The Combat Dietitian

The Combat Dietitian Jack Doherty
Bachelor of Exercise & Health Science
Masters of Dietetics 2021
Team member at &
[email protected]

01/09/2026

FULL DAY OF EATING | FIGHT CAMP EDITION

I flew to Auckland to set up Izzy’s nutrition for fight camp in person.

Individualisation is where the real work starts.

The objective is not simply to assign calories and macros. We need to understand the athlete as a whole, including their training load, energy expenditure, body composition, nutritional status, lifestyle, habits, schedule, food preferences and performance requirements.

His nutrition plan needs to work around his life, not require his life to work around the plan.

That means understanding when he wakes up, when he trains, how his day is structured, what foods he naturally gravitates towards, how he prefers to eat, what meals are practical around his schedule and where we can build consistency without creating unnecessary friction.

His blood work gives us another layer of information, helping identify nutritional considerations that may influence health, recovery and performance. His body composition gives us context around where he is starting camp and how we want that to change over time.

From there, energy and macronutrient requirements are structured around his actual training demands, with carbohydrate availability considered across the week, protein distributed appropriately to support muscle protein synthesis and recovery, and dietary fat positioned to support overall nutritional adequacy.

Meal timing is then built around training, performance and recovery, while food selection needs to provide adequate micronutrients, fibre and dietary quality without ignoring personal preference and adherence.

The result is not a generic fight camp meal plan.

It is a nutrition strategy built around Izzy’s physiology, training, lifestyle and habits, with the flexibility to evolve as camp progresses.

Because the best plan is not necessarily the one that looks best on paper.

28/08/2026

A lot of what I do as a dietitian in combat sports has been shaped outside of a textbook.

Muay Thai, and specifically The Ring Gym and Andrew Colgrave , played a pivotal role in the early part of my career, connecting me with the community and even connecting me to Jordi. Andy encouraged me and taught me resilience and self belief, and the gym gave me an environment where I could start applying what I had learned, but more importantly, learn what I didn’t yet know about combat sports.

The training I do myself has become another important part of that process. Being in the room, feeling the demands of training, understanding fatigue, weight cuts, recovery and performance firsthand gives me a practical testing ground for the things I work with athletes on every day.

Then there are the athletes themselves.

The relationships I’ve built with athletes who have trusted me to guide them have probably taught me more than anything else. They’ve allowed me to see what works in practice, what doesn’t, and how much nuance there is between what looks good on paper and what actually works for an individual. Not to mention the life long friendships we now have.

Joseph Luciano is a great example of that. He has coached me in Muay Thai, but has also mentored me in my mentality, perspective and understanding of the sport.

Not to mention the constant support, refinement, lessons, mentoring and opportunities Jordan Sullivan has cultivated as a friend and business partner.

I think becoming a better practitioner is less about working in absoluts and more about continually putting your knowledge to the test, being willing to learn, and remaining open to the lessons that come from the people around you.

This post is a small insight into the work that happens behind the scenes: the training, the mistakes, the conversations, the athletes, the mentors and the constant refinement that goes into becoming a better practitioner.

Too many people talking the talk without walking the walk.

Always learning. Always refining.

Low testosterone isn’t always the whole story.In athletes, testosterone can fall in response to low energy availability,...
27/08/2026

Low testosterone isn’t always the whole story.

In athletes, testosterone can fall in response to low energy availability, high training stress and inadequate recovery. But a low testosterone result doesn’t automatically mean performance will immediately decline, or that testosterone itself is the primary problem.

The important question is why it is low, what else is happening physiologically, and how long it has been suppressed.

For athletes, you need to consider:

• Energy availability
• Training load and recovery
• Sleep and psychological stress
• Dieting history and body composition
• Other hormones and biomarkers
• Symptoms and performance changes
• The duration and severity of suppression

A temporary reduction during a demanding training block is very different from persistent suppression alongside impaired recovery, adaptation, bone health or reproductive function.

Don’t just treat the number. Understand the athlete behind it.

27/08/2026

Mechanical Efficiency & Energy Needs

Your energy requirements for training aren’t fixed.

As an athlete repeatedly performs the same movement, skill or training stimulus, the body becomes more mechanically efficient.

You learn to perform the movement with less unnecessary energy expenditure. Technique improves, coordination improves, and the body becomes better at producing the same output with less cost.

That means the energy required to perform the same session can change over time.

The athlete who previously needed a certain amount of energy to complete a workload may eventually require less energy for that same workload as efficiency improves.

This is one reason you can’t accurately prescribe an athlete’s nutrition based purely on bodyweight, a generic activity multiplier or a static calorie calculation.

Training load, movement efficiency, performance, body composition, recovery and adaptation all matter.

Two athletes can complete the same session and have very different energy costs.

And the same athlete can complete the same session six months apart with a different energy cost.

Nutrition needs to account for the athlete in front of you and what they are actually doing, not just a calculator.

25/08/2026

How to Rebound / Reverse Diet Properly

Coming out of a long dieting phase isn’t as simple as “eat more and see what happens.”

A structured rebound or reverse diet should have a clear plan for increasing calories, adjusting macros, monitoring body weight, training performance, recovery and hunger, and deciding when to make the next adjustment.

The biggest mistake I see is having no real end goal.

When there’s no defined target or timeline, it becomes very easy to slowly increase food, loosen compliance, and convince yourself that fluctuations are part of the process.

That’s why working with someone can be valuable.

Not because you can’t increase your calories yourself, but because accountability creates structure. You have someone objectively reviewing the data, challenging your decisions and keeping you focused on the actual goal rather than reacting to every change on the scale.

A good rebound isn’t about getting food as high as possible.

It’s about getting you to the highest sustainable intake that supports your next phase, while maintaining control over body composition, performance and health.

No end goal = no urgency.

No accountability = much easier to lose compliance.

Have a plan, measure the response and know exactly what you’re working towards.

25/08/2026

Full day of eating and training with Combat Jack 🥊

See what I eat, how I train, and how I fuel around combat training.

For the full video, check out TFD YouTube, it is posting as we speak!

Refeeds aren’t something everyone needs.They can be useful when diet fatigue, training demands, performance, recovery an...
24/08/2026

Refeeds aren’t something everyone needs.

They can be useful when diet fatigue, training demands, performance, recovery and the overall phase of the plan justify them. But adding a high-calorie day simply because you’ve been dieting for a few weeks doesn’t automatically make it beneficial.

The key is understanding the intake in detail.

Calories, macros, training load, expenditure, bodyweight trends and the goal of the phase all need to be considered. A refeed should have a purpose within the plan, not just be an excuse to eat more.

Sometimes the best strategy is a refeed. Sometimes it’s simply maintaining the existing intake. And sometimes the better decision is to adjust the entire plan.

The more accurately you understand the numbers, the more confidently you can make that decision.

20/08/2026

The whole picture matters.

Pre and post-workout nutrition are important, but they don’t exist in isolation.

Your total calories, macros, meal timing and how you periodise intake across the training week will have a far greater impact than obsessing over what you eat in the 60 minutes before and after training.

If your overall intake doesn’t support your training demands, recovery and adaptation, perfect peri-workout nutrition isn’t going to fix it.

Stop focusing on one meal. Look at the entire nutrition plan.

Creatine isn’t just about strength, size and performance.One of the more interesting applications is when cognitive perf...
17/08/2026

Creatine isn’t just about strength, size and performance.

One of the more interesting applications is when cognitive performance needs to hold up despite sleep deprivation, travel, fight week or accumulated fatigue.

Sleep should always be the priority. Creatine doesn’t replace it.

But creatine supports the phosphocreatine system and ATP availability in the brain, and research suggests it may help preserve aspects of cognitive performance when sleep deprived.

For acute use, the evidence supports approximately 0.2–0.35 g/kg of creatine monohydrate.

Not a magic fix. Not a substitute for sleep.

Just another tool that can be used strategically when the demands on the brain are high and recovery isn’t perfect.

13/08/2026

Some of the best coaching relationships are built over time.

Working with Joseph Luciano for as long as I have has reinforced something I believe more and more as a practitioner: the goal isn’t to force every client into the exact system you believe is “optimal.”

It’s to understand the person in front of you.
Their lifestyle. Their personality. Their preferences. Their expectations. What they’re willing to do. What they’re not willing to do.

What matters to them, and what actually allows them to perform consistently.
A rigid approach might look perfect on paper, but if it doesn’t fit the individual, eventually it fails.

The longer you work with someone, the more you learn about how they respond, physically and mentally. That gives you the opportunity to keep refining the approach together.

Sometimes that means changing something you originally thought was the best option. Sometimes it means giving the athlete more autonomy. Sometimes it means finding a completely different way of achieving the same outcome.

That isn’t lowering the standard. That’s coaching.
Success isn’t getting someone to perfectly follow your way of doing things. It’s moulding the process around the individual while still moving them towards the outcome they want.

Joseph has been a long-term client, athlete and one of my best mates, and our working relationship has evolved massively over the years.

There’s trust there now that allows us both to be open, communicate properly and continually adjust the approach around what he actually needs at that point in his career and life.

The plan should serve the person.The person shouldn’t have to serve the plan.

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