MMA is one of the most grueling and physically intensive sports on Earth. It’s as close as we get to modern-day gladiator fights; two people pitted against each other over 15-25 minutes in hand-to-hand combat, sometimes with dire consequences for the loser.
So it stands to reason that MMA fighters need to pay as much attention to their diet as anyone. A fighter has to be in top physical shape, as they don’t want to risk coming up against a faster or stronger opponent in better condition.
Even if you don’t have any desire to get punched in the face for sport, anyone interested in optimizing their body for performance – and aesthetics – can take notes from how MMA fighters eat on a daily basis.
Whether you’re an aspiring fighter, or just want the physique of one, here’s a look at how to eat like an MMA fighter.
Start Your Day with a Healthy Breakfast
While intermittent fasting and skipping breakfast is a growing trend today (and to be fair, it works for some, depending on your fitness goals), to be like a pro fighter, you need to start your day off with a decent breakfast.
Getting the physique of an MMA fighter takes two things – commitment to diet, and training. If you’re going to train hard, you first need to make sure your body has enough energy, which you’re going to get from food.
A healthy breakfast gives your body the clean energy it needs to go and crush it – whether that be 10 rounds of sparring, lifting, cardio, or anything else.
As an added bonus, starting your day with the positive momentum of a healthy breakfast gets you in the mindset to eat right for the rest of the day, and lessens the chance you’ll succumb to cravings and derail your diet plan.
Eat Whole Foods
The second tip is to make sure the meals you eat consist of whole foods, not processed.
“Whole foods” means anything that is more or less the same as its natural state when you eat it. For example, if you eat a banana, you’re eating it in the same form as it was when it was grown and picked.
It hasn’t been altered, and there haven’t been any unwanted extra ingredients added that can do you harm.
The opposite of whole foods are processed or refined foods. These generally have a list of difficult-to-pronounce ingredients on the back of the package, and in most cases are full of empty calories.
Good whole foods to focus on are fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and lean meats.
Get Enough Protein
For an MMA fighter, or any athlete, protein is vital. If you’re going to train hard, your body needs the necessary nutrients to help it recover and rebuild the muscle damage from training. And that means protein, protein, protein.
Proteins are the building blocks of muscle fibers and connective tissue, and are essential for muscle growth. Without adequate protein intake, you’ll find it takes a long time to recover after a workout, and you won’t get the lean, ripped build you’re looking for.
The recommended daily protein intake for a sedentary person is 0.8 grams per kg of body weight. But athletes – fighters especially – require more protein, and should focus on getting between 1.2 and 2 grams of protein per kg.
Don’t Skip Carbs
Since somewhere around the 1990s, low-carb diets became a big craze. It got to the point where the average person now thinks that low-carb = healthy, and carbs of any kind are bad for you.
While it’s true that some high-carb, processed foods aren’t good for you, and a high-carb diet with little physical activity will result in weight gain, carbs are vital for athletes. Carbohydrates are a great source of energy, which helps an athlete power through a workout or training session.
If you want to train hard and get the build of an MMA fighter, carbs are a must. Just focus on clean, complex carbohydrates rather than carbs from processed foods, to ensure you get clean energy without a crash.
Supplement Your Diet
By committing to a whole foods diet, you’re well on the right track nutritionally. You’re naturally going to get a lot of protein in your diet, as well as clean, complex carbohydrates.
But to train like a fighter, a regular diet with three balanced meals is not enough. You need an above average protein intake, as well as a ton of calories and nutrients each day to support a tough training regimen. Which means supplementation is a must.
Almost any fighter you talk to will say they take a daily protein shake (often more than once a day).
This vanilla protein shake from Naked Nutrition is a clean product without artificial sweeteners and additives. It’s a great option, either as a post-training supplement or a protein top-up after meals.
Hydrate
Finally, while it’s not specifically about how you eat, a vital part of any fighter’s nutrition is proper hydration.
Intense training means an intense sweat, which means you lose a lot of electrolytes throughout the course of your training session. If these aren’t replaced, you can expect extremely low energy levels, and fatigue that can last a long time – even several days.
It’s essential to replace the fluids you lose during a workout or sparring session by drinking a lot of water throughout the day. You also need to ensure you replace the lost electrolytes – minerals like sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium, which are contained in high levels in bodily fluids like sweat.
Clean sports drinks (avoid those with added sugar), and nutrient-rich foods like bananas, seeds, nuts and leafy greens are a great way to keep your electrolytes topped up.
Final Thoughts
No one works harder to keep their body in peak condition than an MMA fighter. Not only do they need to optimize their body for performance in order to not get knocked out, in most cases fighters need to maintain a very precise weight, based on the weight limit of their fight.
These are just a couple of reasons why an MMA fighter’s diet is a great one to use as a model for your own. Even the average person will find a performance boost in the gym by sticking to a whole foods, high-protein diet, with sufficient carbs and optimal hydration.
And getting your diet on track is half the battle of building the body of your dreams.
