Paddy Pimblett loses roughly 40 lbs before each UFC fight, dropping from around 195 lbs between camps down to the lightweight division limit of 156 lbs. He does it through a combination of strict calorie restriction over several weeks and a rapid water cut in the final days before weigh-in. It’s one of the most dramatic weight swings in the UFC, and he’s never missed weight.
Where He Starts
Pimblett is open about how much weight he carries between fights. After his January 2025 loss to Justin Gaethje, he reported weighing 86 kg (about 190 lbs) just weeks later, noting he’d “been eating well.” He’s said he’s been as high as 94 or 95 kg (around 210 lbs) at similar points in past training cycles. That means his body regularly fluctuates by 40 to 50 lbs or more across a single fight cycle. For his Gaethje fight, he weighed in at 70 kg (154 lbs) the day before the bout, meaning he’d shed roughly 36 lbs from his off-season weight.
The Diet During Fight Camp
The bulk of Pimblett’s weight loss happens through calorie control over several weeks of fight camp. His nutritionist, who prepares all of his meals, keeps him between 1,400 and 1,700 calories per day. For context, that’s well below what most active men his size would eat, and it creates a consistent calorie deficit that drives steady fat loss week after week.
A typical day looks like this:
- Breakfast: Protein granola pot, overnight oats, or protein pancakes with yoghurt, around 300 to 350 calories.
- Lunch: Chicken salad wrap or BBQ burrito, around 450 to 520 calories.
- Snack: A banana between training sessions, 70 to 110 calories.
- Dinner: Chilli meatballs with pasta, a Wagyu burger with sweet potato fries and greens, or a cajun chicken wrap, around 470 to 500 calories.
- Dessert: Chocolate protein school cake or protein cookies, around 220 to 230 calories.
The meals are calorie-controlled but not extreme in composition. They include carbs, protein, and fats rather than eliminating any one group. The key is portion size and consistency. Every meal is pre-planned and prepared by his team, so there’s no guesswork. Four weeks out from a weigh-in, Pimblett has been filmed heating up sweet potato fries, sausage, and broccoli, all meticulously measured to hit his calorie targets.
The Water Cut in the Final Days
Calorie restriction alone doesn’t get Pimblett all the way to 156 lbs. The last stretch relies on manipulating water weight, a technique common across combat sports. In the days before weigh-in, he eliminates salt from his diet and begins “water loading,” which means drinking large amounts of water to trick his body into flushing fluids at a high rate. He then stops drinking, and his body continues excreting water, rapidly dropping several pounds of water weight.
The timeline in his final cut is intense. After a hard pad session at 7:45 p.m. on a Thursday night, he weighed slightly over 169 lbs, meaning he still needed to shed around 14 lbs in just over 12 hours. With nine hours to go, he was at 157 lbs. By the official weigh-in the next morning, he hit 156 lbs exactly. He rehydrates and refuels immediately after stepping off the scale, regaining much of that water weight before fight night.
How Training Contributes
Pimblett trains five days a week year-round, sparring twice a week, with relatively little change between camp and off-season. Rather than splitting sessions into separate striking, grappling, and wrestling blocks, he trains MMA as a single integrated discipline, reflecting what actually happens in a fight. During camp, he adds extra running and occasionally slots in additional boxing sessions, though he’s careful not to overtrain or batter himself unnecessarily.
A significant shift came in 2020, when he started lifting weights seriously for the first time despite having fought since his teens. He’s credited strength training with noticeable improvements in both his physique and his durability inside the cage. That added muscle mass likely contributes to why he walks around so much heavier than his division limit: he’s carrying more lean tissue than he did earlier in his career.
The Off-Season Rebound
Pimblett is famously unapologetic about gaining weight between fights. After the Gaethje bout, he put on 36 lbs in a matter of weeks. He’s framed this as a deliberate choice, noting that he was “only” 86 kg and hadn’t ballooned to the 94 or 95 kg he’d reached in previous off-seasons. Whether that’s genuine moderation or just relative to his own extremes is debatable, but the pattern is clear: he drops dramatically for fights and regains quickly afterward.
This kind of weight cycling carries real physiological consequences. Research published in the journal Metabolites found that repeated cycles of rapid weight loss and regain in combat athletes lead to a reduced resting metabolic rate, meaning the body burns fewer calories at rest over time. Insulin and leptin levels, the hormones that regulate hunger and blood sugar, get disrupted during the cut phase. Then during the rapid refeeding after weigh-in, excessive calorie intake can cause spikes in insulin that may signal early insulin resistance. Over years of repeating this cycle, fighters face increased risk of metabolic syndrome, unfavorable changes in cholesterol, and a tendency to gain back more weight each time.
Why It Works (For Now)
Pimblett’s system works because every piece is managed by a team. His nutritionist plans every meal to the calorie. His coaches control training volume. The water cut follows a precise timeline that’s been rehearsed across multiple fight camps. He’s never missed weight at 156 lbs, which is the ultimate proof of execution in MMA.
The trade-off is that he’s asking his body to swing through a 40-plus-pound range multiple times a year. At 30 years old, the short-term performance results have been reliable. The long-term metabolic cost of that pattern is harder to measure, but the science suggests it compounds with every cycle. Pimblett seems aware of the trade-off, recently keeping his off-season weight lower than in past years, though whether that shift sticks remains to be seen.