Back to Training

As many that talk to me regularly (gasp!) face-to-face know, I've been dealing with an on and off psoas injury that kept upping the ante of pain. So I gave myself two weeks off to just eat, bike around to work, stretch, and generally give myself a break. That's a break from weightlifting, conditioning, pole dancing, and trapeze.

Yesterday was my first full training session back with the weightlifting team. I expected it to be a disaster, but my coach gave me some more gradual re-introduction work. My timing is definitely off, and doing sets of eight reps in the back squat is horrendous no matter what, but it wasn't quite the disaster that I expected it to be. Another thing I noticed though...

... how important is it for me to get back to being low carb Paleo.

When ManFriend and I went low carb Paleo, not only did I seem to lose fat quickly, I noticed a few other things.

(1) My energy was level through out the day regardless of when I ended up eating my meals. Since I'm often running around from one appointment to the next, I could go 6 hours without eating and not feel a slump in energy, a fog in my mind, or general crankiness. When I teach early in the morning, I can sleep in an extra 15-30 mins and just wait to have breakfast after class without hurting my "performance".

(2) I'm prone to headaches at the drop of a hat. I used to get monthly migraines (thanks, overies!). But when I was low carb/ Paleo, I didn't get a single headache. I went off Paleo during my two week break, with my deviations getting progressively more severe. Yesterday and today I'm dealing with a nasty headache and ibuprofen only minorly alleviates.

(3) When I'm not relying on sugar as my main energy source, I can get through an entire two hour lifting sessions, or one and a half hour trapeze class, without hitting a wall, feeling dizzy, or generally getting lethargic.

As mentioned, my diet progressively deviated from ketogenic during my break in training. By the day before yesterday, it was pretty bad. And while my scale weight hasn't changed, that makes me more nervous. Eating crap should at least mean I'm putting on water weight! Please don't tell me that eating crap has also assisted in losing some muscle? (Though, it probably has.)

So today, as I pop ibuprofen as a reminder of how I fell off the tracks, I'm getting back to it. Now starts the 10 days to go keto, and then I can start the carb cycling Saturday.

To the grocery store for more bacon and heavy cream!