NEW ORLEANS – Dustin Poirier is a happy man these days.

Why shouldn’t he be? No longer is he starving himself.

Funny what a few carbohydrates will do for your outlook. Better, too, for the people who have to live with you.

“My wife doesn’t have to see me every day aggravated about being hungry,” Poirier told MMAjunkie. “That kind of stuff gets to you after weeks and weeks of dieting crazy hard. You just get aggravated all the time.”

It used to be that Poirier couldn’t eat after training. The week of his fights were the worst. A weight cut and dehydration were all there was to look forward to as a featherweight.

While it may not have been Poirier’s choice to get knocked out by Conor McGregor this past September, the outcome lead to another – the choice he now feels was the best one for his life: A move to the lightweight division.

After his first trip up to 155 pounds ended in a first-round knockout win, Poirier (17-4 MMA, 9-3 UFC) is enjoying life more than ever as he heads toward his second trip, a meeting with Yancy Medeiros (11-2 MMA, 2-2 UFC) at Saturday’s UFC Fight Night 68. The event takes place in Poirier’s backyard of New Orleans at Smoothie King Center. Main-card fights air live on FOX Sports 1 following prelims on FOX Sports 1 and UFC Fight Pass.

“They knew I wanted to fight in New Orleans, so they saved me a spot, and Yancy, after my last fight, he was asking to fight me,” Poirier explains. “I just love Louisiana culture and Louisiana people and I’m just happy to be here in New Orleans.

“I have a lot of people who unfortunately missed a lot of my fights because they didn’t have the money to travel or couldn’t take off work to make a trip for a week. I have a lot of friends and family who haven’t seen me fight live in a long time coming to this.”

For the moment, Poirier isn’t worrying too much about where he sits in the divisional rankings. He just got started, after all, and the 155-pound class is one of the most crowded in the UFC. A lot of key obstacles need to be cleared before he’s ever considered a title contender, but he does have one goal for this year.

“I want to get this win and get my hand raised and take it from there, but my plan is to be a top-10 fighter in the lightweight division by the end of 2015,” he said.

Fighting Medeiros, a scrappy veteran on a two-fight win streak, is going to kickstart his campaign.

“I promise you this, I’m not going to try to lay on top of him and win a decision, and he’s not going to do that to me,” Poirier said. “We’re going in there to finish each other. That’s the kind of fights I like to be a part of. So let’s go out there and make this money and put on a show for the fans.”

For more on UFC Fight Night 68, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.