Legendary Bruce Lee Diet and Nutrition

What Bruce Lee practised was a way of life. Of fusion. Not martial arts. It was a very philosophical way to look at attaining self-mastery, and expressing it through (partially) martial arts of yong chun (wing chun) and his own fusion of everything called jie kun dao (jeet kune do).

Therefore one important aspects that he saw missing in a regular martial arts school is conditioning the body in other ways - cardiovascular, strength training, flexibility and a better diet and good nutrition. During the olden days, most garden-variety Chinese people were eating food filled with carbohydrates. Mainly due to the fact most are working in rice fields, ports, coal mines, fisheries, cargo, and all sorts of 12 to 16 hour days of hard labour. Therefore as you can notice, most food and delicacies, such as you tiow, are carb intensive quick meals. Fried rice. Fried noodles. Noodle soups. Fried radish cake which is filled with flour. Tapioca products.

He learn from the places he was in. He lived in Seattle. Same as what he wanted to achieve in martial arts, to learn as many styles and fuse them together, he applied it into his personal health.

He concluded that to attain a physical body that can perfect all those arts, such bad eating habits such as gorging on carbohydrates is not the way to follow. It is an incorrect body fuel causing one to be slow when consumed in large quantities. Which is very true. Those labour intensive jobs, would have the correct fuel of carbohydrates daily. Although living in USA, he avoided the regular pastries and baked products based on refined flour. Fresh fruits and vegetables daily with Chinese and other Asian food, such as beef in oyster sauce, tofu and steak, and liver. He also drank protein shakes, supplements such as bee pollen, wheat germ oil, Vitamin C, and made his own fruit shakes out of apples, celery, carrots. Perhaps it is not reported, but I do feel Bruce Lee might have also taken very traditional chinese supplements such as he shou wu.

Consuming smaller meals, 4-5 times a day is his way simply because his daily exercise routine gave him time to do so. His morning starts at 7am with running (warm-up cardio), stretching (flexibility exercises) and abdominal exercises (core strengthening), for 2 hours. Then resting for 2 hours with a meal. And then an hour of weight training (strength training) with cycling (cardio).

So far, I can see similarities with modern protein diets. Reducing carbohydrates is one. Breaking meals into several smaller ones. Infused diet with fresh vegetables and fruits. Overall exercise daily that includes strength, core, flexibility and cardiovascular workouts.

And the conclusion is that if such a great athlete with a super physique adheres to a good clean diet regime, then we should do that too if we truly treasure our bodies and want to great health.