UFC 290: The Fight Dietitian Jordan Sullivan reveals Alex Volkanovski’s surprise fight week diet
Meet The Fight Dietitian, Jordan Sullivan – the man making weight cutting safer.
Chicken wings, steak, ice cream and low sugar maple syrup.
That’s just a quick glimpse at some of the food Alex Volkanovski will eat right up until this week’s UFC 290 weigh-ins in Las Vegas.
It’s a menu that would shock most old-time fighters. It wasn’t that long ago that boxers were living off boiled chicken and nuts, essentially starving themselves before making weight.
Volkanovski’s intake might seem high, but it’s all part of an intricate plan, backed by science and pieced together by a man known as The Fight Dietitian.
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Australian dietitian and weight-cutting expert, Jordan Sullivan works with some of the best fighters on the planet and will be in Vegas this week planning and executing Volkanovski’s featherweight cut.
Sullivan’s role has three parts. First is ensuring fighters are eating well and not ballooning up in weight when not in fight camp. Second is preparing meal plans and diets to make sure fighters have enough energy for their rigorous training camps.
The final part is during fight week, when fighters must cut down to their weight limit.
For Volkanovski, that mark is 145-pounds, or 65.7kg.
And while it might seem like Volkanovski is eating a lot of “bad” foods, Sullivan says there’s a very precise method to the approach.
“Fight week is about losing water weight,” he says. “They’ll lose all this body fat during fight camp, but Volk will lose anywhere between six to eight kilos in the week leading into the fight.
“To do that, you’re not losing body fat, but you’re slowly making the body lose fluid.”
Every fighter Sullivan works with has their own tailored fight week plan, but the same broad principles apply.
“It’s about moving fluid out of different parts of the body,” he says. “The big dietary strategy we use is called carb reduction.
“It’s good to have a lot of carbs in our body, but when we store it, it’s stored with water. So, when we lose that from our bodies, we lose the physical weight of the carbohydrate, but we also lose the weight of the water attached to it.”
Other strategies include losing sodium, which draws water into the body; eliminating fibre, which is heavy as well; and water loading, which involves increasing the amount of water fighters drink, which – coupled with reduced salt – encourages the body to expel more water from the body.
“The cumulative effect of all these strategies over four or five days, is that fighters can lose about five per cent of their body weight,” Sullivan says.
“For Volk, that’s about three to three and a half kilos just from dietary strategies.”
Sullivan cooks and prepares all of his fighters’ meals during fight week, which means he “pretty much builds a kitchen in my hotel room,” with an air fryer, a portable stove, a fridge and a freezer.
He and Volkanovski’s coaches have been hyper-conscious about their fighter’s move back to featherweight after his lightweight title fight in February, but say Volkanovski is tracking perfectly.
Sullivan’s regimented approach to one of the more dangerous aspects of fighting is a relatively new phenomenon.
He had been working in the field since 2015, but started The Fight Dietician in 2018.
At the heart of Sullivan’s work is making weight cutting safer so fighters arrive at fight night in the best possible condition.
“We’ve seen people die, people go to hospital or end up in comas,” he says.
“There’s just not much information out there, so a lot of fighters are left with guesswork, but what works for one fighter isn’t necessarily going to work for another.
“What we do for Volk is different to what we do for Israel (Adesanya) and different to what we do for Dan Hooker or Kai Kara-France.
“It’s all based on body type, body composition, training schedules, habitual diet, what foods they like and don’t like, how much they sweat, and how salty their sweat is.
“There’s many, many factors that come into it and it’s about doing it in the safest way possible and in a way that doesn’t diminish performance on fight night.
“That’s the art of it.”
For Volkanovski, who loves his food and even does a “Cooking with Volk” segment on his popular YouTube channel, sourcing foods he enjoys is paramount.
“You can give him bland chicken and nuts all you like, but there’s a huge psychological side to it, and I think a big part of it is not hating the food you’re eating,” Sullivan says.
“If you can make it more enjoyable, it’s a huge psychological boost. He loves cooking wings and burgers and thighs, so we can actually incorporate that into his fight week diet, as long as it follows the rules around carbs and fibres.”
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An example of what Volkanovski will eat this week.
“Right up until weigh in day, he’ll be eating three meals and three snacks a day,” Sullivan says.
“We start with a four egg omelette and at the start of the week we’ll have a few veggies – spinach, asparagus and onions.
“We’ll freeze peanut butter so it goes like ice cream, and we’ve got low sugar chocolate chips and sugar free maple syrup. Good things that taste nice, but still follow those rules and gives him calories to get through training.
“For meals, it’s chicken wings, drumsticks, chicken thighs, salmon, steak. All the foods he likes and enjoys.
“Then he’ll have dessert of ice cream or jello.”
Originally published as UFC 290: The Fight Dietitian Jordan Sullivan reveals Alex Volkanovski’s surprise fight week diet
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