This week we’re looking at how weight making athletes such as weightlifters, powerlifters and combat sport athletes can get ‘free weight loss’ without compromising their performance.
As you’re probably aware, acute weight making strategies can be taken to the extreme where you’ll frequently see combat sport athletes try and drop 10-15+ pounds in the days leading into a fight to make weight.
You’re also probably aware that this places an athlete at great risk as they often end up in the hospital; you only need to read the headlines.
However, acute weight loss can help athletes make weight as the icing on top of the cake after a successful fat loss phase. In this case, here’s a really nice strategy I use with my weight making athletes to drop the final couple of pounds without it being detrimental to their fueling, recovery and overall performance.
THE LOW FIBRE/RESIDE DIET.
Dietary fibre can slow down the transit time of foods in the gut whilst drawing water into the intestines to add ‘bulk’ to your stools. In other words, adding weight.
Therefore, if an athlete were to reduce the ‘bulking’ fibre rich foods in their diet, it will reduce the content of undigested veggies and subsequently the water loaded stool bulk and body weight. This can potentially equate to 1kg of bodyweight loss.
The adoption of a low fibre diet for two days when compared to a high fibre diet has been shown to improve the cleanliness of the bowel and that 7 days of a low fibre diet (10g/day) was equally as effective as a bowel preparation formula used for colonoscopies (Wu et al, 2011).
Although there isn’t any direct evidence on low fibre diets and weight making athletes, pinching some ideas off the medical field plus some anecdotal evidence would suggest that this is a pretty effective strategy.
I.e. you can keep carbs and energy intake high to support training, whilst dropping body weight (not body fat) during the final days by simply removing all plant based foods out of your diet. Since gut transit times differ from person to person (10-96 hours), it’s difficult to give exact guidelines here (Lee et al, 2014)).
However, my recommendations are to drop high fibrous foods 2-4 days out of competition if you’re struggling to lose that last 1kg. Remember, this only works if you already have a high fibre diet, removing veggies from a low veggie diet would be pretty futile