How to make a Sumo Wrestler
Ever wonder how the Japanese, a culture of small ones, develop beings of mammoth proportions? Are they born this way? Or is it a practice dating back thousands of years critiqued to grow little boys into giants of 400 plus pounds?
Lets take a look into a day of a Sumo Wrestler. Sumo wrestlers wake up early in the morning. Usually around 5. They do not eat anything and get straight to their training. They train for 5 hours of strenuous exercise called keiko. After a bath they eat their main meal of the day which is called chance-nabe. This is a chunky soup that is protein rich. It is made of noodles, chicken, pork, salmon, eggs, rice, seaweed, bonito flakes, cabbage, leeks, shiitake mushrooms, bean sprouts, tofu, and soy sauce. There is more rice added to the top of this and added is beer and sake.
After this meal they nap, then wake up and eat dinner and go back to sleep again. Sumo wrestlers do this day after day till they become the human version of the elephant. Their life is devoted to this lifestyle as it is the sport.
So what makes them fat? The meal they eat seems healthy right?
Here are just a few of the keys to the weight gain:
1) Sumo wrestlers skip breakfast
2) They train really hard with an empty stomach
3) This makes them starve which makes them overeat
4) Then they go to sleep after eating.
Do any of these correlate with the typical American way? Even when we take out the fact of what is being eating ( the typical American’s quality of food doesn’t come close to Mr. Sumo). This looks like the average “busy” person.
People get up, life is too important to take 10 minutes to eat something, so breakfast is skipped and on with the high stress day! By the time lunch rolls around they may or may not have something to eat. If they do it will be the first thing they ate since the previous night’s dinner: So it is usually as much as the person can stuff in their mouth. The work day is completed with little or no snacks; because in America stopping work for a cigarette is acceptable but running to the refrigerator to eat a healthy snack is being lazy. After work, dinner is scarfed down because we are starving again by this point. We get tired because of the overloaded digestive system. We then fall asleep and do it all again the next day.
-Hello Obesity!
The way our body works is very complicated. And there is a much bigger scientific reasons for fat gain. But I wrote this story to hopefully install two very important, yet natural, and easy to do tasks into your life. These will help control your metabolism and your cravings.
1) Eat Breakfast
2) Eat often
If you do not do the above two. I want you to write down the reasons why you do not. Go give the piece of paper to somebody else and ask them to read it back to you. You will notice how ridiculous it sounds, and hopefully come up with a solution for the problem right as the other person is reading them.
Example:
Problem
I get up at 5:50am! and I have a 30 minute drive to get to work because of traffic. Work starts at 6:30. So that gives me 10 minutes to shower and get dressed, some times only 3 minutes if I hit snooze! I have no time for breakfast.
Solution
Wake up at 5:35/5:40 instead!
Result
Have 15 minutes to cook some eggs or egg whites, and eat it with an avocado and some veggies, salsa, or fruit.
Easy right?
Do it!
Ronnie Teasdale
CrossFit Mean Streets of Downtown Los Angeles
