One experience that I am currently having that I have never before had in my life except on long hikes is this: I cannot eat enough on fighting class + kung fu days. I physically cannot put enough calories in my body (without feeling sick) to get through three hours of hard core working out. No matter what I do, I am dizzy and shaking by the end.*
It's sort of counter-intuitive for our diet obsessed society to find myself, on fighting/kung fu days, deliberately choosing the higher calorie food item. It makes a difference, I've found, even to get coffee with 2% milk in the morning instead of skim. I always used to order the full-fat coffee drinks, because I had some weird little thought that ordering the coffee drink with skim milk was like acknowledging that you wanted to weigh less than you weighed, and my pridefulness wanted not to acknowledge that. About the time I moved to Gone West, though, I got over that, and I've been a skim latte person ever since.
It feels very weird and counter-cultural to purposefully order a more fat-filled item. I'm doing it, though, because I literally can barely see due to hypoglycemia by the end of kung fu. Everyone spends the last twenty minutes or so practicing forms, and I barely know them, mostly because by the time we get to the forms, it is all I can do to stand my ground on two feet and not stumble toward the door.
I complained about the exhaustion at the end of the 3 hours of workout and how I can barely push through it to the ex-Marine today (he also does both classes), and he said, "That's the point."
There are reasons why I never even attempted anything like the Marines.
He did proceed to show me the forms, on this, a Thursday, the easy day, when we just do a one hour class. It's amazing what being able to hold your head upright does for your ability to learn them.
* Let us not, however, think that this means that I am losing weight. If anything, the opposite. I am gaining muscle, yes I am, but I think my body is still in shock from adding kung fu. It is still clinging to every little calorie I throw its way.
It's sort of counter-intuitive for our diet obsessed society to find myself, on fighting/kung fu days, deliberately choosing the higher calorie food item. It makes a difference, I've found, even to get coffee with 2% milk in the morning instead of skim. I always used to order the full-fat coffee drinks, because I had some weird little thought that ordering the coffee drink with skim milk was like acknowledging that you wanted to weigh less than you weighed, and my pridefulness wanted not to acknowledge that. About the time I moved to Gone West, though, I got over that, and I've been a skim latte person ever since.
It feels very weird and counter-cultural to purposefully order a more fat-filled item. I'm doing it, though, because I literally can barely see due to hypoglycemia by the end of kung fu. Everyone spends the last twenty minutes or so practicing forms, and I barely know them, mostly because by the time we get to the forms, it is all I can do to stand my ground on two feet and not stumble toward the door.
I complained about the exhaustion at the end of the 3 hours of workout and how I can barely push through it to the ex-Marine today (he also does both classes), and he said, "That's the point."
There are reasons why I never even attempted anything like the Marines.
He did proceed to show me the forms, on this, a Thursday, the easy day, when we just do a one hour class. It's amazing what being able to hold your head upright does for your ability to learn them.
* Let us not, however, think that this means that I am losing weight. If anything, the opposite. I am gaining muscle, yes I am, but I think my body is still in shock from adding kung fu. It is still clinging to every little calorie I throw its way.
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