My Chinese Weight Cut

So, we left for China early on Friday morning. It would be about 26 hours of travel time, with our few layovers. We flew from Philadelphia to Chicago to Shanghai to Changsha. 
Now, I usually cut quite a lot of water weight. Though I don’t fluctuate a lot between fights, I routinely cut about 20 pounds of water the day before the weigh-in. It’s not something everyone’s body can do, but after this many fights, I know the limits of my body and what I can cut in water. 

This fight in China was to be at 68 kilos, 149.6 lbs, which is a kilo or 2.2 lbs heavier than what I usually fight at. I knew I could make the weight without much trouble, as long as I stuck to my usual routine. 

I have a strict water-loading schedule that I usually follow in order to help my weight cut. Because of the travel, I really wasn’t able to stick to my normal schedule. That screwed me up bigtime. I wasn’t able to drink excessive amounts of water, as I usually do, and I couldn’t control the amounts of sodium I was taking in. Airplane food is insanely high in sodium, which will make you retain water. The altitude usually bloats you as well. All things were kind of stacked against me. 

We landed on Sunday night in Changsha, and got settled in after lights and cameras and lots of press met us at the airport. Interviews after getting right out of a time capsule traveling across the globe were understandably corny and dry. We headed to bed and the next day we would try to get adjusted to the time difference. 

The next day, we just kind of got settled. We went shopping and ate. Again, it was really hard to not kill a ton of sodium. I got a chance to work out a bit. We went up to the weight room to hit some pads and there were photographers there to take some photos of us. 
I took my shirt off and George kind of giggled. He said “you look huge”. I felt enormous. I checked my weight. I was 79.1 kilos… 174.4 lbs.  I immediately freaked out. Haha. I hit pads for a few minutes as dudes took videos.

I knew I had a lot of work to do. I guzzled a gallon of distilled water and started to watch what I was eating. 

We tried to find the sauna, but had no luck. After asking the front desk, they told us it was open 12pm-2am. That would be a huge help. 

The day before weigh in, I started with a nice light run in my sauna suit around our resort. I got a good sweat on. I was going to get to the sauna afterward. I had cut a few pounds, then headed to have someone show me the sauna. When I asked, I was told “no sauna, only massage”. I freaked out again. Haha. 

So, I headed to find Epsom salt and rubbing alcohol to cut the weight in the tub. 

We searched a few pharmacies, a couple grocery stores, and a few other spots. Virtually no one spoke English. Finally, I learned the word for bath salts on Chinese when an owner of a pharmacy looked it up on an online translator. “Moo yoo yan”, or something to that effect. They could not be found anywhere. 

So, later, we want to a giant Costco-like store, called Metro. The only thing we found was a high-end perfume stop next door that had bath salts for about $50 US…that was insanely expensive while everything was super cheap in China.  

We eventually went back in to the Metro. I bought like 20 bags of table salt, and 20 small bottles of weird smelling rubbing alcohol and headed back to the room.

I did a few hot baths with salt and alcohol over the course of Monday night and through Tuesday. I weighed in on Wednesday at 11:00am, and missed it by .3 kilos. After a few minutes on the treadmill wearing my sauna suit, I made the weight of 68 kilos.  

It was one of the weirdest times I’ve ever had cutting weight.–The over-hydration got screwed up. The sodium control got screwed up. No sauna. No Epsom salt. Itty bitty bottles of rubbing alcohol.

But I made it. And then we ate spicy salty food and drank a ton of liquids. I felt huge again by fight time.