MMA Star Felice Herrig In Workout Gear Shares Plans For the Future

Newly-retired MMA fighter Felice Herrig is taking a step back from combat—and reassessing how she approaches health and wellness. Herrig, 39, shared pictures of herself in a variety of workout clothing, highlighting how different she looked at different weights. “Unfortunately there’s no 120 lb division in MMA. “So I spent many years not being so kind to my body. I wouldn’t take any of it back. But cutting down to 115 lbs was not the easiest and probably not the healthiest either. Now that I’m retired I’m working hard on finding a healthy balance. I have an 80/20 rule with food. I’ve always had a healthy lifestyle but it can be hard for me at times not to go to complete EXTREMES. I am trying my best. The next venture for me is to get certified in nutrition so I can help female athletes cut weight properly and in a more healthy fashion,” she captioned the post. Here’s how Herrig stays fit, focused, and ready for the next chapter.

1. Weight Lifting Background

Herrig was inspired to pick up weights after watching her bodybuilder father train when she was younger. “I remember I had these 5 pound dumb bells,” she told Fitness Gurls. “I used to do all my own little workouts with them and when I developed a little bicep I just thought it was the coolest thing. I became obsessed with getting a 6-pack and remember I would do 1,000 crunches overnight. I’m a very obsessive person so that's when I knew health and fitness was always going to be a huge part of my life. In fact it's around that time I dreamed of becoming a fitness competitor rather than a fighter.”

2. Healthy Diet

Herrig got help tailoring her diet to her needs. “I’ve always been really healthy and I’ve done it all,” she told Fitness Gurls. “I was a raw foodist for about 1 year and then a vegetarian for 2-3. Right now I've been working with a really well known and sought after nutritionist Fakhri Mubarak and all my meals are prepared for me by a company called Fuel-up. So everything is perfectly proportioned out for me. I’m not going to go into complete specifics about my diet because that's my little secret. But my Fakhri has based my current diet on my blood work and on getting me to the lowest weight I can be with the most amount of muscle and strength as possible, with a specific ratio of carbs, proteins and fats.”

3. Working Through Anxiety

Herrig has learned how important it is to deal with anxiety in a healthy manner. "I was always training, but I was working on all the things that I maybe had been stubborn to do before, and I worked on getting my anxiety under control which was a huge factor,” she said during the UFC on FOX 20 press conference. “And this was the first fight where I felt relaxed and where I felt like I did everything in the fight I know I'm capable of, things I do in the gym. So we'll see what's next. I don't really know."

4. IV Therapy

Herrig does IV therapy when she needs an extra boost. “I guess it’s all an accumulative effect. I put my body through a lot of stress,” she captioned an Instagram post. “I train hard on a regular. I have a lot of anxiety which doesn’t help my case for not burning through all my cortisol . And perhaps the stress of having 2 knee surgeries in 14 months didn’t help. Anyway I’m giving this IV therapy a shot (pun intended).”

5. Fueling the Fight

Herrig’s performance as a fighter changed when she started eating to fuel her body instead of trying to look a certain way. "Every time I ate, I'd feel fat. I'd be afraid of gaining weight," she told ESPN. "I was trying to be healthy and trying all these diets to help with the weight cut before a fight, but it was also about being vain. Once I started eating a certain way and my body looked good, I started eating for looks rather than performance. That was a mistake."