At the right angle, Alistair Overeem barely looks like Alistair Overeem anymore.
The 43-year-old combat sports legend caused quite a stir this past summer when photos emerged of him looking much slimmer than the behemoth heavyweight MMA fans had grown accustomed to seeing over the course of a decorated fight career.
Speaking on The MMA Hour this past Wednesday, a happily retired Overeem confirmed that those photos were indeed as real as they appeared to be.
“I am the healthiest I’ve ever been,” Overeem said on The MMA Hour.
”I’m like 210, 220 [pounds]. If you’re not going to fight, why would you walk [around heavier]? I mean, I still look good. I’ve got a six-pack. I’m still strong. I can still kick ass. But yeah, why would I have another, what is it, 20 or 30 pounds of weight? Because then you have to eat, you have to lift heavy, you have to do the things to maintain. And once I made the decision [to be] done [with fighting], all of everything becomes [about] longevity.
“I want to have longevity,” Overeem continued, “and that’s some of the things, some of the projects that I’m working with for the future is longevity programs. And then obviously a lot of fighters have injuries. I’ve done a great job in always recovering from the injuries and maintenance, and I’m very happy I did that, because now I actually have a second life basically. Again, I’m loose, everything’s working, brain working, so yeah.”
Overeem was once synonymous with a physique that looked as if it was ripped straight out of a comic book. During his heyday as Strikeforce, DREAM, and K-1 champion, Overeem’s muscularity ballooned to such impressive proportions that he garnered the nickname “Ubereem.” In an infamous video released during his K-1 run, Overeem waxed poetic about his love of meat and his dedication to eating around the clock to maintain his towering size, with a diet that included everything from beef to horse meat and beyond.
But more than a decade later, Overeem couldn’t be more dissimilar from his old self. He said his embrace of a raw vegan diet has contributed mightily to his weight loss.
“I’ve switched my diet around extensively,” Overeem said. “So I’m still researching a little bit. I’ve had all these nutritionists, right? Twenty-five [years of] different ones, so I’m kind of a nutritionist myself. But for me, I’m still in search of, hey, what is optimal for the body.
“I would say it started a year ago, and there has been some chicken here and there, but in general, yeah, I stay away from meat, yes. It’s a raw vegan diet.”
Alistair Overeem is looking slim pic.twitter.com/DnQ9DjMxYn
— Left Hook Club (@lefthookclub) June 19, 2023
“Light heavyweight was the last time [I was this weight], because I’m basically light heavyweight now,” Overeem added. “That was almost, oh my God, 2007 or 2008?”
Overeem reiterated that he feels better in his own body at age 43 than he has at any other point in his life. While he still trains and coaches occasionally, he’s mostly moved on from the rigors he put himself through over the course of a fight career that began in 1999. And although his diet may be very different now from what it was over the past 24 years, he doesn’t have any regrets about the road that led him down the path he leads today.
“I think describe me as a martial artist who’s always learning, and the fighting was just a small piece, but I’m always learning and I will always continue to learn,” Overeem said. “And once people figure that out, ‘Hey, I have my health in my own hands, if I eat the wrong stuff,’ and if you’re doing that for 20, 30 years, you’re going to get sick, then people’s attitudes will change to what they eat. But still, the general public doesn’t see this, in my opinion not yet, because when people understand that, then yeah, it’ll change.
“It’s all about knowing, right? Like, what I did in my 30 years of training and competing and everything, I did the best I could [at] the time [that] I knew. That’s the right way to put it. But as time goes on, you learn new stuff. And I’m also trying a lot of stuff with my own body — what is working, what is not working — and then, yeah, planning accordingly.”
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