10 tips to change your eating habits and improve your jiu-jitsu

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Marco Imperial em mesa rica em alimentos da Dieta Gracie: o Jiu-Jitsu começa pela boca. Foto por Gustavo Aragão.

Marco Imperial at a table rich in Gracie Diet foods: BJJ begins at the mouth. Gustavo Aragão

Breakthroughs in technology and medicine have brought a disastrous side effect: People eat all sorts of garbage, confident that chemical drugs will cure whatever they get. The result is an increase in obesity – child obesity has doubled in the past 30 years, and among adolescents it has quadrupled.

So if it’s difficult to eliminate these villains from your kitchen, which end up disrupting your performance in Jiu-Jitsu, we’ve listed ten tips for you to gradually get rid of a low-nutrient diet. Check them out!

1. Simple and essential: Do not bring to the table or store in the pantry processed foods, which are full of salt, sugar and fat.

2. Stop to reflect. On weekends, try to jot down or just remember what you’ve eaten over the last seven days. Rethink whether you ate fruits and vegetables, and seek more balance.

3. Treat the villains in your diet as opponents to be beaten: it may be that one beats you that day, but you must overcome them, one by one. The classic villains: margarine, oils, butter, sweets, refined sugar, chicken patties, soda, sausages, sandwich cookies, store-bought sauces.

4. If you eat tasty dishes that brighten up your brain to boot, you have come halfway to your food re-education. Invest in foods that help produce serotonin, known as the happiness hormone, and leave the table satisfied. Look for foods rich in folic acid (green leaves, legumes, avocado, orange, asparagus), sources of vitamin B6 (banana, beans, oats, lentils, avocados), magnesium sources (legumes, oysters, brown rice, salmon), and tryptophan foods (eggs, nuts, oats, peanuts, almonds, cheeses, fish and chicken).

5. Craving dessert? Look for naturally sweet foods, such as dates, coconut water, and other fruits and nuts.6. Bring the family to the table whenever possible. The habit helps to slow down chewing and eating, and break, from childhood, bad habits such as the fast snack with little nutritional value and fast food.

6. Bring the family to the table whenever possible. This helps to slow down chewing and eating, and break, from childhood, bad habits such as the fast snack with little nutritional value and fast food.

7. Get less red meat on your weekly menu. As food journalist and writer Michael Pollan teaches, the more steak, the less room for salad on your plate.

8. Take a few hours between meals and follow your routine like a samurai. To learn more about the topic, look for Gracie Diet on GRACIEMAG.com, and learn from Grandmaster Carlos Gracie, an expert on the subject.

9. Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored or anxious. Often a glass of water or juice satisfies your anxiety and does not disrupt your digestion schedule or the next meal.

10. Physical exercises and a healthy menu are inseparable siblings who help each other. Don’t neglect either one, and good training!

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