The Real-Life Diet of Bill Goldberg — Goldberg discusses His daily diet

Professional athletes don’t get to the top by accident. It takes superhuman levels of time, dedication, and focus—and that includes paying attention to what they put in their bellies. In this series, GQ takes a look at what athletes in different sports eat on a daily basis to perform at their best. Here’s a look at the daily diet of WWE superstar Bill Goldberg.

 

For nearly a decade, no other professional wrestler gave off the untouchable, damn near mythical aura of Goldberg. The entrance theme helped, sure, but really it was the insane feats of strength that made every wrestling fan’s jaw drop.

(This is a guy who hoisted even the 7-foot, 500-pound Big Show into the air for a Jackhammer with relative ease.) So.

when it was officially announced that Goldberg would be making a comeback in the WWE, people’s reactions ranged from pure joy and excitement to, well, tentative intrigue.

You see, in the hyper-athletic landscape of professional wrestling today, there are dozens of performers capable of such feats, something Goldberg was well aware of before stepping back in the ring. “From Roman Reigns to Sasha Banks to Cesaro, the athleticism is to a point where it’s unbelievable.

There are no limited wrestlers anymore,” he told me. Somehow, at the miraculous age of 50, no less, he’s making a comeback, main eventing pay-per-views like this Sunday’s “Fastlane.” So we called him up and asked him how he manages to look like, well, this.

GQ: You’ve spoken before about your training as you prepared to return to the WWE, but did you make any major adjustments to your diet in the buildup to your return?

Goldberg: Oh, man. The answer is absolutely yes. The more “seasoned” you are, the more your diet plays a huge part in your makeup. My biggest issue throughout this latest adventure that I’m on is trying to make up for 12 years of losing weight.

When I signed on the dotted line with WWE this time around, I had six weeks to train and to be in the ring and my food intake doubled, at least.

I’m assuming your diet became a consistent flow of lean meats and tons of protein then?

Well, it’s always been eat as much as humanly possible and stay away from the fats. Carbs are my friend. As long as I don’t eat them late at night, I’m good. Except for the fact that I now have to train late at night.

I have a gym that I’m sitting in right now that is a quarter-mile from my house, and I’m here until midnight, six days a week. So my metabolism is continually going right up until I sleep because I have to eat after I train.

It’s a continual furnace. I burn it, I throw it back in. I’m trying to get in shape and accomplish gaining weight at the same time. It’s almost impossible.

It’s definitely not an easy endeavor to put on mass while looking as ripped as Goldberg is supposed to look.

 

The amount of food I have to take in—I had to take in a huge amount of food back in the day, but the amount that I have to take in now just to seemingly gain a couple of pounds is unfathomable.

I am like a machine—even more so than I was before—just trying to attain, physically, something that is passable, let alone Goldberg-esque.

That was actually something I wanted to ask you: Are there any big differences in your diet now versus when you were a full-time wrestler in the ’90s and early 2000s?

When you’re 50 years old and you’re putting your underwear on in front of millions of people and you used to be me—lets just say that I’ve cleaned up my diet quite a bit. I didn’t use to be as strict with my fat intake.

I mean, I didn’t even know what “Gluten-free” was then. I ate everything that I saw back then. And it didn’t matter because I was younger and my metabolism was even faster. I’ve always been blessed with a very fast metabolism.

Which, again, is a blessing and a curse when you’re trying to gain weight and get into cardio shape.