Bruce Lee: An Accidental Food Allergy Role Model

By PatriciaBiesen, May 15, 2010 at 7:22 am

As far as I know Bruce Lee didn't have food allergies per se but he hated cheese. He never understood why Westerners were such large consumers of it. While he ate plenty of rice he avoided the empty calories of foods made with refined flour. His diet was nearly gluten free. He wanted to consume calories that only contributed to the benefit of his health and well being. Also, because he trained nearly six hours a day he never stuffed himself, shortly after a meal he was on the next round of training and therefore didn't have the luxury of an after lunch nap.

The book The Art of Expressing the Human Body by Bruce Lee and John Little goes into much detail about his diet. Information was largely gathered from Lee's notes as well as interviews with his wife, Linda Lee Cadwell. I read this book not because I'm a martial artist but I wanted to know how he created that seriously lean physique. His wife claims his waist size was usually between 26 and 28 inches. At 5'7" he weighed about 127-135 lbs with a body fat percentage of about ~5-7% and to that I have to say "don't try this at home kids". Even contest body builders cycle their body fat percentages for contests and the off-season. When fitness magazines are generally saturated with photos of muscular men with ultra lean abs (not that I'm complaining) it's easy for us enthusiastic female lifters to forget that we are women. We need to have higher body fat percentages than men. Generally healthy women should be around 21%, athletic women shouldn't go any lower than 12-14%. Fitness models and women body builders are generally 6-10%.

Lee's diet was mostly Chinese food including lots of rice, CARBS you say! Lee ate more carbs than fat or protein. Keep in mind he was a professional athlete who trained for many hours of the day. Lee consumed one or two protein drinks every day, plus fruit smoothies. His protein drink consisted of non-instant powdered milk (pretty much the only dairy in his diet), eggs and often with the shells (for added calcium), peanut butter, wheat germ, bananas, brewer's yeast, inositol (great for shiny hair) and lecithin. In addition he supplemented with (which were cutting edge at the time): vitamin C, bee pollen, royal honey, vitamin E, rose hips (liquid form), natural protein tablets, acerola-C and B-folia. I think if he were around today he would probably be really interested in superfoods.

The Art of Expressing the Human Body is great because it also goes into detail about his training regime which included extensive forearm training and weight training. You Tube has some great interviews with Lee where you can see how charismatic and elegant the Master truly was.

Filed under: Children, Gluten-free, Health, Wheat-free

Tags: fitness, martial arts

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