To Cut Or Not To Cut #3- The End

Remember, lean doesn't mean weak.

For starters, let's back it up a second- let's take it back to two days out.  I left out something of note for Wednesday which interests the shit out of me, but happened to forget to include in the last installment.  Beginning Wednesday morning, no matter what diet you've been following, cut out starchy carbohydrates and red meat.  Both starch and the creatine in the red meat will cause you to hold water (3g of water per gram of glucose or creatine).(Ferriss, How To Lose)

Having gotten that out of the way, let's move onto the day before the weigh in.  Friday morning, you should begin limiting your liquids to 1/3 of what you normally drink, and it should consist of naught but purified or distilled water.  Your consumption of food and water will end with a light meal on Friday evening around 5, and that's when your water consumption for the day will likely end.  Prior to hitting the hay, however, you should weigh yourself to see where you stand.  Time Ferriss recommends using 2 scales twice each, and then averaging the results.  Additionally, he recommends consuming enough water that you're two to three pounds off from your desired weight before you hit the hay if you're close or under, and I can personally attest to the fact that going to sleep with horrible dry mouth makes for a terrible night's sleep.

Unless you're sleeping next to that, in which case you might have trouble getting your eyes closed.

Should you find yourself more than two or three pounds away from the promised land, you're not going to run. In fact, I strongly advise against doing cardio in a "sauna suit" for those of you who are familiar with them.  It'll leave your legs weak as shit, and it's far less effective than the method about which I'm about to tell you.  Additionally, you do not want to do this shit the day before your weigh-in- this is strictly day-of shit.  You need to limit the time you spend in a dehydrated state, as dehydration drastically impairs your performance.  According to one study, even mild weight loss from sweating (1-2% of pre-exercise weight) resulted in a significant degradation in performance.(Armstrong)  More extreme dehydration can reduce your endurance by about 55% (Sawka), and depending which of four separate studies you consult, can reduce maximal strength by up to 11%.(Maughan)  Additionally, Ferriss chimed in with a statistic of his own (unfortunately uncited, but I believe it's  Bosco et al (1968)), that dehydrating a muscle by 3% can result in a loss of 10% of contractile strength and an 8% loss of speed.(How To Lose) For those of you posting numbers that aren't world-changing, this means that dehydration can be the difference between first and last in a meet, and as such, you'll want to be at your weigh-in weight for as little time as humanly possible.

Though liquor is a diuretic, this is only ideal when the meet's either a ways off or in the past.

To get to that weigh in weight, however, you're going to use one of two things- hot baths or steam rooms.  Ferriss is a huge fan of the former, as a hot bath has 100% humidity, and the "higher the humidity, the less the evaporation, and the more your body must sweat to cool core body temperature."(How to Lose)  For this  you should use a bath containing water "that does not burn the hand but causes pain if the hand is moved underwater."(How to Lose)  For anyone who's been in an overly-heated jacuzzi, this can generally be a godawful experience.  Never fear, however, as Matt Kroczaleski has the solution for you- use a combination of hot bath and steam bath, in thirty minute intervals.  According to Matt:

I start by entering a bath with the water as hot as I can get it without scalding myself, and I submerse my entire body except for my mouth and nose. I prefer the hot bath because it facilitates raising my body temperature as fast as possible and being submersed in the water is somewhat more comfortable (at least for me) than sitting in a steam room, especially a dry heat type of sauna. After fifteen minutes, I get out of the bath. I leave the shower running though on pure hot to maintain the steam and heat in the room. I don’t know what the precise temperature gets up to, but it’s typically as hot as any steam sauna I’ve been in. Next, I either sit or stand in the steam for another fifteen minutes. At the 30-minute mark (bath and steam time combined), I exit the bathroom for five minutes. This allows me a break both physically and mentally and lets my core body temperature return to a more normal level. I’ll feel much better physically. After five minutes in the cool room, I return to the hot bath (I drain and refill the water each cycle to keep the water as hot as possible) and begin the process again. (Kroczaleski)

To make the steam room he mentions, Kroc has a pretty slick method- he just fills the tub by running the shower on full hot with a towel stuffed in the crack under the bathroom door.  Using this method, you'll just keep weighing yourself with your two scales until you're there.  To aid your loss at this time, you can use two over-the counter supplements- Dandelion Root and Caffeine.  The two work synergistically to help you shed water, and taken at the prescribed doses shouldn't have much of a negative impact on your helth, especially since dandelion root is potassium sparing, in addition to being high in Vitamin A and Choline.  Ferriss recommends 250-500 mg 3 times daily (preferably with food) of the Dandelion and 200-400 mg 2-3 times per day of the caffeine, and suggests they should be taken with a potassium supplement, though if you've taken my advice on Mrs. Dash, you're getting more than enough potassium.  For my last meet, I used a supplement called Cranker 2, which seemed to work pretty well, although it only contained caffeine of the aforementioned ingredients.  Instead of the Dandelion Root, it includes a variety of other herbs, so if you try that, it might not hurt to throw some Dandelion in on top.

Electroshock therapy for your nipples and tongue is unnecessary, and might be best reserved for the post-win orgy than the pre-weigh-in prep.

Obviously, if you're doing a same-day weigh in, this shit is not for you.  You could use some of these methods, but given the research I cited above, you might be too fucking drained, or lack the necessary rehydration time, to make hard cut feasible.  As such, I'd experiment with a few different cuts and test your strength thereafter.  More than a few pounds, however, is likely going to be way too much for you to recover.

Perhaps a better way to commence the carbohydrate consumption.

Rehydration and replenishment is even more important than the dehydration phase.  Yes, that should be an "is", as the two words are parts of a singular hole- there are some grammar nazis on Reddit who were going to get all up in my shit if I didn't make that apparent.  The first thing you're going to want to do is rehydrate- eating will come later.  For this, Kroc uses Gatoraide diluted 1:1 with water, but Ferriss recommends straight Pedialyte instead.  "Commercially available sports drinks" he contends, "and so called 'replacement fluids' contain much too high a concentration of sugars (high fructose, dextrose, glucose, sucrose, and maltodextrin) or other solutes to move efficiently from your stomach to the primary site of absorption in the small intestine."(Hot to Lose)  The key at this point is to achieve a state of hyperhydration, which differs considerably from what most housewives will tell you when they see you chugging water and tell you that "too much water can kill you."  This is true, but that condition is called hyponatremia (water intoxication), is caused by a sodium imbalance rather than a surfeit of water, and is characterized by "nausea and vomiting, headache, confusion, lethargy, fatigue, appetite loss, restlessness and irritability, muscle weakness, spasms, or cramps, seizures, and decreased consciousness or coma."(Wikipedia)  Hyperhydration, on the other hand, is awesome, as it can induce improve power output and oxygen delivery.  Endurance athletes use hyperhydration for this reason, and the way to ensure that you end up with the one rather than the other is to consume 75mg of sodium per 8oz of water.  Additionally, Tim Ferriss and Christian Thibaudeau recommend consuming hand moisturizer to increase the amount of water you hold intra-muscularly.  Before you start rummaging through your nightstand and eating your onanism lube, ensure that it's made of glyerol, which will be called glycerine on the cover label.  As the majority of you likely roll with something more along the lines of Lubriderm, your stash should remain at home, uneaten.  Glycerol has been shown to improve rates of hydration, and even if you don't give a shit about looking "full", "pumped", or "shredded", you should consider including .543g/lb LBM of glycerol and .3984 fluid ounces/lb. LBM.(Ferriss)

Ninety minutes to two hours after you've chugged a gallon of glycerol-infused Pedialyte, you've got two options.  Ferriss recommends using the time-tested endurance ratio of protein to carbs (4:1)- this is probably most easily accomplished with some Waxy Maize and a blended protein (not whey, as you don't want to go catabolic during your meet).  Throw on top of that 100mg of ALA per 75 lbs of bodyweight and 50 mcg of chromium polynicontinate (not picolinate) to increase your insulin sensitivity, in addition to a 15 minutes soak in an Epsom salt bath for magnesium supplementation and muscular reaction, and you're off to the races.  Ferriss, by the way, mentions that you can absorb a tremendous amount of water through the skin even in a shower, demonstrating that it is after the weigh-in that you should shower or bathe, rather than before.(How To Lose) Kroc, on the other hand, eats a real-food meal as soon as possible, and eats as much as he can possibly fit down his gullet.  He also recommends continuing to drink throughout the day, which I would think goes without saying if I didn't see so many people do so much stupid shit every day I leave the house.   

I was looking for a picture of some hot hippie broads with the intention of saying that they needn't ever shower and I will still smash the fucking granny out of that, and found this picture of Dirt Diva, where's she's hilariously referred to as a hippie by someone who cannot spell a simple six letter word.  

... and that's how it's done, motherfuckers.  If you'd like to read about how I did it before doing any research of any kind, check it out here.  Expect the posts to come fast and furious over the next couple of weeks, as I have been slacking.


Sources:
     Armstrong LE, Costill DL & Fink WJ (1985): Influence of diuretic-induced dehydration on competitive running performance. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc. 17, 456–461.
     Ferriss, Tim.  How to lose 30 pounds in 24 hours:  The definitive guide to cutting weight.  The Blog of Tim Ferriss.  http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/01/18/how-to-cut-weight/
     "Hyponatremia." Wikipedia.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyponatremia#Symptoms
     Kroczaleski, Matt. How to Cut Maximum Weight for Competitions with a 24-Hour Weigh In.  http://www.elitefts.com/documents/cut_max_weight_for_comp.htm
     Maughan RJ.  (2003): Impact of mild dehydration on wellness and on exercise performance.  Eur J Clin Nut.  57, Suppl 2, S19–S23.
     Sawka MN & Pandolf KB (1990): Effects of body water loss on physiological function and exercise performance. In Perspectives in Exercise Science and Sports Medicine. Vol. 3, ed. CV Gisolfi & DR Lamb, pp 1–38. Misc: Indianapolis: Benchmark Press.
     Thibaudeau, Christian, and Chris Shugart.  Shredded In Six Days.  http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance_diet_mass/shredded_in_6_days
     Wingo JE, Casa DJ, Berger EM, Dellis WO, Knight JC, McClung JM.  nfluence of a Pre-Exercise Glycerol Hydration Beverage on Performance and Physiologic Function During Mountain-Bike Races in the Heat.  J Athl Train. 2004 Jun;39(2):169-175.