George Lockhart on Joe Parker: "You can't feed the guy enough food, and then he'll wake up lighter the next morning"
Joseph Parker is preparing for a huge showdown against Deontay Wilder in what promises to be one of the biggest fight cards of the year.
But have you ever wondered what 'Big Jo' eats on a daily basis during camp? Betway spoke to hisnutritionist George Lockhart who revealed exactly what he eats in camp as well as his 'cheat meal'.
What meals does Joseph Parker eat on a day-to-day basis in camp?
GL: Obviously it's a mixture of everything for every single meal. I actually give a lot of lean pork to Joseph (Parker) and chicken too. I'll do red meat on days that he is off to give his body the time to digest. Red meat is the most nutrient-dense meat out there, but it also takes time to digest, so I don't want to be giving it to him every day.
Joseph’s weight fluctuates, it's crazy. He'll be 117 kilos on Sunday, but be 111 kilos on Monday, just because of the amount of carbohydrates and how his body uses them. Every gram of carbohydrate holds about three grams of water, so if you're holding a lot more muscle mass, you can deplete and increase the amount of carbohydrates in your body and your weight can drastically go up and down.
Is Joseph a big eater?
GL: You can't feed the guy enough food, and then he'll wake up lighter the next morning. I don't like where the hell he puts it. His output's going up, so I'm happy with the way everything's going in his camp.
When Joe was bulking out in New Zealand, he was bulking massively so I was giving him steak every day. It's great for adding that muscle, but you’re just kind of tired all the time and your body's going through growing pains and everything. So yeah, he’ll get red meat about twice a week; we do fish about three, four times a week; and then we'll do pork and lean chicken for the majority of the meals.
What is Joseph’s cheat meal?
GL: For Joseph, we do sushi Sundays. So, he’ll actually fast for 24 hours, doing an anaerobic workout fast for 24 hours and then at the end of the 24-hour period, he does an aerobic, high volume, very low intensity workout – it helps lean out the body and you actually hold onto more muscle that way versus depleting calories throughout the week. It also increases the amount of carbohydrates your body uses, and the efficiency in which your body uses carbohydrates.
But on sushi Sunday, we go into this place and they're going to start closing the place down just for us because it takes forever! Joseph will plough through 40 pieces of sushi and sashimi. It's insane. I think we started this in Ireland and the lady came out saying ‘this is, this is for 10 people. This is designed for 10 people’. Literally 15 minutes later, she came back, and all the food was gone. I think that would be Joseph Parker’s guilty pleasure.
Joe's trying to stay as active as possible. So, our big thing is probably getting it out of your system for maybe a week. But it's funny when your cheat meal is like sushi and stuff like that, it's not too bad. When you start eating a certain way for a long period of time, you stop craving all that bad stuff, too, because you just realise how it makes you feel. That's what I tell myself anyway! Who knows what they eat when I actually leave. They're probably like ‘oh, yeah, I'm going to have some sushi’, but they probably go get a bunch of doughnuts.
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