What should I eat in the days before Shiai

I lost a lot of weight in December due to flu and other bugs that put me totally off my food. Anyway I’ve been slowly putting the weight back on since but as I’m competing at the weekend I decided to weigh myself yesterday and to my surprise I’m only 89kg (I usually walk around at 94-95kg). I’ve therefore entered the -90kg weight category (first time at this weight) but want to make sure that I don’t put on that extra kilo between now and then. Other than not eating lots of crap food can anyone give me any tips on what would be a good to eat on Saturday (the day before the competition) to ensure I weigh as little as possible?

With regards to the day of the competition I intend to eat porridge with sliced banana. I weigh in at 12.30pm

Cheers

eat your normal diet, just don't over do it, and try to stay away from the "heavy" foods (stuff you feel dragging you down the next day). Hydrate the night before - you'll want to limit fluids before weighing in the next day.

I think making sure you have plenty of energy in reserve, get a good night's sleep, and feel good are more important than anything else. You can also ask your coach.

I'd stay away from anything you're not familiar with as you might find out the hard way that you're sensitive to a particular type of food, etc.

The other major consideration is how nervous does your stomach get before a competition. If you get a nervous stomach, you'll want to eat frequent, small meals throughout the day, and those meals should be relatively bland (boiled chicken, rice, etc) - keep something in the tank, but don't irritate the tank.

Pre- weigh yourself in the morning; it'll give you a better idea of what you can/should eat in the morning. If you're right on the edge first thing in the morning, take the porridge to go, but get some easy sugar in your system - a tablespoon or so of honey so you have fuel without too much actual weight.

And, before you get too far into the diet thing, make sure the tournament actually has a habit of dividing into Olympic weights in your division. Talk with your sensei or instructors, check last year's rosters/brackets and make sure you're not subjecting yourself to unnecessary diet (for example - very few women's divisions in my neck of the woods break into Olympic weights, even for the bb division. Usually, it's just light and not so light with the dividing line between the two set by who actually shows up to play. Dieting to "make weight" is therefor a silly distraction)

Above all, have fun this weekend.

what should you eat? Some times you can overthink this. My meal before competition was always a dinner, being we weighed in early in the morning. Religiously I always have lasagna and 2 beers. Where is Ledbetter for this one.

cake donuts. lots and lots of plain cake donuts. not even joking.

genetic judoka wrote:cake donuts. lots and lots of plain cake donuts. not even joking.

nah ... food is better. In the days before tournaments it is best to eat food.

arguably, cake donuts do constitute food, but they are a ton of calories and grease.

The argument can be made that you should eat whatever superstition gets you "up" for a competition. There's some value in giving way to superstitions before a competition, if that's eating nothing but cake donuts, it's nothing but eating cake donuts. For me, it would be a spaghetti dinner - it was the dinner to eat before a big swim meet when I was growing up. I want to amp up for an event, I also shave my legs, again because of growing up with competitive swimming.

Now, there are other superstitions that people should just break - change your underwear, wash your socks, don't eat a ton of garlic.

Carefully consider the role of superstitions in your pre-shiai rituals. There's some value to some superstition as it gives you a formula to get your mind and body switched over to shiai mode. But some superstitions are just plain gross.

Stacey wrote:The argument can be made that you should eat whatever superstition gets you "up" ...

One rule should be "no feeding obvious straight lines which lead to the breaking of other rules about emotional responses."

Well the competition was cancelled due to a lack of entrants but thanks anyway

sorry, Stu. That really sucks. Use your sensei; pick established tournaments. Nothing worse than amping up and having that kind of let down.

Might try... Natto, tofu, fruits and veggies.