Nutritionist George Lockhart works with heavyweights Tyson Fury and Joseph Parker
Tyson Fury is preparing for his upcoming showdown against former UFC ruler Francis Ngannou before attempting to become the first undisputed heavyweight champion since 1999 when he takes on Oleksandr Usyk.
At 6-foot-9, weighing over 19 stone, have you ever wondered what Tyson Fury eats during camp to prepare for world title fights? Betway spoke to his nutritionist George Lockhart who revealed exactly what he eats, as well as food he loves and hates.
George is the nutritionist for fellow heavyweight Joseph Parker and has also worked with Conor McGregor and Tommy Fury so he speaks about those fighters during the interview too.
How does camp seem to be going for the three guys?
GL: Good, good. It's going great. I’ve got my guy out there working with Tommy and Jason. He's doing a great job. He just finished working with Alexa Grasso, who just defended her title in the UFC. He went out there for a week, did a weight cut, threw bags, and now he’s back with Tommy.
Everything's going really well. I've been with Joe since his last fight, and we've been working nonstop since the six weeks before that fight. So, I'm truly excited to see him back in the ring. I don't think anybody's expecting this or what’s going to happen. Wait until he takes that robe off and weighs in: ‘people are going to be like, holy crap!’
What do you expect to be the weight the fighters ahead of their upcoming fights?
GL: We went to the Eubank fight the other night and everybody's like, ‘dude, Joe, he's losing so much weight!’. He's actually put on about seven or eight kilos, but he's lost a lot of body fat and packed on some serious muscle. But he's leaner now, so with his shirt on he looks smaller – but he's definitely not!
As for Tyson… he's like clockwork, the exact same way every single time. It’s almost like you press play, and repeat. We’ve found the formula he likes, and the weight that he wants to be at.
Tyson's had a new baby with Paris. What's it been like in the household since then?
GL: Everybody's been great, and Tyson’s obviously in great spirits. He obviously spent time at the hospital, and then when the baby came he came back. He literally trained hours after his son was born. But he's happy and as excited as can be expected.
Tommy has a huge fight against KSI, which has been predicted to do the big PPV numbers; what are your thoughts on that fight?
GL: Yeah, it’s crazy. We’ve worked with KSI before, and he’s a really good guy. Real nice guy. But obviously I'm biased with Tommy, and I don't think we've seen the best version of Tommy come out yet. Take the last fight with Jake, and the amount of pressure. The kid was 22, or 23 years old, and the amount of pressure that was on him: the family name, boxing vs YouTuber. But he went out there, did what he was supposed to do, and he got the win.
But now, having been under those lights and dealt with that pressure, I think he's going to get better and better. And I think this fight, we're going to really see that. I think he comes out on top easier. It's not going to go the distance. If he shows what he can do and what I've seen him do a training, he's going to demolish KSI.
And what about Tyson against Francis?
GL: I think it's a no brainer. You’ve got to look at range, you’ve got to look at boxing IQ, movement, and conditioning. If you watch Ngannou and his fights, they're not like a volume of punches that he throws in an MMA fight.
I mean, if you look at that versus Tyson and the amount of volume that that man can throw, I just don’t see the range. Like I said, it’s about boxing IQ. If Tyson couldn't move, maybe. But the guy moves like a middleweight, but he’s 270 freaking pounds! But that was that lucky punch, right? Everybody's like, well, what if he hits him?
If we could talk about Joseph, Tommy, and Tyson in terms of what they're eating at the moment, how many calories per day?
GL: Tommy is doing his own thing because he’s training in Manchester, so Jason's working with him. Tommy is more carb-adaptive. You see that in the muscularity of his training style. You’ll see that in the sort of food Jason makes him, like pancakes that are really high carb!
And it’s the same thing with Joe. His weight fluctuates like 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.
In contrast, Tyson's much more steady. Whether it’s an intense day or a light day, he'll wake up and be almost the exact same weight, no matter what. He has a little bit more of the higher fats. Though, he's not actually a big eater like a lot of people would think. When I started working with him, I thought I would be cooking for a freaking army, but that's not the case.
Joe, on the other hand: 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.
In terms of Tyson, you said he doesn't eat that much, but when he does eat, what meals does he eat on a day-to-day basis in camp?
GL: Obviously it's a mixture of everything, every single meal. At breakfast, he'll usually get black pudding, which is really high in iron, eggs… I actually give a lot of lean pork to him and Joe. Chicken too. I'll do red meat on days that they're off, to give their 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.
When Joe was bulking out in New Zealand, he was bulking, 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.
I heard from a source that Tyson said in an interview to them that one of his guilty pleasures is turkey dinosaurs. Is that true?
GL: Yeah, he's got a lot of funny guilty pleasures! He's definitely got a sweet tooth too, but if you bread stuff and crisp stuff up, it's definitely a lot more enjoyable than a regular grilled chicken. But I think it's because he's got seven kids, you know what I'm saying? Just probably indulging in a couple of freaking chicken nuggets here and there!
Do Tyson, Tommy or Joe have any cheat meals in the week? And if so, what are they?
GL: Well, I don't know about Tommy. I've never met anybody that can eat so much in my life. You’ve got people that love to eat, and then you’ve got people that love to eat. Tommy loves to eat, and that man can put down some serious food.
But for Joe, 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! Joe 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’. And literally 15 minutes later, she came back, and all the food was gone. I think that would be his guilty pleasure.
And in terms of least-favourite meals, are there any meals that you've cooked for either of the guys where they've said ‘George, next time could not have that because I don't like it’?
GL: More than I would care to admit with Tyson, and I think Joe's just lying to me to tell you the truth. I'm like, it's impossible to like every single meal!
With Tyson, he's not a big fan of veg, so I cook a lot for long periods of time to mask the flavour. I'll do it with chicken broth or bone broth.
Or you can do it in a rice for a long period of time, so you can't really taste it. But as the camp progresses, obviously veg has got to go up to make sure they're getting all their micronutrients.
Are the rumours that Tyson consumes around 5,000 calories a day true?
GL: No, honestly. Right now, I would say that it’s probably maybe 3,500, but it depends. As he gets closer to the fight, obviously output starts going up. As the fight gets close, in the last two weeks, he'll probably be eating 5,000 – 6,000 calories. His weight just like plummets towards the end. Joe, on the other hand, is easily over 5,000 a day. Like, wow.
What do your boxers eat before a fight?
GL: Basically, your body can only hold so many grams of carbohydrates. Like the old adage where it's like ‘okay, we have a game tomorrow, so we're going to go load up on pasta’. Just because you eat an extra amount of pasta, it doesn't mean your body's going to give you more carbs. It's only got so much storage space, unless you create a stimulus to tell them to work.
So, one of the biggest goals here in fight camp is to find exactly what they do and what works best for them. So, every time we spar, we treat it like a fight day. So, I'm like ‘okay, well, if he ate three hours prior, how did he feel?’. And that's what we use by camp for. We find that magic number. So, four hours out, we're going to have this exact meal that works well for them, and they digest it well.
When camp finishes, what do they tend to eat after a fight?
GL: It’s going to be a little different because we're going to be in Saudi, and the place we’re at has a stupid buffet. They have the cleanest food. So, I guess we're actually fine. We're going there and it's not going to be a one day! I think it's going to be a plethora of everything. Like I said, Joe's big thing is sushi, Tyson's big thing is spicy – which surprised the hell out of me when I started working with him.
You know, 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. You know what I mean? When you start eating a certain way for a long period of time, you stop craving all that stuff, too, because you just realise how it makes you feel.
That's, 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.
But when fighting in the UK, would McDonald's be ordered or anything like that?
GL: No! The last time, I ended up cooking. After Wembley, when Tyson fought at Wembley, I went back to the house, the family was at the house in London, and I just ended up cooking a bunch of chicken. Obviously, I was a little bit more liberal with the oils and everything else and the fries were crispy – I think I cooked them in duck fat. It was so good. We had a feast. I think it's the environment that means more than anything.
I know that you were working on a cookbook when we last spoke. Have you created that book now?
GL: Yeah I have a cookbook out. They're super simple recipes. It's an e-book, so you can get it online. If you go to Lockloaded Nutrition, it'll be on the bio there. If you think of any fighter that you could possibly think of, like Gervonta Davis, Devin Haney, freaking KSI, Tommy, Conor McGregor – they've all been certified by us.
So that's in my bio, if anybody's ever interested. We're actually looking for people, because there's a lot of fighters – at the moment, I'm actually staying with Joseph Parker and I'm going to be with him until the end of his career.
What are Conor and Tank like in terms of nutrition?
GL: So I didn't actually work with Tank – Elliot Buckley is the guy who he works with. But obviously I worked with Conor for about six years. I remember he loved lamb. I used to cook a shit-ton of lamb for him! I got so good at cooking lamb, but that was his big go to. For Tyson, it’s fish and chips, and Joe it’s fish. They're fuelling the stereotypes!
So, with Conor, in terms of the food side of things, does he tends to eat clean?
GL: I would say he was definitely a big sweets guy; you know what I mean? So, he was on a good diet… whiskey and protein, you can't beat that!
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