Woke up crusty this morning. I’ve had what we used to describe as the “creeping crud” for about a week now. Started out as a runny nose, then moved to an itchy throat, and now it’s become a nice productive cough. All of these have been relatively mild – but it’s annoying as hell. In addition, we’re now at a point where I fear H1N1 (hamthrax) when I stub my toe … so there’s that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Really looking forward to the judo tournament tomorrow. I’m hoping that the crustiness doesn’t affect the competition. If I feel contagious, I’ll pull myself out of the tournament. Infecting a bunch of international athletes just feels rude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I went ahead and did the experiment of going into full “training” mode like a real athlete … and it’s been instructive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First off: I think that athletes work really hard. My “full on training” mode consisted of:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
* Exercising at least a little bit every single day, and working out seriously at least every other day
* No alcohol whatsoever
* Getting to bed by 11<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I already eat pretty healthy, but I made an effort to avoid the mid-afternoon ice cream sundae.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The result was startling. I was already feeling fit and healthy, walking around at between 173 and 176 pounds (I fluctuate by three pounds – even weighing myself at the same time under the same conditions every day). This morning I weighed myself at 167. That’s at least four pounds of flab that just melted away under fairly mild training conditions. I can’t imagine what would happen if I took these changes to heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are two reasons this might matter:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
* For my general health, I don’t think it matters at all. By any measure (BMI, activity level, …) I was already in awesome shape. I’m moving around within a band of “healthy weight for me.” Also, to reassure people who might jump me for caring about BMI – I’m the body type for which they created BMI. When I weigh 172, I’m able to participate in the activities that I want to do – I don’t get tired easily, and I’m happy with how I look. Let’s be clear: I don’t give a damn about *your* BMI – but I’m happy with mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
* The other reason it might matter is that judo tournaments are broken up into weight classes. If I pass certain thresholds, I have to fight either much smaller or much larger guys. Those boundaries are 162lbs and 178lbs. So I’m in no danger whatsoever of breaking either of those limits. I bet that if I was willing to really work at it, I could get down to 162 – but there’s no point. I would rather feel strong where I am. I’m also going to weigh in with my pants on. I may not even put down my gym bag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don’t feel particularly better. I find that I wake up easier – having gone to bed earlier. I find that my endurance at the gym is quite good – but I’ve always been able to keep up, mostly. I hate dedicated cardio workouts with a passion – so I have very little data on whether this has affected endurance at all. My body may recover from little bruises and sprains more rapidly if I don’t pour beer on it … but I don’t have the data to tell. The small-annoying-injury rate has increased in line with the frequency of workouts … so it’s hard to tell whether I’m healing faster or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Woke up crusty this morning. I’ve had what we used to describe as the “creeping crud” for about a week now. Started out as a runny nose, then moved to an itchy throat, and now it’s become a nice productive cough. All of these have…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-judo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1886"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1887,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886\/revisions\/1887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}