The Shintaro Higashi Show - Diet for Grappling

Episode Date: June 21, 2021

Diet is an important part of any sport, but it is especially so for grappling sports like Judo, BJJ and wrestling. In this episode, Shintaro and Peter discuss what their philosophies are on diet and how they approach it in their everyday lives. Please support us on Patreon if you can: https://www.patreon.com/shintaro_higashi_show. Any amount helps!

hello everyone welcome back to the shintaro higashi show with peter yu today we're going to talk a little bit about diet the d word it's a four-letter word right i struggle with it every day right right every day it's it's tough man you know we were born to just eat we're like born to eat yeah food is so accessible exactly especially during this modern time and also i think during the pandemic when everyone was cooped up a lot of people i i myself included just kind of let myself go a little but then yep trying to get back to it so we uh the fitness episode was very popular so i thought you know we could cover the other aspect of fitness not just the activity but yeah what you diet for grapplers yeah for grapplers so what should we uh uh talk about first like uh maybe like nutrition wise or like just diet plans what do you yeah nutrition

wise that plan i think just the overall eating healthy right what does that look like what does that entail right i have to preface this i'm not a dietician nor am i a nutritionist nor am i in phenomenal shape i'm just a guy that does a lot of judo right and i i'm kind of uh into this stuff right so you gotta have to take everything i say with a grain of salt right a lot of the stuff that i do say is sort of common knowledge stuff right but i am not an expert but you try you've tried a lot of different i've tried a lot of this yeah i've even had nutritionists and stuff before right right so yeah let's talk a little bit about you know how i do things because then it's like a little bit more like hey not you should do it but what i do right right and uh you know i sort of base my eating philosophy around michael pollan's three food rules oh Oh, okay.

What are those? So he wrote this book, Carnivore's Dilemma. He's big into that nutrition scene. He recently wrote a book about psychedelics. He's a very smart guy, very well-known guy. He has three food rules. Eat food, mostly plants, not too much. Those are the three rules. Eat eat food don't eat processed food

like eat real food right like american cheese that's a food product highly processed right and i try to distinguish between food versus food product and i always Cheerios food product not a food food product right so i'm not eating real food, right? Rice, yeah. Chicken, yes. Fish, yes. Vegetables, yeah. Those are food. How about bacon? Yeah, yeah.

Is it food? It's food? Okay. Oh, nice. You know, protein, fat. Yeah, yeah. I love bacon, so. Yeah, bacon's great.

Yeah, so this is the thing, right? Eat food, mostly plants, you know? Research shows, like, I'm not saying don't eat meat. You know, I ate a lot of meat, gave myself gout plants you know research shows like i'm not saying don't eat meat you know i ate a lot of meat gave myself gout you know it's like a uric acid inflammation situation in my toe you know they call it like what do they call it the luxury disease or something like that wait wait when did this happen i didn't know that yeah we did it oh it's kind of on and off i get these gut flare-ups dang okay that's how you know when you're in your 30s when you're deep in your 30s and you eat a lot of meat and drink a lot of beer no i don't

drink any more beer but like right beer beef like those things can really get me out of that so anyway eat food mostly plants right mostly plants like big portion of your diet should come from plants right i've i've started a plant right is a plant vegetable you know greens kale potatoes those are all plants i i've started eating try to eat more plants too and then i even started eating a lot of vegetable burgers and stuff they're pretty tasty now yeah those are food products peter oh really should i not man veggie patty highly processed like vegetables don't look like that how about the you know like impossible burgers and stuff oh man that's that's like uh

that's a food product i mean will i eat that sometimes yeah it's not healthy for you they have what's called i think in the industry people call it a health halo oh damn when you throw around terms like all plants healthy for you organic right natural low sodium it's like oh man like that sounds amazing you know like no trans fats like that's a health halo it sounds healthy there's like a halo around it saying like hey we're healthy hey we're healthy but the more they advertise the more they push this idea of it that it is healthy the worse off it is for you because the more processed it is oh man because an apple doesn't have a label right it doesn't just the apple right yeah it doesn't have like this and that and even apples now different from apples used to be right and you could go down the rabbit hole of like gmos and like trey jones is all gmo

produce you know what i mean you know that i did not go down the deep path of this yeah uh and you know sometimes i get a little bit too crazy about this stuff but when i get too crazy about it's not sustainable and then i crash and burn and i eat ice cream every night for whatever amount of time yeah so eat food mostly plants and not too much right research just shows like being at a caloric deficit is good for you right you don't want to overeat because that's where inflammation and all this stuff happens like i said i'm not a scientist right take what i'm saying with a grain of salt right i know just enough to sound like i know what i'm talking about if you ask me to deep dive into anything you know it's especially when it comes to

this stuff i think it's generally good advice i mean it's not really hard to keep to adhere to uh but those are good rules uh yeah three rules yeah food mostly plants not too much michael pollan's rules not my rules i just follow them i see because it made sense to me when i listened to it right martin rooney was my strength and conditioning coach for a long time and he was a physical therapist first before he was a high level coach right and then i spoke to nutritionists about this stuff too and then he suggested this book i read it i was like oh man this this makes a lot of sense i see so the what so okay so those are simple rules that you could adhere to.

But some people go crazy with strict diets, diet plans. What is one that's only eating meat and fat? Carnivore diet, ketogenic diet. Ketogenic, yeah, all that. What do you think about those things? I think keto is great when you're putting your body into ketosis, I think it's a great thing. People should do it. But at the end of the day, you're at a caloric deficit because you're taking out carbs completely.

It's easy to eat a bowl of rice and feel hungry, right? But it's not easy to eat, you know, 800 calories of protein and, you know, be hungry. You'll be full longer, right? It's more satiating. Right, right. You know? But even keto it's like oh i can eat these foods people go crazy overboard then it's like all right i'm gonna eat bacon every every morning and i'm gonna eat a stick of butter and i've known guys who've

done that that's dirty so i like to distinguish dirty keto and clean keto you could have clean keto it's like all right i'm eating you know broccoli with a little bit of uh butter you know i'm eating lean protein chicken and maybe, right? Like you could do clean keto. Staying away from grains, staying away from carbs. You could do that. That's a lot healthier than doing dirty keto where you're sitting around, you know, eating chunks of fat off like a ribeye. Oh, yeah.

Because lipidology is a real thing. Some people are just like, oh, yeah, fats, but there's healthy fats too. Right, right. You know what I mean? Almond is different than, you know. Like vegetable fats. And I'm not saying like saturated animal fats are bad. All right?

I'm not saying that. You know, but it's like, yeah, ketogenic diet can be good. Right. They can all be good if you follow the three simple food rules, right? Eat fruit, mostly plants, not too much. I see. I'm a big believer in this. And it always loops back to that for me because if there's just like basic ground rules that you could always follow and

yeah yeah and sustainability is huge and i struggled in my whole life man you see me sometimes i'm 230 you see me sometimes i'm 180 you know i go up and down and up and down i fought 220 great reason for me to and you know when i was a junior in high school i wrest 180 you know i go up and down and up and down i fought 220 great reason for me to and you know when i was a junior in high school i wrestled 275 i wasn't weighing 275 right right kid at 215 was you know ranked fourth in the country or something and my coach was like why don't you just go 275 because i'd say there's no probably fair better there and you probably make it the states right so i was like okay And that gave me an excuse to just eat whatever I want and just go up to blow up to 240.

I didn't feel good. I didn't compete well. I mean, I did, but I wasn't optimal. I'm short, right? So it's like, that's no good. And then sometimes I crash diet and I go down to, I fought 178 for judo. And then I have to really watch what I eat,

watch my macros because I don't want to lose mass right i want to lose fat not mass you know but ultimately you end up losing a little bit of both right right yeah so then um what do you think about like some other things like maybe just not just what you eat but like the timing of it like intermittent fasting and stuff yeah it's great if you can do it there's a guy you know you guys all watch my youtube channel so you guys probably know george right right he probably has the most extreme diet i've ever seen and people go on yeah yeah he does ketogenic diet slash intermittent fasting right and i know so many people that go on keto so many people are going to fast thing never more than a couple months at a time. Most people can do it for a week.

That's it, right? This guy's been on it for like four years, five years, consistently, never breaks. He's so disciplined with his diet. Never seen him break, man. Yeah, he doesn't eat at all, all day. Drinking water, caffeinated, black coffee's up. That's it. He doesn't drink, eat anything during the day

comes to judo on an empty stomach works out whoa he eats one meal a day he fasts that much i don't know he intermittent fasts every day he only eats one meal a day and it's usually after judo and he's jacked shredded jack man he's jacked so there's research suggesting like intermittent fasting has muscle preserving effects, right? Ketogenic diet when you're on the ketosis, right? There's muscle preserving effects. I see. And if he lifts weights, then he'll eat something after.

I see. I see. To supplement that. Yeah. And he does clean keto. He does clean keto. He eats vegetables. Like I've had dinner with this guy many, many times.

And it's like he does his training. He's like, all right, I'm going to crush food. Two salads, mix them together. Throw a big thing of chicken on there. He loves pesto. All of the day. Loves pesto sauce. Eats a lot of almonds.

He really lives by that. Right, right. It's quite impressive. Yeah, I've never seen him. I've never seen anyone like that. He's shredded and he's big. So he's kind of an inspiration. I do think think a lot of i hear a lot of people always saying like oh man like i didn't time my eating right before practice like i ate too close to

practice i don't feel good i hear that well i didn't eat anything today i don't feel good you know um i do believe in intermittent fasting i see believer in that but like you kind of have to get used to it you know you have to get used to feeling hunger pangs and you have to get used to working out fasted it's like all about sustainability like it can't sustainability yeah consistency is the fourth part of the the four food rules right anything you can do for a short period great but like if you can't maintain it then what's the point of doing it you know i guess it's with anything in life really like yeah a good diet is some a diet that you can stick to yeah and you

know i think the most misleading thing online about diet is like hey check out what michael phelps eats on a daily basis it's like you know depending on his training cycle too right he doesn't always eat like that you know 24 He's probably not eating that same thing now. Right, right. And those things are kind of misleading. Because people ask me, like, what's your diet like? What do you do? How do you do it?

All this stuff. It's like, hey, it depends. What I'm doing right now is different from what I was doing during the pandemic when I was sitting around eating peanut M&Ms. Yeah. Like right now I'm trying to squeeze a little bit and cut down. Me too. You can probably tell from my face. I've been been uh watching it stay below 2000 calories right try to stay as fast as long as i can i know myself though right i know after judo i want to throw down some calories

like big time yeah so it's like i save my calories for later in the evening same i think it's it it's like uh it really depends on what i'm doing during the day too you know like i think um i honestly i do intermittent fasting too but it's more out of my daily schedule like i i just don't want to be busy in the morning it's okay to be hungry you know yeah to be hungry you know coming from a guy that's fat half the time you know most of the time actually probably like 70 of the time i'm like kind of fat you know no you're not fat come on i'm carrying a good amount of body fat on right uh but you know it's okay it's right you know what i mean you go up and down you go up and down as long as you're trying to get to a better place always and you're improving you're learning i think it's good you

know i fall off the wagon big time i'll tell you one that i really liked for a while that i was doing i was doing like uh this is something that i completely came up with on my own based on all the stuff that i yeah you'll probably remember you'll be like oh i remember you were doing that i was doing this like hunting thing not hunting not actually hunting like i don't have the time to go out right words and yeah if i really dedicated myself i could probably do it but i had this mentality of like pre-hunt herbivore post-hunt carnivore i was doing that huh and i would treat my judo sessions as a hunt oh i see yeah yeah my workout like a hunt so when i woke up in the morning, it's like I'm eating like things like greens, grass, like almonds, stuff that I've gathered from the forest.

And then it's like I'm going to the gym. I'm dead lifting heavy today. I hope I get 565 for singles or whatever it was at the time. Like I can't do that now. My back hurts. But like I'm going to go out there and then crush this workout. That's going to be my hunt, right? God, go after it.

And then after I've hunted, you would give me that stimuli of like going for something, right? Wrestling something to the ground or whatever it is. Then I like reward myself with like a very heavy carnivorous meal. And I was kind of doing that.

And I like felt like, oh man, like we're back to the road like live like this and yeah like this and i was trying to do it and i was trying to eat like there was like a butcher hudson and charles oh dude remember that place yeah yeah yeah so they had like a farm upstate they would bring the cows in and sometimes i'd be like hey man we're getting the cow on tuesday bro right if you need uh whatever it is and i will go in right and you know they'll give they'll give you you know whatever inch fat yeah yeah yeah it's dry aged all grass fed all this and that and you could actually go visit the farm or something i can't remember exactly what it was

what is it called like humanely raised yeah Humanely raised. Yeah. Humanely raised. That was the thing. Factory farming is so messed up. Right. Right. It is. It's so disastrous. It's so disgusting. You know, I'm not a vegan in any way.

And I'm not a vegan in any way. And I'm not trying to like advocate and be like a nature hippie. But like factory farming is bad for everybody. Yeah. It's. Bad for your body because it's not good for you. It's not good for you food. Right, right.

It's trash food almost. It's not real food. You know, animals raised the way they were meant to be raised. They're in such a stress. Yeah, they just do some. It's an abomination, right? So anyway, I'm going down the rabbit hole over there, right? It was like a pre-hunt hmm makes sense yeah right and you know not always herbivore

because like oh i hunted last night and i have all this you have a little bit left over yeah left over but i'm grazing right i'm getting ready for the hunt and the hunt the part of the hunt is like being a little hungry or you have to be a little bit hungry for the hunt you know right right right you have to be like a little bit hungry like your alertness is raised because you're like oh man i gotta i gotta eat so i gotta find something to eat and then there's george and a gi oh man put my hands on it like stick my claws drag them to the ground i'm choking them you know what i mean that's a big one it's primal it's primal i see so like that was my whole mentality and i did that for a little while probably lasted a good

six months when i was like doing that and i was in really really good shape yeah yeah and i had some abs showing nice it's a good time good time yeah so we talked a lot about this uh the everyday diet plans diet you know strategist keto intermittent fasting you're that you're a hobo or a carnivore thing but now another aspect of dieting for grappling is weight cutting oh yeah yeah yeah yeah you know that's like a big one so now that we talked about the everyday thing how about weight cutting how these are not everyday things no these are just for specific related right and i used to mess myself up doing this too because i used to know that i could cut 20 pounds when i'm fully hydrated and eating whatever i want right to make weight within a

certain time frame usually a week right right so i would just eat whatever i want and then like especially during the wrestling season i would blow up and then i would try to cut 20 pounds at the last second or last minute or last day or whatever it is right right but then there can't be a disconnect there right because if you're carrying body fat you got to get rid of that first so the everyday stuff leads in so you want to be as close as possible to that weight before you start to cut water out right right right because i could naturally be at 178 shredded around the clock all year around and compete optimally at that weight right but i could be carrying a lot of

body fat and then hanging out and i'm 200 pounds and i lose 20 pounds and then now like i can't really compete optimally and i just do that for years. And I still, like, never really graduated from that because I'm not as disciplined as people would think, right? There's some athletes that are, like, Mayweather is around the clock working out. He's shredded. I'm not one of those people, right? I like my ice cream. I like my pizza. You know, I used to drink a lot, right?

Yeah, yeah. Not anymore. I used to drink a lot. So I kind of let myself go so being closer close as possible to that weight is huge that's first and foremost so it has to be integrated right now all of a sudden when you're cutting down right you have to drink a lot of water and you have to manipulate your sodium and then water like let's just say a gallon and a half of water two gallons of water two

gallons two gallons two gallons one gallon one gallon half a gallon half a gallon no water right sodium sodium no sodium no sodium no sodium body get rid of it kind of like right right and that's sort of like the general way it's practiced i don't recommend it it's crazy people shouldn't do it right people have kidney failure like i said i'm not a doctor i don't recommend it. It's crazy. People shouldn't do it. People have kidney failure. Like I said, I'm not a doctor. I don't advocate for this. But people do this. And when they're wringing out the water out of their system, they take hot baths. They put albolan on their skin.

And then they go into saunas and stuff like that. I don't view it as a diet. Weight cutting is a completely separate thing. So like good diet, clean diet, caloric deficit, getting close to the weight. And then the very last thing you do is that but if you're carrying body fat you shouldn't be doing that last bit you should just naturally be at that weight and that's coming from a person that never really did it right it's just the weight cutting is just to shave off the last few last bits yeah last couple

of pounds just to make it just to get water on the scale and then make it into the weight class you want yeah but you and then you drink that water back and now all of a sudden you're a little bit heavier than another person right mentality you know having uh you know day before weigh-ins helps too right depends on when the weigh-ins are so they change a lot of stuff into national judo like now now, you know, they do. I mean, I can't, I don't know right now. Right. Switched it around, you know, before they did day before weigh-ins.

Now, I think the last time I competed was day of in the morning. Right. So now you can't do that as much. Right. Right. Because you didn't have time to recover. Yeah, man. Think about it.

If you're like a 220 pound guy. Right. You diet down to 200, you shred it at 200 right and then you lose another 20 pounds and you're competing you step on the scale 180 and you have all day to rehydrate and all this stuff and the next day you're competing now you're walking out there at 210 yeah and then and then picture this the guy is naturally 170 pounds walking around carrying a little bit of fat, right? So this soft, pudgy, average-looking 170-pound guy going against a 210-pound guy, that may be the differential between someone that diets properly and cuts weight versus someone that's just naturally kind of carrying body fat who should be at 145 but he's competing at 18 178 right walking around at 170 you know right so that makes a difference that matters i mean that's why people do it yeah that's

why every every single piece of advantage counts at that level yeah but you know what when you're a white belt when you're a yellow belt when you're a beginner it doesn't matter right don't get too caught up in that because now all of a sudden like you've never done it before but now you're trying to cut 10 pounds of weight right you're stressing about your weight and cutting the water it's like that's that's why right i understand the appeal to want to do that because like hey i'm cutting weight it sounds like cool because all the pros do it right right but it's not something that you want to introduce too early it's not something you want to rely on uh always you know you should just if you're not lean or ready if you could be naturally at that weight be naturally at that weight using

the three food rules right you know so uh it's more about you know keep keep up with the good diet the everyday diet the remembering those rules and weight cutting maybe if you if you are like it's not recommended i mean it sucks it sucks you know i've done it multiple times i'm not saying it's not recommended because if you're competing i mean you have to do it i guess yeah yeah you know uh especially you don't have to but it helps you know some of the great athletes right are in the right weight class and they're in the right weight class right pros how to struggle with weight cutting too it's not something well yeah everyone struggles with it you know and when you're in a weight class sport and you're constantly getting down to a certain weight it's right easy to just like oh man i'm tired of doing this i'm gonna go eat

like crazy and binge for a month and their weight bounces up and you see a lot of this yo-yo stuff right right not healthy probably not i'm gonna guess no right i'm gonna guess no right it's probably it's a good guess it's probably not yeah it's fun you know managing your own body because you don't control right and that's what it's about you know and like some of the extreme stuff the food eating disorder stuff like a lot of people do this stuff just to feel in control you know but i think the food three food rules are a great way to start right right right michael pollan situation yeah ketogenic diet you know it's okay if that's right for you you know whole 30 is another one where you like get rid of everything you start from scratch right some

people think nightshades are bad for you because they cause inflammation nightshades being like tomatoes eggplants and such oh okay yeah yeah tom brady doesn't eat nightshades you know he doesn't even eat eat that stuff you know some people have a gluten intolerance yeah you know what i mean people have allergies too right you can't eat peanuts right so it's like you kind of have to know your body you have to be in tune with your own body right you know i'm not saying go out there and talk to a nutritionist it's hard out there because there's so much noise when it comes to diet everyone wants to be shredded everyone thinks that they have the right answer right and you know like judo it's like it has to be catered to you you have to know yourself right before you even go into this stuff you can't just adopt and do

what george is doing you know and i tried that can't do it it's it's george's thing yeah it's george's thing you know that he prides himself on it and he's using it as a way to be better right like he's very disciplined in that way right on it's a self-improvement thing and he puts a lot of value on that right right so you know and for some people it's like i want to go out and have dinner with my buddies. And I don't want to be that guy that's not eating bread at the dinner. Like, you know, that's a thing. Right.

It's like you have your goals. How bad do you want them? You know? It's about, you know, balancing your goals, your daily responsibilities and obligations. You know, the key is sustainability. Like you have to keep it up. Remember the big rules big rules yeah and pick and choose whatever works for you yeah martin rooney used to always say to me like if you can't dig it out the ground fish out of the ocean yeah hunt it down and kill it don't eat it pick it off a tree don't eat it yeah four things he's always said yeah that's how we were

you know i was like what about boston chicken with the chicken like chicken's good right he's like can you get that kind of chicken you know like no that's just factory farmed injected hormones like that's not real chicken that's a food product right oh so i shouldn't be eating boston chicken with gravy and all this stuff he's like no these factory farmed chickens they can't even walk after a certain age apparently because they are yeah it's messed up i just saw a documentary anything like health related documentary i'll watch it yeah you know and sometimes they lose me with their crazy because they have their agenda too right it's right in so many ways i was watching something it was like a pro vegetarian documentary and they were saying like eggs are just as bad for you uh as cigarettes oh wow and

they were like trying to make that argument i'm you uh as cigarettes oh wow and they were like trying to make that argument i'm like you know like they said a lot of good things but that one statement lost me like i can't watch this like i can't this is like trash now to me like you ruined the whole documentary because of that one statement that's an outlandish claim yeah outlandish claim i can't remember exactly what it was maybe maybe i misheard i don't know i mishear a lot of things you know confirmation bias and a lot of the times i hear something and i just filter it into things i already know like yeah yeah i think i believe in that so that's it must be true okay i take that you know that makes sense but you know what nope i'm gonna

reject that as we all are prone to do yeah we are all prone to do yeah yes so yeah man eat food mostly plants not too much that's that's a good rule to live by and stick to it and it's not mine i can't stress that enough it's michael pollan's thing yeah you know uh and yes he has a lot of books but food rules right i think is the book that i read nice something like that's good and that's you know i think uh we're talking about diet but diet and grappling go hand in hand because you have to be optimal. Yeah. Yeah. We didn't talk about macronutrients.

You have to have protein to recover, right? Right. You know, I think the consensus is like between half a gram to a gram of protein per body weight. Me, I try to do 100 grams of protein a day at least minimum always right you count the grams yeah kind of yeah so it's like i know like a scoop of my protein is 25 grams so if i had two scoops it's 50 i know they say like optimal absorption is 25 or whatever it is but it's like sometimes i'll do that just to get it in oh the the shakes yeah man it's like 250 calories 50 grams of protein okay like knock those two things out of there i still have 1750 left in calories

right right right and i kind of like got daily half i try to go over obviously 100 is the bare minimum i see i see and i try to do 100 ounces of water but it's like if i'm p i pee all the time right if i'm drinking that right right that's a lot of water depending on how much i need to go to the right yeah if i need to go if i'm home all day i'll drink that 100 right no problems like 100 grams 100 ounces and that's sort of and then 2 000 calories sort of like where i'll try to be at i see i see that's kind of the general guideline for me you know like i said it depends on the cycle like if i'm benching up you're trying to get strong and big and i'm going to eat more i'm going to have more protein right so recovery is important right it depends on your goal and yeah yeah depends on your

goal you know what i mean cool cool yeah all right well um it's a big topic very important topic we talked about i mean we couldn't have possibly covered everything. No, no way. But hopefully we gave you guys something. You're going to be hitting me up like, what about beta alanine? I know. Oh, man. What is that?

I don't even know what that is. What about Pd monohydrates? I go, here's a YouTube video. So, yeah, we try to give you guys some big rules and big principles so that you guys because it

like Shintaro said it has to be personalized you have to know your body yeah you have to know your life yeah so anything else to

conclude the episode no cool thank you guys for listening as always yeah die Peter's mother-in-law selling hats oh yeah conclude the episode no cool thank you guys for listening as always yeah die uh peter's mother-in-law selling hats oh yeah hey shintaro's got one it's for you know it's

great for summer it's about those are bucket hats they're really hot so um thanks for listening guys and stay tuned for the next episode yep bye guys bye