Nick Bosa’s Diet Includes This Shortcut To Eating More Fruit & Vegetables

Nick Bosa’s diet

Nick Bosa’s diet, as you’d expect, is predominantly a high-protein, low-carb diet, focusing on lean meats like chicken, steak, and raw fish, complemented with salads rich in nutrients. But the trick for him is making getting fruits and veg as easy and quick to consume as possible, so he’s a huge fan of juicing; slow juicing specifically so the ingredients stay fresh and retain all their natural nutrients.

“Juicing changed my life and you can tell after a lot of time staying consistent with it you feel better and you perform better. I would definitely recommend it to my teammates, friends and family, the people I care about, I want them to be healthy. I don’t think there’s any better way than to just flood your body with amazing nutrients,” he says.

He’s been working with personal chef Ana Machado for the past three years, who introduced the star athlete to juicing while he was on the road to recovery following an injury in 2022. “I introduced juicing to Nick because I truly believe that starting the day with fresh juice, and getting the nutrients first thing in the morning before working out is absolutely important for their well-being.”

Ana continues: “Nick’s favorite juice is the zing-ginger in which I incorporate kale, cucumbers, celery and then red apples, citrus fruits like grapefruit, orange, lemon, and ginger. It gets the sweet and ‘zingyniss’ of ginger and he really likes it.”

But Nick Bosa’s diet wasn’t always so healthy. Whenever he’d go home to South Florida, Sunday dinners consisted of penne, gravy, short ribs and meatballs. “If there was one place where there was a weakness, it was my diet,” he told The Athletic in September 2022. But he soon swapped Chipotle for ceviche (a traditionally Peruvian dish of citrus-cured fish), and he subbed the short ribs for tuna poke. And an early morning McGriddle? That’s where juicing comes in.

“You should see my kitchen on juice(-making) days,” Bosa said. “It’s like the produce section of a grocery store.” He dropped to around 9 percent body fat, which is the lowest on the 49ers roster.

Nick Bosa’s workout regime

Nick Bosa’s workout regime has been influenced by two big injuries; one in 2018 after a core muscle tear ended his final season at Ohio State, the other in 2020 with an ACL reconstruction that included a torn MCL and torn lateral meniscus.

After the first setback, Bosa started working with personal trainer Todd Rice, who had studied Olympic weightlifters in Sweden, Poland, and Bulgaria. “It was, what makes Olympic lifters stay healthy even though they’re lifting, minimally, 2 1/2 times their body weight in a clean and jerk?” Rice told The Athletic. “And yet they don’t have the injuries that a lot of college and NFL athletes have.”

The difference, he found, was their flexibility—something that football players generally shrug off because it’s “boring”. But Rice’s approach has worked. “I’ve upped my maxes in squats and benches this past year pretty substantially,” Bosa said. “My sprinting numbers are better than they’ve ever been. My agility drill numbers are better than they’ve ever been.”

Nick Bosa’s cheat meal

Nick Bosa’s cheat meal isn’t the McGriddle anymore. “It’s a steak, like a fatty steak,” he told The Athletic. “On the weekends I’ll have a ribeye. Because when I do fatty things, it doesn’t affect me nearly as bad as eating a pizza.” He’ll also have a glass of wine on Saturday nights during the offseason.