Mikey Musumeci has revealed the origins of his crazy diet.
Five-time IBJJF black belt world champion Musumeci gained popularity outside the mat with his strict diet of eating only pizza and pasta. Musumeci is the first American to win more than one IBJJF World title at black belt winning four gi competitions and one no-gi tournament.
BJJ champ Mikey Musumeci opens up on only eating pizza & pasta
In an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, Mikey Musumeci talked about the origins of his diet and how he developed his current eating habits.
“Every night I eat like this. So how this started was I’d been cutting weight and dieting my whole life and you almost develop an eating disorder from always dieting and cutting the weight for so many years of your life right, it just naturally happens. I would binge eat, I would starve, it was very unhealthy, the way I would live.”
“I’d always be cutting like five pounds, ten pounds, nothing crazy but I’ve done crazy cuts also. You just die from those also. But all that time just messes up your brain where you never feel like you’re satisfied, and you’re never full. That part of your brain that says, ‘oh you’re full stop eating,’ I stopped having from cutting weight so much.
“What I started doing was intermittent fasting. I would just not eat during the day because honestly, I don’t like eating before training. I feel bloated when I eat so I would just eat at night. But I started just eating the foods I love. I’m Italian so I grew up just eating pizza and pasta… for dessert I’ll eat a pint of Acai and my weight would be lighter doing this diet than eating like no carbs and all these things.”
Musumeci claims it’s worked wonders for him
When asked whether having such an extreme diet affected his performance, Musumeci stated that it actually benefitted him.
“How I see it is I have to earn the food at night, training all day is like me working for the food at night. Like how people used to hunt and gather for food.
“That’s my mentality and my best performance in gi world was in December, I had my best performance ever and it was on that diet. I made 125 lb easy.”
Musumeci had recently been victorious in his ONE Championship debut winning a $50k bonus with a finish of Masakazu Imanari.
