The Jiu Jitsu Diet

The BJJ Diet

First and foremost, don’t eat greasy foods with high fat content several hours before coming to jiu jitsu class unless you want the embarrassment of throwing up on the mat! Also, it’s not helpful to cut carbohydrates out of your diet as a quick way to lose weight. When learning the sport of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, the amount of calories you will burn every class will be extreme. Carbohydrates are vital to recovery and energy stores in your body. The best system is to cut calories while maintaining a good balance of carbs, fat, and protein. The 60/20/20 breakdown seems to work the best; meaning 60% of your daily caloric intake should come from carbs, 20% from fat, and the remaining 20% protein. The average person training BJJ takes in 2500-3500 calories per day. If your goal is to lose weight try cutting 600 to 700 calories out daily while maintaining good workouts. The remaining calories should be healthy energy rich foods so you don’t feel depleted from cutting calories. Remember, in Jiu Jitsu competition, you want to be as light as possible and strong as possible. Another area of importance is what to eat prior to training. Like I said, cheeseburgers wouldn’t be a wise choice prior to practice. There is some flexibility here, however anything high in carbs and low in fat would be fine. Ex: oatmeal, sandwich, pasta, bean burrito, rice chicken bowl, soup, PB and J, etc.. After practice you want to eat a low calorie meal. This is where you want the chicken breast and vegetables meal. After training at night is when you want to eat your smallest meal of the day. The largest meal of the day would then be breakfast. As the old saying goes, most important meal of the day for a reason. A typical solid breakfast would be eggs, whole-wheat toast, potatoes, and a meat selection. There are a lot of substitutions one can add into this diet and many possibilities. One good rule of thumb when trying to lose weight is, eat your calories, and don’t drink them. Meaning try and avoid drinking lots of juices high in sugar, big coffee drinks, smoothes, and alcohol as well. Just taking this simple step can really make a big difference in weight loss as a person can easily drink 1000 calories a day in junk. Ex: I don’t want to mention anybody’s name but his initials are Jay Shellhammer, drinks like 10 sodas a day, avoid this. Let me know if you have any questions just respond on the blog page.

Sean Apperson