MMAWLS Blog

I decided to go with the name “MMA Weight Loss Secrets” because it created a differentiator for me. My expertise is in weight loss for combat sports that have weight classes, so I wanted to leverage that knowledge, but the knowledge itself is highly transferable to all people who want to lose weight. The only difference between your neighbour Suzie losing weight to get healthy and your nephew Jimmy the wrestler losing weight for National’s is the final sprint to the weigh-in. MMA is really gaining mainstream traction and becoming very popular, so not only are there more people who need to learn this, but more people are seeing what MMA competitors do and wondering how they do it.

The “secret” isn’t really a secret. Instead, it is knowledge that is not widely disseminated. What’s really funny is there is another group of people who use the same techniques: Models. Underwear and swimsuit models will use the same techniques as combat sports athletes to look the way they do. So, how do they do it?

First they lose body fat, then they lose water, and they lose a lot of water. That’s it: “the secret”.

This is how it’s done: They will get down to the point where they have either essential body fat or just a small percentage above that. For men, essential body fat is 3%, for women, it is 10%. Then, 24 hours before the weigh-in (or the photo shoot), they will cut their water intake in half. Then, 8 to 12 hours before the shoot or weigh in, they will cut out all water, and sweat out whatever water they can. Once they get to their target weight, they will only stay there for a few hours or minutes, then, after the weigh-in or the photo-shoot, they will replenish all the weight they lost. Some people will even go on intravenous to replenish water and electrolytes as quickly as possible.

Before reading further, I need to state the standard disclaimer: I am not a doctor, do not consider anything in this article as medical advice. There are now two questions: 1) How do you get down to essential body fat? 2) How do you lose all that water? My book is all about cutting body fat. So go buy that if you haven’t already to learn that information. This post is about losing the water.

I’m not a doctor, I’m just describing my experiences. Consult a doctor before trying any of this yourself. Water loss as a form of weight loss must be done very carefully because your body absolutely needs water. Also, it is only a temporary form of weight loss. 24 hours without water and your kidneys will shut down. When your kidneys shut down, you will probably die. But, if you cut out your water correctly, you will have no problems. Your body evolved to endure the hardships of minimal water intake, and even no water for a short period of time. Think about this: If you get 8 or even 12 hours of straight sleep, how often did you get up and have a drink of water? Did you die?

So, the answer to the question “How do they lose that water?” is, they sweat it out. The easiest way to sweat it out is in a sauna. They sit in a sauna, for several hours, until the water is gone. They may even wear a sauna suit and possibly exercise while in the sauna. Some people know exactly how long they have to sit in the sauna to lose a pound of water. I used to bring a stationary bike into the sauna. The sauna was set between 35C and 40C, I had a plastic sauna suit, and I rode the stationary bike. It didn’t take me long to lose that water. I knew that cracking a good sweat was .2Kg and would take 20 minutes, then every 10 minutes after that was another .2Kg. I’d check the clock, calculate how long I needed, then do it. I would not check my weight again until I knew I was where I needed to be. That first 20 minutes was hard, so I wanted to make sure of where I was and how much I needed to drop before I went in. Also, to weigh in, you need to be dry and not sweating, so it was costly time wise to make a mistake. If you miscalculated, you need to put your cold wet clothes back on before heading into the sauna again. Overall, I could expect to lose 1KG per hour in the sauna. One final problem: You can’t spend 4 straight hours in the sauna or you’ll overheat. Again, I’m not a doctor, and I don’t recommend this. I’m just conveying information on how people do this.

Post weigh in consists of replenishing your water and electrolytes. Pedialyte, Gatorade, Powerade, and diluted fruit juice are all good for this. You want to drink slowly. Take a sip, wait 20 seconds, take a sip. Do this until you have drank as much water as you lost. If you are under a doctor’s supervision and whatever activity/sport you’re doing allows intravenous recovery, then I guess you can, but nearly all sports consider this “Performance Enhancing” and have outlawed it, so, if you’re an athlete, it could be called cheating.

Once most of your water has been replenished, you can start eating. Your meal plan will depend on when your competition is, if you’re an athlete. Fats and proteins digest more slowly that carbohydrates. If you have less than 12 hours before competing, you will want to eat high carbohydrate food. If you sleep overnight, you can add some protein and fats to the meal. If you did everything correctly, the short term water loss will not affect you, and your glycogen stores should be adequate for competition, although, you will still need to continue eating throughout the competition.

Do you want help with your nutrition and weight goals so you can be the best possible you? Imagine the feeling you get when your goals are met. We can help you achieve that. As nutrition and weight cut coaches, we have done that already for many people. Go here for a free nutritional analysis to get started.

Everybody knows we need to recover from a weight cut. But not everybody knows how to do this the right way. In this blog post, we’re going to learn a very important part of the weight cut process: Eating for recovery. During recovery, drinking water is very important too, we combine water with the right amounts of glucose and fructose and time our consumption of it all in order to fully recover from the weight cut. 

During the weight cut, you will have completely depleted your glycogen stores and eliminated a great deal of water. Your body stores carbohydrates in your muscles, and during the cut, you will have used up all that energy and provided no way for the body to replenish so now we have to do that. There is some science stuff you have to keep in mind:

1. Usually, your body can only process about 60g of carbs per hour
2. You need to replenish up to 400g of carbs
3. You will only have anywhere from 4 to 24 hours to do that
4. After about 4 hours of constant/y consuming carbs, your body slows down absorption and eventually only 50% of the carbs will be digested.

Doing the math, we start out at 60g/hr, so in the first 4 hours, we only consume 240g, and then for the next 5 hours, we only consume at 30g/hr, to get the last 180g. This means a total of 9 hours of recovery. At first glance, you will spend an entire evening consuming carbs at a slow measured rate and may have to get up early on competition day and finish. If you compete on the same day as your weigh-in, you won’t be able to recover in time.

But there is a way to make it happen faster. Both glucose and fructose are converted into glycogen. Additionally, they are digested in different parts of the intestine, so if you are consuming just glucose and fructose at the same time, you could digest up to 102g/hour.

• 400g at 102g/hr means a total of 4 hours ⇒ success, although it still means constant carb consumption for 4 hours

Now we have to consider the best way to do this. The answer to that includes water. You have just finished depleting a lot of water and all your glycogen. Restore them both at the same time. Your body can only process 1L of water per hour, so mix 60g of glucose and 60g of fructose in 1L of water, and drink that over the course of 1 hour. Do this 4 times. You should have a good percentage of your water and all your glycogen restored. Pre-mark a see through or translucent  jug with 60 intervals, set a one minute timer on your phone, drink to the next interval mark at each one minute alarm. You will need discipline at this point to not guzzle down the fluid. Faster than an hour or slower than an hour are suboptimal. Make sure to eat some fats and proteins while you're drinking your recovery drink. 

So the last question to answer is where to get liquid fructose and liquid glucose?

• Coconut water has about 40g/L of fructose
• Honey has about 1g/g of fructose (almost pure fructose)
• Dextrose powder provides 27g of glucose in a 30g scoop

One option is to mix 1/2L of coconut water, a 1/2L of water, , 40g of honey, and 2 1/5 30g scoops of dextrose powder, then take an hour to drink it. Do this four times, and make sure to take an hour to drink it each time. Another option is to mix 60g of honey in 1L of water and add 2 ⅕ scoops of dextrose powder.

You might want to experiment with this recipe and make sure the coconut water has no adverse reactions, and possibly add some sort of flavoring before you try to drink this in real life. Do these experiments months before competition so you know ahead of time exactly what you like and can handle.

Fructose, glucose, and water are your recovery friends. Use 4 full hours to consume 4L of water, 240g of fructose, and 240g of glucose. We go a bit over to ensure full replenishment in 4 hours.

One last thing: I’m not a doctor, so please consult with your doctor first, and if you have any issues such as diabetes, kidney, or liver disease, you really need to be careful with this.

Do you want help with your nutrition and weight goals so you can be the best possible you? Imagine the feeling you get when your goals are met. We can help you achieve that. As nutrition and weight cut coaches, we have done that already for many people. Go here for a free nutritional analysis to get started.

So how do guys like George St. Pierre and Connor McGregor drop 20Kg for a weigh in?  How can those male underwear models look the way they do?  How does any model do it?  What about body builders that can show every single little muscle fibre?  Many of us have heard of athletes can drop huge amounts of weight for a competition. How do they do it?  What is their secret?

The secret is they get down to the lowest possible body fat composition, and then dehydrate themselves.  In fact, they lose almost all of that weight in water and gain it all right back again.  It takes them less than 12 hours to dehydrate, so there is minimal damage to your body.  Your body has evolved to be able to cope with that kind of dehydration for a short period of time, as long as it rehydrates very soon and very quickly after dehydrating.  I don’t recommend this method of weight loss because it is not sustainable and it is not long term viable.  In addition, when you do it wrong, you can expect significant muscle loss and other health problems.  Kidney failure occurs after 24 hours with no water, death soon after.  I’m not a doctor, so go talk to your doctor before attempting anything like that.

A few days before a weigh-in, a male athlete or model will drop from 8% body fat to 3%.  This is about the absolute minimum a body will go to.  Women have significantly higher body fat limits.  Immediately after weigh ins, the photo shoot, or competition, they will begin the rehydration process, as well as begin consuming food calories.  They will never stay dehydrated for longer than 12 hours, and will not stay at 3% (12% for women) body fat for longer than a day or two.  Rehydration techniques for some people will include an actual IV drip which is illegal in UFC now, but still allowed in some jurisdictions.

The chart below provides some guidelines for fat percentages in men and women:

High performance athletes who need to weigh in will drop to about 3% body fat (for men, women will drop to about 12%) about 24 hours before weigh ins and be fully hydrated.  Then they will reduce water for 12 hours, and begin depleting their water reserves.  With 12 hours remaining, they will eliminate water, and continue to deplete water until they have reached their target weight.

You may be asking now, “How do you deplete water?”  It’s called a sauna.  Crank up the heat and sit in the sauna.  Some people can lose as much as 5 lbs an hour in the sauna.  Some people know exactly how much they lose per hour, so they can time it to the minute.  For example, they will know they can lose 20lbs, at 4lbs per hour, in 5 hours.  They may take a 5 minute break every 30 minutes to regroup.

Bodybuilders walk around at about 20% body fat.  Other high performance athletes and models walk around at between 7% and 10% body fat (women 15% to 19%).  If you’re looking at anorexic people, they need help and are obvious to spot.  The reality is, that six pack striated look is very short term and unsustainable.  The people you see in the magazines cannot and do not stay there.  Magazines provide PhotoShop improvements as well, which don’t happen in real life.  Makeup artists know how to spray on the muscles, and lighting experts know just the right way to shine a light.  What you see in a magazine or on the internet is usually just an illusion.  In addition, we’re looking at the top 1% population with respect to will, ability, and appearance.

That's the secret.

So what about you?  What can you hope to expect?  What have you set as a goal?  Do you have 3% body fat as a goal?  Are you expecting to lose 50lbs in one week?  I hope not.  No one can walk around every day at 3% and no one can safely lose 50lbs in one week.  Maintaining 8% to 10% body fat is an achievable goal for men, and 16%-18% is achievable for women.  Losing about 1KG of body fat per week is probably a good goal, but it really depends on how much body fat you already have.  The lower the body fat, the more food related sacrifices you need to make.  You need to balance your healthy love of food with your body goals.

Do you participate in a combat sport that requires a weigh in?  Will your weight target require you to lose muscle mass?  Are you willing to lose muscle mass to achieve your weight goal?  How much time do you have for recovery?  Does your sport allow IV drip recovery?  There is actually a formula for calculating how much weight you can lose without losing muscle mass.  You need to balance your sport goals with what your body will actually let you achieve, and there are many factors to consider.

Do you want help with your nutrition and weight goals so you can be the best possible you? Imagine the feeling you get when your goals are met. We can help you achieve that. As nutrition and weight cut coaches, we have done that already for many people. Go here for a free nutritional analysis to get started.