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Ronda Rousey's Diet And Fitness Rules Before A Fight

Exactly How Ronda Rousey Will Prepare For Sunday's Fight

Video by Tom Compagnoni

One name doing the rounds in Australia right now is UFC fighter Ronda Rousey, who is in the country to spar with Holly Holm in Melbourne on November 15th.

According to MMARising, Californian-born Rousey is the number one pound-for-pound female mixed martial arts fighter in the world, and it is reported that she is the world's highest paid fighter in the UFC.

Rousey entered the radar of non fighting fans when she starred in the 2015 film 'Entourage', based on the popular American TV show, and is well known for never having a fight last more than one round (with the exception of one with Miesha Tate that lasted to third round).

There's no denying that Rousey is a force to be reckoned with, though such accolades don't come without hardcore determination in regards to training and strict discipline with her diet. Mike Dolce, Rousey's Nutrition Coach and creator of The Dolce Diet, spoke to The Huffington Post Australia while in Melbourne ahead of the fight.

"Right now Ronda is eating five to six meals per day. The meals are not excessive, but she eating according to the energy she will be expensing during small blocks of time," he said.

She eats every two to four hours so it is important for us to calculate how much energy she will be expending over that two to four hour period, and feed her accordingly.

"It's also very important to make sure that she is constantly eating and never hungry so she is not breaking down muscle tissue and losing energy," Dolce said.

Probed on what exactly those meals consisted of, Dolce made clear that Rousey doesn't rely on artificial gym supplements and synthetic protein sources to fuel her in the lead up.

"She's eating earth-grown nutrients. That's real food -- it makes up the entirety of Rhonda's diet because real food contains more nutrition per calorie than any other food source on the planet," he said.

"Nothing you buy at a restaurant or have out of a box or bag will have more nutrition per calorie than real food. This way she is getting all the nutrition she needs at a rather low total caloric load, allowing her to eat constantly and have great energy, but not retain additional body weight."

So it's real food in, supplements out. But what kinds of food, exactly?

"For breakfast she will have oats with fruit, nuts and seeds all mixed together in a breakfast bowl, which is rather delicious," he said."

"During the day she will eat eggs and vegetables like spinach, peppers and onions in an omelette.

"At night she will have lean proteins like chicken or fish or steak, again with more fresh veggies and a little bit of a complex carb like rice, potato or quinoa.

"Her snacks are typically simple sugars from fruit and some sort of essential fat from a nut source, so an apple and some almond butter, cashews and an apricot or avocado and an orange."

The night before the fight Rousey will continue with the same approach to her nutrition and taper her fluid intake.

"We start the water intake very heavily in the morning but we will slow down the water intake at night so her body can level out, and then we will pull out any additional weight by taking a hot bath," Dolce said.

"The day of the fight normally we will do the hot baths during the day of weigh ins, but because of the time differnce here in Australia weigh ins are at 9am. In the United States weigh ins are typically at 4pm. So we're going to make sure Ronda goes to bed on weight so she can have a good sleep, wake up and not have to worry about weight in."

Assuming Rousey wins, which is fairly safe to do so, we wanted to know if she'll head to the club to celebrate or race to Macca's for seven Big Macs.

"With a victory, Ronda goes out and has chicken wings. She prefers baked chicken wings over fried, which shows how healthy she is. That's her one celebration food," he said.

"She is so disciplined and that's why she is where she is."

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