Pleasure can be a very finicky part of life. Not enough and life sucks; too much and it loses itself and becomes mundane. If balanced properly, it makes life worth living. I had a conversation with a client this morning about the pleasure of good food and the pleasure of good tasting food.

I maintain a fairly balanced diet year round to not only fuel my body, but also my mind. Last week while on vacation, I ate like shit. Completely off track with zero effort to get back on track. I drank beer; I drank a few hurricanes; I drank more beer; Hell I even drank a Mai Tai due to a crappy bartender. I ate pizza twice and left over pizza twice, I hate the majority of a large bag of Sour Patch Kids, pancakes, biscuits, tacos, everything else I wanted.

Guess how the last few days have treated me. Monday morning Jiu-Jitsu made me hurt and every class and lifting session has decided to stack on the last. I honestly don’t remember the last time I was this beaten down on a Wednesday. To put this in perspective, in the 6 days prior to leaving for the beach, I trained 8 times (taught 6 classes, 1 open mat, 1 private lesson) and worked out 5 times (4 resistance sessions, 1 30 min session on the spin bike). Felt great.

Did I gain weight? Nope. Do I still have abs? Yup. Does any of that matter to the mat or the kettlebells? Nope. Do I have a plan to get back on track? Yup

Step 1 – Understand I did this to myself and suffer while continuing to move forward. Check

Step 2 – Empty Promise to never do it again. Check – Every single time a grab a lapel or kettlebell.

Step 3 – Get diet back on track with overhydrating. Check

Step 4 – Full rehab mode- Daily stretching and foam rolling/ Sauna/ acupuncturist. Check

I had a blast on vacation. Now I get to pay for all of those wonderful decisions.

Nerd Stuff:

Last picture shows the power of breathing on the cardiovascular system. No real reason for this other than getting bored in the sauna for 37mins. The Galaxy Watch uses Heart Rate Variability (HRV) to measure stress. First was 15 mins in the sauna. The heat and my physical disarray caused my stress to be elevated. Think of this as my baseline just sitting in the sauna. The second bar was forced rapid breathing for 5 mins to raise the stress by lowering my oxygenation and putting myself in a panicked state. This caused my stress to almost max out. Third was deep focused breathing to refill my oxygen stores and completely relax my body. This brought me way down for the rest of the sessions. Top is my daily baseline. Pretty cool huh?