The Gracie diet would not exist today if Mitsuyo Maeda had not immigrated to Brazil in the early 1900s. He was the global envoy of Japanese jiu-jitsu and the most accomplished fighter of the time. The Gracie family helped him make a home in Brazil, where he taught the Gracie brothers jiu-jitsu. Carlos Gracie would invite and challenge anyone to fight to promote his new school in 1925.
When Carlos Gracie was in his late twenties, he fell in love with studying philosophy and religion. He immersed himself in the pursuit of knowledge and self-improvement through mind, body, and spirit. His research on health and nutrition was about to change his family and the world.
The diet and jiu-jitsu lifestyle were practiced and honed by the Gracie family. They needed to be healthy and ready to fight at any time with their open challenge fights. They were always ready to fight and prove to the public that their martial art and lifestyle were the best, most effective, and, more importantly, the most efficient.
Carlos studied and researched a wide range of diets, doctors, and nutritionists. He eventually concluded that food combination was the secret to optimum health and performance.
The Gracie diet, in a nutshell, is living efficiently. There is a jiu-jitsu way of doing everything in life. From the way we interact with others to how we drive our cars or conduct our business, there is always a better and more efficient way to live our lives. In this case, we are talking about the diet.
Ask yourself how you can be at your optimum performance. Eating right, exercising, and always having a positive mindset are the key foundations for a productive and optimistic worldview. The diet is designed to make digestion as simple as possible by combining foods that are easy to break down and digest with as little energy expenditure as possible. This ensures that you’re never lethargic, tired, or sleepy after a meal.
The logic comes from “always being ready.” The greatest samurai, Miyamoto Musashi, almost always avoided bathing due to being caught off guard and unprepared to fight. This might seem a bit extreme to most but, at times, very necessary.
We don’t live in such savage times anymore where a battle to the death can happen at any given moment. Still, the Gracies did what they could to ensure they were always physically ready to perform. Food combination was their secret to excellent health and longevity. It was so effective that the family would flaunt their children raised on the Gracie diet as never getting sick, having autoimmune diseases, and even having no cavities. This diet would start the Jiu-Jitsu revolution of the 20th century.
