Weight Cut Recovery

Everybody knows we need to recover from a weight cut. But not everybody knows how to do this the right way. In this blog post, we’re going to learn a very important part of the weight cut process: Eating for recovery. During recovery, drinking water is very important too, we combine water with the right amounts of glucose and fructose and time our consumption of it all in order to fully recover from the weight cut. 

During the weight cut, you will have completely depleted your glycogen stores and eliminated a great deal of water. Your body stores carbohydrates in your muscles, and during the cut, you will have used up all that energy and provided no way for the body to replenish so now we have to do that. There is some science stuff you have to keep in mind:

1. Usually, your body can only process about 60g of carbs per hour
2. You need to replenish up to 400g of carbs
3. You will only have anywhere from 4 to 24 hours to do that
4. After about 4 hours of constant/y consuming carbs, your body slows down absorption and eventually only 50% of the carbs will be digested.

Doing the math, we start out at 60g/hr, so in the first 4 hours, we only consume 240g, and then for the next 5 hours, we only consume at 30g/hr, to get the last 180g. This means a total of 9 hours of recovery. At first glance, you will spend an entire evening consuming carbs at a slow measured rate and may have to get up early on competition day and finish. If you compete on the same day as your weigh-in, you won’t be able to recover in time.

But there is a way to make it happen faster. Both glucose and fructose are converted into glycogen. Additionally, they are digested in different parts of the intestine, so if you are consuming just glucose and fructose at the same time, you could digest up to 102g/hour.

• 400g at 102g/hr means a total of 4 hours ⇒ success, although it still means constant carb consumption for 4 hours

Now we have to consider the best way to do this. The answer to that includes water. You have just finished depleting a lot of water and all your glycogen. Restore them both at the same time. Your body can only process 1L of water per hour, so mix 60g of glucose and 60g of fructose in 1L of water, and drink that over the course of 1 hour. Do this 4 times. You should have a good percentage of your water and all your glycogen restored. Pre-mark a see through or translucent  jug with 60 intervals, set a one minute timer on your phone, drink to the next interval mark at each one minute alarm. You will need discipline at this point to not guzzle down the fluid. Faster than an hour or slower than an hour are suboptimal. Make sure to eat some fats and proteins while you're drinking your recovery drink. 

So the last question to answer is where to get liquid fructose and liquid glucose?

• Coconut water has about 40g/L of fructose
• Honey has about 1g/g of fructose (almost pure fructose)
• Dextrose powder provides 27g of glucose in a 30g scoop

One option is to mix 1/2L of coconut water, a 1/2L of water, , 40g of honey, and 2 1/5 30g scoops of dextrose powder, then take an hour to drink it. Do this four times, and make sure to take an hour to drink it each time. Another option is to mix 60g of honey in 1L of water and add 2 ⅕ scoops of dextrose powder.

You might want to experiment with this recipe and make sure the coconut water has no adverse reactions, and possibly add some sort of flavoring before you try to drink this in real life. Do these experiments months before competition so you know ahead of time exactly what you like and can handle.

Fructose, glucose, and water are your recovery friends. Use 4 full hours to consume 4L of water, 240g of fructose, and 240g of glucose. We go a bit over to ensure full replenishment in 4 hours.

One last thing: I’m not a doctor, so please consult with your doctor first, and if you have any issues such as diabetes, kidney, or liver disease, you really need to be careful with this.

Do you want help with your nutrition and weight goals so you can be the best possible you? Imagine the feeling you get when your goals are met. We can help you achieve that. As nutrition and weight cut coaches, we have done that already for many people. Go here for a free nutritional analysis to get started.