UFC Fighter Ditches Carbs — Gets Fitter Than Ever | Kajan Johnson

weight cutting. So, we manipulate carbohydrates and water for weight cutting essentially. And now Dan's carbohydrates, I was wondering if you had any insight on how to manipulate water in in a similar way or if you've worked with anybody that has. It's um well, the thing is you'll cut out a lot of your water weight and so you'll be pretty dry all the time. you know, I mean, you could drink less water and all that sort of stuff and actually get fully dehydrated, but you know, you won't be retaining water, you know, and so, you know, you you'll you'll notice that when you check your weight, it's much more consistent. It's much more consistent. So, as long as you know, you pee in the morning, you hop on the scale, it's going to be pretty damn similar. You're not going to have these big ups and downs and all that sort of stuff. It's going to be pretty pretty steady. Um, you'll you'll naturally shred down, right? And especially with the amount of training that you're doing, most people actually find the difficult part is keeping on the weight and um you know I had Yeah. Yeah. So you know it's like that's just you got to eat more meat, you got to eat more meat. Okay. Well, what's the other side? Don't eat enough meat. You know, so if you don't eat enough meat, you're not going to be able to get the muscle hypertrophy. You're going to body's going to have to say, "Okay, well, we can't maintain this this this whole musculature." And you're going to slim down a bit, but you're going to get super damn lean. You're not going to catabolize your muscles until you actually run out of fat. But if you're not like necessarily using them as much, you won't um you they won't just need to be built up. You know, Ryan Talbot, he ran into that. He was losing too much weight. We, you know, figured out, okay, you just need to find more meals. You need to stick in more meals. Okay, you have a morning training, eat straight after that. You don't have a morning training, eat breakfast. Then you have 5 hour gap until your next training. That's, you know, five hours sort of a minimum on what you want as as far as a gap in meals and between training a meal and training and then you know eat a lot after that and you just got to get these meals in. You just got to get that food in because the amount that he was training he was just losing weight. Well then when he figured out how to get enough food in all of a sudden now he's got the opposite problem. He's putting on too much muscle you know which is usually not a problem you know that's that's usually a good problem to have but he's the athlete. He's got to go fast. He's got to jump high. He's got to have a pull vault over like a big ass bar. So, he's actually got to stay, you know, a bit, you know, and he was already lean. He had no fat. He was just getting jacked, you know, he's just getting super ripped, right? And so, he actually had to stop lifting weights as much. He had to pull back on the weights because the more weights he lifted, more muscle he gained. It was just like, you know, there's a direct relationship. So, you know, that's the thing. You can you can pull back a bit on the on the weights. focus more on the concentric versus the eccentric, right? Because like you were saying, you're doing more eccentric work when you're doing that. So people don't know, concentric is when you're you're contracting the muscle. And then the eccentric is when you're sort of letting it down sort of slow and these actin fibers and the sarcimeirs is the muscle unit in your in the cells. They sort of have these little hooks that sort of have these chemical bonding sort of stick and then they sort of go like this and they and they go like that and that's how they contract, right? If you stretch, it actually pulls all those out. And then there's not really many touching there. So when you contract, it's a weaker contraction instead of up here and you have 80% of these contract. Boom. It's a huge contraction. But then when you're doing the eccentric, they're still bound, but you're elongating the muscle and actually starts tearing it and damaging it. That's why you get that muscle damage. You get more soreness, except we don't. And um and but you also get more hypertrophy, right? So if you do the concentric right? Where you just do like um this is one this is one of the things this is one one of the top trainers trained some of the top uh NFL prospects and he works with like at least back in the day he worked with eight the top eight NFL prospects had to be a top prospect he only worked with you know you know blue chip sort of guys right hey everyone really happy to announce a new sponsor for the show and for everybody down in Australia Stockman Stakes who are delivering high quality grass-fed and finished pasture-raised beef and other meats flash frozen and vacuum sealed to your door. Something I've been enjoying a lot of myself recently as well. They also have a great range of specialty items such as highfat keto mints and carnivore beef and organs mints with liver, kidneys, and beef heart as well. So, use code chaffy today for a free order of beef mints or another specialty gift along with your order at stockmanstakes.com.au and I'll see you over there. Thanks, guys. He he did these things with strength to power ratio. get your strength up, strength up, strength up, strength up, and keep your weight down, you go faster. That's all there is to it. And he was dropping guys 40 times by like half a second. It was like I I forget the quarterback's name, but there's a quarterback that had a five second flat 40. Dropped a quarterback down to 4.5 40 time. Just just balling ass, right? And um so one of the main things he did was a hexar deadlift that more mimic the natural explosive motion that you do when you're running when you're sprinting. And it was only the concentric. So you just lift it up and you drop it. Lift it up, drop it. So you wouldn't have that breakdown in the tissue. You could do it more often. You had less muscle damage, less less recovery time needed. You could do it more often during the week. And you got stronger, but you didn't get bulkier, right? So you didn't put on more weight. and your weight to and your strength to weight ratio got better and better and better. So you can do things like that. Like if you're lifting weights, you want you want to focus on the concentric. So bench press, you push it up, people sort of help you bring it down and then you're just pushing it up and then sort of lie down, pushing it up, sort of thing like that. Squat, same sort of thing. Um it's it's a bit of a pain in the ass. You can do it with weight with things. You can drop the weights. That's easy, you know? Yeah, you just drop them. Yeah, like the Olympic weights. Yeah. you lift them up, you drop them down, so you don't, you know, go down. So that's that's a way that you sort of a sneaky way to get the strength but not get the bulk and the weight. Um, you know, Yeah. And so there's um um I don't know if you know this guy, guy Tyson Pedro, he's in he was in UFC for a while. He's bigger dude, sort of like 200 lb sort of um and he played Yeah, that's all right. I watched it. I know techniques. I I look at people and I'm just looking at the technique that they're doing and the method and the strategy. I don't really like care who they are, you know. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. So, he did um he was a professional rugby player as well. He played rugby league in League in Australia and he went and started um doing fighting MMA. Now, he just switched into boxing and he went and he went carnivore as well and was just getting absolutely shredded. And um and he was saying he's like, "Hey, how do I keep on weight?" Like, "Fuck, I'm losing too much weight." You know, and then it was like again, you're just adding in the eating time. But I was just like, you know, are you really worried about losing weight? Like I mean, just maybe just go down a couple weight classes and just destroy people, you know, and um you know, this may this may be a blessing in disguise, you know, if you just down, you know, strength is going to stay. So, you know, it's uh it depends on what you're doing, but you know, depending on how hard you're working, I mean, you're you're training so hard that if you if you don't eat enough, your body is going to just sort of stay a bit. you're going to sort of just cut lose a bit of weight. Um, and so you can adjust you can just adjust that if you if you don't want to go too much like you need this energy for your body, you know, but you're going to shred up naturally. You're probably not going to have too much of a problem, you know, making weight because you're you're going to be lean as [ __ ] all the time. And honestly, I I'm crazy lean now. Like it's like people trip out now. like when I like have to change my shirt or something like that in the gym and I take my shirt off or like I'll go to fights and like I'm cornering one of my fighters or whatever and I I take my shirt off to put my other my my training gear on to like help warm them up or whatever and people are like what are you fighting? Like are you coming out of retirement? Like like you're more shredded than you were in in fight shape in fight camp like the day before your fight. Like it's it's wild, man. It's wild. And I'm I was lifting then when I was fighting and I'm I just started like like two weeks ago just started lifting again. So I'm really excited to see what happens now, right? Because I'm really low body fat. Like very low body fat already. I'm a I'm I'm I burn quite fast, right? Like I I'm I have a high metabolism. I always have had a high metabolism. It's never been really an issue for me to lose weight. Although I could always kind of gain weight as well if I would eat a lot or if I would work out really hard. Like I I can grow pretty fast, I can lose pretty fast. So, um yeah, I think it's I I I don't foresee it being a huge issue with cutting weight. Like I think that because now I have no carbohydrates, like the water is going to leave my system faster. So normally we do like the process is like okay you're eating your regular carbohydrates and then you're water loading right so you're you're drinking like eight 8 and 1/2 liters of water a day right for the last little bit you kind of work up to that but like the last like week or so you're eating like you're drinking like eight and a half liters of water a day and then all of a sudden you cut your carbs you cut your salt and then uh and then you like stop drinking water right and you start just peeing out everything. So, I I'm I'm going to try to do the same process. I'm just going to like I obviously there's no carbs. Um but I think it'll still act very similar. Like as long as I'm water loading heavily and teaching my body that there's always water to get rid of, then as soon as I stop drinking water, especially with having uh having no carbs to to hold it at all and my body just not being used to holding it, it's just gonna gone. And then because I'm a little bit smaller, like I've been thinking like maybe I can even fight at a lower weight class. It could be possible. Unfortunately, weight classes are like 10 lbs difference, right? Like mostly some are 15, but like I I've always fought at 155 pounds and now it would be like maybe I can make 45. Like there's a lot of guys that I see that are 45ers that are bigger than me. And if I could get to that weight, bro, people aren't gonna touch me because I got real long arms. You're gonna be way over there, buddy. But yeah, I'm really I'm really interested to see uh to see how it works because that's one of the one of the things that that we just don't know yet as as MMA fighters, and I'm sure some do that are that are doing it. Like obviously they have to cut weight. Um but it's not anything that anybody's talking about on YouTube, like how do you cut weight on carnivore? the diet's going to change things a little bit. It's going to be interesting to see. Hopefully, we can film it and uh and show everybody what's going on. Yeah, definitely. And you the thing is too is that you'll see you don't actually even need to sort of coers your body into losing water weight and things like that. You just won't retain it. And so you you'll get down you'll get down to a weight and you could, you know, you just aim aim for that weight now. just do it like sort of a slow progression and just see where you want to get to and and you'll get there, you know, and um you know, do it like a like a bodybuilder does where it's just a slow progression, you know, over time, you know, they're just sort of, you know, they're just working towards a goal, you know, and because you're not going to be, you know, you're not eating carbs, you're not and plants and things like that. So, you're not going to be retaining water. I mean, just plants as vegetables and things like that. Like I was retaining like I don't know 10 pounds 15 pounds of water weight just from just from eating, you know, spinach, broccoli, and kale, you know, and my my water weight would fluctuate 5 10 pounds a day. Like and I was I was ketogenic. I wasn't eating any carbs, not because I was I was doing keto, but just because like I I noticed that anytime I had like bread or anything with carbs, my back hurt like hurt. And so I was just like, "All right, well, I'm not doing that." for like days, you know, it' be like three, four days. My back would hurt and I'm like, "All right, well, I'm just not going to eat that crap anymore." Wow. And uh yeah, so then I dropped just the vegetables and and I dropped 23 lbs in 10 days and it was just all water weight. It looked like I'd just taken like diuretics. I just like deflated, you know, over the course of two weeks. It someone squeezed me out like a rag or something like that. And uh I'm sure I lost some fat, too, but I think a lot of it was water weight probably. And uh that's just what it sort of looked like to me. Hey guys, just want to take a second to thank our sponsor at Carnivore Bar. I don't promote many products because honestly all you need to be healthy is to just eat meat. For those times that you're out hiking, road tripping, or stuck at work and you want nutritious snack that is just meat, fat, and salt if you want it. The Carnivore Bar is a great option. So I like this product not because it's just pure meat, but also because I want the carnivore market to thrive as well. And the more we support meat only products, the more meat only products there will be available in the mainstream. So if this sounds like something you'd like to get behind, check it out using my discount code Anthony to get 10% off, which also applies to subscriptions, giving you 25% off total. All right, thanks guys. Yeah, and so, you know, and then I was just I my my weight didn't fluctuate. I was I went I went down from like 267 down to 243. And I was 243 on the nose every single day for the next 6 months. It wasn't a single day. It went to 242 or 244. 243 every single day. But I was lifting weights. I was sprinting. I was playing rugby. And because I felt so good. I at 38 I went back and started playing high level rugby. And like my team here in Seattle, my professional. And so I was like back in training with all these these pro athletes felt amazing. And um and uh yeah. And so then after like six months I hurt my knee and so I I couldn't finish the season and um couldn't really play in the season. It was sort of um um only played a few games and um and then I started losing weight because my I couldn't train, I couldn't lift, I couldn't run and so my legs started getting smaller, you know, and I was I was pissed. I didn't want to lose weight, you know, because my body was transforming. I was losing training fat and stacking on muscle. I got down to like 6% body fat without trying, you know. I'm just working hard. at 240. Yeah. Wow. 243. So, it was always 243. 243. And um Yeah. And and eating eating until meat stopped tasting good. Just listening to my body. Wasn't counting any calories. Didn't have any macros and like, "Oh, this is what I'm have this meal. I'm have 15 meals a day and I'm going to eat this and I'm going to do this. I'm going to take that." So, none of that [ __ ] I didn't take any supplements. I didn't have any meal prep. I didn't split up my meals. was ate one I ate 2 lbs of of amazing ribeye every day and uh and that was it. I ate once every 24 hours and I felt fantastic. I didn't want to eat any more than that, you know. And um and one day I didn't even want to eat that. I'd like been training. I like three hours of lifting and three hours of rugby and I'm like, "All right, great. I'm going to go home and eat a big ass steak and go and crush this out again tomorrow." And everything in me like don't do that. Steak sounds awful. I'm like, "How is that possible? I love steak. It's my favorite thing ever. Why would that not sound good right now? Couldn't figure it out. But I was just like, yeah, I was just like, don't eat it. Don't do it. You know, I was like, that's bizarre. What the hell's going on? And um I said, "Okay, well, I'm going to cook a steak anyway, but I'll I'll like reverse sear it, take like two hours, make this like amazing ass thing, and give myself some time to settle down." So, I watched a movie, chilled out, steak was ready, at it, and I was like, I guess I could I could eat a little. I started eating it and it was just like I got like a quarter of the way through and I was just like I am just not enjoying this. I just really don't want to eat this. It was amazing steak. There's nothing wrong with it, but I just just just wasn't feeling it. So, I was like I was really nervous cuz I had a lot of training the next day. I had like I don't know 6 hours of training the next day planned and I was like [ __ ] all right I really need this energy though. Not realizing that I was you know you know bulkier then so I still had a lot of fat on me you know. So I'm like probably had you know like you know like 100,000 calories you know sitting there waiting for me. I didn't need anything. That's what I real and and the next day I felt fine. Didn't eat it put it away and the next day I felt fine. Felt absolutely amazing and no problem because you know I I you you know I sort of came to the realization you know you you don't you don't the energy that you use now for your training today did not come from your meal this morning or last night. it came from two weeks ago, right? And you put that in your fat and then now you're using the fat, right? And so you Yeah, you don't need to eat the same day or the day before, whatever. And I I And then I thought back on all my games before I realized all this stuff. All the games when I felt my best, I never ate that. I never ate on game day. Never ate. I That was like just an unbreakable rule like that. I tried that a couple times. It was just like never again. And so I always played fasted, always play I always tell people always play hungry. You know, you want that little that little edge, that little killer instinct that I need to go out and kill something. I have to go and fight for my dinner and uh and have that sort of edge. And um and then I even started feeling better. If I if I had dinner the night before, I didn't feel as good. So I would like skip dinner. I may may not even eat on a on a Friday if I had a Saturday game or maybe would eat way earlier in the day. And and I started feeling better doing that. And it just it naturally sort of went into that and now I know why, you know, because I, you know, you just want to be running on your body. You don't want a bunch of food in your gut and uh, you know, slowing you down, you know? So, in fighting, we make weight and then 24 hours later, we fight, right? So, they give you a bit of a a bit of a breather to like build yourself back. Everybody's dehydrating and and bringing themselves down like 20, 30 pounds. It's a lot unhealthy, dangerous stuff. Yeah. But the amount of food, the amount of food that people are and and juice and just sugar that people are ingesting after weigh-ins, like if it was more beneficial to to be fasted when you're competing, it's like the absolute opposite. Like you're people are stuffing themselves so much it like hurts. They're like it actually hurts. And they're like, "Oh, but that's not enough carbs, right? That's not the right number yet. I have to eat x amount of of carbs in order to to be able to have the energy to perform tomorrow." Yeah, man. There's just so much benefit. There's just so much benefit. You know, you replace your glycogen on the fly when you're in ketosis where they got to keep sucking down sugar gels and sugar water and crap like that. Yeah. You know, and you can't even you can't even do