This time yesterday I was sat at my desk, mentally gearing up to shift the last few of pounds to get down to weight. Surprisingly, I was feeling quite energetic (it’s all relative of course) and looking forward to just getting it shifted in order to commence the fun part of this whole ordeal; rehydrating, replenishing, and then having a tear up with some spritely young fellow in the cage.

It’s hard to describe the mindset you have when you’re in a dehydrated and depeleted state and you just want it to end, but at that point I guess the motivation is that relief is only a couple of hours (and pounds) away. I donned the sweatsuit once again, layered up and jacked up the volume on the I-Pod; with a selection of tunes from Slick Rick all the way through to No Warning keeping me pounding the treadmill. Again, I got a sweat on with a light jog and then maintained it with some lower intensity stuff to keep it going. My thought process is that I don’t want to be taxing my body any more than I need to, so it was a case of slowly, slowly catchy monkey. And I could catch a monkey. I did about 35 minutes on the treadmill, bike and skipping combined, and I got that sloshing feeling in my sweatsuit somewhere around my elbows that lets me know I’ve expired a decent amount of liquid from my body.

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We’re edging ever closer to the pay off and, whilst my body and mind feels more depleted as the hours pass, it also takes us closer to the goal; being a skinny runt for about five minutes to step on the scales, only to put most of the weight back on again. That sounds pretty backwards to me right now, and whilst I was boiling myself in a hot bath last night, nothing could have seemed more trivial than my current pursuit. However, it’s got to be done no matter how stupid I think it is. Again, I’m not going to bang on about the ethics and morality behind weight cutting, just reporting the facts on how I do it.

(A selection of cutting utensils)

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I left you following a scintillating egg white and black coffee breakfast yesterday morning and, I’ll be honest, things haven’t exactly got much cheerier around these parts.

The saving grace amongst toiling through the slow hours is that for every moment that goes by, you’re a moment closer to weigh-in time. Clock watching never helps though, like you want it to feel like any more of a drag.

There isn’t a great deal of note to say about the day time whilst I was in the office. Stuff got written, stuff got sorted, people unwittingly came dangerously close to getting their eyes gouged out and I went about my merry weight cutting ways. I was on a reduced water intake of around 5 litres of the low sodium stuff, and I ate meagre amounts to keep me going whilst looking forward to not a lot.

As you can tell, enthusiasm isn’t at an all time high at this point. Oddly, the day before the weigh-ins when I start the 24-hour fast, I actually feel better knowing it’s slightly more imminent. Two days before kinda sucks though, because there’s no real sense of achievement in there.

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We finished off yesterday after taking a look at a little bit of background information and how I’d go my weight to where it is now. Sullenly I admitted to waking up at 72.0kg on Monday morning, but that looks a little brighter today as I was down at 70.4kg after a monumental urine deposit upon waking akin to some sort of African waterfall. In a couple of days time I’ll be happy with a mere trickle of the stuff, but for now there’s just no stopping the flow. I’d apologise for going into the gritty intricacies of my toilet practices this early on, but this is the real life of cutting weight and you’ll be paying a lot of attention to it if you do it yourself.

(A typical weight cut shop)

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People are often astounded when I tell them how much it’s possible to lose in a relatively short period of time to make weight for a fight. “How can I do that?” they ask. By sweating your balls off, eating the blandest, most unfulfilling diet, hitting the cardio like a mad man and an array of other torturous endeavours, that’s how. But I don’t tell them that. Normally I’ll just say, “Ahh it’s not easy but it’s do-able,” or something similarly inane. I don’t even really bother going into why it won’t work for them because the bulk of it is water and glycogen depletion – all of which comes back on after I’ve stepped on the scales (not like magic, but by a proper rehydration and replenishment strategy). However, for you guys — no doubt an informed and intelligent bunch — I’m going to go into it.

(Eric ‘Red’ Schafer looking happy in the sauna – an experience most fighters will go through at some point)
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