The Gym Closes
March 2020 — week eleven of the reboot
Two weeks earlier I'd been doing the math on a fight. I was getting back into training, kickboxing with college kids who were preparing to compete, and I wanted to walk into a Muay Thai fight camp around 195 (live NILS3514). That was the plan.
Then the pandemic got here, and in about a week the plan was gone.
Sick, alone, with my dog
I'd been sick for the two weeks before this. Not the virus, as far as I could tell: I had a nose cold and no fever, and my symptoms didn't line up. But I don't think anybody cared about that distinction right then. If you coughed in public, people looked at you like you'd pulled a gun (live SLJU1052). By the eighteenth I was at the tail end of plain old tonsillitis (live NFHM8238).
So I was home. Just me and my dog. Lots of food, the heat working, staying in for days and days (live SLJU1052). I'd worked from home for years, so I thought I'd be fine. More on how that went in the next one.
No pads, no sparring
Here's the part that mattered for my diet. Training with people was done. I could still shadow box at home, and I did, but shadow boxing is just not the same as hitting pads or sparring with real people. It's not as fun (live NFHM8238). And as it turned out, I wouldn't work pads or have a sparring match again for the rest of that year, because in my opinion it wasn't safe to train with anybody (live UYGW3421).
Everybody had a version of this. I had tickets to see a comedian and to see Rage Against the Machine and Run the Jewels, and I was pretty sure none of that was happening (live NFHM8238). I also worried about my Diet Pepsi supply, and then talked myself out of an optional trip to the store for it, because even if the odds were tiny, I didn't want my soda to be the reason some 22-year-old waitress got sick and lost two weeks of shifts (live NFHM8238). Small stuff. But small stuff piles up.
A few pounds of vacation
I'll be honest about the scale too. I'd gone on a bit of a vacation the week before and I had some carbs. I paid for it, mostly digestively; I was gassy and carrying a few pounds of bloat. I blamed it on stress and vacation, mostly vacation, and then said let's just blame it on the pandemic. Then I went back to losing. For better or worse, quarantini fasting to save lives (live NFHM8238).
The reboot had started January 1, so by my count we were in week eleven, though honestly I'd lost track of the days by then. I told the group that a lot of them should be well on their way, and that all of their routines were about to get tossed in the air: people weren't going to have their usual drinks and supplements, and the gym people were going to have their whole week messed up (live NFHM8238).
I stopped selling
At that point I'd been offering paid coaching. On this live I said I was suspending pushing it. If someone wanted to buy it, fine, but if anybody needed support and didn't want to reach out because they felt like they had to pay me for my time, please reach out anyway. I was home more than usual, so I offered a half hour or an hour on the phone to anyone who needed help figuring out what to do. I wasn't going to go running into an ICU, but I could at least offer some distant support and a little entertainment (live NFHM8238).
The group was the other half of that. It was active, and people would often get to an answer before I did (live NFHM8238).
What I didn't see yet
Looking back from January 2021, I could name what happened to me. One of the rewards of eating well was that I boxed better. I liked being good in the ring, and I performed better when I ate better. When the ring was taken away, I had one less reason to get my satisfaction from performance, and one more reason to get it from a box of Oreos (live UYGW3421).
That's the real story of the gym closing. It wasn't the lost calories. It was losing the reason.
What I'd tell you now
A few pounds after a carb-heavy vacation is mostly water and glycogen coming back, not fat, and it comes off the same way it went on (water weight explained). The bigger lesson is about motivation. If your reason for eating well lives outside you, like a fight, a wedding, or a gym you love, it can vanish overnight, and then the food decisions get harder even though nothing about the food changed. I still think weight loss is mostly made in the kitchen (that argument), and exercise is worth doing for its own sake (why, and more). But I'd add a second reason now, one that doesn't depend on a gym being open. I talked about that a lot when I came back in 2021 (video).
Earlier: 246 to 225, Then Up Five · Later: Lockdown Losses