Nate Diaz has long been known for being one of the few professional fighters who follow a vegan diet, and now he’s explained why he made that decision in a recent interview with Bradley Martyn. Martyn is a bodybuilder who’s been involved with the combat sports world for quite some time, and Diaz made an appearance on his podcast. When the topic turned to Diaz’s veganism, he explained that he doesn’t have any blood test results to demonstrate the benefit but he goes by his own intuition instead:
“I just know what I feel. I do everything by feel. Like, what feels better. I loved eating meat, I was grabbing on burritos all day long. That was my thing. I started cutting weight and I was, like, doing everything I could. I was running all day, working out all day, on a diet… Exhausted.”
Because these weight-cuts were proving to be difficult he turned to his closest source of advice, his older brother Nick Diaz:
“My brother was, like: “Quit eating meat. Quit eating meat and cheese and you’ll start shedding weight.” So I did that and I started shedding weight. I made weight.”
Now that Nate Diaz had been told that embracing a vegan lifestyle might solve some of his problems, he started to follow that advice during the build-up to his fights. The problem was that he would go back to eating meat after his fights were over and his problems would start up again:
“My stomach would get all jacked up. And then, (his team) would be like: “Yo, we’re coming over tomorrow, and we’re running at 10am.” And I would be, like, alright cool. But I’d get up, like, (holding his stomach) man I don’t feel like running. I would go on a run anyway, but I would feel like sh*t.”
The full interview with Nate Diaz where he explains why he decided to go vegan was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of Bradley Martyn’s Raw Talk:
