Extremely Effective Fighter’s Diet

Fighter Diet Guidelines

I am not a dietitian but a dietitian is not a fighter, nor would they know the diet of the best fighter. It goes without saying that a wrestler’s diet is one of the most important elements in wrestling, considering how many of us lose weight throughout our careers.

During the last few months of my competitive career, there were only a few days where I didn’t record my weight each morning, what I consumed, and how much I exercised. In the end, I was using my early days as a role model two or three days before a game. Despite the madness, the idea worked. Below I’ll show you some sample pages of my fighter’s diet, but it’s important to remember that everyone’s body is different. If for some reason the fighter diet that worked for me doesn’t work for you, he keeps experimenting. Keep in mind that experimentation is best done in the off-season.

Wrestler’s Diet Generalizations

First of all, in the diet of any fighter, the preferred drink must be water. It is the best way to stay hydrated. Water is like the gasoline in our car, without it we cannot run. On game days we should go from full to half tank, not half empty.

Drinking a sports drink when you can is also important in a fighter’s diet. The general rule is to drink only one if he exercised for more than an hour. The problem is that sports drinks don’t go through your system as fast as water, so you have to be careful with them. The only other drink I drank was green or white tea with no additives like sugar or milk. However, at first he was not a big fan of tea; gradually, over time, i learned to love it and i still drink at least two cups a day. The tea is high in antioxidants and a natural diuretic that helps fluids pass through your system faster.

A good guideline to follow is to stay hydrated as long as possible, as my weight reduction post pointed out. I would not start to stop drinking water until the day before the weigh-in. In high school this is very difficult since weigh-ins happen almost every other day. This is why I recommend high school wrestlers to always move up a higher weight class than they aim for. If more wrestlers focused on wrestling in high school instead of what weight class and who they have to dodge, they’d be much better prepared for the sport in college. More high school students continue to grow, and losing weight impedes that process. I made the mistake of sucking in too much weight on my wrestler’s diet in high school and it messed up my metabolism.

You should make your own food as much as possible, so you know exactly what you’re eating. There aren’t many places you can get a well-balanced meal, including advertised healthy places. Making your own food is the smartest (and cheapest) way to live when you’re on a fighter’s diet. If you live alone and have trouble in the kitchen, buy a healthy cookbook to help you get started.

Recommended foods of the fighter’s diet

Any vegetables, fruit (helps hydrate you), yogurt with live active cultures, egg whites (whole eggs are fine once in a while), walnuts, almonds, granola, oatmeal, peanut butter and jelly on whole wheat bread, chicken (baked or grilled), brown rice (not the Chinese food type), quinoa (another grain), beans (if from a can, rinse and then re-season), tuna (rinsed), shrimp (not fried ) and veggie burgers. Those foods basically made up my diet during the season excluding meals away, which our team shared after certain games.

I also limited my sodium intake as much as possible by never adding salt to anything. Destemming vegetables is the best way to cook them. The main ingredients of almost all my dishes were extra virgin olive oil, onion and garlic.

Stay away from all types of fast food when on a fighter’s diet during the season. “Diet” things like soft drinks are also not the best choice. It’s better to drink sugar and burn it off than to drink diet soda and watch TV. Of course, there are certain eating habits that we all have. Mine was frozen yogurt, teddy grahams, fruit bites, baked cheetos, and hot sauce. The hot sauce was essentially the only added sodium that I was allowed to have. Do not deny yourself your eating habits completely, otherwise you will go crazy. In our contemporary supermarkets there are many options to get your “fix”. If they are cookies, you can buy 100-calorie packets. If it’s chocolate, eat a few blocks a day. Wrestlers burn so many calories that it’s not the end of the world if you go off the wrestler’s diet once in a while.

Below is a copy of what I ate five days before a game (I number the cups of green tea I drank – too many kept me up all night) and was the fattest of the entire season on this particular day:

Sample Day 1 of the Fighter’s Diet:

Monday 02/04/08…154.8 Fat Disgrace

drank a lot of water

Chewed 2 pieces of gum throughout the day (5 calories each)

8:35 – Strawberry Oatmeal with Real Strawberries and 2% Milk

9:25- Cup of green tea 1

10:30 – Banana

12:20- PBJ with walnuts on whole wheat bread, 100 calorie Hostess cakes

12:30 p.m. – 100 calorie yogurt

12:40 pm – cup of green tea 2

2:20- some granola with a slice of my homemade healthy pumpkin pie

2:25- 7 baby carrots

3:00- cup of white tea 3

4-6:00- Practice

6:45- ½ Gatorade, 1.5 Bowls of Berry Berry Kix with 2% milk that I drank

6:55- Fruit snack 80 calories

8:30- 90 calorie granola bites

8:40 – 250 calories of Animal Crackers

10-10:40- 40 minutes of the Stairmaster at maximum speed, that is, level 20 Fat Burner Plus, (two twenty-minute intervals, with a 1-minute rest between them)

11:00 – ½ Gatorade

As you can see, he still ate a lot of food even when he was overweight. We had gone out to dinner the night before and my stomach took over my brain. It happens, the key is not to panic. Weight is one thing that can be fixed. I ate constantly on my fighter’s diet and it kept my engine running. Mondays and Tuesdays were extremely busy for me as I had work from 9-2, practice from 4-6, class from 7-10. Otherwise I would have worked out in the morning as well. The following is an example of what I ate the day before a game:

Sample Day 2 of the Fighter’s Diet:
02/14/08…Thursday…147

Cut off the water intake

8:35- Oatmeal with some nuts mixed with 2% milk

8:45 – G2 Gatorade shot

9:20- cup of green tea 1

11:00- 1 Lindt milk chocolate truffle, one orange

12:00- Balance Bar (200 calories) Pita Chips (140 calories)

12:05-Gum

12:55 – Banana

3:00 – 100 Cal Congrats, ½ PBJ on WW Bread, 100 Cal Hostess Muffins, a handful of Craisins

4-6:00- Practice

6:30- 2 kiwis, 2 oranges

6:50- Frozen yogurt with granola, handful of almonds, 90-calorie granola bites, 100-calorie congratulations, sip of Gatorade G2

9:30-10:10- 40 minutes Stairmaster to the maximum

10:35- Sip Pedalite, Sip G2 Gatorade

Now go find the best fighter diet for your body.