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Powerlifting nutrition
"The Sumo diet: the art of weight gain”
By Ian Smalley
I’m writing this to article to shed some light what is probably the greatest, yet most un-heralded method of putting on weight in existence. The common perception of sumo wrestlers is that they are big fat guys who push each other around wearing diapers. The fact is that these are some of the strongest and most fit and healthy athletes around. This is due in part to their unique training regimen, but also to their centuries old method of putting on muscular size and weight. Muscular size? Yep, sumo wrestlers are some of the most muscular men on the planet, you just can’t see it because it’s hidden under their external fat layer. This is called subcutaneous fat, and lies on top of the muscle, as opposed to visceral fat, which marbles the interior of the body and is common in obese sedentary people. Subcutaneous fat helps to increase the overall mass of the sumo, cushioning the impacts of his training. It doesn’t however have a negative impact on health. Now to the diet.
The average day of a sumo goes something like this.
Wake up at 7am
Train till noon on an empty stomach.
Eat
Take a nap
Train
Eat.
Go to bed.
Repeat.
Looks pretty easy right. Wrong. Imagine waking up and going to the gym for 4 or 5 hrs on an empty stomach. No coffee. No pre-workout drink. Nothing. Just 5 hrs straight of intense training. This is the first key to the sumo’s success in weight gain. Beginning the day this way puts the body into extreme starvation mode. All of the energy stores from the night before have been destroyed, the body is depleted and needs calories, badly. So creating a giant caloric deficit is the first step to making the sumo diet work. Your body must think it is going to starve.
So after the workout comes the first meal. This meal consists of one constant, un- changing menu item. Stew. The Sumo fill a giant pot with everything they can get their hands on. Meat, Vegetables, broth, spices, and lots of it. Gallons of stew. Other items such as rice or dumplings, spare ribs or any other dish is added to round out the meal. The goal is to eat as much as humanly possible and then pass out. Eating lots of soup has several weight gaining benefits. Number 1, all of the food mixed with fluid helps to stretch out the stomach, which in turn allows for more food to be consumed. Number two, soup typically contains greater sodium levels, which adds water weight to the body because of the retentive qualities of salt. Its also been proven that people eat significantly greater amounts of food when gathered in large groups, so the sumo guys sit around together for an hour or so and just eat and socialize. Its not uncommon for sumo’s to eat upwards of 8 to 10,000 calories in a sitting. This is of course after years of eating this way. A good goal for normal athlete who wants to try the Sumo Diet would be 2000-3000 in one sitting. This may sound like a ton, but if you haven’t for 5 hours or so, you’d be surprised how much you can take in. Especially when your eating Sumo Stew.
So after the big meal they go lie down just like kindergarten and take a nap. Just the shear amount of fluid and calories that the body has to process would be enough to knock you out anyway. But during this short rest period the body gets to recover from the mornings’ workout and synthesize as much food as possible. Remember, the body is still in starvation mode, it doesn’t know when it’s next meal is coming so it will cling on to every scrap of food it can and store it. This is how you gain the weight. The remainder of the day is basically a repeat of the first half of the day, training, eating a ton, then sleeping.
The easiest way to integrate the Sumo diet into your life if you want to try it is this. Make a giant pot of Sumo Stew (see recipe at the end of the article) the night before you begin and keep it in the fridge. The following morning skip breakfast and don’t eat until 1:00pm. Then eat as much stew as you possible can without throwing up. If you can take a nap afterwards, like on a weekend, then do it. If not, don’t worry about it. Don’t eat again until 7:00pm. Again, eat as much of the stew as you can with out losing it. Then go to bed at your normal time and get plenty of sleep. I tried this for ten days and put on 8 lbs of body weight. Yes most of it was water weight, but even still, had I chosen to keep going with the diet my body would have had to adjust and the weight would have become more solid. This is definitely not a recipe for how to gain lean mass. This is just mass. But for many hard gainers and natural athletes it can help to break through weight plateaus that your body has in place that keep you weighing what you weigh. Sometimes just showing your body that it CAN be heavier is enough to allow it to actually become heavier and stay that way. Give it a try for a couple of weeks and I guarantee you you’ll gain weight. A couple hundred years of Sumo experience can’t be all wrong.
Sumo Stew Recipe
1 gallon chicken broth I whole white onion chopped
3 carrots chopped 1.5 lb of chicken thigh meat (pre cooked) minced garlic
1 bunch celery chopped 1 cup of white rice (un cooked)
Assemble all ingredients in a large pot and cook covered on high heat for 1 hr. All ingredients are inter changeable, ex. Beef for chicken, beans for rice, add potatoes, etc. You can’t get it wrong, just make sure you make a lot of it and eat a lot of it.
