Gallery Maycee Barber def. Hannah Cifers at UFC Fight Night 139: Best photos view 6 images

Maycee Barber is perhaps the biggest female prospect in MMA today. Dominant performances through her young career have turned heads, and now it has come to light that she put on those performance in a less than optimal state.

Barber (6-0 MMA, 1-0 UFC) is one of many fighters who has operated off the smallest of margins when it comes to diet and weight cutting. It caught up to her finally, though, and that’s why Barber decided to make the decision to move up to the women’s flyweight division from strawweight, where she won her UFC debut in November.

The incredible restrictive diet Barber needed to follow in order to make 115 pounds was becoming detrimental to her long-term health, she said, but with the assistance of the UFC Performance Institute, some essentially changes have been made in advance of Barber’s next bout against J.J. Aldrich (7-2 MMA, 3-1 UFC) at UFC on ESPN+ 6 in March.

“I feel way better,” Barber told MMAjunkie. “No one has ever seen me in a fight on the proper type of diet. No one has ever seen me at 100 percent function. It’s not something I’ve ever done. Now that I am eating like a normal human, my power is up, my strength is up and everything overall.”

Barber said the circumstances that led to her current situation began early in her career and only worsened over time. She worked with the in-house nutritionist while training at Jackson-Wink MMA in Albuquerque, N.M., and with a walk-around weight between 130 and 133 pounds, decided collectively with her team that strawweight was her ideal weight class.

Still in her teenage years at the time, Barber, now 20, said her mentality was to strictly adhere to any directions given to her by coaches. She said she was limited to a calorie intake of between 500 and 800 per day, and with multiple training sessions per day, that made life difficult.

Barber said she eventually moved on from Jackson-Wink MMA and begun working with Perfecting Athletes. She then teamed up with Sam Calavitta, who is the nutritionist for UFC champ T.J. Dillashaw, and eventually with another noted nutritionist in George Lockhart.

Even through all the changes of scenery, Barber said she was “never on over 1,000 to 1,200 calories per day, which is insane for training multiple times per day.” She was asking a lot from her body while not giving much back, and that imbalance somewhat came to ahead before her UFC debut.

Barber stepped into the octagon for the first time at UFC Fight Night 139 in November and bloodied Hannah Cifers to a dominant second-round TKO. Barber was the final person to weigh in for the event, and needed a second attempt in order to hit the 116-pound mark for the strawweight division. She said it was a grueling journey to get there.

“I’ve worked with George Lockhart for the past three fights and I’ve made weight every single time water-wise, but my diet has not changed,” Barber said. “George is amazing for the water cut, but he’s still not the highest level in terms of nutrition. I had a 10, 12 week camp. I started at 135. I dieted and I followed their plan exactly every single day. I updated my weight every single day. They kept telling me to follow the plan, even when I got worried. I followed the plan up until the week of the fight and I had 18 pounds to go and we had to cut 18 pounds that week of the fight.”

Despite winning her UFC debut, Barber said something had to change. She traveled to Las Vegas to work with the experts at the UFC Performance Institute, and it was at that point she discovered the extent of her issues.

“I found my metabolic rate was down by 50 percent,” Barber said. “I should be burning around 1,500 calories a day doing nothing, but mine was 700 or 800. My metabolism had been wrecked. I lost a lot on the hormonal side of things including my cycle. I lost a lot of things that are normal human functions. My brain, cognitive functions, my mood was awful all the time.”

Barber said she was immediately placed on a “drastic reverse diet,” and the results have quickly revealed themselves.

“I’m feeling good, I have my cycle back, I’m a happier person, I’m training way better and I’m so much stronger,” Barber said. “At this moment of time I’m not willing to go back to what I was doing before. The smarter side of me and the people around me say, ‘You have to do this.’ Because if I don’t, it’s going to ruin me metabolically and with hormones. I won’t be able to function later in life.”

Barber said she recently visited the UFC Performance Institute for a six-week check-in following her initial meeting, and all the feedback was positive. She said everything is trending in the right direction, and that has her feeling more and more like flyweight could be her home for the foreseeable future.

She doesn’t count out the idea of ever returning to strawweight, though, Barber said it just needs to be done the right way. Her focus now is on the March 23 encounter with Aldrich, though, which streams on ESPN+ from Bridgestone Arena in Nashville.

Nicknamed “The Future,” Barber has made no secrets about her desire to be a UFC champion, and get the belt at a younger age than anyone in company history. She said a change in weight classes doesn’t impact that goal – it actually opens up the door for even biggest opportunities.

“I have a whole lifetime left in me in this sport,” Barber said. “I think I’ll go back to 115. I don’t see me not being able to make 115. Especially if I take the title at 125 then go take a second one. I don’t see myself being a two-division champion at 125 and 135. I see it more so at 115 and 125.”

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