The Fighter's Body. Loren W. Christensen

       CHAPTER FOUR Bad Diets

      Why Low-carb, Low-fat & Low-protein Diets are Bad for Martial Artists

      Over the years, there have been many low-carbohydrate or low-fat diets promoted as the answer to the woes of people long struggling to drop a few pounds. For the most part, these have been fad diets that, in some cases, have been dangerous even for people who don’t exercise, and terribly dangerous for people who make great demands on their bodies in the martial arts. To understand why, we need to look closely at the functions of these macronutrients.

      Carbohydrates

      As mentioned in Chapter 2, carbs are the primary source of energy for your body. They are the fuel that feeds your engine and keeps you training when your instructor calls for 50 more reps. When you ingest carbs your body converts them into blood sugar (glucose) to be used in every endeavor requiring energy, everything from combing your hair to punishing a heavy bag. If your body doesn’t use all the energy, it converts and stores it as glycogen in your muscle cells and liver; think of it as an energy reserve. Problems arise when you eat carbs to refill the depleted glycogen stores in your muscles after training, but you eat more than you need so that there are calories left over in the form of glucose. Since your muscles and liver are full, the only place for that extra glucose to go is into fat. When that happens, the seams of your training uniform begin to cry for mercy and dogs bark as you pass by.

      Keeping your muscles full of energy requires that you constantly replenish them with carbs. It takes about 24 hours after a hard workout for your muscles to refill completely with glycogen, provided that you take in a sufficient amount to do the job. If you don’t take in enough, and you train again the next day, you begin with a glycogen supply that is already low. Should you do it again on the third day, again on the fourth and so on, you will soon suffer from chronic fatigue. This happens routinely to people on extreme diets.

Low-carb Diets

      Training in the martial arts is a combination of physical and mental skills, all of which require sufficient energy to function at their optimum. The source of this energy comes from carbs, the same ones that some anti-carb diets restrict.

      It’s important to eat a meal of carbs before your training session so you have enough glucose and glycogen stores to get you through the rigors of kicking and punching. If your workout is a tough one and you didn’t eat enough carbs to support your energy needs for the entire session, you might feel like one of co-author Christensen’s students who had been following a low-carb diet. Half way through a particularly hard class he groaned picturesquely, “I feel like warmed over puke.”

      Since your brain needs the energy it gets from carbs to think clearly, to remember things such as the moves in your kata, and to perceive the world as a happy place, an excessively low-carb diet punishes you with irritability, a throbbing headache and an inability to concentrate and focus, not only in your training but at work and in school.

      If you choose to shed body fat via your martial arts training, you have to experiment to find a happy balance with your carb intake. Know that there is going to be a tradeoff: You don’t want to eat more carbs than you need because that makes you chubby, and you don’t want to eat too few carbs because you won’t have sufficient energy to train hard enough to burn off your love handles. You have to experiment to see what is right for you, but don’t fret over it. Read on because we give you some ways to make the struggle doable.

Carbohydrate Diets Are All About Calories

      There are many carbohydrate diets that either limit how many grams you eat or make them more important than other vital nutrients. Neither extreme is good for a hard training martial artist.

      Too few and your training suffers Since carbs are an important source of what keeps you going, eating a diet that severely restricts them poses a major problem when you want to train long and hard or do well at an all-day tournament. Without sufficient carbs, you can’t perform at your best, you tire quickly and, in time, you might become ill. Your carb-starved body might even break down your own muscle fiber to use as energy, meaning that you literally cannibalize yourself. Then one morning when doing your regular biceps flexing in the bathroom mirror, you scream in horror at what appears to be limp spaghetti hanging from your shoulders. That is a bit of an exaggeration, but not much. Read on.

      Several years ago, co-author Christensen competed in the Mr. Oregon bodybuilding championships (yes, he wore those skimpy little posing trunks and smeared his body with oil, but that’s another story). Being naïve and misinformed, he followed a Spartan diet consisting of tuna fish, turkey and one orange a day. As the orange was his only source of carbs, his energy took a nosedive, as did his strength. After three months, his bodyweight was down 30 pounds, his muscles had shrunk and his strength had depleted to the extent that he could barely manage 35-pound dumbbells for bench pressing; 90 days earlier he had been using 115-pounders. Not only did the dramatic reduction in carbs make him feel miserable for those three months, in the end he lost the contest.

      When you deplete your glycogen stores following a low-carb diet, your body turns to other sources for energy, namely fat and protein. While it’s desirable to burn fat as fuel, protein should be spared. We have heard many students say that they don’t care if they lose some muscle because they just want to be thinner. We disagree, and here is why.

      When you run out of a glycogen, your ravenous body cannibalizes your muscles of amino acids and sends them to your liver. Once there, they convert into glucose and move into your bloodstream to fuel your working muscles. This isn’t good since the theft of your amino acids attacks the very thing you use in your training: muscles. By using protein for energy, you remove what your body needs for growth and repair of muscle tissue, thus slowing and endangering your recuperation, and ultimately hampering your progress.

      To put it into training terms: You can say goodbye to the crispness of your forms, your power on the heavy bag, your speed when sparring, and your motivation to train. There is nothing you want by restricting your carb intake to the extent that your body eats itself. Think of it this way: Carbs are nutrients that “spare” protein.