Ah, the art of Sumo Wrestling… There is nothing like two fat guys hitting each other at full speed and trying to knock the other one down, right?

Sumo Wrestling dates back to ancient times. The earliest written mention of Sumo is found in the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters), a book from the year 712, which is the oldest example of Japanese writing. The Kojiki relates a legend about how possession of the Japanese islands was determined by a Sumo match 2,500 years ago between the gods Takemikazuchi and Takeminakata. The two men grappled on the shores of Izumo along the Japan Sea coast until one of them finally lost. Thus control of the archipelago was ceded to the Japanese people led by Takemikazuchi, who is said to have established the imperial family from which the present emperor traces his ancestry.

Thus Sumo from the start was different from most other sporting matches; each round a historical recreation. The actual event, as disgusting as it is, is considered a sport. In fact, it's an ancient and treasured sport in Japan. It’s kind of like our wrestling in the states, only our guys and gals are fit, muscular, and buff. Hey, to wear those skin tight outfits, you better be ripped, right? Sumo is the traditional national sport of Japan. Baseball and soccer are close seconds, but Sumo reigns supreme as Japan’s favorite. With the growth of its popularity outside of Japan, there have also been changes. The most recent Grand Champion is a man called Akebono- a Hawaiian who took up the sport at a young age and excelled in it; surprising Japanese and Americans alike who wondered at this stranger taking on the traditional sport and excelling at it. Due to Akebono's success, more international competitors are entering the ring, all aware of their participation in a sport that is older than most of the countries that they come from. When I think of wrestling the first thing that comes to mind is being bigger, faster, and stronger than the opponent. In the U.S., there are all different weight and size classes for wrestling. Over seas they have one size: fat, fat, and more fat on top of that and then some muscle built underneath all that fat for power. The saying “the bigger they are, the harder they fall” is an understatement when it comes to sumo wrestlers. The heavier the fighter, the lower his center of gravity, the better advantage he has because he is harder to push or toss out of the ring. The Grand Champions weigh several hundred pounds and follow a strict training and diet schedule.

Have you ever wondered how a human being can get to be that size, or more importantly why they would want to be that size? Sumo wrestlers follow a strict diet, mainly consisting of rice and chankonabe, a fish and chicken stew. Each meal consists of approximately 10,000 calories, more than 3x the average caloric consumption of a male. Sumo wrestlers eat two big meals a day followed by a few hours of napping to keep on the weight.

So here’s my question to you, “Do you want to be a sumo wrestler”? If you eat only two meals a day, and go long hours with out food, you will be. It’s as easy as that. The typical American diet is to skip breakfast, probably skip lunch because there is an emergency meeting that you have to attend, and then eat with the family at night for dinner, maybe in front of the TV, maybe at the dinner table. Predominately, supper will be their biggest meal of the day.

This is exactly how the Sumo Wrestlers pack on the pounds: they eat a lot of high carbohydrate-laden foods and a lot of meats. They train all day long, kind of like most Americans who work all day long. They don’t eat anything the whole day and then right before they go take a nap or sleep, they fill their stomachs up with as much food as they can eat. During the night all those calories that they just took in will not be burned up, it will be stored as fat and the weight will stay on, which is what they want because like we said before, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. What do you normally do after a big supper? Watch television, help the kids with their homework, and then go to bed, right? Are you starting to understand what’s happening to your own body and why you can’t lose weight, or inches, or both?

So, let’s recap the regimen for getting fatter:

1. Skip breakfast. By depriving their bodies of food after eight hours of sleep, their metabolic rates stay low.
2. Exercise on an empty stomach. If their bodies have no food, their metabolic thermostats are turned down even lower to conserve fuel.
3. Eat large and infrequent meals. By taking in so many calories in one sitting, the body cannot use most of them and stores them as fat.
4. Take a nap after eating. The Sumo secret for gaining weight is that, after eating, they sleep for at least four hours. Because the body does not require a lot of energy to sleep, even more calories are stored as fat.
5. Eat late in the day. Going to bed with full stomachs means that their bodies must respond to the huge flood of nutrients with a rush of insulin, forcing their bodies to store some of it in the cells as fat instead of in the muscles and organs as nutrients.
6. Always eat with others in a social atmosphere. According to leading researchers, a meal eaten with others can be at least 44 percent larger and with 30 percent more calories and fat.

The example of the sumo wrestling lifestyle is really eye-opening to a lot of people. This ancient regimen is a tried-and-true method for storing fat and is all-to-often reflected in our busy lives. Having difficulty getting to a meal or thinking that skipping a meal will help you lose some weight actually has the opposite effect. The take home lesson is that we need to eat the right foods more frequently throughout the day to keep our metabolism up and become more physically active. Stay tuned for the most effective tried-and-true fat burning regimen used by athletes, body builders and fitness models next time. I hope that this little article helps some of you to learn what’s happening to your body, what you’re doing to your body every time you skip a meal, and why you currently may be struggling with packing on the pounds or are finding it difficult to lose weight.