Losing 7kg while constantly eating

Anyone that knows me knows I like to eat. my favourite thing in the world is probably to go for dinner & I'll endeavour to clear everyones plate. I wanted to see if I could drop my weight, while maintaining and, if possible, increasing my strength.

From May - July I lost 7kg (about 15 pounds) and got stronger while eating as much as I ever have. From 76.5kg to 69.4kg.

Many years ago I lived with an Olympic-style lifter, who commented that I "trained like a chapion but had the diet of a teenager." This made me think about my diet and ever since then I have not only cleaned up my act, but learnt ow to deliver several different aspects of nutrition.

So for this drop in weight I cooked only with fats that are solid at room temperature (butter and coconut oil) and ate relatively clean. I removed gluten, oats, potatoes (but not sweet potatoes) and ate as much organic food as I could get. A typical breakfast would be eggs with peppers and spinach, luch - ricecakes & houmous, veg soup with tons more Kale, brocolli, peppers and spinach added, I would then add cheese to this.

Dinner - Organic/grass fed meat, sweet potato or white rice, loads of veg. I would snack on Green & Blacks dark chocolate, banana cake (which I made & will make a video of how I knock this up soon) and even gluten free crisps.

There's 2 other aspects to this. I drank only bottled mineral water and would eat 200-250 ml of Ben & Jerrry's ice cream for pudding every other night (usually Baked Alaska). I wondered if this worked as a laxative, as on the mornings after I ate it I certainly felt the difference. I also made more of an effort to sleep earlier and therefore, hopefully more.

I was squatting, deadlifting & bench pressing more (just small ammounts) but weighing considerably less.

I did this as I wanted to be able to cut weight for MMA while maintaing strength and not starving my body of essential properties, nor dehydrating it, allowing for better performance. This experience has definitely got me thinking about nutrition for the people I train and the people cutting weight in the traditional (and out dated) methods at my gym.

One last point, the ammount I was training during this period actually fell but the amount I slept increased slightly (on average 30 minutes).

#photo