Before you haul your New Year's resolutions to the gym, take stock of what you're eating. Local fitness gurus are becoming menu planners, they tell Mike Peters, because diet can be the first step to that beach body.

Garry Wang is a cheerful, confident fitness coach who never thought he'd go back to the days when he was chubby - an 11-year-old who felt left out of school sports and other activities.

"My brother was lean - the class athlete, he got the girls," says the Chinese-Australian entrepreneur, now 26. Wang started going to a local gym in Sydney and pumping iron, setting out on a path that would ultimately take him to competitive bodybuilding. Two years ago, having relocated to his parents' homeland, he entered a provincial contest in Shandong.

"That meant 28 weeks of hard work and nothing but broccoli, chicken and brown rice," he says with a grimace. One thing that taught him, however, was the importance of diet as well as exercise for overall fitness. After the muscle competition (he came in second), he and his wife started devising menus that were more diverse but delivered a calculated balance of carbohydrates, protein and fat.

His gym mates noticed the prepared meals he was bringing to the gym, he says, and began asking: "Hey, can your wife make lunches for us, too?"

Wang laughed at first, but an idea was born, and soon he was catering meals "for half the gym". Thanks mostly to word of mouth from his clients and friends, his food and fitness company, Living Bigg, has been delivering up to 200 meals a day in a 3-kilometer radius of Beijing's Sanlitun area - prompting a recent move to a big commercial kitchen.

"As most people know these days, it's 60 percent diet, 40 percent exercise," Wang says, "so we hope to educate our customers on the importance of both".

To help do that, Wang recently decided to channel his inner 11-year-old - that fat kid from his youth - to produce a video documentary about diet and health.

"I ate nothing but junk food for 12 weeks, and gained 20 kilograms," he says. "By the end, I weighed 100 kg, and most of the gain was around my middle. People would say, 'But you don't really look fat,' and then I'd pull up my shirt and they'd go: 'Omigod!'"

To demonstrate the impact of proper nutrition, Wang then began eating a healthy diet, the sorts of meals he'd been preparing for his clients anyway. Twelve weeks later, he was back down to 80 kilos, his ballooned waist shrinking from almost 37 inches back to 31.

Importantly, he stayed on the same gym routine during both the unhealthy and healthy eating periods, working out five or six times per week for an intense 90 minutes. The only variable was his food intake.

Recent trend

Wang isn't the only entrepreneur who's found healthy food and exercise to have parallel business potential. Fitness programs across China's big cities, following a trend in the West, have teamed up with like-minded restaurants to match workouts with calorie intake, and balance carbohydrates, proteins and fats - whether the goal is bulking up or shedding pounds.

"If you want to lose weight," says fitness coach Matin Zamani, who has teamed up with Beijing's Factory by Salt for prepared and delivered meals, "the general rule is to consume 400-500 fewer calories than you burn every day. So someone who works out two times a week needs a different menu plan than someone who goes to the gym every day."

The Japanese restaurant Obentos, which launched four years ago with a focus on healthy eating, has lately been feeding participants in a range of fitness programs, from get-in-shape bootcamps and Heyrobics meet-ups to yoga sessions. Over the past 18 months, the most intense partnership has been with Fight Camp, four weeks of "lung-busting, grueling workouts" that co-founder Rory Van Den Berg and his training team combine with a package of local discounts that include 15 percent off Obentos meals. These can be delivered when pre-ordered to the Capital Training Center gym after morning and evening sweat sessions.

"Fight Camp aims to be holistic in that we also try to take care of the diet," says Van Der Berg.

Numbers game

A typical meal, a bento box with sake-steamed chicken in ginger ponzu sauce, lotus root, egg roll, kale gomaae and spicy bean sprouts, runs 58 yuan ($8.80) before the discount. It adds up to 322 calories, with 39 grams of protein, 11 grams of fat and 18 grams of carbs. You can do the math on every meal from Obentos as it includes this data on all menu items, listed in categories from breakfasts and bento boxes, salads and grains, noodles and soups to fruit juices and smoothies. A dumbell icon indicates the item is "high-protein", while plates that are "light", "low-carb", "low fat", "omega 3" and "vegetarian" are also flagged.

Similarly, Beijing's Tribe restaurant has recently parlayed an award-winning healthy menu into Tribe Nutrition, a small storefront next to the B-Active gym in Sanlitun Soho. The gym offers fitness programs paired with a daily menu from the restaurant.

Routine is important, says Living Bigg's Wang.

"The trick for me is to be strict about food Monday to Thursday, then enjoy myself - without going crazy - over the weekend. That means eating pretty much what I want Friday to Sunday, but always in moderation."

Contact the writer at michaelpeters@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 01/19/2016 page19)