I’m 7 days out from my first powerlifting competition. I weigh 179 lbs and intend to compete in the 165 lb weight class. Only 14 lbs to lose in 7 days. No big deal, right? Well, it’s actually very feasible. Every UFC fighter, wrestler, powerlifter, etc. drops anywhere from 10-30 lbs in under a week before their weigh ins, then stack on that lost weight before the big show. How? By applying science and meticulous measurements to everything they consume during that week. Most attention is focused on water consumption, as the largest quantity of the weight being shed is in the form of water. Sodium is the key element that influences water retention, so salt intake must also be highly monitored. Thirdly, carbohydrates cause the body to retain water in the muscle and fat cells, so a low-carb diet is a must.
In order for me to lose my 14 lbs, I have my plan all laid out. Beginning on Friday (7 days away), I will consume a large amount of water and salt, and initially I will gain some weight, but my body’s auto-regulatory response will tell itself that it is okay to get rid of “excess” water since it is receiving such a surplus. As the week goes on, I will drink less and less water each day. I will be ridding myself of more water than I am taking in, thus creating a hydration deficit.
WARNING: Do not assume this process is a safe and effective form of weight loss. Being in a dehydrated state for a longer period of time than my 2-3 day window is very dangerous and your body will begin to witness organ failure and, more or less, slow death. I have had multiple experiences with dehydrating myself in the interest of experimental scientific testing and have learned how my body handles extreme diets and training. If, for any reason, you need to follow in my footsteps to lose water weight for your own competitive pursuits, please contact me first so I can walk you through the procedure. To help you understand the gravity of this process, I will give you a day-to-day commentary on how I felt throughout the week…
Friday: 7 days out – 179 lbs
Water: 2-3 gallons
Sodium: High
Carbs: < 50g
I drank roughly 2.5 gallons of water by the end of the day. 2 full jars of pickles (juice and all), lots of bacon, ham, table salt added to everything. I feel like the water is a meal in itself and I have to force the food in along with it. I’m ready to go back down to 1 gallon.
Saturday: 6 days out – 184 lbs
Water: 1-2 gallons
Sodium: Low
Carbs: < 50g
(“Before” picture taken this day) I feel so bloated! Now I have 19-20 lbs to lose. I go to the bathroom… all the time. I’m not even confident enough to go out for the weekend because I’ll spend every 15 minutes in the bathroom. By noon, I already crave the taste of salt. This is going to be a long week.
Sunday: 5 days out – 181 lbs
Water: 1 gallon maximum
Sodium: Zero
Carbs: < 50g
Went to the gym for a light workout wearing 3 layers. Got a good sweat going on. Afterward, I sat in the sauna, fully clothed, for 8 minutes. Nothing too drastic. I finished my water at 7:30 pm and for the first time, I had to tell myself “no” when I got thirsty later on. Slight decline in my mood after that.
Monday: 4 days out – 178 lbs
Water: ¾ gallon
Sodium: Zero
Carbs: < 50g
Didn’t sleep very well last night. Rolled around for 2 hours, partially because I had to pee every 30 minutes and partially because I was thirsty and couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Today was interesting… and highly productive. I started to introduce coffee into my routine for the diuretic effects (counting it as part of my ¾ gallon), and I cracked out for about 4 hours straight, cleaning my house until it was spotless. I threw on some sweats beforehand and killed 2 birds with one stone. I can tell I’m slightly dehydrated because I find it harder to take a full breath and the corners of my eyelids feel dry, like I’ve been sitting in a smokey bar all night. If I didn’t already eat a high fat and low carb diet, today would be about the time that I started feeling the ketogenic effects of burning fat and craving sugars. Luckily, I’m used to it… but man I could really go for a big bowl of assorted fruit or a box of donuts right now. I miss the taste of salt too, but lemon juice is sodium free and serves as a good replacement. My abs are getting more and more defined as the day goes on. First day of Spring semester starts tomorrow. Environmental stress is about to hit me like a freight train.
Tuesday: 3 days out – 177 lbs
Water: ½ gallon
Sodium: Zero
Carbs: < 50g
Some more experienced guys told me I should expect to drop 3-5 lbs/day from here on out. I’ve given up on the idea that I can get a good night’s sleep anymore. I knew I had to be up at 6:00am, so I laid in bed at 9:00… tossed and turned in an irritable state until I checked the time and saw that it was midnight. Even melatonin pills aren’t working. This dehydration thing is starting to become a test of my psychological strength opposed to my physical.
Happy last first day of college, TJ! Please don’t attack somebody.
Mouth – dry. Throat – dry. Nasal cavity – dry. Tender loving heart and glowing personality – ice cold and decaying. I don’t want to socialize. I don’t want to introduce myself to the class. I struggled to maintain a smile at the physical therapy clinic where I work. But even with a fake smile, my brain failed to function adequately enough to remember each patient’s series of exercises, or even some of their names for that matter. Scale of 1-10, I’d give cognitive function a 6, generously. If I could describe the color of my urine, my closest description would be “neon laser yellow with zero transparency.” Fast forward to 6:00 pm and I’m sitting in a 200-degree sauna for basically as long as I can hold out, toweling off and sipping what’s left of my water between sessions. I’m not the most approachable and civil being right now, so my headphones are in at all times. My times in the sauna end up being 15, 10, 5, 10 minutes before I got weak and dizzy and reached a resting heart rate of 110 bpm. Toying with heat stroke will most likely go on the list of the dumber things I’ve accomplished in my life.
Right before bed, my roommate passed by and commented that I looked “flat and tiny.”
Wednesday: 2 days out – 174.5 lbs
Water: ¼ gallon
Sodium: Zero
Carbs: Zero
Caffeine: 200-300 mg x 1
Time to up my diuretics. Popped 280 mg of caffeine pills and was jittery and sweaty all day. My face was rosy red, my eyes burned like I just swam in a highly chlorinated pool, and I was nauseous. All day. Hit my final preparatory workout at the gym wearing 3 thick layers to trap heat, then sat for one 10-minute round in the sauna. When I got home that evening I had a few glasses of red wine in order to dry me out even further. Fun fact: dehydration causes hangovers; being dehydrated before you start drinking causes WORSE hangovers…
Thursday: 1 day out – 173 lbs
Water: ¼ gallon
Sodium: Zero
Carbs: Zero
Caffeine: 200-300 mg x 2
Woke up late for work because I had no energy nor could I sleep well. Took 280 mg of caffeine pills again. Sweaty, shaky, shortness of breath, unable to thermoregulate, ready to faint at any moment. Drank half of my day’s water before 10:00 am. I had to ask a friend to proofread emails that I had typed out to professors because at this point, my visual perception and day dreams have clashed together into a strange, schizophrenic, hallucinative state of mind. I’m so hungry that I’m not hungry. I have no idea what happened in class already. Currently asking around for a friend to drive me to my competition tomorrow because if I drive, I’ll most likely swerve off the road to avoid hitting a unicorn or something impossible. The sauna was cranked up to 220 degrees and after 5 minutes, I think I officially decided that I wouldn’t enjoy an eternity in Hades.
Friday: Weigh-in day – 169 lbs (8AM)
Water: Zero
Sodium: Zero
Carbs: Zero
I look and feel like Christian Bale in The Machinist.
I dreamt of running water last night. At least when I did dream. I managed to sleep from 12:30-2:00 then 5:30-8:00. Woke up, packed my bags, and went back to the sauna. 4 lbs to go. This time as I sat there sweating, I was also trying to spit in a cup as much as possible – emphasis on “trying” because my mouth and throat were about as dry as they get when attempting the cinnamon challenge. I just stared at beads of sweat rolling down my body, knowing I can’t replace them until later tonight. I fixed myself the perfect recovery drink when I got home. ¾ gallon orange gatorade, ¼ gallon water, 25 grams of creatine, 50 grams of dextrose/maltodextrin (simple sugar) powder, blended up blueberries, and 2 packets of Emergen-C. All of my lasting motivation was focused on this jug of holiness. I didn’t get to eat anything dry today either. Can’t have any extra weight in my GI tract. I’m so ready for this to be over.
12:00 PM – 164.4 lbs. Finally! Now all I have to do is avoid eating or drinking anything for 7 more hours… My stomach feels like a vacuum. My body was so hot and unable to thermoregulate that I drove the entire hour and a half to Joplin with the windows cracked – it was 32 degrees at the time. I got to my hotel, made two agonizing and exhausting trips carrying my bags up 10 steps at most, then laid motionless in my bed until it was time to head to the weigh ins.
Official weight – 162.8 lbs. Now comes the rapid weight gain before competition starts in the morning.
10 minutes after weighing in, I’ve already chugged a 32 ounce gatorade and half a gallon of my special drink. 20 minutes after that, I’m hunched over the toilet suffering from terrible stomach pain as my kidneys struggled to kick back online. I had no choice but to shove my finger down the back of my throat and start over with pure water to flush my system and get the gears cranking again. Once I started feeling better, I joined my friends Ken and Morgan for dinner and searched the menu for a high carb, low fat meal – high carb to replace all of my muscle glycogen and low fat because fats slow down your rate of digestion. So I ordered a calzone and a heavy beer. Why would I order a beer when I’m in a dehydrated state? Well for starters, you can’t eat pizza or calzones without also drinking a beer. That’s just unAmerican. But more importantly, heavy beer is full of carbs and contains over 30 minerals and trace elements, including all 13 minerals necessary to sustain human life – calcium, chloride, chromium, copper, iodine, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, sodium, and zinc. So yes, I had a beer. One beer, not ten.
After leaving the pizza restaurant, we went directly to IHOP for never-ending pancakes. I didn’t stop eating when I was full. I stopped eating when my jaw got tired of chewing. Throughout my two big meals, I tried to drink another ½ gallon of water and even brought my special drink with me into the restaurants – this resulted in many double-takes and chuckles from the other people at the restaurant. No ragrets. I was on a mission, and you gotta do what you gotta do.
When I woke up in the morning, I went straight to the lobby of the hotel for the continental breakfast and continued to stuff as many carbohydrates into my body as I possibly could. Eggs, raisin toast, cheerios, oatmeal, yogurt for digestive assistance, fruit juice, and of course the lovely waffle maker. This was my last major meal before the beginning of competition. I was still about 5-10 lbs underweight by the time I was underneath the squat bar, but throughout the day I kept snacking on granola bars, pedialyte, and rice cakes. By the time the final event, deadlifts, came around, I was finally feeling 100% and thankfully I managed to set a personal record. Oh yeah… and I took 1st place!
Upon leaving the competition at the end of the day, I weighed myself one last time and discovered that I had gained 24 lbs in the past 24 hours – 2 more than my peak from 7 days ago. I finally felt human again and I had clarity of mind.
Looking back, this 7-day adventure was probably the most stressful, painful, and vigorous series of events I’ve ever experienced. I would never recommend that anybody follow in my footsteps, but I’m an extremist and I like to push my body to its limits to better understand who I am, and to learn just how far I can bend before I break. So to conclude, just remember that this was a short term dehydration. If you read this article looking for a way to lose weight in a healthy manner, the answers are not here. In fact, losing body fat is 10x easier than the pain and stress you will go through by drying your body out. So again I will say, PLEASE do not try to drop water weight just to look skinnier – it won’t last. Instead, contact me for workout tips and/or a meal plan and lose weight the right way.
-TJ Williamson, NSCA-CPT
KDS-Strength 