The Real-Life Diet of UFC Fighter Payton Talbott, Who Doesn’t Care About Protein

Stop the presses: A 27-year-old American man doesn’t find protein that important. Even crazier, this man gets into physical fights for a living. Payton Talbott, the bantamweight UFC fighter, admits that he’s probably not getting enough of the macro of the moment. But preparing for a fight—which Talbott has on December 6, against Henry Cejudo as part of UFC 323—does come with lots of meticulous preparation. As long as it’s not the weekend, Talbott is going hard in training camp to get ready, particularly in the final month before entering the cage.

Beyond a relative aversion to protein, Talbott is dancing to a much different tune than other mixed martial artists. He loves a mesh tank top, Frank Ocean and Arca, and pushing the boundaries within the most macho sport ever created. “I just think in my head, like—why do I have to be manly?” Talbott told the New York Times in August.

Knowing that, perhaps it’s no surprise that he dabbles in acoustic sound therapy, describes his pre-UFC nose as “cute,” and balks at the idea of going for long, sweaty runs like Rocky Balboa. Talbott is also the proud owner of a gorgeous head of curls, which he can explain the care routine for in the time it takes to order his favorite fast food burger.

GQ: What does a normal day of training look like for you?

Payton Talbott: In camp, since I’ve got a fight coming up, I usually try to do something earlier in the day. So, whether that’s wrestling, weightlifting, functional strength training, or just active recovery. Then at night, I try to consistently train around 5 p.m. I’ll do that pretty hard, five days a week, Monday through Friday. Then Saturday and Sunday, I take both of those days off. I feel like recovery is very important, not a lot of people are doing that right.

How much fighting, or sparring, are you doing in camp?

Quite a bit. I like to spar a lot. We don’t go very hard. It’s more just technical sparring and really, really light touch stuff. One, because it makes me happy, but also just because it helps me get into that flow state. Throughout a lot of my career, I rarely did a lot of technique. It’s funny because lately I’ve gone and traveled a little bit to train with higher-level people, get rounds with them. I will do these drills that they all do to warm up and I’m like, “This is confusing.” I pick it up fast, but they’re like, “What? Have you never done this drill before? You never drilled with this kind of choreography?” No! Normally I just grapple for an hour and then spar for an hour.

How much cardio factors in?

It’s not really part of my training. I think if you’re training hard enough at anything, you can make it cardio. If you’re doing hard sparring rounds or grappling rounds, that can be your cardio. That’s what the fight is. But if I am going to do cardio, I prefer to do sprinting-type workouts or HIIT intervals, because that’s similar to throwing a combo in the cage. I feel like it’s weird when people that do MMA fighting get their cardio just from running, because it’s pretty low-intensive cardio. There’s three sections of cardio, and I feel like it’s the lowest one because it’s so monotonous. It’s good for your mentality, but it breaks your body down.

Those dudes that are running miles every week, they’re just breaking their body down, and only working your cardio in that super low threshold. But sprinting I feel like is really good. It keeps you young, boosts your testosterone. I’ve never really been one to carve out road work for myself. You’re not really going to see me running on the street or anything.

How far in advance of a fight do you shift into fight mode?

[It] usually happens as soon as they tell me that I’m in a fight, as soon as they give me the date. Sometimes that’s four weeks out, sometimes it’s eight, nine weeks out. But I try to ramp things up pretty hard, consistently, around four weeks.

What does the diet look like for you, as someone who has to keep their weight in a very specific range?

Yeah, so that’s interesting because I don’t really put much thought into what I eat [during] most of my camp. I kind of just eat whatever, and I try to tune into my body and listen to my body about what it’s craving. That pretty much gives me what I need to know. It’s hard because a lot of my best training sessions have come after I’ve eaten In-N-Out.

Hell yeah.

I think my body just does really well with carby food. The way I was raised, I didn’t really eat a super balanced diet. I think my body was just kind of used to that from a young age. But I get pretty serious about two or three weeks out. That’s when I start preparing the body with fiber, start changing things up. I can get more into it.

When you say you get more into the fiber, what does that look like?

First, I’ll kind of trick my body into thinking it’s getting more nutrients than I am. Like, I’ll eat a lot of carbs for energy, but just right before a workout, so that’s the energy source that it uses. I’ll try to burn a bunch of fat doing specific workouts, like, just walking on a treadmill. Two weeks out I’ll start loading on fiber because it gets your body to kind of flush. It gets things cycling through pretty easily or pretty fast. That—in combination with a lot of water, because I’m drinking at least a gallon a day from three weeks out—that gets your body to just overproduce sweat and urine. Your digestive system is just funneling through very fast, and then you cut the fiber and salt on fight week and your body’s still in this pattern.

But once you cut that out, you just feed yourself enough protein to feed your muscles so that you’re not malnourished. Your body still is able to sweat a lot when you do those sauna sessions on fight week, and then the weight comes off a lot easier. A lot of it is just that preparation of making your body think, “Okay, I don’t need to be stressed out, I don’t need to hold onto weight.” That way when you cut [weight], it’s not very stressful, you’re able to sweat quick and you don’t have to kill your body.

When you say you didn’t grow up eating very well and you still don’t…that hasn’t caught up to you yet?

I thought it was going to, because I’m seeing the guys I went to high school with and they’re starting to get a little bit heavier. I’m 27, so you would think, but no, it hasn’t really caught up to me. The only time I worry is if I’m weightlifting and I’m eating unhealthy. I can put on muscle pretty easy that way. I don’t know, I just remember being a kid and we weren’t super well off financially all the time. A lot of the time I’d eat breakfast for dinner. That was pancakes. Anytime I’d ask my dad for a snack and he’d just do white rice, sugar, and butter in a bowl. I loved it. I still have a hard time getting up without having something sweet in the morning.

I think a lot about how often I ate Pop-Tarts before school. That’s basically candy for breakfast.

I love Pop-Tarts.

I mean, I still do too. I just shudder to think about what my day would look like now if I started it off with two brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tarts.

It is crazy to do that and then just go to a full day of school.

Are you obsessed with protein like every other man in America?

Not really. I don’t get enough of it by any means. I don’t know. I don’t like cooking. That’s my problem. I’ll go and get it somewhere. Cooking is hard, but it’s hard to get the correct serving of protein in a restaurant. I think it’s important hormonally and that’s about it. It’s not a requirement.

Is there anything that you’ve added to the rotation recently that is paying big dividends, whether it’s food, or a supplement, or a workout?

I’ve tried to add in foods that are high in fat, healthy fats like avocado. I feel like it just helps because my body doesn’t store fat very easily at all. Then magnesium before bed, and I’ve always taken creatine religiously. I’ll put the creatine and magnesium in the same drink and make sure I drink it every night before bed. I think that does a lot.

How long have you been on creatine?

Oh, God, on and off since high school. I took a long break, and then when I got to the UFC, they just give it to you for free. So, ever since I got in the UFC, I’ve been pretty adamant about taking it. It’s good for your muscles and your nutrition, but it’s also really good for your brain, and I get sketched out that we get hit in the head.