Novak Djokovic's Supplements and Diet: What He Actually Takes

Novak Djokovic has won 24 Grand Slam singles titles and was still contesting major finals at 38. He credits a large part of that longevity to what he eats and what he supplements with — a claim that has launched a thousand copycat routines. This article separates what he has actually confirmed from what the internet has invented, and looks at what the evidence says for each element.

Contents

• Who is Novak Djokovic?
• What supplements does Novak Djokovic take?
• Djokovic's supplement stack at a glance
• Why he takes each supplement
• Diet and nutrition habits
• Exercise, recovery and lifestyle
• The scientific evidence behind his stack
• Risks, limitations and what's confirmed vs reported
• How to build a similar routine safely
• Related Welzo products and guides
• Frequently asked questions
• References

Who is Novak Djokovic?

Novak Djokovic, born in Belgrade on 22 May 1987, is a Serbian professional tennis player and the most successful man in the history of the sport by Grand Slam count. He holds 24 Grand Slam singles titles, including a record ten Australian Open championships, and has spent more weeks at world number one than any player of either sex.

What makes him relevant to a supplements audience is not the trophy count but the reversal behind it. Between 2005 and 2010, Djokovic was a top-three player with a reputation for physical fragility — he retired mid-match repeatedly, struggled with breathing difficulties, and was widely written off as someone whose body would never let him beat Federer and Nadal consistently.

From 2011 onwards, that pattern stopped. Djokovic attributes the change primarily to a dietary overhaul that began when he consulted Serbian practitioner Dr Igor Cetojevic. In his 2013 book Serve to Win, he describes the change as taking him from the "brink of failure to the champion of the world".

Why his routine gets so much attention

Three things make Djokovic unusual among athlete-influencers. First, he published his protocol in book form rather than dripping it out through sponsorship posts. Second, he has since founded his own supplement company, SILA, which makes his hydration and mineral choices publicly inspectable. Third, he has continued performing at the top of the sport into his late thirties, which gives the routine an apparent long-term validation that most celebrity regimens lack.

That said — and this matters for anyone planning to copy him — an athlete's success is never a controlled experiment. Djokovic changed his diet at the same time as he changed his fitness team, his serve mechanics, and his mental preparation. We will come back to this.

What supplements does Novak Djokovic take?

Djokovic has never published a complete supplement list with doses, and anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing. What he has done is confirm specific products and ingredients across interviews, his book, on-court footage and his own brand's formulations.

What is directly confirmed

• Creatine. The clearest evidence is on camera. During the 2023 Cincinnati final against Carlos Alcaraz — a match lasting nearly four hours — Djokovic repeatedly shouted for a creatine drink from his box when his team misheard him. His team confirmed the request was for creatine.
• Electrolytes and hydration formulas. In January 2024 he launched SILA, initially a range of electrolyte hydration cubes produced with waterdrop. On the launch, Djokovic said "The idea to create SILA started more than 10 years ago." The published ingredients include calcium, magnesium and sodium carbonates, acerola cherry (a vitamin C source), thiamine (B1) and vitamin B12.
• Magnesium. SILA's later range includes a dedicated magnesium complex intended for evening use, described by the brand as blending bioavailable magnesium forms.
• Vitamin C and zinc. In a 2020 interview with Serbian outlet Telegraf, Djokovic recommended increasing both, in the context of immune support.
• Plant protein. Multiple accounts of his regimen, including reporting on Cetojevic's original advice, describe pea protein shakes. He has been openly plant-based since around 2016.

What is reported but not confirmed by Djokovic

Manuka honey, liquorice tea, and daily raw honey appear repeatedly in coverage of his routine, largely traceable to a single New York Times profile describing Cetojevic's recommendations. His book does describe starting the day with two tablespoons of honey. Beyond that, treat these as reported rather than confirmed.

Claims circulating about specific NMN, NAD+ or nootropic protocols have no primary source. We have found no statement from Djokovic supporting them.

Djokovic's supplement stack at a glance

The table below sets out what is publicly documented. The dose column deliberately does not claim to be Djokovic's dose — he has never disclosed his doses, and inventing them would be dishonest. Instead it shows standard evidence-based ranges for a healthy adult, so you can judge the gap between a headline and a usable protocol.

Why he takes each supplement

Creatine: the one with the strongest case

Tennis is a repeated-sprint sport. A five-set match is hundreds of short, maximal efforts separated by incomplete recovery — precisely the physiological demand creatine addresses. Creatine increases the muscle's phosphocreatine stores, which regenerate ATP during brief maximal work.

The International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand describes creatine monohydrate as the most effective nutritional ergogenic aid available to athletes for increasing high-intensity exercise capacity and lean body mass. The same review concludes that supplementation is safe and well tolerated, including at high doses over long periods in healthy people.

Why creatine matters more on a plant-based diet

Dietary creatine comes almost exclusively from meat and fish. Someone eating no animal products has a dietary creatine intake close to zero and correspondingly lower baseline muscle stores. That means supplementation tends to produce a larger measurable change in plant-based athletes than in omnivores — which makes Djokovic's use of it coherent rather than faddish.

Electrolytes: sweat replacement, not a wellness ritual

Djokovic plays five-set matches in Melbourne and New York heat, sometimes for more than four hours. At those durations, sodium losses are substantial and plain water alone can dilute blood sodium. This is one of the few supplement categories where elite-athlete use is genuinely justified by physiology rather than marketing.

For most people, however, the same product is unnecessary. If your training session is under an hour in a temperate British climate, water and normal meals cover it.

Magnesium

Magnesium contributes to normal muscle function, nerve transmission and the reduction of tiredness. It is also one of the more commonly under-consumed minerals in the UK — the National Diet and Nutrition Survey has found meaningful proportions of UK adults falling below recommended intakes. Evening dosing, as SILA suggests, reflects its common use for sleep and muscle relaxation, though the evidence for magnesium improving sleep in people who are not deficient is modest.

Form matters more than headline strength. Our guide to the best magnesium supplements breaks down glycinate, citrate, threonate and malate, and who each suits.

Vitamin B12: the genuinely non-negotiable one

Djokovic describes himself as entirely plant-based. Vitamin B12 is not reliably available from plant foods — spirulina, nori and unwashed produce do not count. Deficiency develops slowly and can cause irreversible neurological damage if left long enough. Anyone following his dietary approach must supplement B12 or use reliably fortified foods. This is not optional.

Protein, vitamin C and zinc

Plant proteins tend to be lower in leucine and less digestible than animal sources, so plant-based athletes generally need a somewhat higher total daily intake and more attention to spreading it across meals. Vitamin C and zinc both contribute to normal immune function; both are readily obtainable from a well-constructed plant-based diet, so supplementation is a gap-filler rather than a performance measure.

Diet and nutrition habits

The gluten story — and what it actually shows

The origin story is well known. In 2010, Cetojevic tested Djokovic by having him hold out an arm and resist downward pressure, first normally and then while holding bread against his stomach. Djokovic reported he was "noticeably weaker" with the bread.

This is applied kinesiology muscle testing. It has no established physiological mechanism and performs no better than chance in controlled evaluation. Reports indicate that subsequent blood testing suggested reactivity to wheat and dairy, but the testing described appears to have been IgG-based, which is not a validated method for diagnosing food intolerance.

A typical day of eating

Drawing on Serve to Win and subsequent interviews, his pattern is consistent:

Morning

Warm water, often with lemon, on waking. Then celery juice and a green smoothie built around spinach, kale, celery, apple and mint. Breakfast itself is a bowl of gluten-free muesli or oats with mixed seeds, nuts, berries and banana. He has explained the logic plainly: he avoids foods requiring heavy digestive effort early in the day, because that is when he trains hardest.

Midday and afternoon

Mixed-green salads with a gluten-free carbohydrate base — rice pasta, quinoa or soba noodles — plus vegetables, olive oil and legumes. Snacks are simple: apple with cashew butter, or fruit.

Evening

Dinner is his largest protein meal and is framed explicitly around overnight recovery: vegetables, legumes, and in the earlier version of his diet, fish. He eats slowly and describes chewing thoroughly as deliberate practice.

What he avoids

Gluten, dairy, refined sugar, alcohol and caffeine. The sugar restriction is the one most under-discussed and arguably the most impactful for a general audience — it removes an enormous share of ultra-processed food by default.

How his diet has evolved

Serve to Win included fish and occasional white meat. Since roughly 2016 he has described himself as entirely plant-based. Reporting since has been inconsistent about whether fish reappears during heavy tournament blocks. Treat the current composition as plant-based with some uncertainty at the margins, rather than as strict lifelong veganism.

Exercise, recovery and lifestyle

Training structure

On-court work dominates, supported by gym sessions weighted towards mobility, rotational power and injury prevention rather than maximal strength. Elastic band work, movement drills and single-leg stability feature heavily — the demands of tennis are deceleration and change of direction, not absolute load.

Flexibility and mobility

Djokovic's range of motion is arguably his most distinctive physical asset, and it is trained deliberately through yoga, extended stretching and mobility work. This is the element of his routine most transferable to a general audience and the one most people skip.

Sleep

He has spoken about treating sleep as a trainable variable, with a consistent schedule and a wind-down routine. In practical terms this is likely to matter more to his longevity than any single supplement.

Breathwork and mental training

Djokovic has been open for over a decade about meditation, visualisation and structured breathing exercises. He also engages in practices — heat and cold exposure, various recovery technologies — that range from well-evidenced to speculative.

A note on his more contested views

Djokovic has publicly expressed beliefs about water, energy and emotion that have no scientific support, and has taken well-documented positions on vaccination that are at odds with medical consensus. We mention this not to editorialise, but because it is directly relevant to how much weight a reader should place on his health advice generally. Being an exceptional athlete does not make someone a reliable source on physiology.

The scientific evidence behind his stack

What holds up well

Creatine, adequate protein, electrolyte replacement during prolonged exercise in heat, and B12 supplementation on a plant-based diet are all supported by substantial evidence. If Djokovic's routine has a defensible core, this is it.

What is plausible but oversold

Magnesium for sleep, vitamin C and zinc for immunity, and celery juice all sit in the category of "reasonable, unlikely to harm, effect size smaller than the marketing suggests." Green smoothies are a convenient way to raise vegetable intake; they are not detoxifying, and the body has no need for dietary assistance in maintaining blood pH.

Where the evidence directly contradicts the story

This is the important one. The best available trial evidence does not support gluten avoidance as a performance strategy for people without coeliac disease.

Lis and colleagues (2015) ran a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial in 13 competitive endurance cyclists without coeliac disease. Participants followed a gluten-free diet for seven days, with either gluten-containing or gluten-free food bars supplying 16 g of wheat gluten per day, separated by a ten-day washout. There was no difference in time-trial performance, gastrointestinal symptoms, inflammatory markers or wellbeing.

The same research group surveyed 910 non-coeliac athletes and found that 41% followed a gluten-free or reduced-gluten diet at least half the time — but only 13% did so for a diagnosed medical condition, while 57% had self-diagnosed. A 2025 pilot trial in non-coeliac endurance athletes reached broadly similar conclusions, and flagged nutritional deficiency risk as a reason for caution.

So why did it work for him?

Several explanations are more probable than gluten toxicity, and they are not mutually exclusive. He may have a genuine non-coeliac gluten sensitivity, which is a real if poorly-characterised entity. He may have been reacting to FODMAPs rather than gluten. Removing gluten from a diet built around a family pizzeria plausibly removed a large volume of refined carbohydrate and processed food at the same time. And the change coincided with major shifts in his training and psychology.

There is also a legitimate performance effect from belief itself. If an athlete is convinced their preparation is optimal, that conviction has measurable value. That does not make the mechanism real — but it does mean Djokovic's sincerity and his physiological accuracy are two separate questions.

Risks, limitations and what's confirmed vs reported

Supplement contamination is a real risk, not a theoretical one

This is the single most important safety point in this article. Analytical studies summarised in a 2023 review on supplement adulteration found that between 14% and 50% of sampled sports supplement products tested positive for anabolic agents or other prohibited substances. Informed Sport reports that contamination accounted for around 8% of all anti-doping violations between 2005 and 2022.

For a competing athlete, this can end a career. For everyone else, it means undeclared stimulants or hormonally active compounds in a product bought for hydration. If you are tested in sport, use only batch-tested products carrying Informed Sport or NSF Certified for Sport marks.

Why an elite protocol doesn't transfer directly

Djokovic trains multiple hours daily under professional supervision, with regular blood testing, a physiotherapist and a nutritionist. His electrolyte needs reflect four-hour matches in extreme heat. His protein needs reflect a professional training load. Copying the products without the context reproduces the cost and none of the physiology.

Who should take particular care

• Anyone with kidney disease — creatine requires normal renal handling and should only be used on medical advice.
• Anyone taking prescription medication — magnesium, calcium and zinc all interfere with the absorption of several drug classes, including some antibiotics and thyroid medication.
• Anyone pregnant or breastfeeding — requirements differ and specific guidance applies.
• Anyone with cardiac or kidney conditions — high-sodium electrolyte products are not neutral.
• Anyone considering eliminating a food group — speak to a GP or registered dietitian first, particularly before removing gluten.

Confirmed vs reported: a summary

How to build a similar routine safely

Step one: establish your baseline before buying anything

Fatigue is far more often explained by iron status, thyroid function or B12 than by anything a general supplement fixes. Testing first prevents you from spending months on the wrong product.

Step two: cover the foundations

If you are following a plant-based diet, the genuine non-negotiables are vitamin B12, vitamin D through the UK winter, iodine, and long-chain omega-3. These matter more than anything performance-branded. Our guide to vegan supplement gaps covers this in detail.

Step three: add performance support only if your training justifies it

Creatine monohydrate at 3–5 g daily is the highest-value addition for most people doing resistance or repeated-sprint training, and it is inexpensive. Electrolytes are worth adding for sessions over about 60–90 minutes, in heat, or if you are a heavy or salty sweater.

Step four: change one thing at a time

Djokovic's own account describes a two-week trial. That is a reasonable principle even if the specific intervention was not the active ingredient. Introduce one variable, hold everything else constant, and give it long enough to judge.

What to copy for free

The most defensible parts of his routine cost nothing: consistent sleep, structured mobility work, high vegetable intake, minimal refined sugar and alcohol, and a stable daily rhythm. If you take one thing from this article, take that rather than a shopping list.

Related Welzo products and guides

• Sports supplements — creatine, protein and electrolyte formulas.
• Magnesium supplements — glycinate, citrate, threonate and topical options.
• Vegan and plant-based supplements — B12, algal omega-3, iron and zinc.
• Vitamin B complex — for those covering broader B-vitamin intake.
• Immunity supplements — vitamin C, vitamin D and zinc.
• A minimal, evidence-led supplement stack — if you want the short version.
• The best magnesium supplements — choosing the right form.

Frequently asked questions

What supplements does Novak Djokovic take?

Djokovic has publicly confirmed using creatine, electrolyte hydration formulas, and magnesium, and has recommended vitamin C and zinc. His own brand's products contain magnesium, calcium, sodium, vitamin C, thiamine and vitamin B12. He has never published a complete stack with doses.

Does Novak Djokovic take creatine?

Yes. During the 2023 Cincinnati final against Carlos Alcaraz, he was filmed repeatedly calling for a creatine drink from his team during changeovers. Creatine is well suited to tennis because the sport consists of hundreds of short maximal efforts.

What is SILA, Novak Djokovic's supplement brand?

SILA is a supplement company Djokovic founded, launched in January 2024 initially with electrolyte hydration cubes produced with waterdrop. The range has since expanded to include hydration sachets and a magnesium complex. The brand states its formulas are third-party tested and free from artificial sweeteners.

Does Novak Djokovic have coeliac disease?

There is no primary source confirming a coeliac diagnosis, despite this being widely repeated. His gluten sensitivity was identified using applied kinesiology muscle testing and reportedly IgG-based blood testing, neither of which is a validated diagnostic method for coeliac disease.

Is Novak Djokovic vegan?

He describes himself as plant-based rather than using the word vegan, and has done so since around 2016. His 2013 book still included fish. Reporting on whether fish features during heavy tournament periods has been inconsistent.

Will a gluten-free diet improve my athletic performance?

If you do not have coeliac disease or a genuine gluten sensitivity, the trial evidence says no. A randomised double-blind crossover trial in non-coeliac endurance cyclists found no effect on performance, gut symptoms, inflammation or wellbeing after seven days.

What does Novak Djokovic eat for breakfast?

Warm water with lemon on waking, followed by celery juice and a green smoothie, then a bowl of gluten-free muesli or oats with mixed seeds, nuts, berries and banana. He avoids foods requiring heavy digestion early in the day.

What supplements should I take if I follow a plant-based diet like his?

Vitamin B12 is essential and not optional. Vitamin D through the UK winter, iodine and long-chain omega-3 (EPA and DHA, available from algal sources) are the other common gaps. Creatine and iron are worth considering depending on your training and blood results.

How much creatine should I take?

The standard evidence-based dose is 3–5 g of creatine monohydrate daily. A loading phase is optional. Consistency matters more than timing. Anyone with kidney disease should only use creatine on medical advice.

Are celebrity supplement routines safe to copy?

Not automatically. Elite athletes have medical supervision, regular blood testing, and physiological demands most people do not share. Contamination is also a real risk — analytical studies have found prohibited substances in a substantial minority of sports supplement products. Establish your own baseline first, choose third-party tested products, and speak to a pharmacist or GP if you take prescription medication.

References

1. Djokovic, N. Serve to Win: The 14-Day Gluten-Free Plan for Physical and Mental Excellence. Bantam Press, 2013.
2. Lis D, Stellingwerff T, Kitic CM, Ahuja KDK, Fell J. No Effects of a Short-Term Gluten-free Diet on Performance in Nonceliac Athletes. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2015;47(12):2563–70. PubMed
3. Lis DM, Stellingwerff T, Shing CM, Ahuja KDK, Fell JW. Exploring the popularity, experiences and beliefs surrounding gluten-free diets in non-coeliac athletes. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2015;25(1):37–45.
4. A gluten-free diet does not alter performance outcomes in nonceliac athletes undergoing sprint interval training: a pilot trial. 2025. PubMed
5. Kreider RB, Kalman DS, Antonio J, et al. International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: safety and efficacy of creatine supplementation in exercise, sport, and medicine. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2017;14:18. Full text
6. Prevalence of adulteration in dietary supplements and recommendations for safe supplement practices in sport. Front Sports Act Living. 2023. PMC
7. Informed Sport. Sports Supplements Certification. wetestyoutrust.com
8. The National. Top tennis stars reveal reliance and paranoia over supplements. 25 March 2025. Article
9. Sportskeeda. SILA Hydration Cubes: ingredients and nutritional facts. January 2024. Article
10. SILA by Novak Djokovic — official product information. livesila.com
11. One Green Planet. Novak Djokovic shares plant-based health tips (reporting a Telegraf interview). March 2020. Article
12. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Novak Djokovic. britannica.com