Eating is as much a part of the training regime as cardio-vascular conditioning, strength training, stretching and sparring. But, it is often not treated with the same degree of discipline.

How many fat karate black belts are there out there? Way too many if my experience is any indicator. What about the kids who scarf candies before the lesson, and cool off afterward with a soft drink?

Mastery demands discipline - in the area of food as well.

In order to determine the right diet, the first step is to honestly assess how many hours are spent in training each week or day.  For instance:

If you warm-up and stretch for 15 minutes once daily, strength train 3 times a week for 30 minutes, do road or bag work for 30 minutes twice a week, spar once a week for an hour and spend 45 minutes a week practicing other techniques - you can calculate that you are burning about 3300 - 4000 calories per week in training. Add to that a baseline metabolism of between 2000 - 2300 per day (roughly 16000 per week) and other activities burning an extra 300 calories per day (2100 per week), and you get = 21751 cals. per week or 3100 cals. per day. (This requires 5 hours of training per week).

Let’s now look at some junk food that might be eaten during the course of a week:

1 power bar = 230 cals.

1 Starbucks Grande Drink = 270 cals.

1 small bag potato chips =270 cals.

1 large cookie = 130 cals.

This seems to be a reasonable amount of “snacks” - but they add a total of 900 calories to your intake per week, or an average of roughly 130 per day. This is manageable as presented, but the question to ask is: are you maintaining the above level of activity?

If not - and if you are exceeding these snack figures, you are coming close to the range in which you will begin to gain weight. (3100 cals. burned - 2200 cals. average of meals eaten - 130 cals. snacks = 770 cals. deficit - i.e. good) but (2800 cals. burned - 2300 cals. average meals eaten - 270 cals. snacks = 230 cals. deficit - i.e. shaky).

Considering that the average American consumes just over 3800 calories per day, however - even strict adherence to the above workout schedule will result in a surplus of 700 calories per day (4200 per week) and extra pounds.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 9th, 2009 at 7:56 pm and is filed under Conditioning and Nutrition, Discipline. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.