Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) practitioners often explore various diets to enhance their performance and overall well-being. Among these, the Gracie Diet stands out as a nutritional approach specifically designed for grappling, embraced by both the Gracie family and their Jiu-Jitsu students. This article delves into the Gracie Diet, exploring its principles, rules, and effectiveness.
What is the Gracie Diet?
The Gracie Diet was developed by Carlos Gracie Sr., a co-founder of BJJ, to address his own health issues in middle age. Grappling with body aches and debilitating migraines, Carlos Sr. sought a solution to his declining health. His quest led him to research nutrition, studying which foods promoted health and which hindered it.
Carlos Sr. transformed his diet based on his findings. He prioritized natural, unprocessed foods and increased his water intake. The results were remarkable; he recovered from his ailments and experienced a significant improvement in his overall health.
Inspired by his success, Carlos Sr. formalized his approach into what became known as the Gracie Diet. He introduced it to his family, mandating its adoption by all members of the Gracie clan. The family experienced similar positive outcomes, noting increased speed, strength, and athletic performance.
The Gracie Diet Book
Rorion Gracie played a key role in popularizing the Gracie Diet as the Gracie Academy expanded internationally. He encouraged Gracie Jiu-Jitsu students to adopt the diet to improve their health and training outcomes. Today, the Gracie Diet extends beyond the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu community, attracting a diverse range of BJJ practitioners.
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A Breakdown of the Gracie Diet
The Gracie Diet is built upon several core principles:
Food Combining
The central tenet of the Gracie Diet is proper food combining. This principle posits that different foods necessitate different digestive enzymes, and incompatible combinations can lead to digestive problems and reduced nutrient absorption. The diet categorizes foods into three primary groups: Carbohydrates, Proteins, and Neutral Foods, advocating their strategic combination in meals.
Carbohydrates
This category includes grains, bread, pasta, potatoes, and fruits, forming the foundation of each meal. However, specific rules govern their combination with other food types.
Proteins
Proteins are divided into Acidic and Sweet categories:
- Acidic Proteins: Beef, chicken, turkey, and other red meats.
- Sweet Proteins: Fish, eggs, milk, and other dairy products.
Neutral Foods
The Gracie Diet recognizes four neutral food categories:
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- Vegetables (excluding tomatoes)
- Oils
- Butter
- Fats
These neutral foods can be incorporated into any meal, offering flexibility in meal planning.
Food Combinations to Avoid
The Gracie Diet provides guidelines on food combinations to avoid. For example, carbohydrates should not be mixed with acidic proteins, nor should sweet proteins be combined with acidic proteins.
Time-Based Eating
The diet emphasizes consuming specific food groups at particular times of the day. Acidic proteins are recommended for lunch, while sweet proteins are preferred for dinner.
The 5-Hour Rule
A cornerstone of the Gracie Diet is waiting at least five hours between meals to facilitate digestion and prevent overeating. Snacking between meals is discouraged.
Hydration
The Gracie Diet promotes consistent hydration throughout the day but advises against drinking water during meals to prevent dilution of digestive enzymes.
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Listen to Your Body
An essential aspect of the Gracie Diet is attentiveness to individual responses to different foods and combinations. Recognizing that individual reactions can vary, the diet encourages users to adjust their eating habits based on their body's feedback.
Mindful Eating
The Gracie Diet emphasizes mindful eating, encouraging individuals to eat slowly, savor each bite, and chew food thoroughly.
The Rules of the Gracie Diet For Each Belt Rank
Carlos Gracie Sr. developed a set of rules for students of each BJJ rank to follow and pass on to their successors:
- White Belt: Wash hands before meals, record all food consumed throughout the week, and maintain a clean diet for 5-6 days a week.
- Blue Belt: Continue white belt habits, further restrict the diet, avoid desserts (or eliminate them entirely), and limit beverages to water, iced tea, and vegetable juices (excluding carbonated drinks). Maintain a clean diet for 5-6 days a week.
- Purple Belt: Uphold the eating habits learned at the white and blue belt levels, and eliminate all pork products.
- Brown Belt: Maintain healthy eating habits from lower ranks, wait 4-5 hours between meals, and eat cleanly for six days a week, allowing one free day.
- Black Belt: Adhere to the Gracie Diet rules every day of the week and pass on nutritional knowledge to lower belts.
What do the Gracies Eat?
Most Gracie family members adhere to the Gracie Diet to varying degrees. Generations of the Gracie family have embraced the diet, yielding positive results. It is believed that these guidelines have also improved the genetics of the Gracie family. Over time, members of the family have become bigger, faster, and stronger by following the diet.
Is the Gracie Diet Vegetarian?
The Gracie Diet is not inherently vegetarian, but it can be adapted for vegetarians. They can substitute meat proteins with plant-based proteins and eggs.
A Critic of the Gracie Diet
It is important to acknowledge that, despite its popularity, the Gracie Diet lacks scientific validation. Carlos Sr. drew inspiration from other diets and formulated his own rules and claims. As with any dietary approach, consulting a qualified healthcare professional or registered dietitian is essential before adopting the Gracie Diet. Individual dietary needs vary, and what works for one person may not be suitable for another.
Does the Gracie Diet Work?
At its core, the Gracie Diet promotes basic, common-sense nutritional principles: prioritize clean eating, avoid processed foods, and carefully combine acidic and sweet foods. These are fundamental nutrition rules that everyone should ideally follow. Adherents to the Gracie Diet may experience improvements in athletic performance and overall health.
Additional Insights into the Gracie Diet
Bobby, a martial artist with nearly 20 years of experience and a BJJ black belt under Professor Sergio Miranda, notes that many fad diets lack staying power. He believes that the most practical diets are those that endure the test of time. In the world of 21st-century martial arts, the Gracie family is highly respected as pioneers of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Carlos Gracie established the diet after 65 years of research and experimentation. Decades before the health boom of the 1980s and 1990s, Carlos understood the connection between nutrition and physical performance. This relationship was particularly important for the Gracie family due to the Gracie Challenge, where martial artists of all styles tested their skills against Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. Family members needed to be capable of defending the clan's honor at any time.
The Gracie Diet emphasizes eating natural foods and combining them to ensure optimal digestion. Rorion Gracie states that the diet is ideal for the average person because it allows the consumption of virtually anything. The key is proper food combinations. The Gracie Diet is not restrictive in terms of what you can eat; its main principle is to combine certain food groups at one sitting. The diet recommends three meals a day, spaced four and a half hours apart, with no snacks in between.
Besides food combinations, the Gracie Diet recommends fasting one day a month and eating until you are approximately 80 percent full. Rorion explains that fasting has great health benefits because it allows for a "house cleaning" of the body. He recommends it for people over 40 but not for pregnant women. Eating until 80 percent full reminds us that hunger is a reminder to nourish the body, not to overeat.
Rorion emphasizes that any diet should be tested or followed for 30 or 40 years to see its actual results. Most diets do not undergo this endurance test and become "fad diets." The Gracie Diet has been in use for 75 years and has transformed the lives of thousands of people around the world. Carlos Gracie lived until 94, and his father lived until 95.
Gracie jujitsu is not only a form of fighting; it is a lifestyle that fuses the mind, body, spirit, and nutrition to develop the best possible person and fighter. Carlos Gracie knew that balance was crucial not just physically but mentally, emotionally, and nutritionally. He believed that what happened outside the dojo affected your jujitsu in the dojo and that any imbalance leads to poor performance and an unhealthy life.
The diet's central concept revolves around maintaining the pH balance of meals as neutral as possible. This is essential for proper assimilation and digestion of nutrients. Each meal must have a combination of balanced nutrients from different types of food to optimize energy and live well. Furthermore, the food you eat cannot poison your body.
How It Works
First, you must choose your meals and what to eat. For example, if you are going to eat fruit, you need to eat enough fruit until your next meal. Three hours is the minimum and five is the maximum time before you can eat again. The concept of time is essential for your body to fully digest the meal before the next to prevent combining foods. For example, if you eat a starch for lunch and you are hungry in one hour, and you eat acidic fruit, according to the diet, this is not healthy. You can only eat when your stomach is emptied.
Gracie Diet Menu
- Group A: Vegetables and Greens / Meats and Seafood / Fats and Oily Foods
- Group A can be combined with each other and only with one from Group B.
- Vegetables and Greens: Arugula, asparagus, basil, bay leaves, red beets, bell peppers, broccoli, brussel sprouts, butternut squash, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, fresh corn, cucumbers, eggplant, beans, garlic, ginger, kale, leeks, lettuce, mushrooms, okra, onions, oregano, parsley, fresh peas, hearts of palm, pumpkin, radish, red cabbage, cabbage, spinach, soy, turnips, sweet tomatoes, and watercress.
- Fats and Oily Foods: Avocados, almonds, butter, Brazilian nuts, cashews, dried coconut, all fats in general, melted cheese, all nuts in general, olives, olive oil, peanut, pine nuts, sesame seeds, and wheat germ.
- Meats and Seafood: Chicken, crab, crawfish, eggs, fish, fish eggs, lobster, mussels, octopus, oysters, red meat, shellfish, shrimp, and squid.
- Group B: Starches
- Do not combine starches with each other.
- Starch Foods: Barley, breadfruit, cereals, chestnuts, corn flour, beans, dry corn, dry soy, lentils, oats, potatoes, quinoa, rice, rye, sweet potatoes, wheat, and yams.
- Group C: Sweet fruits and Foods and Fresh and Creamy Cheeses
- You can combine any foods in Group C with each other and only with one from Group B.
Additional Considerations
Grand Master Carlos Gracie Sr. believed that the blood's pH is a key element during the digestive process and that it must be kept neutral, which helps the transformation of the food. He observed that certain combinations of foods kept the blood neutral, as opposed to some mixtures that made it acid or alkaline. He created the Gracie Diet based on this research, which consumed most of the last 50 years of his life.
Carlos Gracie instilled in his children, nephews, and grandchildren the need to listen to the body and offer it only nourishment that is of benefit to it. Little by little, the familyâs body type began to change, and the Masterâs descendants grew ever bigger than his 5â2â³, 139-pound frame.
The Gracie Diet is about not poisoning the body, not letting it get sick, and establishing the appropriate balance in its nourishment. The main idea behind it is to keep the pH of meals as neutral as possible, balancing the substance through the proper combination. Master Carlosâ idea is global and overcomes all problems. It is about not mixing cereals with other cereals, fat with sugar, nor acidic foods with any other acidic food. Meals are to be eaten in intervals of, at the least, five hours, eating again only when the stomach is empty.
Beyond worrying about solid foods, Master Carlos sought to complement them with teas, using what nature offers as cures for manâs ailments. Rilion Gracie states that our body is a machine running on blood and that if the blood is pure, the machine runs well. His fatherâs objective was to ensure that the familyâs fighters were well, or in other words, free of any illness that might arise and make combat unviable.
By complying with the different combinations of the food groups, in accordance with the tables, you can keep meals as neutral as possible. As a result, you will balance out the pH level in your body, which will improve digestion, as well as prevent and combat illness.
The Gracie family has worked with dedication to bring a brand that can support your training while maintaining a healthy martial arts lifestyle.
Key Principles Revisited
- Itâs basic, but itâs also fundamental.
- Grandmaster Carlosâs goal was to keep the body in equilibrium. He came up with a way to mix the groups and also how to mix the foods within the groups.
- One of the paradigm shifts of the Gracie Diet is that fruits are not a desert or a side dish to the main meal. Those who follow the method have to choose between a cooked meal or a fruit-based meal, meaning that if they go for the fruit, they consume enough of it to be satiated.
- Contrary to other popular nutrition methods, the Gracie Diet advocates longer intervals between meals (5 hours is ideal). The idea is to allow enough time for your body to fully process the previous meal before a new one comes, so the foods donât mix, ruining the combinations.
- The Gracie Diet divides fruits into two categories â sweet and acidic. As the goal of the diet is to keep the blood pH from becoming acidic, you cannot mix acidic fruits with other acidic fruits.
- When preparing some fruit juice, adding water to the mix makes it watery and tasteless, and thus in need of sugar (and thatâs a big ânoâ). So GM Carlos came up with the concept of different kinds of âwaters.â His waters were juices made of sweet juices that will help you to have a tasty meal without adding sugar to it. Centrifuged apple, watermelon or melon juices, and also coconut water and sweet lemon juice make great âwatersâ to use as the base for your juice.
- Tomatoes are not really banned, but the thing is they are in the acidic fruit group, so they need to be consumed alone. As you are hardly going to make a whole meal out of tomatoes, itâs better to avoid them.