The Muay Thai kickboxing veteran spoke with MMAmania.com during a special guest appearance on The Verbal Submission
Brian Hemminger (MMAmania.com): Something else I saw which I think is really interesting is that you’re on the Dolce Diet for this fight. Usually people use that when they need help dropping weight to make sure they’re body recovers but you were a guy who entered the UFC in your most recent run as a lightweight and then went back up to welterweight. How is the Dolce Diet helping you for this fight? Is it just to give you more energy? Can you kind of explain what you expect?
Duane Ludwig: Well I’ve known Mike Dolce for three years and I’ve used him to make the cut to ’55 and it wasn’t for him, I probably wouldn’t be making 155 for my last couple fights but it’s just too much of a stretch and a struggle to make 155 that my focus was always on the diet and not on getting better as an athlete so I decided to go to 170 based on quite a few people’s recommendations including Mike Dolce and no matter what weight you’re fighting at, you want to do it correctly and the Dolce Diet is what’s done correctly. If you follow on that and stick to it, you can be the best athlete you can be nutritional-wise which is definitely for health for sure, you definitely have more energy, your attention and attentiveness for training, the fight itself and the recovery aspect. There’s a lot to the Dolce Diet than just losing weight. It’s also making sure you have proper weight and the ideal weight no matter what weight you want to fight at. You get the ideal performance anyways.
Brian Hemminger (MMAmania.com): When you entered the UFC as a lightweight, we’ve seen a lot of fighters as they age and become veterans, they bump up a weight class. We’ve seen guys like Dan Henderson, Frank Trigg, B.J. Penn, was that more of a process of you felt a lot more comfortable at welterweight? The results have shown.
Duane Ludwig: Yeah, definitely because I’ve been walking around at 190, 195 for the last three or four years so making 155 has always been a struggle for me. Now that I’m lifting weights and I’m on a little bit different form of the Dolce Diet, making 170 is much easier. I’m actually at a restaurant with my family eating. When I train, when I lift weights and when I step on the mat, I focus on getting better and not just counting calories now. The mental shift now, versus fighting at lightweight is totally different.
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