Jiu-Jitsu Champ Mikey Musumeci Only Eats Pizza and Pasta

Another thing that's really unusual about you is your diet. Yes. You're famous for eating pasta and homemade pizza and only eating once a day. Every night I eat like this. So how this started was I've been cutting away and dieting my whole life, right? Right. And you almost have all been eating disorder from always dieting and cutting away for so many years of your life, right? It just naturally happens. So I would binge eat. I would starve. You know what I mean? Like it was very unhealthy the way I would live. How much weight were you cutting? Just at a young age, cutting weight, you know, I would always be cutting like five pounds, ten pounds, nothing crazy. But I've done crazy cuts also. So you just die from those also. But all that time, it just messes up your brain where you never feel like you're satisfied and you never are full. You know, so that part of your brain that says, oh, you're full, stop eating. I stopped having from cutting weight so much. So when I started doing was intermittent fasting. So I would just not eat during the day because honestly, I don't like eating before training. I feel bloated when I eat. So I would just eat at night. But I started just eating the foods I love. I'm Italian. So I grew up just eating pizza and pasta. So I make pizza and pasta every night. I have a pizza oven in my house and I roll out the dough, make everything. And then for dessert, I eat a pint of acai. And my weight would be lighter doing this diet than eating like no carbs and all these things. So my mind, I was like, wait, I could eat all the foods I love. If I eat once a day at night, you know, so it was a no brainer for me. And my weight is lighter and I feel better because I am fasting. So I started doing it. Wow. So there's no issue with performance at all that I mean, given your blood sugars and everything like that, when you're training for extraordinary amounts of time during the day and not eating. So how I see it is I have to earn the food at night. So training all day is like me working for the food at night, you know, like how people used to hunt and gather for food. So that's my mentality. And my best performance in world, ghee world was in December. I had my best performance ever. And it was on that diet and I made 125 easy. And so when you do like day of competition, same thing, you won't eat all day. Day of competition, I'll change my diet and I'll eat a piece of bread and like a little honey. You need some food in your stomach to deal with the nerves and adrenaline that changes for me at least. Yeah. So all bread and honey, huh? Bread, honey, rice cakes, just very mild and some sugar, but nothing too heavy. And when you are getting where's your protein coming from? What I eat a lot of cheese, cheese. Is that basically all your protein? Basically. I eat a lot of Mutzadell, a lot of Parmesan, a lot of Pecorino Romano. Do you put any animal products in your pizza, chicken or meat or anything like that? No meat. No meat at all? No. I love seafood and meat, but when I'm training for competition, I feel cleaner when I'm not eating meat. Interesting. And your body doesn't feel like, do you feel like the protein that you're getting from cheese is enough? I feel the best when I'm doing this. I feel like most energy, cleaner. I don't understand how, but it works. That's such a crazy diet for you to just eat pasta and pizza and only eat at night and then train all day. Most people, if you tell that to, they'd go, what are you talking about? Like, if you brought that to a performance coach. Oh, they would be so ridiculous. What are you doing? Have you talked to anybody about that? Would they try to talk you out of it? Yeah. They said, oh, that's so catabolic, right? Because you're breaking down your body doing it. But for me, it's sustainability. And I could sustain eating and training and keeping a routine doing this. And I love my food. So I don't think I would be able to compete how I do if I ate normal. Have you tried different ways of eating? Like different diets and different kinds of combinations of food before? Yeah, I've done every diet before. Honestly, no carbs, high protein, a lot of meat, you know, but none of them are sustainable for me. This, I don't have to change how I eat when I train. I could just eat like this and I love what I'm eating. I go to bed with a full stomach. I'm happy. I'm always smiling when I'm eating like this. Most people look at you like I've seen pictures of you without your shirt on. You're so ripped. Most people don't believe that that's possible if you're just eating pizza and pasta. Yeah. Well, I train all day, every second, you know. So if you're fasting for 20, 24 hours and you just train every second, like your body just burns all the fat on it, right? So you're basically eating for like one hour. I guess, yeah. And I watch a movie and I cook and just eat. Wow. And that's just your daily routine. Every day, you know, and I enjoy cooking pizza. So after training, I'll get like, I'll start making the dough. Right. So that's my routine every day. And how many pizzas do you eat tonight? One big pizza like that fits in the pizza oven, you know, and about half a pound to a pound of pasta and a pint of acai. I once calculated it. It was like 7,000 calories. 7,000 calories. And do you know how many grams of protein are involved in that? I eat so much cheese that it was actually a really high amount of protein. Interesting. I've never heard of anybody getting cheese as their primary protein source. Yeah, me neither. And being an elite athlete. Sustainability. Yeah. It's keeping me able to train and enjoy my training and keeping me sane. Well, I'm already insane, but it's keeping me more sane. How did, did you read about this and decided to give it a chance or was this something that you'd seen other friends do? So I just, I hated eating. What happened was I started doing this because I was doing a lot of seminars and I would be traveling all day and I would never be able to eat when I was traveling. Then I would eat a big meal at night. And then when I started feeling was a lot of clarity when I started fasting. So I stopped eating breakfast and I started feeling better training, not eating before training. I would just drink caffeine. So I drink caffeine during the day and I feel like that gives me the energy. And I eat so much at night that in the morning I'm still full from the night before and I'm just working off the food. And then by the time I'm hungry again, it's nighttime and I'm ready to eat. Wow. And so who taught you how to make pizza? My grandma taught me how to make pizza. She passed away like four months ago, but she taught me how to make pizza. And when you do it, are you making the dough? Do you have like a starter? Like how does that work? So I can make the dough, but with all the things, but it takes too long. I don't have patience. So I just get pizza dough from like Whole Foods or like Trader Joe's and I'll start with that though. But then I'm really particular with the cheeses and like I go to like three different supermarkets for like cheese, basil, all the different ingredients. So it comes out really good. Damn, making me hungry. Yeah, me too. I love pizza and there's something about like a good pizza that you make yourself in one of those ovens that you have. It's so satisfying. Yeah. Well, it's so satisfying even to watch, you know? And you slice it up and the melted cheese and you pick up the first slice. Oh my God. How much more time before you get to eat? Probably tonight again. Like it's like 3.22 right now. Depends on the day. Probably after this, I'll eat like seven o'clock, six o'clock. So have you trained at all today? Not at all. Nothing. No, because my appendix. So I'm just doing a lot of cardio right now and I'm training a little bit, but just very safe. And can you go back to full rolling? Well the doctor told me like hard full rolling, like middle of August, beginning of August. So I could start thin, but right now just light air training. Just keeping your body... Drilling still, studying, but I just maintaining. Right. And so this... One of the things I saw a video of your whole pizza setup. Like it seems like there's a company that you use and they send you certain pizza doughs. Yes. What company is that? It's a Cavita for olive oil. They send it from Italy. It's an olive oil from Italy and I also have a pasta that I use and they send it from Italy too. So it's just way better quality. What's the difference? I feel like the pasta from Italy seems like it's less gluten. It seems cleaner. Like when you eat it, you don't feel as bloated. It's just different, you know. And olive oil, apparently they don't change the pH levels in it. So in America, all the olive oils have to be like a certain pH. Like this is just so natural. They have to be a certain pH? In America, I think. Because what I've noticed about American food, it's more processed and every time I travel out of America, I get lighter naturally just not eating the processed American food. It is wild when you go to Italy. My family and I used to go to Italy basically every year before COVID and everyone's thin. Italians in America are so fat. And that's how I eat my pizza and pasta. It's almost like someone from Italy, not like American Italian food. So I think that's why I'm so skinny eating like that. Does this company sell pizza dough as well? No. They don't. I'm getting my pizza dough usually from like Whole Foods, Trader Joe's. So what are they using for the dough though? Just regular pizza dough. Whole Foods makes it healthier, right? Because it's Whole Foods? Is that real? No. I don't think so. No. Just to say that. But yeah, it's just regular pizza dough I use. And so you have basically been doing it this way for how long? I've been doing it this way since 2020, the last three years. Wow. Three years of just pizza and pasta and just strangling everybody. I feel like I'm better eating like this. I'm happier. Happier makes you better in life, right? Maybe I wonder. I used to be miserable dieting all the time. The dieting I think is terrible. And I think that there's some real benefit to intermittent fasting and there's definitely some real benefit to giving your body some time to digest whatever food that you have. I think there's a lot of people that are packing food on top of food. There's like this constant cycle through their system where their digestive system is always processing things. What's important is what works, right? No one knows their body better than a professional athlete. So I'm sure your understanding of what works and doesn't work for your body is pretty finely tuned. Yeah, you're so in tune with our bodies. I think it's also like a great example of how much people vary in their nutritional needs. There's some people that don't feel good unless they're eating a lot of meat. And then there's some people who don't feel good unless they're not eating meat and they're just eating like the way it sounds like your body is like very carb centric. Yeah. So what's interesting about myself when I was a kid, my parents couldn't get me to eat anything except pasta. Pasta with butter, olive oil. There's a lot of kids like that. I have kids. They were like, they were like trying to give me a toy. They're like, if you eat this steak, we'll give you this toy. But my whole life, all I ate was like pasta and pizza. So what's interesting is me eating the food that I ate since I was a little kid, my body absorbs it the best and I feel the best eating it. So is it because I ate that for so many years as a kid that my body just knows how to deal with it? Kind of makes sense. Yeah. It's interesting. It's like how alcoholics can process alcohol better. Yeah, their homeostasis. Yes. So when you go to a restaurant, do you just order pasta? Always pasta and pizza. That's it. That's a crazy diet, man. I don't think there's anybody that I've ever heard of that's like a legitimate professional athlete at the highest level that eats like that. Do you know of anybody else? I really don't. I don't, but it works for me. It does work for you, but it's kind of crazy that you have the courage to try this out and to do it because a lot of elite athletes, they will essentially mimic the patterns that other elite athletes in terms of diet, recovery. Oh, that guy won a gold medal in wrestling and this is what he does. So I'll do that. Yeah, totally. I've tried all the diets. I've been on every diet, but it's not sustainable for me where I could keep training like I am. Right. I feel like I would want to quit jiu-jitsu if I had to eat those diets because I've did it too many years. What have you done? You've done keto. Keto I've done. I've done five meals a day, protein, small amount of carbs, or where you're deficient in just fat, you're deficient in carbs, you're deficient in protein. I've done all of them. Have you done them under nutrition and supervision? Yeah. And this was like while you were trying to cut weight. Yeah, and I feel like a big thing is because of the eating stuff I've had since I was a kid, I have a hard time with portions because of that. So because I don't have to have portions with this diet, I'm able to do it. Yeah, I saw a video of you at a restaurant with a giant bowl of pasta and a jug of olive oil. You're just pouring the olive oil all over the pasta. But I guess you need those fats from that olive oil too, right? Yeah, and it's funny because I once got kicked out of a pasta restaurant and all you could eat pasta restaurant for eating too many pasta bowls. Come on. So I go in. They kicked you out? They told me I'm done. So I go in. This place was in San Jose. I go in and it says unlimited pasta bowl. So the first thing I say to the person at the front desk, what's the record? They're like, what do you mean? How many pasta bowls has someone ever had? And they're like five. So now I'm on bowl six and the manager comes over to me like angry and he's like, you're done. No more. I'm like, but it's unlimited pasta bowl. He said, your max has been, you're expired. Wow. What a stupid thing to do. But then that restaurant like a month later went out of business. So I might have ate them out of business. I'm sure you didn't. But their attitude probably ate them out of business. Yeah. That's a shitty attitude. You say unlimited. That means unlimited. Exactly. And you don't make someone feel bad for adhering to the boundaries that you set up. Especially I'm not this big fat guy. I'm this small skinny guy. I know that's probably what's really crazy, right? You're walking in there 135 pounds, six giant bowls of pasta. What a dumb ass restaurant.