Physical workouts and training are one aspect of improving your game. Healthy diet in the other one. It’s your diet that fuels your body to perform better on the mats. It provides the energy that you need to fight better on the mat. A lot of Jiu-jitsu practitioners ask about nutrition. Better eating makes your game more effective. Not only in terms of providing your energy but the recovery process and improving your overall fitness. What you take in affects a lot, what you give out in and outside of the class.
Your Nutrition is the important piece of this puzzle. But, taking the right diet is also a confusing topic, you need to search what your body needs, and then supply it in the right quantity at the right times. Changing the pace and kind of what you eat can be difficult. And most of the time an immediate change isn’t sustainable. Start your plan gradually, hit the road of healthy-eating at a slow pace, and change your habits over time. Small changes contribute a lot to big steps.
The Right combination
Correct eating power up your game and help a lot in the process of recovery. What you eat significantly affects your performance. The first and obvious step is eating organic food in an optimized way that ensures healthy digestion. Not for BJJ players, it’s ideal for anyone. But the amount and cycles of eating vary from person to person depending on the needs. How you combine these nutrients with every meal is also very important. The key to the right diet is “combination”.
A healthy diet plan doesn’t have so many restrictions but instructions. No matter what diet plan you follow make sure you sustain balance in it. It will not only power up your game but helps in controlling weight.
1) Maximize your Fruit & Vegetables Intake
Eating vegetables and fruits should be the main component of the diet you take. Lightly cooked raw vegetables & fruits can get digested easily while providing you high energy. Having your salad made up of a variety of vegetables can lead to this road. The rawer plants you will include in your diet the better you get to feel. Green leafy vegetables like spinach & kale, broccoli & cauliflower play a great role in that. Eating a vegan diet makes you healthier. Eating healthy requires commitment.
2) Eliminate Sugar
As per nutritional experts, one of the main causes of body inflammation is sugar. It is no surprise that sugar is an enemy of your jiu-jitsu game. Performing intense training sessions in BJJ-Gi has itself the potential of causing body inflammation. To ease that you require proper rest. Adding the dietary inflammation cause is not a wise choice.
Eliminating sugar can be tricky as the sugar content is hidden everywhere in your food. Make sure you check the food of whatever food you are taking in. Sugar in your diet can be taken into many forms. Such as glucose, Fructose, Glucose Syrup, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Dextrose, Invert Sugar, Maltodextrin & Sucrose. While eliminating sugar, another source of carbohydrate from Muniq will allow digestion without elevating blood sugar resulting in a balanced diet.
3) Limit your Meat Consumption
A moderate amount of meat is essential on a trainer’s diet. Most of the plans include chicken & fish. Huge amounts of meat can tax your stomach, as it requires a large amount of energy to get digested. The same energy can be utilized by the body for training & recovery.
The quality of the meat you are eating also plays a great role. Make sure you get the best quality. Eating the meat of the animals that were injected or mistreated can harm your diet. Limit its amount and ensure its quality.
4) Eat foods that are rich in water
The quality of your lifestyle fully depends on the quality of the body cells. Fresh fruit, legumes, greens, sprouts & plenty of water adds up to their quality.
Make sure your diet includes the food content that consists of 70 percent of water. Lower hydration levels have a higher likelihood of contracting imbalances.
5) Eat Little and Careful about liquids during Meal Times
Do you get to drag yourself out of your bed in the morning, even after getting full 8 hours of sleep? Why? Your body works overnight for digesting the incompatible food that you have put in the belly. Make sure you eat right, enough that will keep the hunger off. If you feel like eating a lot consider eating salad. Eat fruits after 9 pm for proper digestion at least wait for 3 hours before putting anything else in your stomach.
Taking fluids in between your mean dilutes the digestive juices which slow the process of digestion. Avoid taking water, especially cold water.
6) Eat complex carbohydrates before and after training
Eating carbohydrates before your jiu-jitsu training will make sure that your body gets enough energy. Try eating carbs an hour or at least half before starting your training. This will prevent all types of energy crashes. That you can counter if you simply feed on normal carbs.
Try eating oatmeal, muesli Pasta, oat bran, converted rice, Sweet potato, barley, bulgar corn, yam, peas, legumes, lima/butter beans, lentils, non-starchy vegetables & fruits.
7) Listen to Your Body
Listen to your body for knowing how big your diet portions should be. Here is the trick of knowing when you have enough of the meal. Portion control can be predetermined. When you sit down to eat something, eat slowly & stop intaking the food when you don’t feel hunger anymore. There is no need to eat all the contents on the table. Eating it all off isn’t healthy. Eat mindfully, do not eat while you are watching TV, you won’t pay much attention to your meal when you are fully present there. Make sure you have healthy comfort food.
Also read: The significance of working out in a fitness outfit for good health
8) Try Fasting
A Lot of people end up eating too much & too often. We tend to overburden our systems with food & chemicals. Fasting provides your body an opportunity to divert its attention from digestion to healing. Consider skipping meals a few days before you try intermittent fasting. It will increase your energy and recharge your mind. On the other hand, you can always download an intermittent fasting app assistant to get professional guidance on properly starting and sticking to it. Check out this blog to learn more about the best apps out there.