Hey, I really believe that the shorter stuff at higher intensity really helps weight loss. I've been doing a lot more of that this year and I'm leaner than I've been since before I turned 30.

Anyway, it sounds like your coach is being a bit of an azz.

My impromtu coach is a very interesting fellow. He looks like he'd drive you into the ground but he spends most of the time asking how I feel and telling me to sleep and eat more. He had an interesting comment one day, something to the effect of:

Life is like water flowing through a chute, there's only so much the chute can accomodate and training takes up a lot of volume. When you add something else in like a fight with your spouse, a sick relative or even just work stress, that goes into the chute too. It'll accomodate for a little while but eventually it'll burst. So don't discount all those other factors in your life when you think about how much training you should put in a week.

Anyway, I thought that was a good way of looking at it and in your case RM, diet stress would fall into that category.

So everyone out there....Be careful, I've had more than one coach push me to the point of illness. No one knows your body like you do.