Being surrounded by my healthy Brazilian Jiu Jitsu family, we are all constantly talking about food, weight gain, weight loss, whats good, whats bad, cheat days, healthy days. Food becomes as much as an obsession as the addiction to the sport itself. It's part and parcel of the sport because you start to notice how food makes you feel. A number of BJJ students will admit to having a better, healthier diet now than before they started. Quite a few have lost weight, toned up and generally look and feel better for doing the sport because their game has improved due to eating better and taking more care in the way they eat. Everyone wants that gold medal after all!
One of my friends had a really poor diet when they started BJJ, then finally it clicked and they knew that eating a more healthy diet was the answer they needed to get a better performance.
Before the Europeans, I had changed my diet, cut out carbs and lived like a monk for 3 weeks while I dropped weight for the competition. I have never felt so healthy and fit in my life. I was running and sprinting and not even breaking in to a sweat after 20 minutes. I put this down to what I was putting in my body, everything good, so my body was reacting good to it.
Now here comes my confession. Since the Europeans, I haven't been strictly Paleo with my diet. I have eaten Pasta, bread, cakes and sweets, but then we have to eat the foods that we really want and love. I have kept to a manageable 57kg and I still feel fit and healthy, but that was until last night....
Before I went to teach my Kickboxing class, I was craving some chocolate, dark chocolate of course. Some Green and Blacks would have been nice, but the newsagent wasn't able to supply my demands for what I would call 'healthy chocolate'. I mean, if you're going to eat chocolate, you might as well make it the best! So after entering the shop, them not having what I wanted, I settled for a dark chocolate kit kat.
The sugar hit me, then brought me down with a bang! I felt so tired after eating it and like I could quite easily curl up in to a ball on the front seat of my car and go to sleep. I couldn't, I had a class to teach. So stupidly I opted for buying a bottle of Lucazade at the gym in the hope that it would wake me up. It didn't.... I struggled through my class, and thankfully my students told me that it was a great session.
I went to bed last night feeling sick, bloated and extremely tired. Why didn't I grab a handful of Almonds instead?!
Next time you eat something that is loaded with processed sugar or complex carbohydrates, make a note of how you feel afterwards. The same goes for the feeling of when you put healthy foods in to your body.
Jolie x
