but just know that if you want to be a fighter and a lover, a big fatty meal could be your downfall.
Always keep in mind, and yes we harp on this a lot, your body stores all excess calories as fat, whether they come from protein, carbs or fat. If the calories don’t get used, they make you feel like a cow when performing your kata.
On that note, let’s talk about how to slice a pie, a big chocolate cream pie with tons of whipping cream and chocolate shavings on top. Yeah, right. You wish.
You just learned why protein, carbs and fat are essential to your training and progress. Here is a simple pie chart that helps you split your nutritional needs as your training dictates.
Many athletes base their daily nutritional plan around portions that are 40 percent carbs, 30 percent protein and 30 percent fat. This means that if a fighter were following an eating plan of 2000 calories a day, his slices would look like this:
40 percent carbs:
800 calories
30 percent protein:
600 calories
30 percent fat:
600 calories
Total:
2000 calories
But as is the case with everything in the diet and training field, the sizes of these slices has been a debate in nutritional circles for a long time and probably will remain so in the future. Over the years, your authors have tried many different sizes, which have led us to this conclusion as to how large each one should be: It depends. (This won’t be the last time we give a wish-washy answer.)
Several years ago, co-author Demeere had what he describes as a painful pie-slicing experience. After he quit competing internationally and had reduced his training to about one third of his competitive schedule, he made the common error of continuing to eat as if he still trained four to six hours a day, burning 3,000 to 3,500 calories. He also ate foods that had been forbidden in his hard training diet: sugar-dense chocolate, soft drinks and many meals of fat-laden steak smothered in cream sauce with a truckload of french fries. In short, his fat and carb slices were much larger than his protein slices.
Two things occurred to him one day: Over a five-year period, his poor eating had added around 30 pounds, and in a few months there would be photos taken at his wedding. Not wanting a memory album picturing a chubby groom, he knew he had to drop the bulk that he had had so much fun accumulating.
He went to a highly recommended doctor who promptly put him on a low-carb diet consisting of 1,500 calories a day and supplied him with herbal supplements, assuring him that they would give him energy for his two-hour-a-day workouts. Skeptical, he asked numerous questions, which she patiently answered with quotes from so-called “scientific studies.”
Since the balance of carbs, protein, fat and calories were so poorly prescribed (the carb slice was virtually nonexistent) his once easy daily training regimen of 30 minutes aerobics and 30 to 40 minutes of weight training, in addition to six-days-a-week, two-hour martial arts sessions, became grueling. He burned 1500 calories quickly in his training, which left him without energy for the rest of his day. He felt weak, saw black spots dancing in front of his eyes, and his carb-depleted brain throbbed with a continuous and horrendous headache.
Clearly, you shouldn’t experience these symptoms when dieting. If you do, consider it nature’s way of telling you that your diet advice was lousy, if not dangerous. Yes, Demeere lost the extra pounds he had been packing around (and the pictures turned out great), but he was only successful because he stopped following the doctor’s ill-advised diet after four weeks, and used one of his own.
Everyone Has an Opinion
If you research five nutritional sources you will find five different ways to slice the pie, but don’t let that frustrate you. Understand that none of this is set in stone, meaning that what works for the star black belt in your school or the guy on the magazine cover, might not work for you. So what will? Well, to avoid being the sixth nutritional source, we are simply going to give you the information you need to figure it out for yourself.
First, determine your calorie needs and then slice your pie 40 percent carbs, 30 percent protein and 30 percent fat. Stay with it for a month to see how you feel. Take note of your energy level, how quickly you recover from your training, your mental sharpness, how motivated you are for your next training session, and whether you are progressing in power, speed and endurance. If you are dragging in all these areas, you need to change your slices a little.
Here are a few considerations to help you establish the right cuts:
Don’t listen to what others are doing. Think only about your needs. As we discussed earlier, emulating others is a common error in the fitness world. Don’t do it.Think of carbs as your main source of energy, but remember, adding protein and fat to your meals lowers the glycemic value of the meal and provides for longer lasting energy. Try to include all three macronutrients whenever you eat.The percentages change depending on all the factors in your training. Sometimes you might have special carb needs. For example, if you attend a weeklong, martial arts seminar where you train eight hours a day, you might want to increase your carbs for your extra energy needs. Refer to the chart that lists calories per hour per martial art to determine a ballpark number as to how many extra calories you need for the long training days. Say, you determine that you need an extra 1000 calories. This means you must increase your carbohydrate cut of the pie from 40 percent to 60 or maybe even 70 percent. Of course, when the carb slice increases in size, the protein and fat slice has to get smaller. So if you increase to 60 percent carbs, divide the protein and fat evenly at 20 percent each. It’s a good idea to increase your carbs to 60 or 70 percent at least once before the date of the training camp so you know in advance if your body can even assimilate that many carbs without problems. Making emergency runs to the restroom on your first day isn’t a good way to make an impression.If you want to hit the weights extra hard for three months to put on additional muscle size and increase your strength, you need larger slices of protein. To determine how much more, monitor your gain in lean muscle weight by measuring your fat percentage (as discussed earlier) to get an idea of your progress throughout the three months. Then use the previously mentioned Hatfield chart to calculate how much protein you need on a daily basis (see Chapter 11 for more details on increasing muscle size). When taking a larger protein slice, rob the extra calories from the fat piece.Know that your body doesn’t like radical changes and it will protest. Say you have been taking in 60 percent carbs because you have been training for a running marathon in addition to your regular martial arts workouts. The marathon is over, and now you want to decrease your carbs back to your starting point of 40 percent or wherever you were before increasing your training. Do this slowly, changing a little each week. From your starting place of 60 percent carbs, drop to 55 percent the first week, 50 percent the next week, 45 the next, and to 40 percent the week after that. Avoid bigger increments.Make your nutritional plan for tomorrow, tonight. Here are some considerations:
o If tomorrow is a day off from training, plan to eat fewer carbs and calories.
o If tomorrow is your regular martial arts class and your regular daily activities, use the calculations you figured earlier.
o If you have a regular day tomorrow at school or work, but you
