Learning is a big source of motivation for me. It’s one of the key things that keeps me engaged at work and in my hobbies. In part because my experience with powerlifting is still relatively new — this is my third year of competing — there are many opportunities to learn and grow, and one of the cool things is that, being 46, I’m more in tune with how to learn and what to pay attention to in order to really take in new lessons. I think when we are younger we learn organically, sometimes not even realizing what we just internalized or why it might matter. I’m now better able to engage with experiences in a way that allows me to internalize important things while realizing what those things mean.

I’m about five weeks out from the NAPF competition, and a few learning-related reflections have been on my mind. I’ve been on a cut to get to 72kg for the last couple weeks. I’m a little tall for this weight class — frankly, the U.S. Powerlifting Association’s 165-lb weight class would probably be ideal — and I was not successful at a “strict maintenance” diet. Kristin Lander and Mary Morton often share information on the importance of training while “eating for performance” — a great term for eating the right amount to power through your deadlifts and maintain your weight. 

“Strict maintenance” is part of that process (at least for me), and includes all the behaviors you have to engage in to eat the right amount of calories to both fuel your performance and maintain a weight. For me that means doing my own cooking and carefully counting calories and macronutrients, which are the things I want a break from after a period of cutting. Unfortunately, not sticking to strict maintenance behaviors means more cutting at a later date because I am a truly gifted overeater.

Case in point: Earlier this year I fell into a classic newbie trap. I thought I could avoid gaining weight without counting my calories. I could not. Between a few glorious holidays with my mom’s incredible cooking and wanting to check out new restaurants in Pittsburgh, my weight crept right back up. This taught me very clearly that if I want to compete as a 72kg athlete, I’m going to have to start practicing strict maintenance to eat for performance.

What does that mean? I get to eat more when I’m not on a cut, but I have to continue to be disciplined about counting my macros. I may also need to do things like eat at cut-level macros during a week when I plan to have an uncountable meal with my mom. (I’m just waiting for her next big project — like that time she got a whole duck and practiced making duck confit, which she served with potatoes marinated in duck fat and then crisped up with bacon.)

I could continue with this cycle of gaining weight and cutting, but I don’t want to. There’s nothing fun about cutting. It does not bring me joy. And, as Kristin and Mary discussed in a recent podcast, cycles of gaining and losing weight can predispose you to later weight gain. I’m doing my best to lose weight healthfully under Kristin’s watch and by making sure to eat whole foods, lots of veg, and doing my own cooking, and it’s been going well — my bench is continuing to be beastly (5 x 5 x 195lbs with competition pauses was solid and, after spotting me for 220lbs, Sam grinned and exclaimed, “You smoked that!”). But I don’t want to have to cut too many more times. It’s just not ideal, and research isn’t clear enough on at what point you hit in cutting cycles to predispose yourself for later weight gain. 

The trick will be to not go binging after NAPF — a potential challenge because Sam and I are going to take advantage of being in Costa Rica to do some travel. I won’t be able to get into strict maintenance. But I might read Mary Morton’s guide to eating intuitively before I leave. I’ll also bring a scale with me. (One of the many tricks Kristin taught me was to travel with a scale and calibrate it at the meet — get on the meet scale and then on yours to figure out how close they are so you don’t end up stressing and spitting into a cup before a second round of weigh-ins.) Using the scale should help me to exercise some caution and restraint. I intend to make myself think about how much I’m eating. For example, how different are the portions I’m choosing after the competition compared to what I was eating beforehand? 

I will also ask myself if I really, really want to eat something or if I’m eating it because it’s available and I’m not on a cut. If I don’t really want it, why eat it? I’ll no doubt have a bit of a weight spike after the competition, but I’m hoping that being a little mindful about eating on vacation will prevent it from undoing all my hard work.

Although I didn’t intend it this way, I will have some extra motivation to avoid binging after NAPF. I decided to sign up for Bench Press Nationals, which is at the end of August. It’s not great timing to compete again so soon after NAPF, but I’m really happy with how my bench has been going, and it will be neat to have an opportunity to test it without being fatigued from squatting first. Raw Nationals is about six weeks after Bench Nationals, so I have even more reason to hold my weight steady. I’m really excited to see what it does to my numbers if I am eating for performance leading up to that competition rather than cutting. Could eating for strength be my ace in the hole for additional pre-Nationals gainz? I’d really like to find out.

Another observation I’ve had lately has been about fatigue. I’ve got a Fitbit that I sleep with. I don’t enjoy that, but the information on how much sleep I’m getting and how much of it is deep sleep has become really valuable. I was feeling like garbage recently — fatigued, fuzzy headed, and slogging at a snail’s pace through my workouts. Sam pointed out that it could be the cut catching up to me, but I hadn’t been at it for very long when the fatigue set in.

“Well, how’s your sleep been?” he asked. I looked at my Fitbit’s output and saw that the amount of sleep had been consistent over time, but I noticed that the recent graphs showed almost no dark blue bands of deep sleep.

The amount of deep sleep my Fitbit was recording had gone from about 90 minutes per night to 30 or less. I shared this with Sam, who reminded me what an asshole our cat, Spot, had been that week. There was the one night that he coughed up a megahairball in the bedroom, and Sam had tried to get him into the bathroom to simplify clean up. Unfortunately, Sam was one step too slow and only succeeded in turning the cat into a high-powered vomit bazooka. For a small creature, Spot produced a truly spectacular amount of liquid that took both of us a lot of Clorox wipes to defeat.

The next night Mr. Kitty was still off-kilter and began yowling at the bottom of the stairs as if he had been abandoned and was alone in the universe. After Sam called him, he scampered up on the bed for some pets and reassurance, but we were both awake and on high alert for a potential repeat of the vomit gun.

So yeah, two nights of interruptions plus the usual, limited about of deep sleep after training in the evening, and I was wiped out. It wasn’t the cut — although at some point that will probably do a number on me — it was the crappy sleep. That weekend I took naps and lowered my expectations of how many chores I could accomplish so I could get to bed earlier, and I felt great the next week even though I remained in a caloric deficit.

When I was younger I don’t know that I would have been this observant about how my body was responding to different variables. I think I would have focused more on belittling myself for binging after last year’s Nationals and letting my weight creep up to a level that would be uncomfortable to lose. Beating oneself up is wasted energy that could instead go into training or being more focused on meal prep and a good eating plan. It feels good to have the experience of learning about myself, about what seems to work to be able to train hard, and about adopting practices that are positive contributors to achieving my goals. My hope is that my learning may be able to accelerate someone else’s. I’d love to go back and teach my younger self these things, but since I can’t I’ll just have to apply these lessons as quickly as I learn them, enjoy the adaptations I can produce, and hope that maybe some fiercelings can capitalize on this as well.