Beast Mode and eating -- calorie intake and overtraining

So... Beast Mode is catching up with me, apparently. I haven't lost the mental fire and have kept pushing myself to do the workouts at my fullest capacity, but honestly, over the last several days, the physical gusto has just kind of been dwindling. This happened one day last week too. I noticed it particularly during last night's conditioning workout (details below) and in essentially everything I did with my training today. My body just feels tired and heavy, and the will to keep going is twice as hard as usual to maintain. I would figure that this is a symptom of overtraining, but I don't have any of the other primary symptoms of that issue right now (elevated heart rate upon waking, poor sleep, etc.). The problem is, I believe, undereating.

We have a saying in Knoxville of how to gain development, which means a lot to those in-the-know: Eat like Matt; train like Matt. For those not in the loop, Matt is an exemplary Yin Style Baguazhang practitioner with dedication to training hard and training well that exceeds nearly everyone I've ever met (actually... he's probably at the top of the list) -- and this includes training in any martial arts or fitness-related capacity. He also eats like a rock star.

This reminds me of another quote, this one I believe coming from He Jinbao himself: There's no such thing as overtraining, only undereating. Medically, I'm not sure if this is true or not, but the reality of my current situation is that when you're training vigorously and regularly, your caloric intake needs to be substantial to maintain what's going on in your body. Incidentally, I like to think of the contrapositive of this statement (which has the same truth value): There's no such thing as overeating, only undertraining.

Of course, this stuff isn't news if you've researched bodybuilding or any sort of modern muscular development guidelines. In fact, bodybuilders are famous for pounding down literally close to or in excess of ten thousand dietary Calories a day, which is a bunch, and most of that is composed of proper, lean, and balanced sources. That's rather impressive. I'm very far on the other end of the spectrum as I'm simultaneously attempting to sculpt me a "beach body" for once in my always-slightly-chubby life.

Here's kind of my list of "symptoms," so you might be able to tell if you're eating insufficiently to keep up with what you're doing.

• General lethargy during workouts;
• Strong mental resistance to wanting to workout before and during the workout -- usually this fades within a few minutes of getting started even on days when I feel off, but not for the last few days. It's become almost a sheer act of will to get through my workouts;
• Loss of improvement in workout measurement parameters, including rate at which I can do timed workouts and number of repetitions on body-weight conditioning exercises like pushups and pullups;
• Vague malaise and possibly even slight melancholy and/or general irritability;
• Being hungry all the f-ing time.

Bodybuilders would tell me that I'm therefore eating "below maintenance," which is probably a problem. My solution: at least one and maybe two days a week, I believe I'm going to kind of binge up, meaning any and all dietary restrictions are out the window on those days, but I don't go out of my way to be a disgusting American. It's one of the three solutions I've read for keeping your glycogen stores working for you while not generally bulking and for keeping your leptin and insulin levels in a positive frame to succeed in my goals.

Mind you, if you were to be suffering from undereating, and you weren't attempting to sculpt your body (generally kind of pointless, honestly), I would tell you to just eat a lot more when you train more. That's really the take-home message here: when you crank up your training near or to Beast Mode, you need to eat a lot more than you usually do to maintain the vigor and intensity in your workouts.

My conditioning workout yesterday, which was much shorter than usual and followed my usual roughly two hours of training, went like this:

• A difficult high-intensity circuit of abdominal exercises on a Swiss ball. I did one where you pull your knees in with the ball under you (hands on the floor like pushups) x20, situps on the Swiss ball x40, oblique situps on the Swiss ball on each side x15/side, and then an oblique twisting exercise on the ball x100 that was comparatively very easy but might be useful for generating waist power, particularly if resistance was added. I went through this as quickly as possible, while maintaining proper form, three times.
• Mini "warmup" circuit of jumping jacks x100 followed by full-power-up pull-ups x5 (doing a pullup explosively). Repeated three times.
• One of my least-favorite conditioning standards -- "Burpees, mountain climbers, burpees, mountain climbers, abs, abs," which is probably not that good a name for it but tells you pretty much exactly what it is. I put my GymBoss interval timer on rounds of 10//25 (10 seconds of rest, 25 seconds of action) and did those exercises for 24 rounds (four times through), in the order given. The two abs exercises, in this case, were knee-hug situps and "prisoner get-ups," which are where you lie flat on your back with your hands on top of your head and then quickly get to a standing position (hands still on your head) as quickly as possible over and over again. It sucked because it always sucks. It sucked more because I'm so f-ing hungry from not increasing my diet to keep up with the demands of Beast Mode.

So... train more; eat more. That should be a rule.