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Why are sumo wrestlers so big? What do they do to get like this? And what can we, and even more, non-paleo people learn from that?

Thanks!

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3 
 They like safe starches? – The Quilt Nov 12 2011 at 2:16
7 
 Nothing is safe in ridiculous quantities. Sumo wrestlers are so far outside the range of normal eating experience, even for SAD dieters. – Chickenosaurus Rex Nov 12 2011 at 3:29
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 2nd Rex. The behavior in which they purposefully engage to purposefully gain weight actually shows nothing more than support for calories, calories out. But even then, it's so extreme that we need not extrapolate anything from it to apply to more reasonable eating. – Katherine Nov 12 2011 at 15:01
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 they eat this huge stew of almost half fat, half carbs. so low protein (relative to calories), high fat/carb meals (aka the composition of snack food) which don't trigger much satiety makes it easy for them to purposefully overeat. none of them could do this with eggs – DH Nov 12 2011 at 23:11

9 Answers

12

We learn that if you stuff a human as you would a goose or duck slated for foie gras, then NAFLD and the other elements of metabolic syndrome are imminent. (cf. Schiff's Diseases of the Liver, Vol 1).

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9

Umm, if you eat like 20,000 calories a day of chankonabe, beer and white rice, you will get really fat even if you work out a lot. That is what we can learn from sumo wrestlers. And that cuts 20 odd years off your lifespan.

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3 
 I think the electrons might overkill when looking at the 20,000 calories. – Paleo2.0 Nov 12 2011 at 2:20
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 Pretty sure sumo wrestlers mostly eat tau neutrinos. – Travis Culp♦ Nov 12 2011 at 4:17
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 Spot on Travis. Rumor has it that CERN is sending two sumo wrestlers at high speeds around an elliptical track, and when they collide, the Higgs boson will finally show up. I think we can learn a lot from that. – Kamal♦ Nov 12 2011 at 6:20
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 Yeah. Electrons don't weigh very much. Higgs Bosons weigh a LOT more. Everybody knows this. – CaveRat Nov 12 2011 at 14:30
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 @Quilt, oh yeah, I was thinking exactly the same. cough wtf cough – Carly Nov 12 2011 at 16:16
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7

I am skeptical that intentional overfeeding tells us much about why people become obese. Many people say the real question is "why" do people overeat. There is no such question with sumo wrestlers.

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well it does tell us that to get a man fat you feed them a whole lot of................. – JayJay Nov 12 2011 at 2:47
and yes there probably are other ways to get large...but what is the recognized easiest way? – JayJay Nov 12 2011 at 2:48
1

We learn that that adult diaper thing they wear is somewhat gross and probably not a keepsake that a sumo fan would want.

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1

According to "What I Eat" by Menzel and D'Alusio (pretty good book btw), the sumo wrestler they encountered (6'2" 400lbs) ate 3500 calories a day.

They list his meals as follows:

Lunch: fried chicken 6.2 oz, chanko nabe stew with pork (2) 1.7 lb, vegetable tempura 2.7 oz, cabbage, egg, and stewed chicken 4.5oz, white rice 14.3oz

Dinner: grilled mackerel 3.5oz, scrambled egg with chives 2.3 oz, tuna, somen noodles, cucumber, onion in broth 1lb, white radish and chicken in broth 7.6oz, miso soup with chives 10.9oz, white rice 15.1oz, white radish 1.8oz, pickled cucumber 1.3oz

Throughout the day: bottled coffee 1.3qt, barley tea 2.1qt, bottled water 1.6gal

Doesn't really make sense to me given how active they are, but that's what they said. I would wager that some calories were unaccounted for or that the observation affected the reported amounts or something.

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blogitjapan.com/sumo-wrestler-food AND web-japan.org/kidsweb/virtual/sumo/sumo04.html – Anonymous Chump Nov 12 2011 at 23:00
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 So what can we learn from sumo wrestlers? According to this post, we can learn to be truthful in accounting for what we eat. If the sumo wrestler in question ate just one additional ice cream cake per day, that would put him at his listed weight. That's all it takes. – Kamal♦ Nov 12 2011 at 23:03
Maybe if that cake is about 1000kcal. – Travis Culp♦ Nov 12 2011 at 23:26
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 That's easy. 1000kcal is less than a third of a small ice cream cake. See Coldstone's "Cheesecake Named Desire" for more information...coldstonecreamery.com/assets/pdf/nutrition/… – Kamal♦ Nov 12 2011 at 23:51
I agree that 3500 kcal seems really low for someone that size. People suck at counting calories though... You can put 3500 kcal away in a single meal: and it's called thanksgiving. – conciliator Nov 13 2011 at 0:36
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Safe starches still can equate to HUGE gains!

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bingo.......... – The Quilt Nov 12 2011 at 2:18
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 OVEREATING ANYTHING leads to huge gains. – luckybastard♦ Nov 12 2011 at 3:21
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 Really LB? Are you telling me that if I eat 10,000 calories worth of fat every day I'm going to put on weight?? 'Tis madness, madness I tell you. – Carly Nov 12 2011 at 16:23
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Japan = a very strange culture. On the one hand, they are early adapters and promoters of technology and are extremely successful traders. On the other hand, Sumos, in 2011, do not train with weights, avail themselves of modern PEDs, nutrition, supplements, compete with non-Japanese, etc.

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do you know that sumo wrestlers have extremely high incidence of bone fractures.....on par with that of post menopausal asian women. – The Quilt Nov 12 2011 at 5:10
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 You mean out of competition? Poor guys. Get them some D3, Test, Deca and HGH! – Daniel Kirsner Nov 12 2011 at 6:16
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What we can learn is to plant our feet squarely and stomp. Seriously: I never see this without feeling their grounding, resoundingly, in my very being.

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-3

We learn Gary Taubes was spot on

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3 
 Spot on about what? – Matt Mar 23 2011 at 10:33
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 Insulin is not causing them to overeat. There is no reverse direction of thermodynamic causality here. They are force-feeding a buttload of "calories in". – Paleo2.0 Nov 12 2011 at 2:31
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 Do we? I thought we learn that if you stuff yourself silly with high caloric food all day and night you are probably going to put on some weight. No? – Carly Nov 12 2011 at 16:20
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 And we learn that you cannot mention leptin (or electrons) once and still be “spot on” in Quilt’s ever changing reality distortion field… – Paleo2.0 Nov 12 2011 at 23:04
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 Paleo2.0, you seem to misunderstand....... quantum resonances..... leptin receptors..... oh god they're catching on, what do I tell them?... you're not my patient, I'm not going to give you free advice. – conciliator Nov 13 2011 at 0:46
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