Hello everyone, its my birthday today. I’m your writer Odyssey. So what are the reasons people start martial arts? Unlike our ancestors, we don’t need martial arts to survive anymore. We just need it during contingencies to protect our family and ourselves, and in the long-term to promote health and fitness. More than half of my friends join a martial arts simply because they want to lose weight and look great. If you would ask me two years ago why I chose to join a Muay Thai academy, I would say for self-defense. But to be honest, I think few of us will join a martial arts dojo, gym, or academy without the mental images of the likes of Bruce Lee, Tony Jaa, and Brad Pitt or the infamous Tyler Durden! All very lean, very fit, and very powerful models. But before you get these images stuck in your head and go crazy on the punching bags, here some personal experiences I can share to speed up the fat loss process.
Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hosin/4421125782/
Many people go for a low-fat diet in combination with their martial arts routine. The goal is to cut down on overall fat content to achieve their ideal physique. The problem is, the body derives its energy from two avenues: fat and carbohydrates. Fat is very easy for the body to store since it is what our bodies been doing for the past millennia - to convert any excess energy to fat for the difficult times. As for carbs, they are glucose to our bodies and will be converted to glycogen and stored. The problem is, our body require a delicate balance of glucose in our bloodstream at any moment – around 5 grams. In excess, we end up getting diabetes if elevated for extended periods of time, or, in shortage we get lightheaded and unable to work. 5 grams huh? Its about a teaspoon of sugar…what about that cheesecake I just ate? Well, that’s about 40 grams…but don’t worry, you’re not going to die. Insulin is here to help. Insulin helps remove the glucose in our bloodstream and facilitates their storage in our liver and muscles.
Lets say our body is a huge and magnificent office building (or a temple if the analogy is to your liking). But the building needs power to operate their computers and printers. We can either burn the wood that we stored just for this purpose (fat), or we can start with all the paper that we accumulated during our normal operations (sugar or glucose). Which would be more efficient?…That’s right! Burn the paper first then the wood if needed. Our body is the same. It will try to use the glycogen (stored glucose) in our liver and muscles first before getting to our fat, hence the “cardio for 20 minutes and you’ll start burning fat” saying.
So, even with a low-fat diet, if you’re taking in a lot of carbs (which is very common since your body demands it in the absence of fat intake), you won’t reach your goal of low-fat percentage easily. That is because your body will seek to cling on to any fat you come across for storage in case the “lean times” hits. In essence, you’re fighting your body’s natural tendencies. Sometimes, it is best to go with the flow…
The way I did it was instead of going for a low-fat diet, I switched to a low-carb diet by completely eliminating starch and grains from my diet for 2 weeks and let my body have all the natural fat it needs (reasonably of course). That way you’ll completely reprogram your body’s power supply to use fat more efficiently. Yes, glucose converts to energy the fastest, but it is still relative. Like everything else in your body, your energy conversion can be trained to be faster, harder, stronger as well =). So, by the 3rd week, you’ll be a REAL fat burning machine.
That said, I do believe in a balanced diet. And the rigors of Martial Arts will demand the use of glycogen (stored glucose) as immediate energy for explosive activities. So after the 2 weeks of fat-carb reprogramming. You should get some carbs into your system for long-term health and sustainability. Perhaps on the day of the workout after your training or at least 1.5 hours before your training, since good carbs take time to digest and you don’t want to throw up on your sparring partner =_=. It took me 2 years of experimenting with low-fat and paleo diets to get to this balance where I’m happily maintaining a low fat rate all year while keeping all my performances on a steady, but slow, increase. After all, you wanna be fit for life, right? =)
Nutrition is a hobby of mine and I’m currently trying to get into some eastern nutritional theories. Even exotic types such as nutrition from traditional Chinese and Japanese medicine prospective. If you guys are interested, I’ll post more when I gather enough information.
That’s it for today. Hey!! Drop that cheesecake!! Unless its your birthday =)
