So it’s Ramadan! I’m surprised with how it has turned out so far 1 week into it. I anticipated a lot of issues around my nutrition and training, however it’s not as bad as initially thought. It’s basically intermittent fasting(with the added inability to drink fluids). What I thought would happen:
- Fat gain due to less physical activity
- This would be from my body trying to achieve homeostasis. Less training = less need for muscles. So break down the muscles for energy during the day, keep the fat stores for later.
- Caffeine withdrawal crash
- Inability to stay awake during the day
- Exhaustion during work when teaching kids classes
- Can’t go to the gym(no time or energy)
What actually happened?
- Initial fat gain, then back to muscle growth due to training regime change
- This led to overall weight gain, but it was lean mass gain. I actually lost fat! Thank god haha
- Slight caffeine withdrawal headaches
- I was taking roughly 400mg+ caffeine a day(600mg+ on training days). I went cold turkey from caffeine about 5 days before the start of Ramadan in anticipation for the struggle. I crashed hard over the weekend, extreme fatigue and drowsiness. However now my body has adjusted after roughly 2 weeks cold turkey, absolutely 0 caffeine.
- However headaches persisted into the 2nd week, specially when I had less than 6 hours sleep and in the early afternoons. Once I could eat after sunset, the headaches subsided slightly.
- I still wake up early, in fact earlier and consistently.
- Since I eat roughly a days worth of nutrition (my current nutrition is 2000 ~ 2200 calories per day) I get woken up in the morning around 8 AM every damn day to visit the bathroom… Then I can’t fall asleep again because I feel awake but tired… It’s OK on days off, but on work days it’s frustrating.
- Exhaustion during early afternoon
- Around 2 ~ 4PM is the peak of my fatigue. It hasn’t reduced at all. On days I have kids though, it’s actually easier on me than I expected. Mainly due to the fact I don’t have to concentrate too hard(and my children are mostly wonderful clever people ๐ ).
- Power output at the gym is unhindered!
- This surprised me so much! However I don’t have time to do my 5 day/week training regime I’m used to because of gym closing hours lining up poorly with my breakfast after sunset.
- Now I do 3~4 day a week strength training, lifting heavy. My strength improved for my major lifts!! Now I’m using the big boy weights at the dumbbell rack haha ๐
That was longer than anticipated… Well time to eat, it’s 1:50AM and I still need to fit 1000 calories in within the next hour and a half! Night!