Fueling the grappler’s body: eat to train, don’t train to eat

By Liz

Why do we care about nutrition as female grapplers in particular?

I’ve always been self-conscious about my body. Every time I look in the mirror, I’m either too skinny or too fat, too bony or too muscular. My roommate said to me the other day, “I remember one of my first impressions of you was that you were really skinny.” I thought back to the time when she and I had first met. It was a time when I thought I was fat, and I was actively restricting my eating and exercising like crazy. I thought I was fat, and yet when I look back on pictures of myself at that time, I look emaciated.

As women, distorted images of our own bodies are all too common, and as a result, many of us tend to have very destructive attitudes toward food. Some of these habits include not eating enough, disordered eating, and feeling averse to building muscle.

Firstly, we need to make sure we are taking in enough fuel to support our unique BJJ lifestyle of actively building muscle, burning high amounts of calories, and sustaining endurance through long training sessions.

We’re not the cardio bunnies on the treadmills. We aim to train and eat for power and strength, not so we can look as slim as possible. So we require unique nutrition, namely high amounts of protein and carbs. According to my nutritionist, for someone weighing 140 pounds and regularly training jiujitsu at least two hours a day, this means eating at least 95 grams of protein per day (equivalent to four hamburgers) and 300 grams of carbohydrates per day (equivalent to five bowls of pasta).

Secondly, I believe in eating in order to fuel training, not training in order to eat.

Have you ever thought to yourself, “I train hard so I can eat whatever I want. If I didn’t train, I would be so fat.”? I know I have. And still do. I often think of jiujitsu as a way to support my over-indulgent eating habits. From macaroni and cheese to ice cream, I love my fatty and sweet foods, and being able to burn off the calories from the foods I love is a huge motivating factor for me to get to the gym. However, training in order to eat can easily lead to restricting, binging, and purging behaviors, an unhealthy road of disordered eating that none of us should start walking down.

Although I myself am guilty of this mindset, I want to advocate for abolishing this unhealthy attitude and replace it with a new way of thinking. Let's think of food as the fuel for our training sessions, rather than thinking of our training sessions as reasons for eating. As grapplers we have to watch what we eat so we have the strength to be the best we can be, not so we can lose weight.

Women are under incredible pressure to have the perfect figure not only from the media and the men in our lives, but also from other women and ourselves. How often do we talk to other women about how fat we are? About how we’re trying to lose a couple of pounds? And however unintentional, we are under a lot of pressure from ourselves and others to please the men in our lives by striving for that perfect figure. That perfect, elusive, impossible figure: Big boobs, six pack, thin waist, and big butt.

To quote one of my favorite books called Eating in the Light of the Moon, by Anita Johnston, a book that has been invaluable to me in overcoming my own eating disorders:

“Why is it that those aspects of a woman’s body that are most closely related to her innate female power, the capacity of her belly, hips, and thighs to carry and sustain life, are diminished in our society’s version of a beautiful woman?”

Thirdly, I advocate for building muscle.

Sometimes I worry I’m putting on too much muscle. People say jiujitsu is designed for a smaller opponent to defeat a larger opponent. Well, I call bullshit on that. If they are significantly stronger and bigger than you, you have a notable disadvantage. And so I’ve taken up weightlifting and rock climbing as a way to get stronger, and I’ve noticed significant improvements in my game. Yes, you still have to concentrate on technique, and yes getting stronger won’t instantly make you better. But putting on muscle is a part of the game and it’s helped my jiujitsu a lot.

Besides, I enjoy weightlifting and rock climbing, and muscles are sexy!

What and when should I be eating?

Here is my daily training and eating plan while I’m living in the States, which gives me good nutrition, enough calories, and is cheap and time efficient for the student lifestyle. I created this plan after meeting with a nutritionist and after many months of trial and error.

I haven’t included exact proportions because these will depend on your body weight: heavier and more muscular people need to intake more calories than shorter and more petite people. Portion sizes will also depend on how active you are and whether or not you are strength training and trying to build muscle. In the end, the best thing to do is what I like to call “body’s choice": eat until you feel full, and eat when you’re hungry.

Breakfast: A bowl of oatmeal with whole milk, ground flax seeds, and grapes
Mid-morning snack: A few slices of cheese and an apple
Noon workout: One hour of lifting weights, BJJ drilling, kickboxing, or rock climbing
Post-workout: Protein shake
Lunch: Chicken with rice or bean chili
Afternoon snack (Three hours before evening training): Greek yogurt with fruit
Pre-workout: Banana
Evening workout: Two hours of jiujitsu (usually one hour of drilling and one hour of cardio intensive rolling)
Dinner: Spinach salad with kidney beans, eggs, or chicken and ranch dressing.

I also eat nuts, peanut butter, and whole milk throughout the day to reach my caloric goal, especially on intense training days.

After creating this plan, I kept track of my calories and estimated that I consume around 3,000 calories a day and burn about 1,000 calories a day. I recommend MyFitnessPal for a week or two just to see how much you’re consuming, and for longer if you’re actively trying to gain or lose weight.

Remember to HYDRATE, HYDRATE, HYDRATE till your pee is clear! I drink coconut water on hard training days and during competitions, because it naturally replaces electrolytes. I also really like to drink kombucha (fermented mushroom) drinks with chia seeds especially on hard training days. Otherwise I try not to drink soda pop, coffee, or alcohol. I stop eating three hours before training and stop drinking water one hour before training.

It’s essential to consistently be eating enough calories with high nutritional content. Eating well the day of training isn’t going to help much if you’re eating like crap the rest of the time. It’s the same with water: drinking a gallon of water right before training isn’t going to help. It’s more about staying hydrated throughout the day.

Here are some other tips my nutritionist gave me that I found useful:

• Eat slowly and enjoy your food. It should take ~30 minutes to eat a big meal.
• Listen to your body. Follow your body’s choice, and eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full. Eat what makes you feel good in the long run.
• Eat a lot of vegetables.
• It’s okay to cheat sometimes. Obviously the ideal is to eat well 100% of the time, but we all know this is virtually impossible. Shoot for eating good foods 80% of the time and let yourself eat bad foods, like white bread, fried chicken, sweets, etc, 20% of the time. 

TL;DR?

I know way too many women who think they’re fat when they’re incredibly gorgeous.

I wish for all of us to be happy with our bodies however they look right now--short, tall, muscular, lanky, skinny, or fat. Because we are gorgeous no matter what size we are. What we need to focus on as grapplers is giving ourselves the correct nutrition and the appropriate amount of calories to fuel our training that will help us improve our health and our jiujitsu.

It’s easy to get caught in the trap of thinking that having a perfect body will make us happy. It’s even easier to get caught in the mindset that if only we had the perfect body, people will like us more. Sometimes we think that food will fill some sort of void that we are missing--love or sex or companionship--or we use food to help with stress, anxiety, or loneliness. I know I’ve been there.

In taking this journey together, I wish for all of my BJJ sisters to realize the beauty of their bodies while thinking about food as essential fuel and as an important part of the training process. Love yourself, love your body, love your training. Take care of yourself and TRAIN HARD!

Liz started jiujitsu in 2011, got her blue belt in 2013, and has competed in nine competitions. She's learned through jiujitsu that she is only confined by the walls she's built herself.  

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