pure body fat, even though I'm sure it can be done that quickly. As far as water weight, I prob carry a little extra right now too because my pre work out supplements require I drink a lot of water.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

OK this should be farely easy. If I were you, I'd shoot to be about 178 fully hydrated about a week before your fight, and then cut the rest in water. Its completely possible to cut the whole 20lbs in water, but not the best approach, especially if you have fat you can lose and plenty of time. I'll let others comment more in depth on the diet, but I've found the easiest way to do this is to reduce your carb intake.

To lose 12lbs by the week before the fight you need to lose about 1.5lbs a week. This should be easy if you are doing serious mma training.

 

[z1ggy]

Yeah I estimate I eat about 2500 calories per day. Usually my daily diet is something like this

Morning: Eggs, wheat bread with peanut butter
Mid morning: Protein bar
Afternoon: Pasta with marina and cheese or tuna with light mayo
Mid afternoon: Protein bar
Night: Salad with italian dressing, some kind of meat ( Usually chicken) marinated in some kind of marinade.

I don't count calories because I'm not a chick. I don't mind taking in a lot of cals. as long as they are good ones. I figure I burn anywhere from 500 to 750 cals when I train.

Oh.. and I forgot.. I also drink on weekends.. I know I gotta cut a lot of those beers out if I really want to loose the fat.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

I wrestled and did bjj for years. Wrestlers watch what they eat more than any girl, better get used to it if youre gonna fight.

Thats not a huge amount of food for someone who is training hard. What kind of protein bars are you eating? Some of them are very high calorie. Also before 20 more people come in hear and say it, you need to read the fat loss sticky. You probably want to watch the pasta as well. Its could be more calories than you think depending on portion size and theres really nothing healthy in it.

 

[SociallyChallenged]

Yeah I estimate I eat about 2500 calories per day. Usually my daily diet is something like this

Morning: Eggs, wheat bread with peanut butter
Mid morning: Protein bar
Afternoon: Pasta with marina and cheese or tuna with light mayo
Mid afternoon: Protein bar
Night: Salad with italian dressing, some kind of meat ( Usually chicken) marinated in some kind of marinade.

I don't count calories because I'm not a chick. I don't mind taking in a lot of cals. as long as they are good ones. I figure I burn anywhere from 500 to 750 cals when I train.

Oh.. and I forgot.. I also drink on weekends.. I know I gotta cut a lot of those beers out if I really want to loose the fat.

Correction: you're going to need to cut out all of those beers if you seriously intend to compete at 170. An alcohol fast will cut out a ton of calories for the social drinker and it is probably necessary in this case. At this point, you may very well have to count calories to keep yourself on a schedule. You don't have to be a chick to count calories. You have to have a weight loss goal in mind. If you want to lose 10 pounds of fat, it'll be easiest to lose the weight and keep yourself accountable if you track everything. Secondly, I would personally only cut 5 pounds of water weight. I know a lot of athletes cut WAY more, but with my experience in exercise bio and with fighters cutting water weight for the first time, I'd say cut as little water weight as you can (the first time around). If you cut too much water, which is easy to do, you'll burn out easy due to lack of water for metabolic processes and decreased blood plasma volume circulating through your vasculature.

 

[z1ggy]

I wrestled and did bjj for years. Wrestlers watch what they eat more than any girl, better get used to it if youre gonna fight.

Thats not a huge amount of food for someone who is training hard. What kind of protein bars are you eating? Some of them are very high calorie. Also before 20 more people come in hear and say it, you need to read the fat loss sticky. You probably want to watch the pasta as well. Its could be more calories than you think depending on portion size and theres really nothing healthy in it.

I eat the protein plus Power Bars. The pasta I eat is wheat pasta. I know I might need to avoid it, but then what other ways will I get enough calories to have high energy to train? Usually now when I do eat the pasta meals, I have it as the mid-day meal so I use a lot of that directly when I go train at 6pm. I feel liek the calorie counting is never accurate for me because I never know exactly how much I am eating, and exactly how much I am burning.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

The bottom line is that if you want to lose weight you need to eat fewer calories. The first thing I would probably cut is one if not both of the protein bars. Just by cutting out one bar a day and all alcohol you should start losing weight. But you really need to learn to estimate calories and portion size. This is a part of wrestling/boxing/mma.

 

[z1ggy]

Okay I will do that. I will record everything that I eat/ drink today and make a little spread sheet or something and post the results. How much would you estimate I burn off while training? I will prob. be hard to gauge but I go for 2 hours..doing rounds..take down type drills, hitting the pads some instructional jiu jitsu and then open mat/more sparring.

 

[brikis98]

I feel liek the calorie counting is never accurate for me because I never know exactly how much I am eating, and exactly how much I am burning.

Since we can't actually measure our exact caloric intake/expenditure, calorie counting isn't accurate for anyone. However, you can still make your estimates extremely useful by taking advantage of the one thing you can measure: your bodyweight. Here is what you do:

Use a website like http://www.thedailyplate.com or www.fitday.com to do the tracking for you. Both sites have huge databases of foods and exercises, so all you really need to know is your portion sizes and how long you worked out for. Estimate your numbers the best you can for a couple days, aiming for a 500-1000 calorie deficit per day. Now, your initial numbers are probably going to be off, so here is the key to making this work: weigh yourself on a daily basis. If your bodyweight is going down at the proper rate (1-2lbs per week), then your caloric estimates are accurate. If your bodyweight is not changing at the proper rate (either dropping to fast or not fast enough), then your estimates are off and you'll need to go back and tweak them. As you repeat this process again and again, you'll be able to use the bio-feedback of your scale to hone in your caloric estimates and weight loss.

One note: I said above to weigh yourself on a daily basis, but it is important to understand that your bodyweight can fluctuate from day to day for a number of reasons - water retention, what food you ate, time of day you are weighing yourself, etc. To mitigate this, try to weigh yourself under identical conditions each day, such as right after waking up and before breakfast. Moreover, to see if your bodyweight is changing at the right rate, pay attention to the weekly trend rather than day to day changes, as fluctuations will average out over the long term.