Following my article on nutrition, I frequently received emails from readers asking for more detailed information regarding their diets.
James Tolley, one of my training partners and a nutrition expert, agreed to offer his views on the topic. Please bear in mind that these articles can get quite technical, but the investment of a little reading time and thought will reward you with the tools you need to achieve an optimum diet for jiu-jitsu.
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In my first article for the Jiuj-Jitsu Brotherhood I looked at post-exercise nutrition. I am going to stay on the topic of nutrition and talk about the types of food we should eat and which food to avoid.
You shouldn’t think of food as just a source of energy and nutrients to fuel our bodies; it is also a powerful drug capable of eliciting chemical changes in our bodies. Some of these changes are beneficial and some can be harmful. If food is a drug that you are putting into your system three, four, five times a day, you need to ensure that this drug is helping you achieve your training goals and not silently killing you.
The Evolutionary Diet
Following an evolutionary diet is challenging, but the potential rewards to your training and health are worth the effort it initially takes. One of these rewards is that an evolutionary diet allows us better control of our hormones, keeping a natural balance in the competing feedback mechanisms of our complex endocrine (hormonal system) system.
Recently we have seen an explosion in so called ‘diseases of Western civilisation’, including type 2 diabetes, thyroid disorders and obesity. These diseases have one thing in common, they are endocrine diseases. It is essential for health that your endocrine system is in balance. It is worth repeating the point that if this is the case you will see a huge increase in performance.
What to Eat
Following an evolutionary approach to nutrition allows a simple definition of what foods we should eat:
Meat including muscle meat, organ meat and bone marrow. Preferably wild game meats, if not then at least organic and grass fed over intensively reared and grain fed.
Marine and fresh water fish and shellfish. Preferably wild, if not then at least organic and naturally fed.
Fresh, seasonal fruit and vegetables.
Nuts and Seeds.
For occasional sweetness I would include honey and agave nectar (agave originates from cactus plants and unlike refined sugars contains high levels of iron, calcium, potassium and magnesium).
What Not to Eat
We can expand on this list by including what we shouldn’t be eating:
Avoid all modern processed food. This category tends to be high in refined sugars and oils; processed foods are also generally high in added salt content.
Avoid grains. They have a high glycaemic load when compared to more favourable carbohydrate sources such as fruit and vegetables. However, there is also research which suggests that consumption of grains is related to various digestive disorders.
In the past I included all dairy products but I have softened my stance on this topic recently with information from genetic profiling. This suggests that you should consume dairy products if you have the genes to metabolise lactose. Not all people have these genes, but they are more commonly distributed in people with a heritage from north-western Europe.
The above list provides us with a simple guideline of what types of food to eat to help maintain a neutral hormonal balance in synch with our caveman genes. This will help us to remain healthy and allow maximal expression of these genes through our environment, including the physical training associated with jiu jitsu.
Macronutrient Ratios
There are other reasons why an evolutionary approach to nutrition is beneficial to your health and performance. As we have seen the main aim is to maintain a neutral hormonal balance, this can be affected not just by the type of food we eat but also by the ratios of the different types of food nutrient groups, otherwise known as the macronutrient composition of your diet.
The modern principle of diets i.e. a calorie is a calorie is simply not true. It is what you eat (the types of food AND the ratio of macronutrients) and not just how much you eat that is the major influence on body composition, health and performance.
Macronutrients (carbohydrate, protein and fat) are the three basic nutrient groups provided by food. The composition or ratio of the macronutrients digested in today’s diet has drifted a long way from the ratio we have evolved from. Bio-chemical imbalances resulting from sub-optimal nutrition lead to a situation where your genes cannot express themselves resulting in disease and lack of adaptation when training.
It is currently recommended that we consume approximately 65% of total calories from carbohydrate, 15% from protein and 20% from fat. A pioneer of the Paleolithic movement Professor Cordain examined hunter-gatherer macronutrient ratios and found that protein is generally between 20%-35% energy, at the expense of carbohydrate (22%-40% energy).
Recent trials have shown that calorie restricted high protein diets have been more effective in promoting and maintaining weight loss than calorie restricted high carbohydrate diets.
Part 2 of this article will deal with some of the health benefits associated with eating in an evolutionary way.
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