Cruiserweight Boxer Chris Billam-Smith: Overcoming A 1% Recovery Status & Becoming a WBO Champion

0:00Welcome to Catching Up With The Royals, a brand new show with me, Richard Coles. And me, Emily Andrews. Every week we'll be going beyond the headlines, lifting the lid on what life is really like behind the palace walls. Hello sir, good morning. I'm the Sun's new royal correspondent. Oh, he said, look at me up and down. Things are looking up. We'll be diving into the moments everyone's talking about. What does the world owe you if all of a sudden you've handed back your crown? Meghan and Harry can't keep hold of their staff. We'll reveal the secrets of an organisation usually shrouded in mystery and explore defining moments of royal history to see how the past still shapes the monarchy today.

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2:18Hello and welcome to The Unprocessed Truth, the podcast where we dive into the diet and lifestyle choices of our amazing guests so that we can help you live a healthier and happier life. After years of struggling with colds and illness myself, I decided to take things into my own hands and pay attention to what I was putting in my body. So join us for the good, the bad, and of course, the healthy. Today, we're joined by professional boxer Chris Billum-Smith, who is also known as The Gentleman. He's a regional, a British, and a European and Commonwealth cruiserweight champion, and he's held the WBO cruiserweight title between 2023 and 2024.

3:03So we've got a lot to cover to see and delve into what goes into making a boxing champion. And as a reminder, if you're enjoying these episodes, please do follow the podcast, like the podcast and leave us a review of any guests you want us to talk to because every little bit of feedback really helps make this show what it is. Thanks for joining us, Chris. Thanks for having me. It's great to be on. And thank you as well for the tonic supplements I got them for my boy. Oh, you did? Yeah, yeah. I've been using them a while now. So he calls them his sweeties every morning after breakfast. So it works well.

3:41Amazing. Well, good to hear. Thanks for that. But I'm here today to talk to you about your journey, your story. What does food and diet look like in the eyes of a former boxing champion? I love sport, especially boxing, when you've got these big, intense training camps and what you must go through and what you put your body through in those periods and how you fuel that journey as well. I think it's going to be really interesting for our listeners. So I'm super excited to get into this. but if we start by going back to the beginning we always like to go back to the start of your childhood and see what it was like for you growing up were you a fussy eater what were your parents feeding you how did things look when you were a little boy Chris um yeah I was definitely a fussy eater I um my my number one dish was pasta I think for dinner um breakfast was probably most the breakfast i remember the most was wheatabix i'd have two wheatabix with with milk and prunes and prunes get a fiber in tinned prunes um which came in a syrup which is probably why i loved it um but yeah it was very um i guess basic and in a way but then lunch would be standard lunch box of sandwich crisps a small bit of chocolate or oat bar or something like that yeah um maybe some raisins and then uh yeah i think most of the time for me was like my favorite was pasta in in um with sauce or without playing my favorite meal is probably my mom's pasta cheese sauce which she used to make quite a lot but then a lot of time we'd have cheese and yogurt like natural yogurt and i don't know anyone else who had it and everyone used to say what you have yogurt with with pasta they found it right back in the days especially they found it very strange greek style yogurt not the greek yogurt which is has a different you know macro makeup um so yeah it was always be like yeah cheddar cheese with that that all i lived on that stuff and then it would be dinners would be like maybe sausage mash and peas or beans and then roast dinners and stuff like that the italians are turning in their graves and you're putting yogurt on your pasta that is uh a new one i've never heard that before but i'm guessing it was mixed into the sauce so it was like a cheesy well it was literally just pasta cheese and the yogurt like you'd literally dollop yeah dollop it on and then i'll just mix it around try it it's very good do you still eat it today i would eat it yeah but i don't really have it that often now You're not cooking that for the family?

6:28No, I don't think my wife, I don't think she's ever had it. She finds it weird, which is fair enough. So what was it like around the family table? You've got some brothers. Yeah. Were meal times, sat down, eat all together? What did a typical Friday night dinner look like? Yeah, I think most days, I mean, they're older than me and my brothers, but yeah, we'd be sat around the table, which was nice all the way through, really, even when later on my brothers would move out and move back in when I was sort of late teen and stuff like that they'd be traveling and come back for a bit or whatever so even then we'd have dinner together most of the time um my mum cooked um and then I think her you know cooking probably evolved a little bit we have a chili recipe or bolognese and stuff like that which my mum's chili i love and still cook today um and i'm very very proud of it it's a very like a few little ingredients which most people probably don't use it's not a it's not from a sort of a pot you know it's a proper homemade single ingredient so i know what's what's the secret ingredient well it's just a lot of a lot of liam perens and marmite it goes in it to bring some flavors out so and then occasionally some dark chocolate as well dark chocolate in your chili yeah a little mix mix that up so uh there's some along with you know all the other spices and stuff like that so it's uh yeah it's um it's nice yogurt on your pasta and marmite yogurt would go on that as well on the chili yeah yeah you've got an inventive mother who's using all the ingredients of her cupboard to really make dishes but trust me i think marmite would actually work because it kind of gives it that nice umami flavor that um you can get from like Worcestershire sauce or other things in in your chili the one i always do is a little bit of balsamic vinegar in a in a spag bowl to give it that similar sort of tarty try that one it's a good one but um that's really interesting and what was it like in terms of you know sport in your households were your brothers sporty was fuel for sport and you know your early days a consideration or was it just food on the dinner the table yeah I think um you know when I look back I think they they were both sporty and active um my middle brother probably more than my oldest brother I think but that might be just because of age my my oldest brother was he's nine years older than me and then my middle brother's seven years older than me so um I probably by the time I remember stuff my oldest brother was probably going out of his mates a lot more and stuff like that and yeah um yeah but yeah i mean when we we moved down from south london to bournemouth when i was three years old and had a massive like 120 foot garden uh my dad got some swings and a slide from the a park that was closing down from the council concreted him into our garden and then out the back we had like a little area where we play football we put a basketball hoop up and a football goal like a big net so when we when we missed which was often um it wasn't going into next door neighbor's garden um um yeah we just had i was in the garden all the time i'd put chairs out to create a wall for to take free kicks and stuff like that i was born in 1990s obviously in the beckham era so i was trying to had had a mohawk when that when he brought that out and was trying to trying to be him and taking free kicks yeah but I did fencing, I did gymnastics, did karate, did swimming, diving, badminton, tennis, literally every sport, football, obviously, hockey.

10:16So like a Sunday for me was hockey in the morning, football in the afternoon. So that's, you know, three hours of playing. A long day, fair play to your parents for taking you to all those sports. Yeah, my mum was very, very present all the time in terms of just giving us opportunities. my dad worked away Monday to Friday so yeah it was um amazing and were you always destined to be an athlete did you think that at a young age did your parents kind of try and push you into it or it was just for the love of the game and see what happens yeah I think where I was the youngest and by quite a way I was the the golden child the spoiled one as expected with with three boys I think and uh so anything I wanted to do I probably got away of a lot more but anything I wanted to do they'd support their financially they're in a better position so they could support you know me go into different clubs every day of the week um and that i remember being at sort of family gatherings and and family asking me what do you want to be when you grow up chris and i was like yeah early sort of six seven eight that sort of a footballer i want to be a footballer i want to be a footballer and then they were like you know you're definitely going to end up in sport some way because that's the only thing I just did every sport like I said and yeah just loved it just love being active um you know I remember being at secondary school and the the teacher being saying oh we're missing someone from I overheard him speaking about oh they've pulled out of the cross country and I wasn't even a good runner I was just like I'll do it like I just did it and didn't do very well but just loved being involved in sort of competing and just trying to try new sports so um I think yeah if you ask anyone I was always always destined to end up in sports somehow some way somehow some way and your brothers were they involved much in sport or were they just beating you up because they were your older brothers well my oldest was more he's more creative he was into music and stuff when he was younger um and then my dad works in the film industry so they ended up sort of following my dad into the film industry getting in a trade one's a carpenter one's a scaffolder and he does like rigging for the for the films and stuff um but yeah they both did sport they both like sport uh my oldest big west ham fan because a lot of my uncles are and then um my middle brother was the one who sort of loved boxing um and loved lots of different sports he actually wanted to be a stuntman originally so he was always trying different sports and he had to be so good in so many areas to become a stuntman.

13:05He's got there in the end in the roundabout where he does rigging for the stunts now. But yeah, he was kind of my first inspiration into boxing. And then I went to college and met my mate who was boxing and started training with him, watched him fight and I thought, okay, I want to give this a go. How old were you when you started boxing? 16. 16 is that late? I've done a couple a handful of sessions probably 10 sessions in between 12 and 16 mainly so I could go into school the next day and tell my mates I went boxing last night it sounded really cool but yeah I think I don't know I think boxing is one of those sports because I've done all the other sports I had good motor skills in a lot of different areas and I think boxing you can start later because I think the boxing is a a junior and a youth is like a different sport to as an adult because as a junior and a youth you can you're not they're not punching as hard right so you can kind of get away with just being busy you see you can start competitive boxing at 10 11 years old yeah as you get older obviously people you know punch a lot harder they're growing they've got more strength so you can't just stand there and just wing away at each other so they're almost like two different sports um so i think you can start boxing later as long obviously if you've got motor skills from other sports and there's a lot of mental and grit and determination that goes into sort of uh adult boxing yeah so then you start at 16 but at what point did you realize like this was the sport for you and you're going to make a real go of it um it's weird because i remember at first i just loved it i just loved the control you have over your own outcome.

14:55I think in football, I remember having a really specific game when I was a kid. I had the best game of my life, but we were playing a team that was full of Bournemouth Academy players back then, a Sunday league team, but they had a lot of players that played Bournemouth Academy. And we lost 5-0, but the best game I've ever played, I played centre-back, which was not my position. and I remember like doing diving head and saves off the line and then after the game they were like, do you want to come and play for us? And I remember that and I thought, I had the best game of my life and I still lost 5-0.

15:26I hate that feeling of lack of control over the outcome and you can play the best game of your life and still lose. Whereas in an individual sport, you have more control of what you get. You get out what you put in most of the time. So I love that. and boxing just felt very, I don't know, I just fell in love with everything about it. And there's that whole sort of, I guess the ego side of it as well. You have like, it really, like if you do well at it, it really helps push the ego and the confidence. And yeah, just the battle and I guess the primal instinct of it just I loved. and I just always loved competing so it felt like the best form of competing.

16:18And that was when you were at college. Did you then go straight from college into professional boxing? No, so yeah, I was an amateur for many years and I just loved the sport and it was just that constant growth mindset of getting better and finding ways to figure things out and become a better athlete. and then I got to the semi-finals of the national championships like the open class national championships and got a call up for the Great Britain like an assessment for the Great Britain squad which goes to the Olympics and I was like okay like just never expected it and then didn't get in and then I was like okay well if I that's now a realistic thing if they saw some sort of um you know talent there then if i just keep trying i can maybe go to the olympics and then that was always the goal um and then that was 2012 and then in 2016 i got another assessment which my third assessment got all the way through the process until the final where it's like yes or no and they said no and i was like okay well i was gutted but i was like i guess i got a term professional because i was 26 at this point not gonna wait an hour for another olympics it would i'll be too old and they're not going to want me and so i'll give professional a go and then yeah so it was kind of just around that time of just probably i would have been about 20 22 23 i was like okay well i'm gonna do this still as an amateur but my goal was always the olympic so then as that process went on i thought maybe i could do it full time as a and had you moved out of home at this point no i moved out of home when i was 20 25 26 so all this time in my uh especially in my early 20s i was not everything was boxing i was working part-time in a gym earning very little money definitely not enough money to move out um and i'm not not enough uh maturity to move out either i don't think um my mum as the golden child i think she liked to have me around but also did all my washing did majority of my cooking um but yeah then i met my now wife when i was 24 and then she actually bought a flat a couple of years into our relationship and i moved moved in with her so um at boar's head we've been going back to school for over 115 years And this year, every school lunch is reason to celebrate with the flavors your kids love and the exceptional quality you expect.

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19:52Yeah. So what was that like then when you had a missus and you were about to move out of home at 25, 26, but your mum had been cooking for you? What was your first experiences of cooking? Yeah, I think I started cooking for myself a little bit before then. At home, because of boxing, kind of, my mum would just cook meals and i'd be like well i can't eat that mom so i just end up cooking for myself a bit more not anything extravagant not anything exciting most of the time especially as an amateur there's i had a real bad relationship with it's become a bit of a carbophobe um because that was around that was around 20 2009 2010 time where everything i felt like it was quite a carbophobe era of um especially in boxing because it was you need them for such a high intensity sport but it was all about making weight as well um made weight horrific a couple of times where i have to lose four or five kilo in a week i then weigh in and box within three four hours and that week i'd be having one wheat a bit or maybe two weeks of breakfast not eating all day and then having a chicken breast, some green beans and some greens and that's it.

21:19And that, so I then... That's probably the ideal preparation. No, so I'm probably consuming 800 calories a day at that point and then doing an active job in the gym and then training that night and then probably going for a run after training as well. How did you even do that? Surely your body was just starving. yeah uh I wasn't happy uh it's just that I guess you just grit it out for for a period of time to yeah I don't know really it's just the especially now I know what I know about um nutrition and then I did a nutrition course when I was about 24 25 it was like a year long and I remember just um educating myself so at least when the time comes to get a nutritionist I knew that they what they were telling me was the right thing but also if I you know at that point I couldn't afford one but I am my own nutritionist in that sense so I learned a lot more about about food but where were you learning from in that period was it your boxing coach who was telling you what to do and just only focus on the weight or where did you get your education from I mean I did a personal training course at college which gave me a little bit um and I guess the internet a lot of time and then when i did my actual education like nutrition course uh there's a guy called ben coomba who um he runs a supplement company now and he had like a nutrition academy so i did that that was about 14 months but what i liked about the academy it was like had like a really low pass rate which means you're coming out competent so i was like okay i like that because i'm not just paying for a day course which i've done in the past pay 100 150 quid for a day course come out with a certificate and then coming out of this course you know competent so that was that I felt very comfortable in that.

23:08So what was it like when you were then turning professional in 2017 at that point did you have that nutrition education and you'd really dialed it in and you were you know much better or did you get a team and a nutritionist come and support you in that um yeah i did it myself and also learned from people in the gym um about making weight as a professional because it's different the weigh-ins the day before you do a dehydrate uh sort of you know dehydration process followed by a rehydration process after the the weigh-in and then um yeah i think and then i can't remember when it was but friend of mine who's now uh james more and he's the england rugsby's nutritionist now he got in touch like anything i can do to help and then i've worked with him you know hand in hand for a few years we're really good friends now we've got kids of similar age and stuff like that um and our families really get on so um yeah he's he's worked with me for the last few years uh he's my nutritionist now um and we kind of just bounce off each other and i just ask him a few questions because I'm fairly knowledgeable in it and then I'll ask him questions about this that and the other and he'll set out a plan and I'll send him my weights every week or a couple of times a week or whatever and yeah he um keeps keeps me accountable really and that's that's mainly what it is just need someone to hold me accountable I know most of the time what I'm what I should and shouldn't be doing um but yeah it's um he he's must been working with him for five years now so not long after i come become commonwealth champion so my 10th 11th fight so for people who don't know can you explain a bit about you're obviously a cruiser weight but the whole process of a weigh-in what goes into the preparation and i guess what the goal is of you know dehydrating yourself slash cutting weight for the fight and what's the purpose of it all yeah i mean you want to be the biggest you can for your weight category regardless of what it is um so my limit is 200 pounds which is 90.6 kilos um so i but i get into the ring my performance weight is about 97 98 kilos is my best performance weight where i'm strongest and fittest and not too heavy so i'll train around 100 kilos the weight will come down to 97 98 and i'll stay there until the week of the fight and then it's a lot of manipulation of carbs water um salts you know uh to get down and then the night before the weigh-in do a little bit of a sweat out um but the the the science is there to back it up as long as you can rehydrate and refill properly i think i've seen is stuff like up to 10 is the sort of limit 10 of your body weight is what you can dehydrate and rehydrate i don't do that much i probably do by the time i'm there probably more like five six percent of dehydration and then refueling.

26:26So I'll do a sweat out the night before, sweat out probably 60 % of what I've got left and then do the other 40 % the morning of. And it's not a nice process. How do you feel? Yeah, I mean, you don't feel strong. You don't feel like you can go 12 rounds the next day at that point. But then you weigh in sort of anywhere between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., depending what the weigh-ins are on the, say I'm fighting on the Saturday night, that will be on the Friday. Then it's just all about refueling and rehydrating first. So then the rehydration process will start immediately off the scale. So straight in with electrolytes, water and electrolytes.

27:12Usually my first drink is that, like an electrolyte drink. and then like a high high GI high sugar drink to replenish all glycogen stores then a protein shake as well so that's kind of my first meal as such is but it's all liquids because it is you know more gets in quicker speeds the process up and then i'll give it a few hours until i have a meal sort of let my body rehydrate um and my gut's sort of rehydrated so it can actually absorb some some food um then yeah then i'll have a meal which will be a mixture of obviously high carbs um i think we aim for about eight grams per kilo uh in between or about 10 grams in per kilo in that sort of 30 hours to um between the weighing and getting in the ring so it's a yeah a lot of a lot of food i mean i've never boxed so i've no idea what that process is like but I can only link it to maybe someone who every day has tried like a 36 hour fast, right?

28:18Where they've not eaten and then host the fast. You're then eating that first meal. When I did it, I can't say I felt amazing straight away. Like it takes a bit of time for your body to adapt. Is that long enough? Do you feel 100 % by the time you get to the fight or? By the time the fight comes around, I'd say yes. but the morning of the fight no so like my i wear a whoop so it tells me recovery and stuff i mean you've gone through a quite a strenuous process of making the weight yeah and then your body and then you're loading up loads of food and and your body's processing all that during your sleep and whoop gives you a recovery score and i've worn it a few times i think on the day of you know the night before a fight and but i remember one time it was um the only time i remember is when it was it was 12 % recovered 12 % on the day of a fight um but I think that's in the morning that's 7 8 a.m in the morning I've got another 12 hours of letting the body process everything and then calming down and usually I have like an afternoon nap as well and then it's usually after the afternoon nap or at least the hour of sort of non-sleep deep rest where I then feel recharged and ready to go yeah that might just be a mental thing of like you don't have a choice um but that's that's how i feel feel good or when i feel good so yeah um it's interesting because i mean i've been ill on on a fight week as well where i couldn't hold anything in um and then my nutritionist was like he was away because he was getting married two days after my fight so he was away prepping for his wedding in in spain um and i was flying out the day after the fight but on the Tuesday morning I woke up like throwing up and I'm on the toilet and then I spoke to him on the Wednesday like mate I can't hold anything down and he's like rice cakes and basically had about I don't know eight to ten rice cakes in in the space of sort of 48 hours before the way in and that was it and I had a one percent recovery on the Wednesday it died on the Wednesday my whoop and I was like, okay, I don't need to know that.

30:31The last thing I've seen is a 1 % recovery. But at that point, this is for my world title fight, my first chance at a world title in my hometown, a home football stadium. My dream venue, dream opponent, dream fight. 1 % recovery. Yeah. So I, but nothing was stopping me and I just had to get on with things and yeah. And yeah, and that was, that was that. So by the Friday and Saturday, I could hold food a lot better. The bug had gone. So still obviously not 100%, never are straight after an illness. But yeah, I mean, making weight was probably the easiest time I've ever made weight because most of it was coming out of me and nothing was going in.

31:14How did you feel in the fight? Yeah, I wonder if it helped me because I knew I had to reserve my energy and I knew I had, I just, on the first day, I just remember saying to myself, like internally just like worst case you feel terrible and then you don't even warm up you just get ready and you just give it everything for 36 minutes or 45 minutes including the in between rounds and i thought i can do anything for 45 minutes regardless of my status is because of the what's at stake i can do that and then i felt a lot better than i did on the thursday come come saturday and i've it but i think it helped manage my energy and not go out and just think ah well and just like be too excited excited i thought i had to sort of probably brought me down to the right level of sort of adrenaline and wasn't over the top or anything like that so yeah and um yeah okay turned out right in the end so you won yeah yeah i won that fight um so yeah that was it'll always be the greatest night of my career first chance at a world title at the football stadium against a former gym mate of mine and stuff like that so uh yeah it was uh some night with a one percent recovery yeah probably slightly higher than that probably not yeah on the day but um yeah I guess we'll never know well you know I mean it's crazy right because you think some people could get so sucked into that one percent number and then totally lose it but you're saying how actually you turned it into a positive around conserving your energy and it yeah i think that and also i see like i see it as a and even i just have to like for years i've just flipped stuff like that like if i'm injured or anything that i'm like well that makes the win all the sweeter rather than use it okay i've got an excuse i feel like i will like i want to mention that i'm ill but only if i win like i would never have mentioned it if i lost because i no one likes to hear people moaning about injuries and illnesses but i'm like this is going to be even more impressive because of this and that's kind of how i reframe it and um it helps motivate me 100 i mean there's always a positive to any negative right like life and the world is very yin and yang so you can always find good in the bad yeah i think that's a brilliant mindset um how you flipped it and you used it to your advantage and and came out of that but okay so that's a bit of an insight into how crazy a week prep is to make the weight and you know get into your fights but what's day-to-day life like now with your family you've got a young little boy what are you cooking at home how on top of your nutrition are you when you're not in camp um yeah i'm i'm probably i'd like to think i'm 80 20 but i'm definitely not i'm more probably like 65 70 good and then i think breakfast is always a good meal for us like because we'll most time we'll have it with our son and he loves to have chocolate porridge every morning chocolate porridge to him is some organic cocoa powder in sprinkled in the in the milk um and then um yeah and then he'll have maybe peanut butter and berries with it as well so he's getting a good good mixture of stuff um although we've just been away last weekend and he got back into dippy egg and soldiers which i'm buzzing about getting some some eggs in him because it's he doesn't really like many forms of eggs but i mean dippy egg and soldiers was another staple breakfast for me to be fair as a kid um yeah so we've uh that that's a standard morning is sort of porridge or i might of yogurt instead of um instead of porridge with sort of nuts and berries and a bit of honey and stuff like that um lunch varies my shopping list isn't too bad but how often we eat at home is dangerous when i'm out of camp because that's the time to enjoy it whereas when i'm in camp i'm just very monotonous of meals um and stuff like that but yeah i mean i'm cooking a lot get a butcher's go to a butcher's once a week pick up all our our meat from there which is um lovely and uh yeah i love i'm enjoying cooking we moved house in end of february and we got an aga so we had had that sort of on for the first few months it's now off because the heat it radiates do not need in this is summer um but it's got a gas part to it which is is nice um but then i also got a gosney pizza oven which uh is dangerous if you've got the got the pizza doughs to to go with it and um yeah i've cooked that for sort of having people around and stuff like that in this summer i've had my dad's 70th um and then hosting in new house and uh yeah so what's a go-to meal when you're hosting people around your house um i like that that chili um yeah the chili i make but i've been knocking up just a few random sort of pasta dishes recently just some spices some chopped tomatoes um and a meat whether that's chicken or stuff like that um yeah i've got a basic knowledge of cooking and what spices work with what um and i like to i don't really like to buy pots of sauce or stuff like that i'll try and do it myself but then with with pasta dish i'm not sure if a pasta dish is a pasta dish without cheese so there's a lot of cheese involved probably too much cheese but um you never have too much cheese yeah um but yeah i mean with with regards to home i think yeah it's not it's not too bad if I'm cooking at home it's good um but it's just making sure we cook at home and don't just eat out all the time okay so what's your favorite guilty pleasure takeaway then after a fight what's your go-to well on on fight night the only thing open is is pizza so we end up just getting pizza I've got a friend who always comes and he works in boxing media and he's always the guy who orders the pizzas in even when we're in Saudi he was there and I came back at like half eight in the morning because I've been in hospital all night I'd lost the fight.

37:33I was a broken man. And there was about 12 pizzas just sat in my room, because all the team would have them, but they barely got eaten. So yeah, pizza's always the go-to on a fight night. But then when I get back home, there's a place called Chicken and Blues, which I love. And that's like chicken rat. It's not overly bad, but it is because I'll choose the waffle fries and I'll choose the mac and cheese bites. and I'll choose all those things. Deep fried chicken then? No, it's not deep fried, no. It's good chicken, really good quality chicken, but it's just the sides which get me. And then when I'm in camp, I'll still eat it, but I'll choose sweet potato mash with chicken rather than the chicken wrap with the mac and cheese fights.

38:20So the order just changes, but yeah, that's my go-to back home. Amazing. That is a good go-to. All right, so let's get into the next section then where we try and understand a little bit more about what you think is good, what's bad and what's very healthy in your diet. Probably we can lean into some of your training camp. So what does good look like, first of all? For me, it's, you know, when I'm in camp, to take away the stress a lot of time, I'll get sort of pre-made meals. um like them there you can microwave them i try and use a pan most of the time to steam them to heat them up um but yeah that's a meal prep company which i've got it just takes the stress away of counting macros because i know how many calories and protein and carbs and suffering them so that's easy that usually be lunch and dinner covered um of and there'll be a large protein source 40 to 50 grams per meal um and then breakfast will be sort of a protein porridge or something like that so that's kind of what a good staple looks like for me obviously hydration supplements and stuff as well yeah um in in camp and then yeah that's that's the you still allow yourself something bad something naughty while you're in camp yeah i'll have some dark chocolate usually that's not that naughty dark chocolate's a super food yeah well that's that's my my go-to now and again i might have um depending where my weight's at maybe at the weekend depending how far i'm out of of the fight i might treat myself to a dessert of or an ice cream or something which is definitely sort of led by my son he might want an ice cream on a Saturday or something where we're out and we're having fun so and then it's hard to turn that down.

40:26You've got to treat yourself I think. Yeah I think I think now my relationship with food is much better I allow myself to eat more because I'm aware of how to to do it but also mentally if you allow yourselves those things in in you know sort of moderation then you don't beat yourself up too mentally and add more stress to an already stressful job well yeah because it can be very all or nothing right you're prepping for these big fights and like you say you kind of go through hardcore strict meal prep all the way to take away four or five nights a week and like mentally that's quite tough and probably not the best relationship with food yeah absolutely i think that's the the biggest factor is that that relationship that you have i know other boxers and myself in the past have done you know literally all or nothing in terms of like way too restricted and on calorie front and and carb front um and then now i've learned to fuel my body more and performing better because of it and also the stress is taken away yeah yeah yeah that makes sense makes sense so what about the healthy what's one health hack that you've learned in your boxing career that you swear by when it comes to food and nutrition i think it's i think with boxing is still maybe the the timings of of meals like one getting a decent carb source back in after a session but also for me and the data on that i get from my sleep is like not eating too late which is difficult sometimes um but trying to eat sort of give myself three hours before bed but sometimes I've done strength like my strength coach and the way our sessions have worked is like sort of half seven till nine half nine and then I need something after so I'll probably just whack a protein shake and then like a three to one carb to protein ratio um but I'd say yeah not eating later then I just feel like I sleep the quality my sleep is so much better and then I also just feel wake up feeling so much more rested more refreshed and yeah I think that for me is probably the biggest thing but most importantly actually fueling my sessions because the old me didn't used to fuel enough definitely I've seen it with um boxers even in the gym like they under fuel themselves they just the the foods or their nutritionist comes from the wrong background because they haven't done their research and as somebody who had a bodybuilding nutritionist who just had them on so little calories and this person's got a spa and then doing that run that day and they're probably burning even though a small weight is burning two to two and a half thousand calories a day and they're on 1200 and then yeah it's uh it becomes difficult food is fuel right um but the process of digesting food is actually really resource intensive in itself so that's why if you eat a big meal late at night big takeaway then your sleep's gonna suffer because it's stuck basically digesting the food rather than going around the body cleaning up dead cells and doing what it's supposed to do and help you recover while you sleep so that is i would agree one of the most underrated tips um just eat your dinner early and be done for the day and cut out the food don't do late night snacking don't do heavy takeaways it doesn't work for your body at all yeah it's hard though because i guess in culture right we have that late night sweet treat in front at the telly uh especially my wife's pregnant currently so uh that's a very uh yeah very prevalent thing at the moment and just in in our relationship and but most of the time that is dark chocolate dark chocolate's great what percentage are you uh i go 90 or 70 i don't like the 85 i feel like it's it tastes way stronger than the 90 for some reason so uh try and get higher but uh always 70 whereas she'll sort of delve into the flavored caramel sea salt ones which end up being like 30 well they're not even dark chocolate i mean they call themselves dark chocolate but i would argue they're not because they're basically half sugar yeah you need a percentage number on that yeah so i'll try and always when i'm on it i'll try and be sort of 70 above get to the 90 yeah if they've got it i are you will i will buy the 90.

45:02all right i actually tried 99 once have you ever tried that i've tried 100 have you but is there a chocolate is actually 100 is there i've never tried that it's just cacao yeah but it's like the cocoa powder you put in your son's porridge yeah it's quite bitter and it doesn't have any sugar they have it in like a bar form do they you can get a full bar you can get it in most supermarkets uh yeah you can get it in my super being in majorca like 15 years ago and seeing 99 and i got that and i tried i was like that it's not on that i need to enjoy it otherwise this is pointless it's definitely an acquired taste i was the kind of like nutrition geek when i was at university studying for my final year exams and i was looking for any edge i could get and that's when i started eating 100 dark chocolate but because I was like, it's a no-tropic, it can be really powerful for your brain.

45:55So I was like, I'm going to get through it. And I hated it, but I just did it anyway because I was looking for an edge. So now this is a section of the podcast that I'm always most excited for. I get to look into your shopping trolley and receipt. I think you've brought one with you. Yeah, I've got a list on my phone. Who does the weekly shop? You or the missus? I'll do the shop, but she'll write the list. most of the time so all the bad stuff is her her fault um i've got a hosting shopping list and i've got a a standard shopping list so the hosting shopping list involves a lot of pizza base so this is like when we're hosting for like cooking pizzas yeah pizza cheese and then you've got uh bags of crisps in there and a few snacks and stuff like that which will let you off aren't ideal if hosting but what's a regular normal one so go to butchers for our meat that's got uh sausages bacon mince chicken breasts steak um got some raspberry leaf tea at the moment because my wife's pregnant um nice and then this is so this is from from the supermarket will be orange juice flatbreads bananas cucumber peppers strawberries apples blueberries garlic um and then pancakes sourdough bread like the soft pancakes they're for my son although pre-made pre-bought yeah the i make pancakes from home like um banana and eggs that's that's what i mean that's the way to do pancakes really simply the pre-bought ones are usually full of yeah junk yeah but these are just like on the go snacks he my wife will buy for him then there's like cheddar cheese, feta cheese milk I'll always get like the unhomogenised milk.

47:47Good man Potatoes, dark chocolate where else have we hummus Can I have a look? Can I see what you're hiding? There's the top one which has got the pizza bits in it sort of a mixture between the two mixture between the two so when are you drinking the orange juice um i don't have it a lot but mostly probably at breakfast with my house a small glass every day no just an occasional weekend yeah um yeah probably i don't know i don't drink it that often to be honest myself i mean with the amount you're training you can easily put it away i say freshly squeezed it's not freshly squeezed but it's a 100 % not from concentrate the good stuff right fair enough um I mean it's very good right it's essentially meat and vegetables the only bits in there that are probably a bit tricky are the pancakes for your little one yeah the scariest thing I read the other day about kids health is that although kids in the UK are now the world leaders of ultra processed food consumption more so than America, which is mental, which is about 60 % of their diet is now ultra processed.

49:02The place where it gets really bad is the lunchbox, which is about 82 % of a lunchbox is now ultra processed. So you think those pancakes are like just a little throwaway side snack, but it's an ultra processed food, right? Which will have probably emulsifiers in it, some preservative and some other stuff which I know I get it we all need snacks for kids and it's a kind of coping mechanism sometimes when they're screaming and you're just like I need some help but you know there's potentially better ways to do it like you said like making the pancakes with bananas and eggs and just mix it all together and fry it in a pan and yeah I reckon that's probably happened more just thinking about now since my wife's been pregnant and then I'm here there and everywhere so it's just ease ease for her so yeah it makes sense but yeah you're right it's one to watch out for i mean i get it like there's always going to be compromises i was at the beach at the weekend with my kid and he's having an ice cream like i can't stop him from seeing the ice cream van and it is going to happen but it's it's those kind of like daily regulars that then can creep into years of being regular as opposed to like the odd treat which you've got to watch out for and then flatbreads what's your go to flatbread whatever's in the store yeah it's just yeah it's just a meal that my wife likes chicken and feta and salad and stuff such an easy go to meal I'm the same just like stick it in a wrap everything tastes good with a bit of sauce but just watch what's in those flatbreads as well because there are some good ones you can get some non ultra processed If you're typically buying, I think the mainstream brand is Mission.

50:49It's like a highly ultra-processed wrap, but there are alternatives that don't have any of the additives. So you can do that really easily. Not that you already know a lot about nutrition and you've got an amazing shopping list when you're not hosting. And then as long as you're not hosting five nights a week, then you're good to go ultimately. It's a very good list. Yeah, I mean, even with the pizza doughs, to be fair, like they're three ingredients, they're yeast, they're flour and water. And that's the ingredients you need for the... So when we're hosting, I can try and make our own, which is slightly better.

51:33Well, no, but I would argue that you could make a healthy pizza, right? Like if you have a base like that, which is three ingredients, and you put some tomato sauce on there, which is also just tomatoes, a load of cheese, which is good fats, good protein. And if you whack a bit of veg on and maybe, you know, some chicken or whatever you fancy on your pizza, you can balance it out. I think part of the problem is most people just buy an ultra-processed one, which is then filled with loads of preservatives and other things which aren't great or a lot of processed meat, which isn't great either on a pizza.

52:06but you can you know fundamentally a bit of bread with meat and vegetables is a decent meal yeah right um so it's just about the quality rather than what most people consume is uh domino's which is quite quite in the same i mean that's the thing with the pizzas we make like people i don't feel rough after it like whereas when you have the other stuff it just you do you feel Oh, terrible. It's heavy. It's kind of greasy. And then, yeah, if you make it home, you're not using the same amount of oil and it's much more fresh and easy. So, yeah, you know, the Italians live some of the longest lives in the world, right?

52:44And they're eating pizza and pasta, but they're doing it right. They're doing it homemade, authentic, no junk and additives. So that's awesome. Awesome. Good stuff, Chris. Let's get into the quick fire round. We're going to try and catch you out if we can. but you should be quick on your feet because you're used to it in the room um so what's your favorite quick energy boosting snack when you're training a banana or if um on a sparring day i'll take like a high sugary drink because it's just quick sugars getting in and then i'm using it fuel up with the sugar bit of glucose loading yeah all right favorite comfort meal after a brutal training session have to be some sort of form of pasta dish yeah um yeah chicken pesto pasta or something like that simple staple can't go wrong nice um what's the weirdest thing you've seen a boxer eat it's not that what it is but it's the amount like i'd see boxer eat like a porridge pot like the pre-made pots where you just add hot water or milk or whatever which are like 300 calories and that's all they eat maybe that and a banana before a sparring session where they've got to do like 10 rounds it's like that is not enough energy right i mean that wouldn't fuel me sitting at my desk yeah let alone it's a boxer that's that's the uh there's a massive lack of education in boxing i think with uh around that raw eggs or cooked eggs yeah no I mean, I've got a friend who used to, who went for the start of his sort of training phase.

54:27He had a lot of raw eggs, but he also had like, he wasn't boxing. He was just sort of lifting weights. And he used to have like six sausages, six bacon and some raw eggs and like raw eggs and a shake. Then he'd cook a load of wild diet. Yeah, it was never for you. Did you try it? No, I probably have at some point, stupidly. or I chucked it in a protein shake or something. Yeah, I've put them in a protein shake and actually they make it quite creamy, I find. It's not that bad, you can't taste it. Yeah, no, it's, but yeah, that's, I think, I like my eggs cooked. You prefer them cooked, fair enough.

55:05If you could eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be? Probably my mum's pasta, cheesy pasta dish. With the yogurt? No, does she has like a pasta with cheese sauce, like a macaroni cheese but like she made but yeah so like those are cheese and I think sauce just like milk cheese and corn flour so it's like macaroni cheese yeah basically but yeah I just always remember having that as a kid and I think that's that's my I can taste it now and it tastes good it's always the nostalgia that gets us of like that memory from a childhood yeah or a really good roast dinner I do love a roast dinner love a roast dinner but just don't have enough of them because they take ages to prep and time and i don't know i see they they are a lot of work but i feel like if once you get the meat in the oven yeah then it's actually not too bad because it's the meat and the potatoes once you prep that and it's in then you're kind of waiting around yeah i think this winter i'll be we'll have the agar on and i'll be very much on that and i'll enjoy prepping sort of Sunday on the afternoons get some music on and uh yeah I want I want I want our household to have that sort of staple Sunday roast the best way to do that actually I've found because I've got two young kids so time is hard to like do a roast but if you slow cook the meat what I do is I get up early on the Sunday morning before the kids are up prep the meat get it in the slow cooker or like in the oven on a really low temperature and let it sit there for like you know five six hours um depending on the size of the meat but essentially then you've done that first bit and then all you've got to worry about later in the afternoon is the potatoes the veg and you know the gravy or whatever so it kind of almost separates the work and makes it a little bit more achievable yeah i think when my younger or my son at the moment who with another one the way he's three so getting him involved will be easier in the winter so that'll be be fun you want to teach him to cook yeah and i'm just so much life's easy when they get involved and they're not just running around asking for you to play with them and they love getting involved i find so i get him involved in like i put his in the mornings i put his porridge his oats in one cup milk another cup chocolate powder another cup and he pours them all in and he and then he stirs it and then he'll lick the spoon and that's like his his um his little routine that he likes doing but then he loves it he's like he's not as bad now but he used to get really annoyed if we did it without him if he was in the other room and like i'm making breakfast and then he'd come and be like no i want to pour it which is nice because he wants to get involved But yeah, I think just involving them in it and I think creating that sort of good relationship with the kitchen and food and trying to do that.

57:57100%. I think it's such a key skill in life, right? Just learn how to, well, you said it earlier in the pod around learning how to put flavors together with different spices is, I think, just a fundamental skill. if you learn what goes with what and how you balance, you know, sweet and salty with sour and acidic, then, you know, you're basically halfway there and you can cook anything, which is awesome. But then I've got to ask, as a, you know, world champion boxer, what's one health hack to end the podcast on that you would recommend everyone do?

58:35um i mean one that's not sort of consumption related would be sleep that makes life a lot easier um but hydration as well i think is a massive one um i'd say yeah sleep and hydration are my sort of fundamental things for life and then and performance of life whether that's performing on a an athlete level or just a day-to-day function as a parent or work or whatever and i think massively gets uh overlooked hydration i'd say because people's first drink for most is a coffee and it's just straight away on an empty stomach um try and hydrate first um but yeah hydration in general i mean my dad is terrible i he does my head his water consumption is just null and void and it's just uh he was working out doing some work at our old house and i buy like end up just buying him bottles of water so they're there so he's not even have to fill them up he just can take them out and and consume them but yeah um yeah i think hydration's a huge one and then protein i think people massively under eat protein as a as a whole um so yeah i think there's some great recommendations in there the hydration one is so fundamental my dad is you know swears by wine and tea basically and i'm like that is not how you need to be hydrating you know it's just so important we're basically made up of water and just a two percent decline in our hydration can affect our physical and mental performance so it really has a big impact so i think that's a massive one which you've learned the hard way through all your weight cutting yeah dehydration and as a kid i never drunk water i couldn't bear the taste of it even though it tasted nothing and now it's what i drink literally 95 percent of the time in and out of camp um you know most of the time it's just it's just water and then when i'm out of camp i might have a few a few sort of soft drinks i don't drink alcohol so a few soft drinks here and there but sort of ever even on a bad day it's two and it's like a a wedding or something like that do you know what i mean so uh but most of the time just yeah water and just i just find without it um i just can't it just affects my life so much now um so yeah amazing thanks chris it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast i've learned a lot it's been really interesting thanks for having me on i really appreciate it like i said thanks for the the kids supplements as well oh listen it's all good it and i hope some of our listeners got some takeaways it's not often you get to hear from a world champion in their field about what they do and how important some of these basic things are like sleep like hydration and the food you put in your body obviously so that's all we've got time for today on the unprocessed truth so thanks for coming yes thanks heaven cheers man

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