Sumo wrestling diet

It’s ironic your national sport of Japan—who’s inhabitants are among the skinniest & most mild into the world—involves two over weight guys attempting to shove each other out of a band.

The reality is that it is not only flab which makes a sumo wrestler’s girth; there’s a whole lot of muscle mass beneath it all.

The ideal weight for a sumo wrestler is everything from 400 to 600 pounds. This means it requires not only energy and mobility become a sumo—it additionally takes the proper diet. Eating is a vital part of their education.

Sumo-size me

An average sumo wrestler eats a regular diet of 20, 000 calories, which is quite astounding if you think about your suggested day-to-day consumption for a wholesome, active male is 2, 500. They eat 10 times what an ordinary male eats and all sorts of from it’s done in two huge 10, 000-calorie dishes. The sumo’s diet is a manifestation of my personal favorite Japanese social trait—never doing things halfway.

Here is a typical sumo wrestler each day eating schedule:

Skip morning meal

A sumo wrestler’s time begins at four to five o’clock in the morning with education and exercise. Surprisingly, break fast is not supported. Missing breakfast and working on alternatively decelerates the wrestler’s metabolic rate, so they often don’t consume until around 11am. Additionally gets all of them hungry sufficient for the 10, 000-calorie lunch.

Bulk load

The main dish that sumo wrestlers eat is a stew called chankonabe (ちゃんこ鍋). It appears similar to ‘chunk nabe, ’ which can be somehow oddly appropriate. This is certainly a stew filled with fish, veggies, animal meat and tofu. Nabe (鍋) is a normal Japanese stew, but chankonabe could be the supersized variation, stuffed filled with extra every little thing for only purpose of supplying calories.

To enhance their particular great meal, sumo wrestlers eat around 5–10 soup bowls of rice and copious levels of beer, necessary for vacant calories. An excellent rikishi (力士, sumo wrestler) may straight down as many as 6 pints during midday meal.

Simply take a siesta

After lunch, there’s another important bit of training—the nap. How will you not pass-out after meals like this? Sumo wrestlers take a siesta as long as 4 hours after lunch, to decrease their particular kcalorie burning and add everything they simply ate to their girth.

Dinner and lights out

At the end of your day, sumo wrestlers consume another huge meal and call-it a night. While
they sleep, the day’s necessary protein and calories work their particular secret and they get up during the early
morning willing to smash their bodies against one another.

Chankonabe: The choice of sumo

Although hearty, chankonabe is quite healthier. it is not your triple Whopper or deep-fried pizza pie. The stew is full of fresh vegetables, tofu, seafood and either chicken, chicken or meat.
Just in case they aren’t complete following the treats are eaten and there’s only soup left, the sumo often dump a pile of noodles to the dish.

It is possible to consume chankonabe at restaurants throughout Japan. It comes in many different flavours including salt, soy sauce, miso, kimchee plus. Only deliver a beneficial desire for food.

The restaurants within the Ryogoku part of Tōkyō, known as “Sumo Town” since it’s the house of the Japan Sumo Association, are specially popular. You can also find various other restaurants here that tailor to rikishi and serve ridiculously large dishes of curry alongside typical dishes.

Publisher's note: The National Geographic video clip below may be worth viewing if you're enthusiastic about this topic: