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01.2019 “WAS IT THE SMARTEST
THING TO KEEP FIGHTING
WITH A BROKEN HAND?
MAYBE NOT.”
—JON BERNTHAL , page 80

BIG STORIES
80 WHAT IT MEANS 102 THE MEN’S HEALTH
TO MAN UP GUIDE TO GURUS
As the Punisher, Jon Bernthal We download the podcasts,
wants vengeance. As a dad, he take the supplements, and read
wants his sons carrying their little the books. But can a wellness
sister’s schoolbag...every day. “expert” really fix us?
BY MOLLY KNIGHT
106 THE GURU’S DILEMMA
86 HEALTHIEST YEAR EVER Inside the biohacking world of
It’s 2019. Time to examine your Dave Asprey, the man willing to
health—check your poop!—and do (and spend) almost anything
do something about the results. to live to 180.
BY JESSICA MIGALA BY RACHEL MONROE

92 TRANSFORM YOUR 112 KETO NATION

BODY AND MIND The story of how a small personal
Get started! The absolute best experiment turned into a massive,
advice to make a new you bacon-filled diet sensation.
this year, featuring Rob Lowe, BY MICHAEL EASTER
Rob Kardashian, and plenty
of no-longer-average Joes.

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PHOTOGRAPH BY ERIC RAY DAVIDSON 3

 LIFE
39 How to reinvent
your career.
43 Your biggest
style conundrums
solved, finally.
46 Give me the “Cavill”:
What’s driving the latest
dermatology trend.
48 Best Foods for
Men: Redeem the
breakfast burrito.
50 Hack your chicken!
How to make a
grocery rotisserie
bird gourmet.
52 Nonalcoholic beers
that (hear us out, we’re
serious) don’t suck.
54 Navigating the
sugar-filled minefield of
your local Starbucks.
56 How to not sleep
together after you
sleep together.
58 Ask Her Anything:
How fast should
you be thrusting??
60 Married? Just
met? We’ve got your
V-Day covered.
62 Cool Dad: Novelist
Sam Lipsyte is the anti–
soccer parent.
At F3, you take the 64 Quiz! You’re cold,
stairs. Preferably before it’s miserable. Can you
dawn (page 24). flip the winter blahs?

MH WORLD BODY MIND

67 John Wayne it up
9 CBD madness 17 Got a fitness goal? 28 Don’t drink and harness grit to get
sweeps the Internet!; Aim high. No, higher. your ketones until you through anything.
how to recalibrate your read this story.
BS detector; a 50-state, 22 Reset! A full-body 75 Make meditation
workout to burn off 32 The Health Food a habit. It only takes
50-marathon quest. your December. Fact-Check: You’re on a minute.
our list, kombucha.
On the cover: Jon Bernthal photographed
24 Trend on Trial: Crack- 78 Can we really call
34 Dr. Alexa: Putting
by Eric Ray Davidson exclusively for Men’s
Health. Styling by Ted Stafford, grooming of-dawn workouts Kanye crazy?
by Sussy Campos/Art Department, prop just might be the best AI assistants to the
styling by faethgruppe, styling assistance
by Madeleine Issa, tailoring by Saira Huff/ way to make friends. medical test. +
Lars Nord. Cotton T-shirt ($40) by Polo
Ralph Lauren; ralphlauren.com. Cotton 26 How the man who 36 Is there protein in 116 Are you an
511 jeans ($70) by Levi’s; levi.com. Black above-average movie
Bay Dark watch ($4,150) by Tudor; managed Biggie goes this? Probably! Make watcher?
tudorwatch.com. big in the gym. sure it’s the right kind.

4 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH PHOTOGRAPH BY JEREMY M. LANGE

 Hillshire farm® turkey
is slow roasted for hours.
And devoured in seconds.

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At Hillshire Farm , right after we carve our deliciously seasoned turkey, we double seal
every slice for freshness. Which leads to the best Turkey, Arugula & Tomato sandwich
you’ve ever tasted. Visit HillshireFarm.com for more sandwich inspiration.
 Richard Dorment Jack Essig MEET THE
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT/PUBLISHING DIRECTOR

Helene F. Rubinstein Executive Managing Editor ADVERTISING SALES

MEN’S HEALTH
Jamie Prokell Creative Director NEW YORK (212) 649-2000 ADVISORY PANEL
Caryn Kesler Executive Director, Luxury Goods
EDITORIAL John Wattiker Executive Director, Fashion & Retail
Ben Court Deputy Editor Doug Zimmerman Senior Grooming Director We’d be nothing without our
Ross McCammon Special Projects Editor Joe Pennacchio Eastern Automotive Sales Director
Marty Munson Health Director Sara Schiano Integrated Account Director
panel of experts. These are
Paul Kita Senior Editor Gil Tiamsic Advertising Sales Director the doctors, scientists, and
Ebenezer Samuel Fitness Director John Cipolla Integrated Account Manager, Southeast trainers who keep us accurate
Jordyn Taylor News Editor Brad Gettelfinger Sales Manager, Hearst Direct Media
Mark Emery Senior Editor of Content Strategy CHICAGO (312) 964-4900 and updated on the latest in
Matt Goulet Senior Associate Editor Autumn Jenks Midwest Sales Director health and fitness.
Brett Williams Associate Fitness Editor Emily McCoy Midwest Sales Manager
Melissa Matthews Health and Nutrition Writer LOS ANGELES (310) 664-2801 BRAIN HEALTH:
Joshua St. Clair Editorial Assistant Patti Lange Western Ad Director P. Murali Doraiswamy, M.D.
Anne Rethmeyer Group Sales Director, Auto David Perlmutter, M.D.
ART SAN FRANCISCO (628) 208-0648
Leslie Xia Associate Art Director Andrew Kramer Kramer Media CARDIOLOGY:
Eric Rosati Designer John Elefteriades, M.D.
Sarah Leituala Design Assistant DETROIT (248) 614-6120
Steve Fusco Digital Imaging Specialist Marisa Stutz Detroit Automotive Director DERMATOLOGY:
Brian Capell, M.D., Ph.D.
PHOTOGRAPHY Samantha Irwin General Manager, Hearst Men’s Group Adnan Nasir, M.D., Ph.D.
Alix Campbell Chief Photography Director, Karen Ferber Business Manager
Paul Baumeister Research Director EMERGENCY MEDICINE:
Hearst Magazines
Alison Papalia Executive Director, Consumer Marketing Jedidiah Ballard, D.O.
Sally Berman Deputy Director of Photography
Sinikiwe Dhliwayo Associate Photo Editor Chris Hertwig Production Manager Robert Glatter, M.D.
Madeline Bednar, Savannah Bigelow, Zoe Fritz, Travis Stork, M.D.
Shelby Iannello, Kayla Savage, Toni Starrs
FASHION
Sales Assistants ENDOCRINOLOGY:
Ted Stafford Fashion Director Sandeep Dhindsa, M.D.
COPY PUBLIC RELATIONS EXERCISE SCIENCE:
Janna Ojeda Assistant Managing Editor Nathan Christopher Public Relations Executive Director Martin Gibala, Ph.D.
John Kenney Managing Copy Editor Kelsey Leiter Public Relations Manager Mark Peterson, Ph.D., C.S.C.S.*D
Alisa Cohen Barney Senior Copy Editor Brad Schoenfeld, Ph.D., C.S.C.S
Connor Sears, David Fairhurst Assistant Copy Editors MARKETING SERVICES
Cameron Connors Executive Director,
GASTROENTEROLOGY:
RESEARCH Head of Brand Strategy and Marketing Felice Schnoll-Sussman, M.D.
Robert Scheffler Research Director Stephanie Block Associate Integrated INTEGRATIVE HEALTH:
Jennifer Messimer Research Chief Marketing Director Brenda Powell, M.D.
Kevin McDonnell Senior Associate Research Editor Alison Brown Special Events Director
Alex Gardner Researcher Jiri Seger Creative Director, Marketing MENTAL HEALTH:
Nick Pachelli Assistant Research Editor Thomas Joiner, Ph.D.
PUBLISHED BY HEARST COMMUNICATIONS, INC. Avi Klein, LCSW
VIDEO Steven R. Swartz President & Chief Executive Officer William Pollack, Ph.D.
Dorenna Newton Executive Producer William R. Hearst III Chairman Drew Ramsey, M.D.
Ryan Bird Video Producer Frank A. Bennack, Jr. Executive Vice Chairman
Connor Reid Video Producer Catherine A. Bostron Secretary NUTRITION:
Angela Kim Executive Director, Carlton Charles Treasurer Chris Mohr, Ph.D., R.D.
Business Development and Global Licensing Mike Roussell, Ph.D.
Natanya van Heerden International Editorial & Brian St. Pierre, R.D.
HEARST MAGAZINES DIVISION
Content Analyst
Troy Young President PAIN MEDICINE:
Michael Clinton President, Marketing Paul Christo, M.D., M.B.A.
HEARST MEN’S FASHION GROUP and Publishing Director
Nick Sullivan Fashion Director Kate Lewis Chief Content Officer SEX & RELATIONSHIPS:
Matthew Marden Style Director Debi Chirichella Senior Vice President, Debby Herbenick, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Michael Stefanov Market Editor Chief Financial Officer Justin Lehmiller, Ph.D.
Alfonso Fernández Navas Fashion Assistant David Carey Hearst Magazines Chairman
Gilbert C. Maurer, Mark F. Miller Publishing Consultants SLEEP MEDICINE:
HEARST PHOTOGRAPHY GROUP Alon Avidan, M.D.
Darrick Harris, James Morris, Justin O’Neill Directors W. Christopher Winter, M.D.
HEARST MAGAZINES INTERNATIONAL
Cary Georges, Fiona Lennon Deputy Directors
Lauren Hechel Senior Editor
Simon Horne SVP/Managing Director SPORTS MEDICINE:
Asia Pacific and Russia Michael Fredricson, M.D.
Lauren Brown Editor
Richard Bean Director of International Licensing Dan Giordano, D.P.T., C.S.C.S.
Cori Jayne Howarth, Ignacio Murillo Associate Editors
and Business Development Bill Hartman, P.T.
Amy Cooper Assistant
Kim St. Clair Bodden SVP/Editorial & Brand Director
Chloe O’Brien Deputy Brands Director TRAINING:
Shelley Meeks Executive Director, Content Services Mike Boyle, M.Ed., A.T.C.
Ben Bruno
Alwyn Cosgrove, C.S.C.S.*D
HOW TO REACH US: Customer Service: To change your address, pay a bill, renew your subscription, and more, go online to
David Jack
menshealth.com/customer-service, email mhlcustserv@cdsfulfillment.com, or write Men’s Health Customer Service, P.O.
David Otey, C.S.C.S.
Box 6000, Harlan, IA 51593-1500. Editorial offices: 300 W. 57th Street, New York, NY 10019. Feedback: mhletters@hearst
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.com. Licensing & Reprints: Contact Wyndell Hamilton, Wright’s Media, (281) 419-5725, ext. 152, hearst@wrightsmedia UROLOGY:
.com. Absolute satisfaction guaranteed. Scent-free subscription available on request. From time to time we make our Elizabeth Kavaler, M.D.
subscriber list available to companies that sell goods and services by mail that we believe would interest our readers. Larry Lipshultz, M.D.
If you would rather not receive such mailings by postal mail, please send your current mailing label or exact copy to: Men’s
Health, Mail Preference Center, P.O. Box 6000, Harlan, IA 51593-0128. WEIGHT LOSS:
David Katz, M.D., M.P.H., FACPM, F.A.C.P.
Men’s Health carries the latest health, fitness, and nutrition reporting to provide you with Men’s Health is a
Jeff Volek, Ph.D., R.D.
useful information about your health. But every body is different; individual diagnoses registered trademark of
and treatments can come only from a health care practitioner. Printed in USA. Hearst Magazines, Inc.

6 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH

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 WORLD
BEHIN D THE
SCEN ES W ITH
THE EX PERTS,
A DV ISORS,
A N D R E A DERS
W HO BR ING
MEN’S HEA LTH
TO LIFE.

THIS MONTH ON
MENSHEALTH.COM

CBD FOR EVERYONE!

IT’S SHOWING UP in oils, capsules, additives to your coffee, and cocktails. But
what the hell is it? Cannabidiol is a nonpsychoactive compound found in cannabis
plants, and it has swept the country for its purported health benefits. Over on
MensHealth.com, we examine “CBD Madness,” a monthlong deep dive into the
seemingly miraculous substance. The three biggest questions we answer:

Is it legal? Can it Is it safe?

Not really. CBD is still a Schedule I
controlled substance in the
eyes of the Drug Enforcement
Administration. If you’re in
a state where pot is legal, though,
CBD is fair game.
get you high?
No. CBD has no psychoactive
properties, which makes it
all the more attractive for its
potential benefits.
If it’s a controlled substance, it
has the potential to harm you, so
you have to know what you’re put-
ting into your body. And because
its marketing isn’t regulated, you
may not actually be getting CBD.

YOU TRIED IT. YOU TWEETED ABOUT IT.

“It was horrible for me. I get
that I’m the minority, but it
doesn’t work for everyone.”
—@loosehead
ERIC ROSATI
“It’s too expensive. You’d think it “It helps me with my train-
has THC in it at the price they charge. ing and recovery. I’ve been
I tried it but didn’t see any change in using it for years.”
my recovery or sleep. When the price —@diegobressant
gets realistic, I’ll give it another try.”
—@tylerhovda

To learn more from our CBD coverage, visit menshealth.com/cbd-cannabidiol-facts.

MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 9

 WORLD

EXPERT WISDOM! WHERE TO

His best advice for not getting duped by a health FIND US:
fad: “To navigate the world of health claims, con- We’re on all the
screens.
sider Bertrand Russell: ‘The whole problem with
the world is that fools and fanatics are always so
certain of themselves, and wiser people so full
of doubts.’ Those who are not legitimate experts On the web
menshealth.com
A NOTE OF THANKS often speak in certainties. They use definite lan-
To Men’s Health guage, like ‘the way,’ ‘the cure.’ They use words like
Advisory Panel ‘guarantee.’ But if a medication or cure were so
nutritionist David L. certain, the entire medical community would be YouTube
/menshealthmag
Katz, M.D., M.P.H., in on it and there would be tons of published stud-
FACPM, F.A.C.P., ies. Legitimate experts simply don’t offer guaran-
FACLM, for assessing tees. We give probabilities and caveats. It’s not
the claims and sexy, and that’s why so many people want to trust Pinterest
/menshealthmag
these ‘experts’ who seem so certain.”
supplements hawked
by our gallery of
gurus (see page 102). Dr. Katz’s new book, The Truth About Food, Instagram
Here’s how he sniffs is out now. All proceeds go to support the @menshealthmag
out BS (right): True Health Initiative.

Twitter
@menshealthmag
MUCH-APPRECIATED
Read Book, (AND FINANCIALLY SOUND)
Burn Fat! BIRTHDAY WISHES Facebook
/menshealth
Just in time for the new I’ve been reading
year, and fresh off all the @menshealthmag for the Follow, tweet,
weight-loss inspiration past 13 yrs. Such an incredi- comment, like,
respond, and
you’ll see on page 92, ble, well-written magazine. tag us. You could
we’ve enlisted fitness and I also want to point out how be featured in
health researcher Elling- in 30 yrs., the cost has only MHWorld.

ton Darden to teach you gone up by $1 and that’s pretty And send us your
feedback at
how to burn fat and keep it off, thanks to thermo- awesome! (I’m in .) Thank MHletters@hearst
dynamics. Darden’s program has had more than you and congratulations!!! .com. Letters may
be edited for length
a thousand participants, who have lost on average —@rgmwolfe and clarity.
29.5 pounds. Killing Fat goes on sale January 22.

ARE YOU CUT, CUT RIPPED JACKED SWOLE

KYLE HILTON (Katz illustration), ERIC ROSATI (flexing illustrations)

RIPPED, JACKED,
OR SWOLE?
Over at MensHealth.com,
Associate Fitness Editor
Brett Williams finally,
definitively lays down the
terms of fitness. Lest you
call a cut guy jacked, go
Less about size than Where mass built on Pecs, arms, neck, and The biggest of the big,
to menshealth.com/ definition—lean mus- arms and shoulders shoulders are all big. where every muscle is
cut-ripped-jacked-swole. cle and defined abs. eclipses the abs. Protein is life. huge. See also yoked.

10 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH

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 WORLD
ONE OF OUR
OWN STARTS
THE RACE OF
HIS LIFE
INTRODUCING YASIR SALEM, OF THE
MEN’S HEALTH MARKETING TEAM, AND
HIS 50-MARATHON ENDEAVOR.
YASIR SALEM is a marketing
director for Men’s Health and the
Hearst Men’s Group. He’s also an
accomplished competitive eater—
he participated in the Nathan’s Fa-
mous Fourth of July hot dog eating
contest six times before retiring
in 2018. And he’s a speed-eating
ultra-athlete, having won the Tour
de Donut bicycle race several years
in a row. (That’s a 36-mile road race
with a doughnut-eating contest
throughout.) The man is ambi-
tious. And there to support him
through his zaniest competitions
was his wife, Gweneviere Mann.
This past summer, Gweneviere
MEN’S HEALTH TWITTER POLL
Would you drink nonalcoholic beer
if only for the taste?
For those of you who
doubt whether tasty
NA beer exists, we
bet we can convince
you otherwise. See
page 52.
Based on 1,711 Twitter
responses to @MensHealthMag.
12 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH
was diagnosed with a rare form of
lung cancer and passed away. The
couple had run their first marathon
together, New York’s, in 2010, a year
after Gweneviere recovered from
surgery to remove a meningioma
tumor in her brain. In the eight years
after that, Yasir and Gwen ran eight
marathons together.
A NEW MISSION
To honor his wife and raise
awareness of the disease that took
her, Yasir is traveling across the
17%
Yes, no hangover!
58%
No, I’m here
for the buzz.
25%
Tasty NA
beer exists?
ASK
MEN’S
HEALTH
You’ve got questions.
We’ve got experts.
Gweneviere and Yasir at a 5K
in 2009, and Yasir and a friend at
the 2018 New York Marathon (left).
country to complete 50 mara-
thons in 50 states. The “50 in 50” is
a project of the Gweneviere Mann
Foundation, which he established
to raise funds for early-detection
programs, so more people can
receive screenings for brain
tumors and lung cancers sooner.
Along the way, the foundation will
eventually set up mobile radiology
screenings at each marathon site.
The “50-in-50” effort started at
the 2018 New York City Marathon
and will end at the 2019 race. It’s
made catching up on Mondays
a little more interesting at Men’s
Health HQ, hearing how our mar-
keting guy did in his recent race in
Vegas or Philly or how he’s raised
$40,000 for the foundation al-
ready. We couldn’t be more proud.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
Donate to the Gweneviere Mann
Foundation by going to gwenmann
.org. There you can donate directly
or sign up to join a marathon with
Yasir as part of the “50-in-50” team.
And follow Yasir on Instagram at
@gwenfoundation; #50in50.
Two-minute
workouts are the
new 30-minute
workouts, right?
—PAUL, Oklahoma City, OK
There has been a lot of
news lately about the
value of extremely short
workouts. And while
there is interesting new
research to suggest that
as little as two minutes of
high-intensity exercise
can stimulate local
changes in the metabolic
function of muscle, this
kind of exercise shouldn’t
be confused with an
alternative to regular,
lengthier aerobic or
anaerobic workouts. Why?
Your body has both acute
(short-term) and long-
term responses to exercise.
Acute responses are the
physiological changes that
happen as a result of the
individual exercise. Long-
term responses are a result
of the body recognizing
the stress associated with
a single bout of exercise,
by gradually increasing
its ability to withstand
the stress associated
with that stimulus.
Think about training for
a marathon and slowly
building up endurance.
You wouldn’t get that from
high-intensity interval
training (HIIT). There are
Courtesy Yasir Salem (Salem and friend), courtesy NYRR (Salem and Mann)
numerous rewards that
come from HIIT, and it
should certainly be a part
of every person’s routine.
However, that does not
mean you can get away
with only two minutes of
exercise, even if at very
high intensity, and expect
to reap the same long-term
performance benefits as
with longer workouts.
The Expert: Mark D. Peterson,
Ph.D., C.S.C.S.*D, associate
professor, Michigan-Medicine,
Department of Physical Medicine
and Rehabilitation
 SIXSTARPRO.COM
GREATNESS IS EARNED
ROB GRONKOWSKI – ALL-PRO TIGHT END
 WORLD

THE MH WINTER GAME PLAN ASK TED!

What we’re looking forward to in January and February.

BOOKS
Drug Warrior: Inside
the Hunt for El Chapo
and the Rise of Amer-
ica’s Opioid Crisis
By Jack Riley
FEBRUARY 19
This story of two men—born on
opposite sides of a border and
working on opposite sides of the
law—is equal parts crime thriller
and epic Moby Dick–style hunt.
—J.S.
MOVIES
Glass
JANUARY 18
Bruce Willis and Samuel L.
Jackson reunite with the polar-
TV izing M. Night Shyamalan for
the much-awaited sequel to the
The Titan Games director’s (arguably) best film, Un-
JANUARY 3 breakable, this time with a freshly
jacked James McAvoy reprising
It’s like the Rock and your favorite mid-’90s Nickelode- his role from Shyamalan’s Split.
on show, Guts, went and had a TV child. This obstacle —J.S.
competition has athletes facing off in various feats of
strength. We polled readers for their first thoughts when The Lego Movie 2:
the trailer dropped in November. The biggest question:
The Second Part
FEBRUARY 8
How do I get on the show? (The answer? Too late!) Clever writing and Chris Pratt
—MARK EMERY, senior editor of content strategy helped turn the first movie into
a dark-Lego-horse blockbuster.
Look for a (partly) animated
sequel you can take your kids
I Am the Night to and actually enjoy.
The best tips from a re-
cent Reddit AMA with
Ted Stafford, Men’s
Health fashion director.
WHAT DO YOU THINK
IS THE RELATIONSHIP,
IF ANY, BETWEEN FITNESS
AND FASHION?
—METCARFRE
Ted: Men work out to feel
good or better about them-
selves. They also want to feel
good about themselves in
the way they dress. We take
a very healthy and realistic
approach to servicing them
in both.
ANY TIPS OR RESOURCES FOR
THOSE OF US WHO ARE DADS
IN OUR EARLY 40S WHO STILL
WANT TO LOOK PRESENTABLE
IN OUR EVERYDAY WARDROBE?
—SCOTTLER
Ted: J. Crew is a good
resource for men looking
to find everything from a
stylish suit to more work-
casual wear. Banana Repub-

JANUARY 28
Chris Pine and Wonder Woman di-
rector Patty Jenkins team up again
for a suspenseful TNT miniseries
about a washed-up reporter (Pine)
and a teen girl who join forces
to solve the mystery of her past.
It’s at the top of the list for a
midwinter binge.
—JOSHUA ST. CLAIR, editorial assistant
Black Monday
JANUARY 20
Let’s add to the burgeoning
genre of comedians taking on
Wall Street types (what with
Adam McKay’s The Big Short and
Jonah Hill in The Wolf of Wall
Street) with the Seth Rogen–
produced Showtime series
Black Monday, about the people
behind the worst stock-market
crash ever, in 1987. Come for the
corporate intrigue, stay for the
cocaine and shoulder pads!
—MATT GOULET, senior associate editor
SPORTS
Bridgestone NHL
Winter Classic
JANUARY 1
An original-six matchup between
the Chicago Blackhawks and the
Boston Bruins, outside at Notre
Dame Stadium, is prime lazy New
Year’s Day sports viewing best seen
from the warmth of your couch.
—M.G.
—M.G.
STYLE
Nike Tech Pack
JANUARY 8
Nike is dropping a new collection
this spring that’s designed to work
for running, training, and lifestyle.
Look for a hybrid mix of knit mate-
rials, engineered to give you a full
range of motion, regardless of
weather conditions, or whether
you’re hoisting weights or a beer.
—TED STAFFORD, fashion director
Vivian Zink/NBC (the Rock), Steve Babineau/NHLI/Getty Images (Bruins vs. Blackhawks), KYLE HILTON (illustration)
lic is another great resource
for fashionable pieces in
classic fits; additionally,
today they have perfor-
mance attributes that help
make you feel comfortable
while still being stylish.
Try the rapid-movement
pants, which look sharp
but you feel like you could
run a marathon in them.
WHAT ARE SOME TRENDS YOU
SEE THAT YOU THINK WILL BE
RELEVANT TO THE AVERAGE
READER OF MEN’S HEALTH
IN THE COMING MONTHS?
—SETFIRETOFLAMES
Ted: There’s lots of cool winter
wear out there—awesome
winter boots from Timber-
land, Todd Snyder’s collabora-
tion with Red Wing, or heavy-
weight parkas from Triple
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14 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH

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THROUGH A GRUELING DAY
OF FANTASY COACHING.

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 BODY
22 ................................... TOTA L-BODY
T U N E-U P!
26 ............ THE 6:00 A .M. WOR KOU T
28 ................. C A N
YOU DR IN K YOU R
K ETON ES NOW ? (GU LP)
32 ........................... SU PER FOODS OR
“SU PER FOODS”?

GO
Alex Honnold on El
Capitan. See his tips
for climbing higher
on the next page.

BIG
A ROUTINE is a beautiful thing—
until it’s just the same 5K run, the
same 5K race results, the same ride, the
same way it checks the workout box.
Time to go all-in. Commit to that
thing you keep saying “someday” to. Go
epic not just for the bragging rights but
because scores of studies back up what
you suspected: Big goals lead to bigger
efforts and, when you reach them, greater
feelings of self-satisfaction. Plus, you
can’t hit a hairy fitness goal without get-
ting in the best shape of your life.
Ask Alex Honnold. His 2017 climb up
El Capitan without ropes—featured in
the recent documentary Free Solo—was
basically the ultimate Big Goal (the pen-
alty for one missed toehold is death). “I’d
been thinking about free-soloing El Cap
This is your year
Courtesy of National Geographic Films

for years and waiting for it to happen, but

to go faster, higher, then I realized it was never going to hap-
stronger. Today’s pen unless I put in the work.” Honnold
top athletes help turned a nebulous desire into an in-focus
you get it done. target—and then got to work. Now it’s
BY AC SHILTON your turn.

MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 17

 BODY

FIGURE OUT WHAT YOU’RE
ACTUALLY AFRAID OF
1 Go Higher “Most people aren’t afraid
of heights; they’re afraid of
falling and dying. I’m afraid of
When there are a couple thousand feet falling and dying; that’s totally
between you and the ground—or any other natural and normal,” Honnold
time you’re aiming big—you’ve got to have says. If you think you’re afraid
muscle strength and a way to manage fear. of heights, reframe it as being
Alex Honnold, 33, one of the greatest climbers afraid of falling, then deter-
of all time, reveals what it takes to really reach.
mine why you think you might
fall. “If it’s because you don’t
trust your equipment, work
on that.” If you don’t trust the
person belaying you, find a way
to build that relationship. But
framing your fear as specific—
and solvable—makes conquer-
ing doubt much more doable.
AIM FOR JOY, NOT EUPHORIA
When Honnold reached the top
of El Cap, he was surprisingly
subdued. A significant part of
making the attempt was work-
ing slowly through the wall’s
challenges until it felt easy,
so it was no major surprise
when he made it. “I liken it to a
slot machine: When you have
a one-in-a-million chance,
you know it’s so unlikely for
it to work out, so it feels crazy
to win. But if you have a 99
percent chance of winning, it
feels good, but not like some
crazy, crazy celebration.” Rock
climbing, with or without
ropes, is dangerous. Work with
the odds in your favor, even if
you don’t get that just-shot-the-
moon sensation after the fact.

FEELING AWFUL
IS NORMAL
“Someone recently said to me
about running: ‘It never feels
easier—you just go faster.’ A lot
of sports always feel terrible.
Climbing is always like that.
MAKE HIGH HAPPEN You always feel weak and like
you suck, but you can do harder
Honnold’s guide to beginner climbing.
and harder things.”

“When I started, classes weren’t really available. Climbing was still a BREATHE HEAVILY
fringe thing,” says the self-taught athlete. Plus, as a shy kid, he wasn’t
STEP 1: good at asking for help. Instead, “I read a lot of books and climbing Climbing isn’t purely about
Get Help magazines,” he says. It worked for him, but for most people, a basic strength; you have to be aer-
intro-to-climbing course makes them comfortable with the sport’s obically fit, too. In Free Solo,
rules, jargon, and safe habits from the get-go.
you can hear Honnold’s breath
quicken as he works his way
As a beginner climber, you probably won’t have the grip or arm up the wall. Frequent climb-
STEP 2:
strength to pull yourself up the wall, so concentrating on how and
Focus on where you place your feet will help you build a solid foundation while
ing is essential, but Honnold
Your Feet First you work on developing your pullup prowess. says he couldn’t have become
fit enough through climbing
Climbing a lot can get you most of the strength you need, says Hon- alone. So he spent hours hiking
nold, but you can accelerate your gains by working your arms off a up and down mountainsides.
STEP 3: hangboard. That’s basically a pullup “bar” that’s a totally flat surface,
Max Whittaker

Build Your Grip which forces you to use finger and hand strength. Start by just hang- Choose routes with huge eleva-
ing. Slowly extend the time you can hang, then work toward pullups. tion gains to work your heart as
well as your quads and glutes.

18 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH


2 Get Stronger
You can’t bike to the top of Everest, but that’s
not stopping cyclists from tackling a feat
called Everesting: climbing all 29,029 feet via
short laps of the same hill. JJ Zhou, 24, upped
the game and did those laps on Everest itself
last August. His take on what strength is about.
DO A MOLEHILL FIRST
Zhou Everested on a different
mountain before taking on
actual Everest. “It was in Nan-
jing [China], on the Purple
Mountain, which is where I
learned to ride a bike. It snowed
the day before, so I had to go
out with my parents and shovel
a 1.2-kilometer section. They
hated me by the end of that.”
Everest’s grade made that climb
much harder, but the fact that
he’d already done the challenge
elsewhere gave him the confi-
dence he needed to attempt
the tougher goal, he says.
MIND YOUR MIDDLE
Sure, quads thicker than cord-
wood won’t hurt your attempt,
but what you really need is a
core that won’t quit. “When I
was building up, I was lean and
in tip-top shape, but my core
stability wasn’t good. My back
would get achy, which was a
sign that I’d cashed out my core
strength,” he says. Without a
strong middle, you’ll rock back
and forth as you climb. (See
how he builds his with Zhou’s
Seriously Strong Circuit,
below.) That extra movement
is wasted energy you could be
using to go up.
ENLIST REINFORCEMENTS
“By the time I reached 7,000
meters of elevation, I was com-
pletely fucked. Nothing in my
body was functioning, and I
was like, ‘I need someone to
ride with me,’” he says. Zhou
had started the day with four
other riders, which dropped
to three, then two, then one.
“It wasn’t so much that they
dropped out but realized they
weren’t going to make it in the
40 hours we’d allowed,” he says.

ZHOU’S SERIOUSLY STRONG CIRCUIT When Zhou asked for help, his
tired teammates suited back up
To build core, leg, and back strength all at once, incorporate Zhou’s three-move and took turns helping him fin-
circuit into your weekly schedule. He does 50 seconds of each move, with 10 ish. Without them, throwing in
seconds of rest in between. “Repeat as many times as you can stand it,” he says.
the towel may have been a more
appealing option.

WORK YOUR GRAY MATTER

For the first ten hours, Zhou
says, his physical strength
mattered. For the last 30,
“everything became about what
was between the ears.” On an
MOVE 1: MOVE 2: MOVE 3:
Plank with Knee Hex-Bar Turkish Getup with attempt like this, you don’t have
to Elbow Deadlift Kettlebell a change of scenery to distract
you—it’s the same stretch of
road over and over again. “Med-
mathiasmagg.com (bicyclist), illustrations: +ISN

WHY: This is great for teach-
ing your core to stay stable as
you’re moving.
DO IT WELL: Start in a high-
plank position—basically, a
pushup position. Lift your right
foot off the floor and draw your
knee up to your right elbow.
Pause for a moment, then
return to the start. Repeat
on the left side. Alternate for
50 seconds.
WHY: This is more effective for
your core than a deadlift with a
traditional barbell.
DO IT WELL: Stand in the hex
bar, feet shoulder-width apart.
Keep your back straight, bend
your knees, push your hips
back, and pick up the bar by
the handles. Keeping your
back flat, push up to standing.
Brace your core, and slowly
return the bar to the ground.
WHY: This creates well-
rounded functional strength.
DO IT WELL: Start by lying on
the ground, kettlebell in your
left hand, left knee bent. While
still on the ground, press the
kettlebell straight above your
shoulder. Then keep reaching
upward—kettlebell overhead
and core strong at all times—
until you’re in a standing posi-
tion. Repeat on the other side.
itation has been a very big part
of daily life,” he says, adding
that he does meditative breath
work while exercising, versus
doing traditional sit-on-your-
butt meditation. “Some people
would say, ‘Oh, he’s not serious
about meditation,’ but it’s what
works for me.”

MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 19

 BODY

3 Go Faster
Eliud Kipchoge, 34, didn’t “break two”
in 2017, when he and Nike tested if it’s
possible to run a sub-two-hour marathon.
But that didn’t keep him from crushing
the world record in Berlin in 2018, clocking
2:01:39. His philosophies could help even
mortals hit a PR.

RUN THROUGH THE LOWS

Good news: Even Kipchoge
has days when he doesn’t want
to run. Bad news: He gets out
there anyway. So should you.
“[Eventually,] if I keep on run-
ning, the body will respond,”
he says. “You can’t let the bad
days deter you.” A marathon
is like life, he says, with the
hard times making the payoff
so much more worth it.

BE METICULOUS
Kipchoge logs every single one
of his workouts in a notebook.
It’s like a ledger at a bank,
keeping track of everything
he’s invested. “When the race RUN FASTER AT ANY DISTANCE
is hurting, I start to think of The elite Mammoth Track Club, in Mammoth Lakes, California, has produced
my great workouts and train- greats like Meb Keflezighi and Ryan Hall. Head coach Andrew Kastor says these
ing,” he says. Reflecting on the speedwork sets—done less than once a week—can work for regular runners, too.
amount of cash in the bank,
he always knows exactly how DISTANCE DISTANCE DISTANCE DISTANCE
much he has to spend. If you 5K 10K Half Marathon Marathon
do the same, he says, “all will
be well—trust me.” THE WORKOUT: 8x400 THE WORKOUT: 12x400 THE WORKOUT: 8x800 THE WORKOUT: 5x1
meters at 1-mile meters at 5K race pace. meters at under mile at 10K pace.
race pace. WHY IT WORKS: A 10K 10K pace. WHY IT WORKS: “For
DON’T BE AFRAID WHY IT WORKS: For is run right at your WHY IT WORKS: “A half marathons, I change
TO COME UP SHORT this distance, you anaerobic threshold, marathon is below the 80/20 rule to
need to be able to meaning a pace you anaerobic threshold 90/10,” Kastor says—
“The best lesson an athlete can
perform right above can hold (but that’s pace, so it’s more in other words, your
learn from failing is that fail- your anaerobic thresh- moderately uncom- comfortable and man- speedwork is a rela-
ing is not suicide,” Kipchoge old. That means you fortable) for 45-ish ageable but you have tively small part of your
should barely be able minutes. Running at to go twice the dis- training.
says. Instead, it indicates that to say more than a a 5K pace helps push tance,” Kastor says. So DO IT RIGHT: Warm up
you’re pushing your limits. To few words at a time. your aerobic fitness your speedwork needs thoroughly and take no
him, failure is an integral part To train that system, upward; doing more to be slightly slower more than 2″½ minutes
you need short, hard repeats than the 5K but with more overall of rest between mile
of running—and yes, he’s had efforts, like these 400- runners do builds mileage to increase repeats. Also: If you
some not-so-glorious moments meter (that’s 1 lap of mental toughness. endurance. just aren’t feeling the
Courtesy of NN Running Team

the track) repeats. DO IT RIGHT: Warm up DO IT RIGHT: After a speedwork that day,
of defeat, like not making
DO IT RIGHT: Warm for at least 15 minutes. 15-minute warmup, you can abandon it,
Kenya’s 2012 Olympic team. “If up with 15 minutes of Between laps, rest in take 2 or 2″½ minutes but you still need to get
an athlete misses a goal, never easy running, then a 1-to-1 ratio. So if you of rest between each your miles in. When it
take 1 minute of recov- do the lap in 90 sec- interval, but no more. comes to a marathon,
get discouraged. There’s always ery (but no more) onds, you recover for “Otherwise, the heart “volume is what’s
the next day. Wake up and between each lap. 90 seconds. slows too much.” important.”
move on.”

20 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH

 m
GET
RIPPED
AND

BUILD
MUSCLE
AT 40+

You read that right. It’s not too late to:

GET SHREDDED CHANGE YOUR BODY

Q

FEEL INCREDIBLE
MensHealth.com/MuscleAfter40
15176
 BODY

Your Total-Body Tune-up

TO HELP YOU RECOVER from holiday gluttony, we turned to Sean Garner, N.S.C.A.-C.P.T., creator of
Project DadBod, for a full-body session. For the past eight years, Garner has worked with hundreds
of guys to help them reclaim their best bodies without turning every workout into a suffer-fest. This
program emphasizes four key ways you move: a push, a pull, a hip hinge, and a squat. You’ll also target
your abs, and you will redline your heart rate with bursts of cardio. The result: awakened muscles and
lubricated joints, setting you up for a great year of fitness. Let’s get started!

DIRECTIONS: Do the 3-minute warmup,

STRENGTH
workout 3 times a week for the next 4 weeks.
Do the exercises in order.
Rest for 60 seconds between
THE WARMUP rounds. Each week, on all
moves except the hollow body
Do each drill for 60 seconds. Don’t count hold, reduce the reps you do
reps; focus on form and take your time. for each exercise by 1 and
slightly increase the weight.
1. T-Spine Rotation to Downward Dog
(a) Start in pushup position. (b) Keeping your left 1. Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift
leg straight, place your right foot just outside Stand holding medium-weight
your right hand. Hold. (c) Lift your right arm and dumbbells at your sides, feet hip-
reach for the ceiling. Hold, then return to pushup width apart, core braced, knees
position. (d) Shift your feet forward slightly, then slightly bent. This is the start.
raise your hips high. Try to form a straight line Hinge at your hips and push your
from your hands through your hips while also butt backward, lowering your
trying to keep your legs straight. Hold, then torso. Hinge until you feel a slight
return to the start. That’s 1 rep. stretch in your hamstrings. Pause,
then stand up, squeezing your
glutes. That’s 1 rep; do 12.

(a) (b)

3. Sprint Buildup
Start standing. For 15 seconds, march
slowly in place, lifting each knee as
high as you can on each step. Then
jog in place for 15 seconds. Finish by
speeding up to an all-out sprint for
30 seconds, moving as quickly as you
can. Aim to lift each foot up as fast as
(c) (d) possible once it touches the floor.

2. Toe-Touch Squat
(a) Start standing, feet
Grooming: Eloise Cheung/Lab Series

(b) (c)

22 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALLIE HOLLOWAY

 MATE T EB’S ULTIMATE 10 FOR 2019
TI
This year, Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S., Men’s Health’s fitness

EN
UL
director, will guide you through the MH Ultimate 10, a series of
01 10
monthlong training plans designed to get you the specific re-
sults we know you want, from a six-pack to arms of steel. This is

H
M
N’

T
S HEAL

E
the first installment—check back next month for more.

3. Side-Plank Press
Start in a left-side plank, your left elbow on the floor and
your torso and hips tight, a light dumbbell in front of
you. Grasp the dumbbell with your right hand. Continue
pressing your hips upward as you lift the dumbbell off the
floor and pull it close to your right pec. Press it toward the
ceiling, then return it to the floor. That’s 1 rep; do 12 per side.

EB SAYS:
“This is great
core work, too.
Contract your
2. Alternating Dumbbell Row abs hard on
Stand holding medium-weight dumbbells. Hinge at your every rep and
hips until your torso is almost parallel to the floor. This is fight the urge to
the start. Squeeze your shoulder blades and row the right rotate your torso
dumbbell to your chest. Lower it and repeat with the left as you row the
dumbbell. That’s 1 rep; do 12. weight upward.”

5. Bulgarian Split Squat

Place your right foot on a
bench or box that’s about
knee height, bending your
(a) knee slightly, and step your
left foot about 18 inches
away. Your left leg should
be almost straight. Hold
medium-weight dumbbells
at your shoulders. Bend
your left knee, sitting back;
your right knee will bend
(b) more as you do this and
nearly touch the floor.
Hold when your left thigh
is parallel to the floor, then
stand back up. That’s 1 rep;
do 12 per side.

(c)
EB SAYS:
“This move
shouldn’t just
4. Glute Bridge Floor Press build muscle;
(a) Lie on the floor holding medium-weight dumbbells, try to feel a
upper arms on the floor, elbows bent 90 degrees. strong stretch
(b) Tighten your glutes and push your hips upward. in your back
(c) Press the dumbbells upward. Pause, then lower leg’s hamstring
them back to the start. That’s 1 rep; do 12. and hip flexor.”

6. Hollow Body Hold

Start lying on your back, arms and legs extended. Tighten
your abs, pressing your lower back into the floor as you
do so. This should lift your legs off the floor; work to keep
them straight. Lift your shoulder blades off the floor as
well; keep extending your arms back as you do this. Hold
for 30 seconds. That’s 1 rep; do 3 to 5. SHORTS:
Rhone
SNEAKERS:
SEAN GARNER is the general manager at Under
Armour
Anatomy Fitness, Miami.

MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 23

 David Redding (second from right), the man
FIT TRIBE who helped start F3 eight years ago, still spends
plenty of mornings training with the group’s

What the F3?! Charlotte, North Carolina, participants.

cofounders), and they happen outside,

Men become fast friends in this free, early-morning, rain or shine. Occasionally, cinder blocks,
guys-only workout class that’s exploded in kettlebells, or rucks are on the menu; most
popularity. MATT CROSSMAN signs up to find out why. often, it’s just you versus your body weight.
David Redding (a former Green Beret)
and Tim Whitmire (a former journalist)
created F3 eight years ago, when their
IT’S 5:30 A .M. on a Monday in St. Louis, because he’s a beekeeper, and steam pours group workout class became too crowded.
the sun isn’t even a rumor yet, and I’m join- off a 36-year-old nicknamed Sheldon. Redding used military terms for exercises
ing a dozen men in a free outdoor workout “Don’t cheat the man in the mirror,” some- and hoped to see ten men on that morning,
group called F3, gathering for what we all one says. Sucking wind, I don’t respond. January 1, 2011. But after they’d emailed
hope will be a glorious beatdown. Doing so would be disingenuous: I’m friends to join them for morning burners,
In a public park, we circle Jason Grothe thinking unkind thoughts about Ringer. 35 guys showed up to the parking lot of a
(F3 nickname: Ringer), who has promised Men across the country are clamoring Charlotte, North Carolina, middle school.
to make our lives miserable for the next 45 to be this miserable, with an estimated F3 quickly became about more than fit-
minutes. He will grunt and groan along- 20,000 active participants. Think of it ness—the other two F’s stand for fellow-
side us—a core principle of F3 is that the as a hyperpositive Fight Club and hipper ship and faith.
rotating volunteer leaders running work- YMCA. It gives you up to 15 supportive guys Whitmire and Redding attended the
outs also suffer. in every workout. To “join,” just log on to same Episcopalian church for years but
Ringer’s playlist starts with Frankie f3nation.com, find one of the 1,500 free F3 barely knew each other before they start-
Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax,” and as the workouts going on in 30 states every morn- ed training together. Redding, Whitmire,
first notes sound, we’re doing jumping ing, and show up ready to sweat in pursuit and other F3 men I talked to realize that
jacks. Burpee box jumps and planks fol- of conditioning and community. The work- having the third F stand for faith will
low. Sweat darkens the concrete under outs are usually boot-camp style (reflect- make some skeptical. They insist that the
a 58-year-old nicknamed Honey Pot, ing the military background of one of its point is not what you believe in, as long as

24 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH PHOTOGRAPHS BY JEREMY M. LANGE

 BODY

SIX MINUTES OF MARY a high school tennis match.

F3’s infamous no-mercy ab burner is not for the faint of heart. Work through the That’s how I get my nick-
following circuit, spending 24 seconds on each interval. name: Ralph.
If it’s your first time,
0:00 Little Baby your straight legs 2:48 Canoe: F3’s the ground. Return to
Crunch: Lie on your about 6 inches off the version of a modified the start. That’s 1 rep. you’re what F3 vets call an
back in situp position ground. Flutter them V-up. Start lying on FNG (friendly new guy).
and lift your chest back and forth, never your back, arms and 4:00 Plank Jack:
Start in a forearm But they quickly make you
just off the ground, letting them touch legs extended, all just
squeezing your abs. the ground. inches off the ground. plank, feet touching. feel like one of the guys.
That’s 1 rep. Tuck your knees and Then leap your feet And when you’re battling
1:36 Low Scissors: your arms, then return wide, then back to
0:24 High Slow Lie on your back, raise starting position. t h r o u g h pi s t o l s q u a t s
to the start. That’s 1 rep.
Flutter: Lie on your your straight legs That’s 1 rep. and pushups shoulder to
back, raise your about 6 inches off 3:12 Rest shoulder with Honey Pot,
straight legs about the ground, then 4:24 Plank: Hold
2 feet off the ground, alternately scissor
3:36 Heels to a forearm plank for you can’t help but feel like
Heaven: F3’s version 24 seconds.
and flutter them one over the other. you belong.
of a straight-legged
back and forth. A few times, I’m tempted
2:00 Rest reverse crunch. Lie on 4:48 Rest
Take 2 seconds to
complete each back-
your back, straight to bail, and once, I almost
2:24 High Scissors: legs pointed upward 5:12 World War II
and-forth flutter. Situp: F3’s version of a relive high school tennis.
Lie on your back, raise (er, toward heaven).
0:48 Rest your straight legs Tighten your abs, straight-legged situp. But I keep going, partly
2 feet off the ground, pressing your legs 5:36 Oblique Crunch because of someone (I’m
1:12 Low Flutter: Lie and alternately scissor up higher and raising
not sure who, because I’m
on your back and raise one over the other. your lower back off 6:00 End
fa cedow n g r inding out
pushups) mumbling more
encouragement. By the
you believe in something beyond yourself. of brothers in sweat. It delivers quality guy time we reach three minutes of plank
All men, regardless of religious beliefs, are time, letting men focus on one another. jacks, the 45-minute workout is nearly over,
welcome. During six workouts in multiple I quickly realize these are both workouts my hair is matted, and my shirt is soaked.
locations, I hear no proselytizing. and social gatherings. After my first work- Every F3 workout ends with a “Circle of
Redding and Whitmire discovered out, I know I’ll get my own F3 nickname. Trust” highlighting the third F of faith. Par-
F3 solved two problems—a lack of deep I just hope mine doesn’t suck. F3 nick- ticipants count off, saying their name, age,
relationships among men and the abdi- names are uniformly silly, often either and F3 nickname. The leader notes upcom-
cation of leadership roles by men—that a play on your name (last name Painter, ing workouts and other community events
they weren’t initially looking to solve. The nickname Drop Cloth) or something from and closes with a moment of thought—
group is all men, but it does more than get your background (I meet an Ohio State typically a prayer or a quote. Today it’s about
men in shape. The fact that it’s all guys fan nicknamed Schembechler, after the love, a reference to 1 Corinthians 13: Love
feels like a throwback while also offering legendary coach of Ohio State’s archrival). is patient, love is kind. It does not envy,
a different dynamic. (There’s also F3 for The guys in my session ask me for my it does not boast, it is not proud.
women, fianation.com.) Redding believes most embarrassing life moment, then And I’m no longer an FNG. Two days later
men think their relationships and friend- listen as I tell them about puking during (yes, I come back), I’m officially Ralph.
ships can’t withstand deeper reflection.
F3 releases them from what he calls “sad-
clown bondage”—a Sopranos reference
to being happy on the outside, sad on the
inside—giving them an instant network
 BODY

6:00 A.M. W/

The Record
Exec
The best way for music heavyweight
MARK PITTS to find his groove:
bang out some heavy lifts during
a morning sweat session.
BY ANTHONY McCARRON

T
HE MAN WHO managed Biggie Smalls rolls
his eyes at the Charlie Brown ringtone blast-
ing from his phone, and then just keeps do-
ing a shoulder press. It’s 6:25 in the morning,
and Mark Pitts’s day is off to a late start. The RCA
executive should be close to wrapping up his workout
by now, maybe already sipping his postlift shake. But
this session began 25 minutes ago and he’s only half-
way through his second full-body circuit at Body by
Ayman, a gym in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
No sense rushing, though, since the 48-year-old
president of RCA’s urban-music division and CEO
of ByStorm Entertainment has his work with him.
Welcome to Pitts’s lab, where music is on his brain.
“When I’m working out, it opens up my creativity,” he
says. “It just clears up the pathways when you’re un-
sure about something.”
In 2017, he was waffling on Atlanta-based rapper
Deante’ Hitchcock. Then came a 5:00 A.M. biceps
blast. “I was listening to a couple of his joints and I
was like, ‘I’m signing this guy!’ ” Pitts says. “I got it so
clear.” Hitchcock’s music was on BET by that summer.
If Hitchcock isn’t on your Spotify, another of Pitts’s
artists probably is. He began in the late ’90s, with friend
Sean Combs, at Bad Boy Entertainment, guiding the
careers of Faith Evans and the Notorious B.I.G. (who
gave him his nickname, Gucc). He worked with CeeLo REALLY LOVES TOTALLY HATES
Green, Usher, and Miguel in stints at other labels. Shoulder Presses Squats
Pitts has been with RCA since 2011, on the hunt for “When your shoulders “I do them, though. But
are right, it makes every- that’s my least favorite.
music’s next big thing. He usually arrives at work on
WWW

thing look good. You When I know it’s leg day,

Madison Avenue at 7:30, and before the office is bus- get that V. And I see I’ve got to get myself
tling, he’s got his headphones on, plowing through the results right away.” mentally ready.”
tracks from unknowns.

THE BREAK DIRECTIONS:

Do 2 minutes of high
1 Dumbbell row
Hold a dumbbell in your
2 Bench press
Lie faceup on a bench
3 Dumbbell fly
Lie faceup on a bench,

OF BRAWN
Having trouble training
on the road? Try Pitts’s
fix, a 30-minute full-body
crusher that works in
most hotel gyms.
knees and 2 minutes of
Supermans to warm up.
Then do 2 sets of 8 to 12
reps for each exercise.
Rest as needed between
sets, especially if you’re
struggling to maintain your
form. But aim to keep the
rest periods brief.
left hand and hinge at your
hips until your torso is
nearly parallel to the floor;
place your right hand on a
bench for support. Row
the dumbbell upward,
then return to the start.
That’s 1 rep. Complete all
reps with the left arm,
then repeat with the right.
holding dumbbells directly
over your shoulders. Your
feet should be flat on the
floor, and your core should
be tight. Bend your elbows
and shoulders, lowering
the dumbbells until they’re
an inch from your chest;
pause briefly, then reverse
the move. That’s 1 rep.
holding dumbbells directly
over your shoulders,
elbows bent just slightly,
feet flat on the floor, glutes
and abs squeezed. Lower
the dumbbells in a wide
arc; pause when you feel a
stretch in your chest.
Reverse the move to return
to the start. That’s 1 rep.

26 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH PHOTOGRAPHS BY GIACOMO FORTUNATO

 Mark Pitts starts nearly
every workout with
some foam rolling,
then warms up his rota-
tor cuffs with a light
dumbbell. Next, it’s on
to a full-body circuit (or
sometimes two!). He’s
typically in and out of
the gym in an hour.

It’s tunes all day, even if Pitts shifts gears in the

afternoon. That’s when he’s polishing upcoming al-
BETWEEN SETS
bums, sometimes hitting the piano himself to show an
artist exactly how a few bars should sound. There are What’s the ultimate eat before I work big breakfast. I eat
measure of a good out. I’m not hungry a lot of egg whites.
some late nights partying. (His annual BET Awards
workout? in the morning, and I have, depending
bash is the stuff of hip-hop legend.) But if artists want
“I’m up. I’m not that’s another part on what body part
his time, they may have to wake up extra early for a day.
tired. You’re of the beauty of [I’m working on],
That’s what Nick Cannon did last year. Cannon hoped
supposed to work working out early. egg whites, some
to run through ideas with Pitts, but he couldn’t seem
to exhaustion, but I’ll have my water, oatmeal, some
to catch him during the workday. Finally, he asked
once you get to my gallon of water, more spinach.”
for the address of Pitts’s gym and showed up the next
the gym and start and that’s all I do.”
morning. “I love that,” Pitts says, adding that many Favorite cheat
moving, you have food?
artists are just wrapping up party-filled nights at 5:00 What about
energy. At the end postworkout? “Cap’n Crunch
A.M. “Their day is ending and mine is beginning.”
of the workout I’m, “As soon as I cereal; that’s
It’s always an intense start. On this morning, he’s
like, wired. I’m
Location: Body by Ayman, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

gutting out pushups, situps, and his nemesis, the work out, I have my cheat meal.
so wired. And I’m a protein shake Yesssss. I might do
Bulgarian split squat. Med-ball slams and EZ-bar
already hyper. It with a banana, and the whole box that
biceps curls follow, and then he takes a few gulps of
enhances what I spinach. If it’s a one day. The reg-
water from a gallon jug and hits his circuit for a sec-
already am.” heavy muscle day, ular one—I don’t
ond round. Pitts circuit-trains everything, to keep his
heart rate high. Do you eat before I’ll add oatmeal to need no Crunch
your workout? it. That’ll get me Berries; that’s too
And he sometimes trains in silence, as he’s doing to-
day, with only “Linus and Lucy” occasionally piercing “I’ll take a prework- through an hour or much sugar going
the air. He doesn’t need to listen to music to hear the out drink some- an hour and a half, from different
ideas in his head. “I listen to music all day,” Pitts says, times, but I don’t and then I’ll have a directions.”
“but I come up with my best ideas when I’m working out.”

4 Dumbbell alternating curl
Stand holding dumbbells
at your sides. Flex at the
right elbow to curl the right
one upward so the weight
touches your right pectoral.
Squeeze your biceps for
3 seconds, then lower the
dumbbell. Repeat on the
left side. That’s 1 rep.
5 Single-arm hammer curl
Stand with a dumbbell in
your right hand, palm facing
your thigh. Curl the weight
upward, squeeze, then
lower it. Work to keep your
torso as square as possible;
if you fight to not tip toward
the side of the weight,
you’ll activate your core.
That’s 1 rep. Do all reps,
then repeat on the left side.
6 Triceps kickback
Hold a light dumbbell in
your right hand. Bend at
the waist so your torso is
parallel to the floor. Your
upper arm should also be
parallel to the floor. This is
the start. Straighten your
right arm, squeezing your
triceps. That’s 1 rep. Do all
reps, then repeat on the
left side.
7 Lateral raise
Stand holding light dumb-
bells at your sides, palms
facing each other. Keep a
slight bend in your elbows;
this is the start. Without
moving your torso or bend-
ing your elbow, raise your
right arm until it’s almost
parallel to the floor. Return
to the start. Repeat with
the left arm. That’s 1 rep.
8 Cooldown jog
Pitts can’t stand tradi-
tional cardio, which is why
he keeps his weight-room
work fast-paced. But on
the road, he still hits the
treadmill (or the great out-
doors) to finish up his ses-
sions. Once you’re done
lifting, jog for 10 minutes.
Keep the pace relaxed; re-
member, it’s a cooldown.

MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 27

 BODY
A 
NY PRODUCT using the words
keto and performance will turn
people’s heads right now. Espe-
cially if it comes in a sleek, shot-
like bottle with a chiseled cyclist on the
front—at the we’re-not-just- playing-
around-here price of $99 for three
doses. Doesn’t hurt, either, that it’s
billed as such potentially powerful fuel
for your body that even NASA is explor-
ing a similar supplement for astronauts
on future missions to Mars.
Which explains the chatter around
HVMN Ketone, a new energy drink that
aims to be the SpaceX of sports nutri-
tion. Its 120-calorie, 65 ml vial promises
to upgrade athletic performance with a
dose of fuel from ketones. So your body
gets a boost not from the usual nutri-
ents—protein, carbs, and fat—but from
these ketones, which are thought to be
extra-powerful, long-burning sources
Liqu
id
Some sc
ientists
think
no low-carb diet required.
28 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH
of energy. That’s seriously appealing to
anyone who’s been on the sagging back
end of a tough endurance workout.
Until recently, though, the only way to
get a high level of ketones in your body
was to make them yourself—you produce
them when you don’t have enough carbs
to burn, as keto-diet followers know. Fig-
uring out how to create a safe, effective
ketone that you could swallow eluded
scientists for decades. But researchers
have finally been able to develop the
molecular-chemistry techniques to
produce them in a lab—and then market
them to you.
el
you can
drink k
etones
Fu
and take your performance to a new level—
orkout beverage?
the next must-have w
Is this
KRIST
EN
BEHIND THE BUZZ
AS FU E L , ketones are efficient. They
produce more ATP—the intracellular
currency that powers cell activity—
per molecule than glucose does. When
burned, ketones yield zero lactic acid
(the compound created when glucose is
used, causing the burning feeling at the
end of a sprint). If they were cars, glucose
would be a coal-rolling pickup, ketones
an electric-powered Tesla.
Proponents say that when supplemen-
tal ketones are on board, you use them as
your primary fuel instead of stored glu-
cose—which you can hold about 2,000
calories of— helping you go longer and
recover better. That’s why the keto diet
has been an obsession for people look-
ing to hack time off their PR. (See “Keto
Nation,” page 112, for why this diet won’t
stop.) The problem is that arriving at and
acclimatizing to ketosis through
MASC
IA t ried it.
Gallery Stock
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 BODY

food can take weeks, during which athletic

performance suffers. (And you do too, with SPORTS-NUTRITION GAME CHANGERS
what’s known as the “keto flu.” Temporary Could HVMN Ketone be the next entry in this timeline?
but unpleasant.) Small surprise, then,
that scientists tried for years to synthe-
’80s ’90s 2010s
size ketones to be used as an energy sup-
plement. Mostly, they failed. Ketone salts BCAAs Whey Protein Creatine Ultra-Carb Drinks
have been around since the 1960s, but Research on Building on BCAA The public caught Top marathoners
they’re different—they’re dietary supple- branched- research, the on to creatine like Eliud Kipchoge
chain amino focus shifted supplements and Galen Rupp
ments created with sodium, potassium, acids became to whey—a in the ’90s, have been using
calcium, or magnesium, and their ability popular in this complete protein especially after a higher-carb
to raise blood-ketone levels is limited. decade. With found in milk many athletes at drink called
In 2003, the U. S. military’s secret strength training that’s often used the 1996 Olympics Maurten during
really taking off in energy bars attributed their races. (They’re not
research branch DARPA got things rolling (thanks, Arnold), and protein-drink success to sponsored by the
more quickly when it wanted to develop a the promise of mixes. Today, the creatine use. A brand.) It forms
fuel to keep soldiers mentally sharp and muscle growth whey-protein 2018 market report a hydrogel in the
physically strong during long missions made BCAA market is worth expected the stomach, and users
in extreme conditions. After 12 years and supplements a more than $8.2 bil- industry to grow say it causes less
popular choice. lion globally. through 2025. digestive upset.
$10 million in funding, two of the world’s
foremost ketosis researchers—Kieran
Clarke, Ph.D., a professor of physiological
biochemistry at Oxford University, and with a different ketone, there was no such they may enhance your performance, she
Richard Veech, M.D., Ph.D., of the National success. Riders performed worse than they says. But let’s face it, most athletes want
Institutes of Health—created a liquid did on a placebo and reported side effects more than that.
serum that seemed to do just that. Their from dry retching to nausea to prolonged
ketone product, DeltaG, was cleared for use vomiting. Brianna Stubbs, Ph.D., lead IN REAL LIFE
in bars, gels, and beverages in March 2015. researcher at HVMN, blamed the use of a W H I L E T H E debate rages, I have the
Not long after, DeltaG caught the atten- different ketone compound for the failure. chance to make up my own mind. In San
tion of HVMN cofounder Geoffrey Woo, To shut down naysayers, the brand is cur- Francisco, I meet with Woo and Stubbs
a computer scientist turned biohacking rently working with elite Italian cyclist Vit- for a crash course in ketone biochemis-
entrepreneur fascinated by ketones. Within toria Bussi, who in September used HVMN try. At the end of our two-hour meeting,
months, he secured a licensing deal whereby Ketone and broke the women’s hour-long Woo slides six bottles of ketone toward
DeltaG would be available in his product cycling record—set in 2016—by 27 meters. me across the conference-room table. A
alone, making it the only liq- week later, I’m prepping for a run. When I
uid ketone on the market— WHAT THEY prick my finger to measure my ketones, as
and raising questions about WHAT (MIGHT) DO BEST directed by Stubbs, my levels are low, hov-
whether it’s a useful product or PERFORMANCE SO COULD liquid ketones be ering at just about zero. I take the drink.
just a potentially lucrative idea. FUEL SMELLS the biohack you’re looking It’s clear, and thick like syrup. The taste is
LIKE for—a ssuming they don’t nauseating. Fruit-flavored nail polish.
SCIENCE WEIGHS IN make you sick first? If you Some 45 minutes later, my ketone lev-
RESEARCH ON THIS —as with want to make your mark in els have shot up—Stubbs says that’s on
any new science—has been anaerobic activities like HIIT par with what I might see after four to six
back and forth. A study led and sprints, no. Since ketones weeks on the keto diet. I set out at a steady
by Clarke’s team (before the blunt your body’s ability to tap pace, with the intention of running for as
HVMN licensing deal), pub- into carbohydrate reserves, long as I can, but I’m unable to discern a dif-
lished in Cell Metabolism, they limit access to the quick ference from my usual self, except for the
found that a group of elite Bitter and energy you need to perform at a overwhelming sensation of a burning in
chemical-y to the
cyclists who took DeltaG along tongue, but trea-
high intensity, explains Chel- my esophagus. After barely getting into a
with a carb-rich drink before a cly to the nose: sea Burkart, a sports dietitian rhythm, I have to turn around—the ketone
half-hour workout rode 2 per- Our staff testers at Texas State University. is burping back up, and it kind of hurts.
cent farther than when they likened the scent Even in endurance sports, With research exploring the potential
of HVMN to
were given only the drink. It’s the effects may not guarantee of lab-made ketones to improve recovery
cough syrup, pink
a no-big-deal stat for your aver- Starbursts, and you a win. “The initial goal was and enhance cognitive function, it at least
age park cyclist or runner, but it “the raspberry to help the military on multi- feels . . . exciting. If I were a pro athlete,
could be the difference between Burnett’s vodka day missions, when they were I’d be watching this space. And hoping
silver and gold for Olympians. I threw up on in in grueling conditions without HVMN brings some flavor chemists on
college.” Tempted
Yet when researchers from anyway? Three
a food source,” says Burkart. board. But until I become an ultramara-
the Australian Institute of bottles for $99 at So if your objective is purely thoner (unlikely), I don’t think spending
Sport conducted a similar study hvmn.com. distance, and not pace or time, $33 on a bottle of the stuff makes sense.

30 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH

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 BODY

Superfood or Here’s what’s good for you

and what’s just marketing

Superphony? hype (or both). Thanks,

research community!

COCONUT WATER
A high-end gym may offer you some GREEN TEA
of this stuff, but researchers found Long-term consumption of
it’s no better for hydration than the catechins in green tea
plain old water. Thirsty? Just drink fights metabolic syndrome
from the tap. (a forerunner of type 2 diabe-
tes) and could reduce your SPINACH
risk of coronary disease. Put In addition to the leafy
the kettle on. greens’ muscle-help-
ing iron content, a study
AVOCADO found eating one por-
Study after study tion a day reduces your
has confirmed the heart-disease risk in
fruit’s heart-healthy just one week.
benefits. Plus, its
high fiber content
may help fill you up.

ALMOND MILK
It can be comparable to
dairy milk in mineral con-
tent but not in protein
(which is why you drink
milk anyway, right?). A
glass of cow’s milk has
more than five times as
much protein as the kind
KALE made from almonds.
Like nature’s Cross-
Fitter, this cruciferous
vegetable does it all.
Rich in vitamins, it
also contains sulfur
compounds that may
prevent the growth
and spread of cancer.

ACAI BERRIES CHIA SEEDS

Not only are these
Despite the label
fruits bursting with
claims, these seeds
antioxidants, but
lack the type of
they’re also a healthy
omega-3 your body
anti-inflammatory.
Incorporating them KOMBUCHA actually needs. While
This gut-health-promot- they are a good source
into your diet could aid
ing drink is a mainstay of of fiber, you’re better
exercise recovery and
off eating oily fish for
Illustration by INFOMEN

limit muscle damage. the homeopathic scene,

but the scientific jury is QUINOA your omega fix.
still out on its benefits. This ancient grain is a complete
Tastes funny, too. protein, containing essential amino
acids. Try it instead of white rice to
fuel your muscle growth.

32 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH

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 BODY
Alexa,
Am I Dying?
Whether it’s a mark on your skin or a weird feeling in your
chest, one of the most common things people want to know about
their health problem is “Am I dying?” With AI seeping into health
care from all directions, MATT JANCER wondered just how good
tech would be at telling us what we most want to find out.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE is elbowing
its way into the doctor’s office, and M.D.’s
are nervous—especially since studies
have found AI better than dermatologists
at diagnosing skin cancer, and it boosts
the fracture-diagnosing accuracy of doc-
tors alone. It’s promising enough that the
consulting firm Accenture predicts the
value of AI technology will climb about 40
percent a year, turning into a $6.6 billion
industry by 2021.
Closer to home, people are a little more
excited about AI’s role in medical care,
vated smart speaker, “Alexa,
here’s what’s going on with
me,” and receiving a competent
response that tells them what’s
wrong and what to do. I won-
dered how well the at-home
AIs might do at that, so I
decided to test them.
I gave a second-generation
Amazon Echo Dot and a Google Home
Mini a couple of medical scenarios to see
if I could trust my life to either of them.
(I didn’t use Siri, which is more like a
voice-activated Google search.) I down-
loaded the WebMD and Mayo Clinic
First Aid skills to the Echo Dot. Google
Assistant can give answers directly, so
the Home Mini didn’t need apps. These
devices are pretty good at giving first-aid
answers, so I skipped those and started in
with some tougher stuff. Right off the bat, I
could tell there were going to be problems.
34 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH
For the first scenar-
io, I had gastroesoph-
ageal ref lux disease.
GERD can have a lot of
symptoms that don’t
involve a burning gut
or spicy bur ps, so I
told the AIs I’d had a pain in my chest for
two days, shortness of breath, and diffi-
culty speaking. Google Assistant went
straight to life-threatening heart attack
and chronic obstructive pulmonary dis-
ease. Alexa’s Mayo Clinic app told me
sunburns. “When people
interact with these AIs, they
expect answers that are
one, maybe two sentences.
Unfortunately, things are
rarely that simple in med-
icine,” says Christopher
Kelly, M.D., a cardiology
fellow at the Columbia
University Irving Medical Center. He
and his colleague Marc Eisenberg, M.D.,
wrote Am I Dying?!, a new book about
‘chest pain,’ anyone is going
to think of your heart, includ-
ing any doctor,” says Dr.
the doctor will ask a lot of
questions to determine if
that’s probable.”
I raised the degree of difficulty in the
next test, so much so that I had a simulated
panic attack. I was cold but also sweating,
and my hands were tingling. My heart was
racing so fast I thought I was going to faint.
The Mayo Clinic app said only, “You may
request an appointment at Mayo Clinic by
phone or by using our secure online form,”
but some other apps came close by landing
on hyperventilation as a possibility. They
also floundered around with low blood
sugar and arrhythmia, because so many
conditions have the same racing heartbeat
and tingling hands. “Many people present
with symptoms that turn out to be anxiety
related,” says Dr. Kelly, “and it would be
very hard for an AI, as they’re currently
designed, to get at those.”
After a few more tests and confusing
answers, that was as clear to me as it is
to Dr. Kelly, who noted
that as they exist today,
voice-a ct ivated A Is
take an already inexact
system—self-diagnosing
on line—a nd ma ke it
worse by speeding up
the process and giving
catchall answers while often obscuring
or oversimplifying how they came to their
conclusions. In the interest of a stream-
lined experience, they can leave you skep-
tical and burned out, he says.
Someday we’ll look back on these stum-
bles as quaint. Companies are doubling
down on improving AI so it can become a
common household reference. Rumors are
floating that Amazon is building a health-
and-wellness team for Alexa, although the
company hasn’t commented publicly.
Improvements will happen. And they
need to: A Northeastern University study
found that when 54 people posed symp-
toms of common injuries and illness-
es to these assistants, Alexa (equipped
with the WebMD, Mayo Clinic First Aid,
and American Heart Association skills)
failed to provide any relevant informa-
of the questions. You could try
to avoid a visit to your doctor
with an AI, but you’ll likely
end up with a slim portion of
the iffy advice already float-
ing around the Internet.
Plus a headache.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JULIA HEFFERNAN
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 BODY

D 
ESPITE WHAT bright new food

Have We Reached packaging might lead you to

believe, humans have known
about the power of protein since

Peak Protein? at least the early 19th century. That’s when

There are a lot of claims about protein out there—in the
supermarket, at the fast-food place, on the back of a
gigantic bottle of whey powder—but the claims you’re
going to read in this story are actually true.
BY OLIVER THRING AND JOSHUA ST. CLAIR
a Swedish chemist named the molecules
using a word from the Greek, proteios,
meaning “holding first place” and there-
fore most important. Today, if society res-
urrected that Swede and dumped him into
an American supermarket, he might feel
smugly validated. In the eyes of consumers
and marketers, the nutrient is indeed the
most important—ubiquitous, beneficial,
desirable, and, now, lucrative.
The global protein-supplements market
will reach $21.5 billion by 2025, according
to industry reports. You’d expect to find
whey in your post-gym shakes and bars, but
now protein is popping up everywhere. You
can wake up and have a protein-rich bowl
of cereal, grab a whey-infused Protein2o
water on your way out the door, pick up a
Chicken Wrap Protein Box at Starbucks
for lunch, and munch on ranch-flavored
Quest Nutrition protein chips as a mid-
afternoon desk snack. Nielsen, a world-
wide data-analytics company, found that
55 percent of U. S. households now regard
protein as an important consideration
when they purchase food.
What’s more, Nielsen saw an 8 percent
sales uptick for products claiming to be an
“excellent” or “good” source of protein on
the front of their packaging. And get this:
Between 45 and 64 percent of consumers
did not identify beef, pork, or chicken as be-
ing high in protein, even though all those
foods are loaded with it.
So why the confusion? Why the current
obsession with a nutrient? And, most cru-
cial, are all these protein-heavy foods help-
ing or hurting your diet?

Why You Need It Protein is vital to life: It’s

made from amino acids that are essential
for building and maintaining muscles and
bones. In addition, recent studies suggest
that protein quality may become more
important as you age. But beyond your
infrastructure, protein also helps to regu-
late a host of cellular processes, affecting
everything from your immune function to
the transportation of oxygen through the
bloodstream. Protein can even aid in weight
Peter Crowther (bottle)

Is “protein water” loss: Researchers have found that consum-

pure BS? ing it stimulates the release of satiety sig-
nals in the small intestine, helping you feel
full. In short, protein is a supernutrient.

36 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH


 Protein  can be
a misleadingly
catchall term
for what goes
into products.
Why You’re Probably Not Eating Enough
The irony of the protein boom is that Amer-
icans aren’t actually ingesting any more of
it today than they were 30 years ago. That
might be because protein’s recommended
daily allowance (RDA) is a modest 0.8
grams per kilogram of body weight per
day, a number formulated by the National
Academy of Sciences during World War II
in order to safeguard public health during a
possible shortage and ensure the nutritive
value of military rations.
“That RDA means roughly 8 to 10 percent
of your daily intake should be protein,” says
Heather Leidy, Ph.D., a protein researcher
and associate professor in Purdue Univer-
sity’s Department of Nutrition Science. But
that 8 to 10 percent is only the minimum re-
quired to prevent a protein deficiency, not
Basilios1/Getty Images (chicken), Stock Food (flank steak), Philippe Desnerck/Getty Images (cod), Stockcam/Getty Images (eggs)
what you need for protein synthesis, mus-
cle gain, satiety, weight management, and
glycemic control. While the diets of most
Americans may contain between 10 and 15
percent protein, Leidy notes, research sug-
gests that anywhere from 20 to 30 percent
would be a better health goal. That’s be-
tween 1.2 and 1.6 grams of protein daily for
every kilogram of your target body weight.
So if you’re a 185-pound guy who wants to
weigh 165, you should eat between 90 and
120 grams of protein per day. The good news
is that higher amounts of protein as a result
of all these snacks and shakes won’t harm
the liver, kidneys, or bones of healthy peo-
ple, as some once claimed; however, excess
protein can mean excess calories, which
may lead to weight gain, Leidy says.
What kind of protein you eat does mat-
ter, though, and protein can be a mislead-
ingly catchall term when describing what
actually goes into food products. You have
whey and casein, both found in milk, as
well as numerous plant options, such as
the protein extracted from soy, peas, and
hemp. (Some companies even extract pro-
tein from insects like crickets and grass-
hoppers.) Not all protein is created equal.
Typically, only the animal-derived va-
THE PROTEIN
SPECTRUM
rieties found in meat and dairy products
contain all the amino acids that your body
Not everything with a “High
Protein!” label is actually
needs. Whole foods with high-quality pro-
tein (beef, dairy, poultry, seafood, soy)
stuffed with it. In fact, most of
the foods highest in protein
remain your best source. Better than sup-
plements, even. “People rely too much on
don’t carry a label at all.
the powder when they think it confers some
magical benefit beyond whole foods,” notes
HIGH
Men’s Health nutrition advisor Mike Rous-
sell, Ph.D., a New York nutrition consultant. (27g)
Protein powder, whether it’s in a jug or
dusting snack foods, isn’t bad. But it lacks
the healthy fats, vitamins, minerals, and
macronutrients found in whole foods.
Most important, whole foods make you
feel full, whereas a shake can leave you
wanting more. (23g)
How to Consume What You Need Can you
eat that much protein per day? Doing the
math might make your head (and your jaw)
ache. “It’s more valuable for people to look (20g)
at protein on a meal-by-meal basis,” says (19g)
Roussell. “The problem is that in the U. S.,
our whole system is based on daily recom-
mendations, not meal-based ones.”
Depending on your body size, you should
shoot for somewhere between 30 and 40
grams of protein per meal, Roussell ad-
vises, which is enough to maximize muscle- (15g) Three eggs
protein synthesis while also helping you
feel full. Athletes should aim for that 40-
gram mark, depending on the intensity of
their exercise. Vegans might need to rely on
supplements to reach the optimum range.
Leidy suggests spreading out your pro-
tein intake even more: Aim for 20 to 30
Protes Protein
grams at each breakfast, lunch, and din- (10g)
Chips, Tangy
ner; drink a shake after your workout to net Southern BBQ
another 20 to 30 grams; and, if needed, add
20 grams with a midmorning snack.
But be careful with snacking. You’ll
(7g)
find some “protein” products on the
market that contain a measly four grams
Clif Bar, Peanut
per serving, along with an abundance of Toffee Buzz
added sugars. “I find that in the snack
arena, it’s generally a marketing tool, not
actually a benefit,” Roussell says. It’s not
that protein-centric BBQ chips are bad for
you. It’s just that, for the same price, you
could purchase six whole ounces of another
health food that supplies 20 grams of pro- Barbara’s Berry
tein along with vitamin B12, calcium, and Burst Protein
Puffins Cereal
zinc. It’s called Greek yogurt. And wouldn’t
that be simpler? LOW
MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 37
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 LIFE
43 ....................... TR AV ELIN’ PA N TS!
50 THINGS YOU C A N DO
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W ITH A ROTISSER IE CHICK EN
52 ............ NONA LCOHOLIC BEER S?
NONA LCOHOLIC BEER S!
56 Y ES, YOU C A N LE AV E
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A FTER SE X. (C A R EF U LLY.)

Millions of Americans are

watching the career path they
were on slowly disappear. To carve
a new one that feels urgent and
monumental, you have to know
the new rules of reinvention.
ROSS MCCAMMON helps decode them.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY T YLER COMRIE MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 39

 LIFE

NTIL A few years ago, I

U  1  Admit That It Sucks, but the Time

MEET THE
bought into the same NEW RULE
idea that my parents
INTERPRETERS Has Come to Do Some Reinventing
and grandparents Stacey
had about how a career should Staaterman, Of course it’s scary But not doing it is worse
a New York City– You expected that you You can kind of hunker
unfold: If you worked hard, you based career and
would be taken care of. You’d leadership coach
would surf this wave all down and hope against
the way to the beach and hope that the storm blows
get to buy a house, a couple Dorie Clark, jump off and have a great over, but it’s not going to
a marketing strategist
cars. You’d retire at 65-ish. The and author of retirement. But the surf blow over. You really only
American dream. I had always Reinventing You changed. Now you’ve got have two choices. Accept
been grateful to have a job— Bill Burnett, choppy, short waves and the default reality: “What-
particularly the “dream job” I an adjunct professor you’re going to fall off the ever happens, I’ll just
and executive director board. Your job now is to scramble.” Do you want
had throughout my 30s. I was of the Design Program get back on the board and the default reality? Or
loyal to it, and to my industry. at Stanford and
coauthor of Design anticipate fall-offs. Today, the one you design?
And my job and my industry, I Your Life being adaptive and flexi- Because those are your
thought, were loyal to me. ble is critical. —S. S. only two options. —B. B.
And then I was laid off. I got
another job pretty quickly, and
then, after two years, I was laid
off again. I was the sole earner
in my family. I had two young
kids and a mortgage.

≢ ≢
Let me tell you: That will clear
the mind.
We’re being told that we’re in
this amazing economic mo-
ment, but most people I know
are scared. They feel anything
but stable, and for good reason.
We’re living through a seismic
shift in American business.
Connectivity has disrupted
industries, as well as the lives of
families and hardworking peo-
ple who take pride in their work
and just want work to do.

Delmaine Donson/Getty Images (man on computer, previous page), Kyoshino/Getty Images (paper)
My reaction? Once I truly
accepted a less stable reality, I
stopped trying to walk down a
“path.” It was as much a mind-
shift as it was a career strategy.
I began to feel younger and
more nimble. But I got a lot of
advice—from colleagues who’d
moved on and from people
who specialize in reinvention,
like the ones I spoke with for
this story. These three experts
regularly work with the most
reluctant reinventors—people
far along on their professional
journey—and help them nav-
igate change. Here’s how they
think you should approach it.

40 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH

 2  Treat LinkedIn as the New
Headhunter (Because It Is)

You’re only what your dig- and make their skills trans-
ital profile says about you ferable? Understand that
Our culture around job it’s not about your literal job
searching and career- description. There are meta
management behaviors mir- skills that you developed
rors dating and courtship. along the way, like under-
Nobody has a blind date standing how to lead a team,
anymore. Nobody. Even if or learning what makes for
you have an introduction to a great story and how to
another human being, all of
the humans involved go to
the Internet and scope each
capture people’s attention.
Things like that could be
applied to any number of
3  Don’t Wait Around
to Get Noticed
other out. If I had two hours different places. —D. C.
to spend on doing some- Today, everybody’s Make yourself
thing to help somebody’s Don’t paywall your in your network easy to know
career and job search, I email address As long as you’re on the If you blog or are sharing
would invest that time on Many people (including re- Internet, you can reach relevant content on social
LinkedIn. Get your profile in cruiters) use free accounts pretty much anyone who’s media, then people look at
good shape first. —S. S. on LinkedIn, so they cannot worth connecting with. It’s you as a thoughtful curator
access your information in completely wide open. I’ve of ideas. That can matter.
Make your profile about the “Contact” section. In- struck up a friendship with Even if you’re in a company
what you can do, not just clude it in the “Summary” somebody who’s been a where there are constraints
what you did section instead. —S. S. leader in personal devel- on what you can share
Peel back the layers of your opment for 40 years, all publicly, you can share
résumé. Think about your You have to jump in because I commented on things in places like your
transferable skills. I do a lot LinkedIn is not a giant dig- some of his content. There is company intranet. Or put
of work with transitioning ital address book. It is a so much access to people at in applications to speak at
members of the military, and 24/7/365 networking event. superhigh levels—there is no industry conferences. It
some of them come in and Those who share, comment reason you couldn’t create takes extra effort, but these
have skills like they’re a tank on, and publish content are a relationship with a CEO if things ensure you’re per-
driver or they defuse bombs, rewarded with connections you wanted to. ceived as credible. —D. C.
and obviously that doesn’t and visibility. Lack of partic- Once you’ve built that net-
seem remotely transferable ipation negatively affects work, you’ve got to keep up Authenticity wins
to civilian life. So how do how your profile will rank in with it. People often don’t do I had a client write an
you take someone like that recruiter searches. —S. S. that. They ping folks once in a article about gratitude—
while or may have lunch, but gratitude after being laid
that’s not enough. They don’t off! The piece was vul-
keep them up to speed and nerable, personal, and
NEW ADDICTION ALERT! treat them like a board of di- unexpected. It raised his
rectors. These people should visibility and led to a ton of
YOU’VE PROBABLY seen YouTube videos with impassioned be getting a twice-a-month new conversations. He’s
speakers like entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk and half of all update: “Here’s how the found a job since then, and
TED Talkers gassing on about working really hard (getting search is going.” Express how he’s doing great. It actually
up early, never quitting, generally crushing it but never much you value their sup- turned up the heat on
saying what “it” actually is). So, what is the . . . result of all port, and ask for specific in- his search and pulled him
this effort? For peddlers of “hustle porn,” who revere and troductions to people. —S. S. out into the light. —S. S.
promote extreme effort as a virtue, the work is the result.
Which is obviously weird! Kind of sick, actually! And, more
important, counterproductive. Ignore those who say you
should work harder than anyone else. (A) That’s impos-
sible, because Dwayne Johnson walks the earth. (B) You
deserve (and need) a personal life. (C) One man’s moti-
4  As Long as You’re Inventing,
Make Something Great
Mike Kemp/Getty Images (sign)

vation can be another man’s self-esteem killer. Hustling

nonstop, as Reddit founder and hustle-porn hater Alexis
Ohanian says, “has deleterious effects not just on your
business but on your well-being.” The only people seeing
any benefits from this twisted philosophy are the people
reaping YouTube ad dollars espousing it. —R. M.
Go for the big win
Get out of the false binary of “It’s either work or life.” It’s just
life and life. You’re living life at home, you’re living life on the
commute, you’re living life. Whenever you make things a di-
chotomy, you’re going, “It’s either A or B, and if I have more of
A, I have less of B.” There’s no way to win that game. —B. B.

MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 41

 FUR NI T URE FOR T HE
CURIOUS, CONFIDENT, AND CULTURED
FFDM.COM/ESQUIRE
 LIFE

I’m a huge sneaker head—

Q. well over 150 pairs. I’m also

a 47-year-old professional.
HAVE I OUTGROWN
THEM? OR IS THERE

STYLE

New Year,
No Rules!
The Style
Lightning
Round
You asked, we answered. The
fixes to your biggest fashion
conundrums of 2019.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY EMILIO HERNANDEZ MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 43

 LIFE

I’m a worked-out, broad-

Q. shouldered guy. If I buy a

dress shirt that fits my arms,
it’s always blousy around the
waist. WHAT DO I DO?
—KENNETH, @KENDORPHINS
A. The tough answer: Pay a visit to your tailor. He can take
in the waist if your shirt fits in the arms and shoulders. The
better answer: Find brands that make options cut for broader
guys, like Hugo Boss’s “sharp fit” shirt. It shows off your work
at the gym when you have to be at actual work.

Cotton shirt ($125), wool tie ($148), and wool trousers (part of suit,
$795) by Boss; hugoboss.com. Canfield Chrono watch ($900) by
Shinola; shinola.com.

This year, I’m

Q.
since it’s falling apart.
Styling: Ted Stafford, grooming: Ellen Guhin/See Management, tailoring: Morgan Foote/
Altered, location: Peerspace.com, Kevin Sweeney/Studio D (backpack, jacket, watches),
SHOULD I JUST GET
A REPLACEMENT?
—STEVEN, @STEVEN.FRIED I’m trying to reduce
A. We’d suggest going instead for a
hybrid. The way we move through the
world now requires a durability that
a leather briefcase can’t quite offer.
Plus, thanks to our phones, we need
both hands free most of the time. The
prop styling: Claire Tedaldi/Halley Resources

solution: a muted backpack in strong

technical nylon that can flip to brief-
case mode as you glide into the office.

Flight Pack 2 backpack ($160) by Aer;

nordstrom.com.

44 January •
NICE BRICK WALL, HUH? Peerspace hooked us up. It’s
like Airbnb for meeting venues, or, you know, fashion shoots.

WHAT ELSE IS THERE BESIDES

Q.A BLAZER THAT CAN KEEP ME
WARM IF I RUN OUT FOR A COFFEE?
—ZACH, Columbus, OH

A. A thin wool blazer isn’t going to do much for you, warmthwise,

in the winter months. And if you find yourself in a casual office,
it can even look out of place. Which is why a neutral, minimalist
fleece works best: It’s dressy in a best-dressed-at-a-start-up
kind of way and still functions as a warm layer for coffee runs.

Retro pile fleece ($139) by Fair Trade Patagonia; patagonia.com. Plaid

shirt ($70) by Banana Republic; bananarepublic.com. Heritage Series
watch ($850) by Movado; movado.com.

Q.
ARE THERE IDEAL PANTS
FOR TRAVELING? I want to
be comfortable on the plane and
still look good when I land.
—TREY, @TREYGRILEY

A. Ah, the elusive dignity-maintaining travel pants. Instead

My New Year’s
of wearing sweatpants or scrunching into jeans, opt for pants
with stretch and a flexible waist made for traveling with ease,
Q. resolution is to start
like this pair from comfort king Mack Weldon. wearing a watch. WHAT’S A
GOOD STARTING POINT?
Radius trousers ($98) by Mack Weldon; mackweldon.com. Herringbone
blazer ($298) by Banana Republic; bananarepublic.com. Cotton shirt —CHRIS, Windsor, Ontario
($295) by Eleventy; eleventy.it. Socks ($22) by Kane 11; kane11.com.
A. If you’re not a regular watch wearer,
Leather-and-wool slip-ons ($169) by Greats; greats.com. Watch by Rolex;
rolex.com. Wheeled carry-on ($245) by Away; awaytravel.com. Leather you want to be sure you’re actually going
luggage tag ($75) by Shinola; shinola.com. to wear the thing before you put down
big money for an expensive one. So grab
a timepiece at an entry-level price. You’ll
earn style points with a metal bracelet
and bold face, and you’ll get used to
regular wear without having to take out
a second mortgage.

From left: Preston steel watch ($195) by Coach;

macys.com. Luminova watch ($295) by Boss;
hugoboss.com. Steel Chandler watch ($195) by
Citizen Watch; citizenwatch.com.
 LIFE
YOUR MUG
The More
Chiseled Me
Men are spending millions on jawline procedures.
Our grooming guy, GARRETT MUNCE, investigates what we’re
getting done—and which approach is best for him.
R 
OBIN WAS my gateway. The jaw-
line of Batman’s sidekick wasn’t
the squarest, but at six years old
in my bedroom in Charlotte,
North Carolina, I knew something was
different about him. That led me to Bat-
man, Superman, Thor, the Human Torch.
I could draw dozens of their faces from
memory even before the Marvel Cinematic
Universe began making gods out of guys
named Chris. The one thing they all have
in common? A jaw that looks like a block of
granite. And I’ve wanted one ever since.
I’m a 34-year-old man with the facial
structure of the Gerber baby, something
that was adorable when I was an actual
46 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH
baby. But now that I’m an adult? It’s still
adorable. I’ve struggled with my weight
and body image my whole life, but my
face has always been a particular prob-
lem. When I was at my heaviest, people
couldn’t resist pinching my cheeks. When
I was at my thinnest, and hospitalized for
anorexia, another patient told me I had
“chipmunk cheeks.” No matter what your
body looks like under your clothes, do you
know what you can’t hide? Your face.
“The sharper the jaw, the stronger the
man” is such a natural way to think that
we don’t even question it. A study in 2013
discovered a link between a wider jaw and
higher levels of circulating testosterone in
men. A Duke University study found that
CEOs with stronger facial features were
seen as more competent. Another study
reported that voters preferred leaders with
more masculine features in wartime. In
comic books (and conference rooms and
the Oval Office and, I don’t know, a Cheese-
cake Factory), a square jaw suggests power.
And more men like me are looking for ways
of getting one.
Nonsurgical approaches include Botox
and fillers; Ultherapy, which uses ultra-
sound to tighten saggy skin; CoolSculpt,
which freezes and kills fat cells; and Kybella,
which destroys fat cells with injectable
acid. But a lot of surgery is happening, too.
According to the American Society of Plastic
Surgeons, 57 percent of chin-augmentation
surgeries in 2017 were performed on men.
I might become one of them. After years
of self-consciousness and a handful of non-
invasive procedures, I’m not sure anything
is off-limits if it’s going to make me feel
more confident. If I’m ready for the knife,
the question is: What exactly does that
mean? What are my options? And, most
important, will it be enough?
IMPLANT? NOT THAT SIMPLE.
“LOOK AT Greek and Roman art and you’ll
see strong chins,” says plastic surgeon
Melissa Doft, M.D., in her office on New
York’s Upper East Side. “Even in ancient
times, this was an aesthetic ideal.”
I came to her wondering about a chin
implant, something she said could be per-
formed in her office under local anesthe-
sia. Traditionally, she might suggest one
as an add-on to a rhinoplasty to balance
the proportions of the face, but many of
her male clients are starting to ask for it
specifically. Even without the nose job,
she typically pairs one with liposuction
around the neck to define the jawline and
adjustments under the eyes to bring out the
cheekbones. For me, even that wouldn’t be
enough. Dr. Doft told me I would also need
to remove my buccal fat pads (the fatty
areas inside the cheeks). She would make
tiny incisions just above the upper molars
to remove them. Then she would use a can-
nula, a narrow tube attached to a syringe,
to remove the fat under my chin.
A full surgical treatment like that would
cost me around $6,000 but take only a few
hours. Maybe it is just as easy as Dr. Doft
made it sound. After all, she showed me
that it’s more about subtle changes than a
huge, sweeping redo.

THE LIMITS OF FILLERS
WHAT LI SA G O O D MAN , founder of the
antiaging clinic GoodSkin Los Angeles,
told me cut deep (and she’s not even a sur-
geon): “You don’t actually have enough
cheekbone structure to handle the amount
of fat that you have.”
Ouch.
The secret to contouring a man’s face
with only injectables, she says, “is really
just about straight lines,” meaning that
instead of making gentle curves that
would feminize the face, the goal is to cre-
ate angles. It’s achieved by weightier fill-
ers like Radiesse and Voluma, which are
injected deep and can visually enhance
bone structure. Layering them with a
lightweight filler like Juvéderm to plump
the skin can rework your face in subtle but
striking ways. In my case, Goodman said
my “fat was falling”—and any remaining
fat would too—so filler would visually pro-
duce more bone structure to help support
the surrounding tissue.
A full treatment with only minimally
invasive methods requires a big-picture
view and a lot of patience. Kybella can
be used to take away pockets of fat (like
my buccal pads) without surgery, but it
involves three to six treatments, each a
month apart. I’d already gotten Kybella
Travis Rathbone (bust), Kevin Mazur/Getty Images (Boseman), Thomas Samson/AFP/Getty Images (Cavill), Stephen Lovekin/FilmMagic (Bale),
jaw is associated with respect
and authority has become
hardwired into our brains,”
he says. “You see it more now
because of the hypersexual-
ization of superheroes.” Just
look at Michael Keaton’s 1989
Batman next to Ben Affleck’s
in 2016.
The problem is trying to
go from Keaton to Affleck in
one procedure. “It’s a game of
addition and subtraction,” Dr.
Steinbrech says. “The mistake
is to put an implant deep on the
bone underneath all this soft
tissue assuming it’s going to
make you a chiseled movie
star.” If a patient doesn’t
already have a clearly defined
bone structure (as I don’t), Dr.
Steinbrech may advise get-
ting a chin, jaw, or cheekbone
implant but will suggest first
taking away the fat (through
procedures such as micro-
liposuction and Kybella) or
tightening sagging skin (like
with a face-lift or neck-lift). Fillers are what they look like with a more angular
then added at the end for “refined detail.”
Dr. Steinbrech recommended almost ple to cosmetic surgeons’ offices quicker.”
THE
HALL OF
JAW
back from the screen was the
ultimate selfie—a version of
my face I was desperate for
me to have and others to see.
About that desperation:
I called Roberto Olivardia,
BOSEMAN Ph.D., a clinical psycholo-
gist and lecturer at Harvard
Medical School, who liter-
ally wrote the book on male
body image. Since he and
his coauthors published The
Adonis Complex in 2000, he’s
CAVILL
noticed a dramatic increase
in men’s preo cc upat ion
with their face. “The every-
day person has become the
celebrity,” he says. “To have a
picture taken these days, you
BALE have to look good, because
with social media, everyone
has access to it. This has
heightened body image in a
significant way.”
Photo-editing apps have
DOWNEY too. “People can alter their
faces very easily now,” says
Olivardia. “They can see
jaw [for instance], and it’s sending peo-

and had adverse side effects—my neck
was completely numb for four months. (I
would rather just go under the knife.)
USING THE WHOLE TOOL KIT
ONE OF THE FEW plastic surgeons in the
U. S. to specialize in men, Douglas Stein-
brech, M.D., told me that no matter what
surgical options a patient goes for, add-
ing fillers gets optimal results. In 2014,
Frank Trapper/Corbis via Getty Images (Downey), courtesy Male Plastic Surgery NY/LA (author)
the whole menu. He noted that I had “gen- A decade ago, patients would show up to
eral subcutaneous facial fat” (meaning their consultations with photos of celeb-
my whole face is fat, not just my cheeks), rities. Now they come with their own
so even with the buccal fat pads removed, doctored photos, a phenomenon Dr.
I would still need to manage my expec- Steinbrech calls “Snapchat dysmorphia.”
tations. He also recommended a chin It presents new issues to plastic surgeons,
implant (“no-brainer”) and cheekbone who spend more time adjusting a patient’s
implants. The “frosting on the cake,” as he expectations because of things like basic
put it, would be a generous helping of filler. anatomy and genetics. Facetune might be
Depending on how many syringes he used, a magic wand, but surgery is not.

Dr. Steinbrech created what he calls the this could run me as much as $18,000 per In the weeks after my consultation, I
Male Model Makeover, which commonly visit. To show me what this would all look spent so much time playing with Facetune
includes enhancing the angles of the face. like, Dr. Steinbrech used a computer pro- that my photos looked like they belonged
The jawline is his focus. “That a strong gram he calls virtual surgery. in a fun house. I stared at my face in the
mirror, lifting and stretching my skin like
THE “AFTER” PICTURE an aging starlet in an old movie.
T H E F A C E t h at D r. I started to realize that my expectations
ME, BUT Steinbrech created as were out of control. Even with extensive
SUPER-ER! I watched looked as treatments, I would never look like the me
if someone had built I’d been imagining.
The author (left)
and, as one the action-figure ver- This story is not going to end with some
doctor put it, sion of me. The goal, he body-positive realization—at least not
his “Hollywood said, was to generate one that leaves me happy with what I look
twin” in a a “Hollywood twin,” a like now. And is that so weird? We go to the
visualization. more handsome version gym to look different. We wear clothes to
of my face that retained hide our bodies. I had an epiphany, sure,
what made me, well, me. but the epiphany was: If I can’t be Batman,
BEFORE “AFTER” Even so, the me staring I’ll still take Robin.

MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 47

 LIFE
M E N ’S H E A L T H
B E ST
FOOD
The Breakfast
FO R
MEN
Burrito Wakes Up
New options now cater to people who actually like food.
We taste-tested them all and declared our winners.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR
For a hearty breakfast
that will keep you
feeling full until lunch,
eat a complete meal
that provides 25 to
30 grams of protein
and at least 3 grams
of fiber, says Valerie
Goldstein, R.D.,
founder of the website
Eating to Fuel Health.
“Don’t compromise
quality for quantity,”
she adds. Cap total
carbs at 50 grams and
include a hard-boiled
egg or two to round
out your breakfast.
Otherwise you may
feel like taking a
midmorning desk
nap. With Goldstein’s
requirements in mind,
we tried more than 30
burritos. These won.
48 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH
BEST OVERALL
PJ’S ORGANICS SOUTHWESTERN
STYLE CHICKEN BURRITO
PER SERVING: 330 calories, 8g fat,
16g protein, 48g carbs (8g fiber)
Many options we tried lacked a satisfying
filling-to-tortilla balance. But PJ’s packs this roll-
up with organic white-meat chicken, black beans,
Jack cheese, brown rice, corn, and red and green
bell peppers (whew!). Though its protein count is
lower than other winners’, the fiber fills you up.
FIND IT AT: Whole Foods, Fairway
BEST BASIC
EVOL SPICY UNCURED
BACON & EGG
PER SERVING: 320 calories, 14g fat,
12g protein, 37g carbs (3g fiber)
This is the burrito that most evokes your bach-
elor days, upgraded with cage-free eggs, quality
bacon, cubed potatoes, and a hint of jalapeño.
“This tastes like everything I want in a breakfast
burrito,” one tester said. A little more hot sauce
couldn’t hurt, though.
FIND IT AT: Most grocery stores
Roland  Rubalcava, exec-
CHEF-IFY utive chef of Playa Mesa
IT! in Costa Mesa, California,
gives  your  heat-and-eat
 burritos  superpowers.
1. FRESHEN IT
Before the last minute of micro-
waving, top the burrito with a big
spoonful or two of roasted tomato
salsa and a small handful of Monterey
Jack. Then top the hot burrito with
arugula dressed with a little olive oil
and Champagne vinegar.
2. SMOKE IT
After heating the burrito, cover it with
warm mole (you can find the sauce in
your grocery store’s Mexican section),
plus some sour cream, toasted
sesame seeds, and a few thinly sliced
raw red onions.
3. GREEN IT
In a blender or food processor, puree
¼ avocado, 2 raw husked tomatillos,
1 garlic clove, a small handful of
cilantro leaves, 1 roughly chopped
green onion, and ½ jalapeño with
water until smooth. Season with salt,
pour some over a cooked burrito, and
top with crumbled queso fresco.
BEST FULLY LOADED
SWEET EARTH FOODS
BAJA BREAKFAST BURRITO
PER SERVING: 360 calories, 13g fat,
20g protein, 41g carbs (3g fiber)
It’s vegetarian and builds a strong protein base
with eggs, Monterey Jack, and pinto beans.
The hearty, savory flavors come from potatoes,
fire-roasted tomatoes, and chipotle seitan, a
meat substitute made from wheat gluten. (It’s
tastier than it sounds.) Add salsa and cilantro.
FIND IT AT: Walmart, Target, Whole Foods
BEST WILD CARD
Food styling: Jamie Kimm, prop styling: Christina Lane
AMY’S BREAKFAST
SCRAMBLE WRAP
PER SERVING: 380 calories, 19g fat,
21g protein, 30g carbs (4g fiber)
This one carries a substantial amount of pro-
tein and doesn’t sit like a brick in your stomach.
“Somehow it has better flavor than some of the
burritos with real eggs,” one taster reported.
You’ll enjoy it even more served with salsa verde
and sliced avocado.
FIND IT AT: Most grocery stores
PHOTOGRAPHS BY TED + CHELSEA
© 2018 Tyson Foods, Inc.
 LIFE

Welcome
to 30/10!
HERE’S HOW
30 IT WORKS: You
10 eat 30 grams of
protein per meal
to feel full and build muscle.
Then you add ten grams of
fiber to reap its digestive,
heart, and satiety benefits,
says Chris Mohr, Ph.D., R.D.,
co-owner of Mohr Results,
a nutrition consulting firm.
You’ll have everything you
need to feed your appetite and
fuel your workout recovery.
This month: a grocery go-to.
BY PAUL KITA

THE PROTEIN
There’s a big reason lifters
love chicken. One six-ounce
roasted skinless breast from
a broiler or fryer contains
49 grams of protein for only
323 calories. The same
amount of meat from a skin-
less thigh has 42 grams of
protein for 304 calories. So
whether you pick up a rotis-
serie chicken at the grocery
store or roast your own at
home, the fowl has your
Sam Kaplan

muscle fuel covered.

50 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH

 7 Things to Do with a
SUPERMARKET ROTISSERIE CHICKEN
Shred it atop tomato soup. Top with fresh cilantro,
1. crumbled queso fresco, cubed avocado, crushed
tortilla chips, and freshly squeezed lime juice.
THE FIBER
Serve your bird with one of these easy
make-at-home side dishes. They each
carry the target ten grams of gut-filling
fiber. Feeling ambitious? Double
the recipe. They both taste great cold
as leftovers the next day.

Reheat shredded chicken in a pan with butter and hot

2. sauce. Tuck into a wrap with crumbled blue cheese, thinly
sliced iceberg or romaine lettuce, and celery leaves.

Throw a few leaves of chopped kale in a bowl. Add a

3. pinch of kosher salt and a squeeze of lemon juice.

Massage until the leaves are softened. Toss in shredded
chicken and top with freshly grated Parmesan.
Top a reheated chicken breast with a few spoonfuls
1. CHARRED BROCCOLI WITH
L E M O N A N D PA R M E S A N
In a large bowl, toss the trimmed florets from

4. of warmed tomato sauce, a piece of pan-crisped

prosciutto, and a slice of fresh mozzarella. Broil till
melted. Remember to use a knife and fork.
Reheat a shredded chicken breast in a large pan
coated with olive oil over medium heat. Add a handful
5. of grapes, a handful of pitted olives, some chopped
rosemary, and a squeeze of lemon juice. Season with
1 large head of broccoli, plus the chopped
stalk, with 2 Tbsp olive oil and a big pinch
each of salt and pepper. In a cast-iron
pan over medium high, add the broccoli
and cook, stirring occasionally, until it is
well charred and al dente, 3 to 5 minutes.
Top with the zest and juice of 1 lemon, plus
freshly grated Parmesan to taste. Feeds 2
PER SERVING: 220 calories, 11g protein,
18g carbs (10g fiber), 15g fat

salt and pepper.

Pile a large slice of sourdough bread with a leaf or

6. two of romaine lettuce, shredded chicken, sliced

avocado, sliced tomato, crumbled bacon, and
chipotle mayo.

In a pan, reheat shredded chicken with your favorite

7. barbecue sauce. Transfer to an onion roll and top
with coleslaw and hot sauce.
2 . C H O P P E D R E D C A B B AG E
Ted + Chelsea, food styling: Jamie Kimm, prop styling: Christina Lane

HOW T O PIC K A W INNER Follow the advice of Alan Morgan,
a global senior culinary director
for Whole Foods Market: “I look at the legs, since they get cooked
the most, to see if the meat has begun to pull away from the
bone. That’s a good indicator that the bird has been overcooked
and is dried out. And avoid any birds with excess juice in the
container—a clear sign all of that flavor has left the chicken.
A great golden-brown color and shiny and glossy skin indicate a
tasty and moist rotisserie chicken.”
Q U I C K S L AW
In a large bowl, toss ¾ of a head of red
cabbage, finely chopped (you can use a
food processor); 2 carrots, finely chopped;
1 apple, cored and finely chopped; 1 Tbsp
distilled white vinegar; 1 tsp olive oil; and salt
and pepper to taste. Feeds 2
PER SERVING: 190 calories, 5g protein,
42g carbs (11g fiber), 3g fat
HUNGRY FOR MORE?
We found the recipe for the ultimate
roast chicken. It’s easy. It’s delicious.
MensHealth.com/roastchicken

MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 51

 LIFE

Beer With Us Here…

. . . Because we have an important announcement: Upstart craft brewers are releasing
nonalcoholic beers with actual flavor. But it’s one thing for them not to taste terrible.
It’s another for them to taste good. And these actually do.
BY JOY MANNING

IF YOU LOVE...
SIERRA NEVADA PALE ALE BLUE MOON FAT TIRE AMBER ALE GUINNESS GOOSE ISLAND IPA

THEN YOU’LL LIKE (AND MAYBE EVEN LOVE!)...

PARTAKE BREWING IPA WELLBEING BREWING HEAVENLY WELLBEING BREWING BRAVUS BREWING ATHLETIC BREWING
BODY GOLDEN WHEAT HELLRAISER DARK AMBER OATMEAL STOUT RUN WILD IPA
Food styling: Jamie Kimm, prop styling: Christina Lane/Tricia Joyce

Citrusy and bracing, this
is the ultimate low-calorie
session beer—an option
even if you’re following a
low-carb or keto plan, for
some reason.
Calories per 12 ounces: 10
Buy: premiumnearbeer
.com/usa
This thirst quencher is a
post-run reviver. You’ll
taste grapefruit and a lit-
tle spice. Plus, no regrets
about slugging back
a sugary sports drink.
Calories per 12 ounces: 68
Buy: shop.wellbeingbrew-
ing.com
There’s a strong malt back-
bone, but hops balance the
sweetness. Try it with an
equally bold food, such as
a medium-rare beef burger
or spicy chorizo tacos.
Calories per 12 ounces: 80
Buy: shop.wellbeingbrew-
ing.com
Smells like a campfire,
pours supersmooth:
This substantial stout
matches especially well
with chocolate desserts,
which help coax out the
brew’s caramel notes.
Calories per 12 ounces: 110
Buy: store.bravus.com
This one has a palate-
popping bitterness. Judges
at the 2018 International
Beer Challenge gave it a
gold medal in the special-
ty-beer category. You’ll
like it, too.
Calories per 12 ounces: 70
Buy: athleticbrewing.com

WHY DRINK It’s loaded with polyphenols.

These compounds found primarily in
It’s a great post-cardio drink.
A 2012 German study found marathon
It’s a nightcap.
If you replace your boozy nightcap with
N/A BEER? plants may help ward off disease and
protect you from free-radical damage.
runners who drank N/A beer during
training had less overall inflammation.
a nonalcoholic beer, you can wind down
without wrecking your rest.

52 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH PHOTOGRAPH BY TED + CHELSEA


Get Back In Shape
75$,1(5
6$'9,&(&$1+(/3<28'5237+$7(;75$
:(,*+7 / BY CHRIS HANSEN
Being a trainer, bodybuilder, and nutrition
expert means that companies frequently send
me their products and ask for my stamp of
approval. Most of the time I dive into research,
test the product out, and send the company
honest feedback. Sometimes, however, I refuse
to give the product a try, because frankly, the
ingredients inside aren’t real food. And I’d
rather drink diesel fuel than torture my body
with a chemical concoction.
Like my father always said, “What you
put inside your body always shows up on the
outside.”
One protein shake that I received, that will
remain nameless, was touted as ‘the next big
shake’ but really had a list of gut destroying
ingredients. Everywhere I read I saw harmful
artificial ingredients, added sugars, synthetic
dyes, preservatives and cheap proteins; the
kind of proteins that keep you fat no matter
ADVERTISEMENT
give it a try.
how hard you hit the gym, sap your energy and
do nothing for your muscles.
Disappointed after reviewing this “new”
shake, I hit the gym and bumped into my
favorite bodybuilding coach. This guy is
pushing 50, has the energy of a college kid, and
is ripped. So are his clients.
While I firmly believe that the gym is a no-
talk focus zone, I had to ask, “Hey Zee, what
protein shake are you recommending to your
clients these days?”
Zee looked at me, and shook his head.
“Protein shakes are old news and loaded with
junk. I don’t recommend protein shakes, I
tell my clients to drink INVIGOR8 Superfood
Shake because it’s the only all natural meal
replacement that works and has a taste so
good that it’s addicting.”
Being skeptical of what Zee told me, I
decided to investigate this superfood shake
called INVIGOR8.
Turns out INVIGOR8 Superfood Shake has
a near 5-star rating on Amazon. The creators
are actual scientists and personal trainers who
set out to create a complete meal replacement
shake chocked full of superfoods that—get
this—actually accelerate how quickly and
easily you lose belly fat and builds even more
lean, calorie burning muscle.
We all know that the more muscle you
build, the more calories you burn. The more
fat you melt away the more definition you get
in your arms, pecs and abs.
The makers of INVIGOR8 were determined
to make the first complete, natural, non-
GMO superfood shake that helps you lose fat
and build lean muscle. The result is a shake
that contains 100% grass-fed whey that has a
superior nutrient profile to the grain-fed whey
found in most shakes, metabolism boosting
raw coconut oil, hormone free colostrum to
promote a healthy immune system, Omega
3, 6, 9-rich chia and flaxseeds, superfood
greens like kale, spinach, broccoli, alfalfa,
and chlorella, and clinically tested cognitive
enhancers for improved mood and brain
function. The company even went a step
further by including a balance of pre and
probiotics for regularity in optimal digestive
health, and digestive enzymes so your body
absorbs the high-caliber nutrition you get
from INVIGOR8.
While there are over 500 testimonials
on Amazon about how INVIGOR8 “gave me
more energy and stamina” and “melts away
abdominal fat like butter on a hot sidewalk”,
what really impressed me was how many
customers raved about the taste. So I had to
When it arrived I gave it the sniff test. Unlike
most meal replacement shakes it smelled like
whole food, not a chemical factory. So far so
good. Still INVIGOR8 had to pass the most
important test, the taste test.
And INVIGOR8 was good. Better than
good. I could see what Zee meant when he
said his clients found the taste addicting.
I also wanted to see if Invigor8 would help
me burn that body fat I’d tried to shave off for
years to achieve total definition.
Just a few weeks later I’m pleased to say,
shaving that last abdominal fat from my
midsection wasn’t just easy. It was delicious.
Considering all the shakes I’ve tried I can
honestly say that the results I’ve experienced
from INVIGOR8 are nothing short of astonishing.
A company spokesperson confirmed an
exclusive offer for Men’s Health readers: if you
order INVIGOR8 this month, you’ll receive
$10 off your first order by using promo code
“MEN10” at checkout. If you’re in a rush to
burn fat, restore lean muscle and boost your
stamina and energy you can order INVIGOR8
today at www.DrinkInvigor8.com or by calling
1-800-958-3392.
 EASY ON
THE SWEET
After gathering your postholiday gift-card spoils, avoid the Added sugars
siren call tempting you toward sugar and empty calories. provide you with
nothing nutrition-
ally. They’re empty calo-
SKIP THE BAKED GOODS and instead do a double order of the Sous Vide ries that can contribute
Egg Bites: Egg White & Red Pepper. You’ll eat about 30 grams of to weight gain and toy
START fortifying protein and less than five grams of sugar. That’s a far better with your insulin levels.

WITH EGGS day starter than the healthy-sounding Banana Nut Bread, which has
50-plus grams of carbs, 25 of which are sugar. And that 8-Grain Roll? Avoid these offenders:

25
It houses 70 total grams of carbs, and 18 of them are the sweet stuff. GRAMS
OF SUGAR
Almond Butter,
OPT FOR THE BOXES that contain a sandwich with muscle-building pro-
CHOOSE THE tein. The Chicken BLT and Smoked Turkey boxes each have 35 grams
Strawberries &
Jam Sandwich
BEST PROTEIN
and a hearty seven grams of fiber. Beware: Not all of the protein-centric
EQUIVALENT TO:
options have enough of the key nutrient. You want 30 grams per meal (see
BOXES page 36). The Fruit & Cheese Protein Box? Twenty grams. The Lentils &
5.5 Oreo cookies

Vegetable Protein Bowl with Brown Rice? Twenty-three.

BLACK COFFEE AND NITRO are both zero-calorie, zero-sugar choices. Shake
46 GRAMS
OF SUGAR
Caramelized
DE-ADJECTIVE some cinnamon on top to help cut the bite of the beverage or add a little Apple Pound Cake
YOUR
milk. The longer it takes you to say what you want, the greater your risk of
EQUIVALENT TO:
ordering a caffeinated milkshake. For example, a venti Blonde Vanilla Bean 1.3 (12-ounce) cans of
COFFEE ORDER Coconutmilk Latte delivers 20 grams of sugar. A grande Double Chocolaty Pepsi Wild Cherry Vanilla
Chip Crème Frappuccino with almond milk has a crash-inducing 49 grams.

CREATE YOUR PROTEIN -and-caffeine combo by cherry-picking from Star- 64 GRAMS

OF SUGAR
MAKE bucks’s menu to hit 30 grams of protein and avoid added sugar. Start with Grande White Choco-

A BETTER
an espresso or unsweetened cold brew (neither one has sugar) and then late Mocha Frappuccino
add an Egg & Cheese Protein Box and/or milk. Yes, a Doubleshot Protein Blended Coffee
MATCH Caramel may have 20 grams of protein, but it also has the same amount EQUIVALENT TO:
of sugar. The Teavana Mango Black Tea has 22 grams of sugar. 2.1 bags of regular M&M’s

54 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH

L
 LIFE

YOU GUYS I RECENTLY SUMMONED a trusted ex to a bar. I wanted to ask

him a question, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.

Wham, Bam, It took me one round of drinks to get to it. “Have I ever done
anything . . . weird? Or gross? Like, in bed? But not, like, in
bed,” I added. “Like, sleeping.” He pretended to think about it,

Bye Now
So that was great. But as
LAUREN LARSON explains, sometimes
the best nights end in separate beds.
but I could tell he already had something in mind. Finally, he
began to speak. I drained my whiskey ginger. He told me the
story of a night right out of Paranormal Activity. A story that
laid bare the true evil that I’ve always suspected exists within
me. I won’t repeat it here, because I am a lady/because my par-
ents read Men’s Health.
I bought the next round and tried to forget.
For a few days, I’d been badgering male acquaintances about
the sleep habits of the women in their lives. By the time I con-
fronted my ex, I’d heard enough stories of drooling and sleep-
talking to know that everyone does something. I have my own
encyclopedia of nighttime horror stories. I once watched a man

56 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH ILLUSTRATION BY ZOHAR LAZAR

 YOUR
EXPERT
In this column,
Lauren Larson
writes about
the evolving
dynamics between men
and women—from hooking
up to working together
to . . . everything else.
sleepwalk across my bedroom, pee in
and around my wastebasket, and then
sleepwalk out of the room. I was too
spooked to follow him, so I don’t know
where else in my home he peed that night.
When I mentioned it, he laughed and
said that it’s “just something that hap-
pens when I drink whiskey.”
We’ve reevaluated so many things
about dating. We’ve changed our tune
on how we meet (Tinder!) and how we
ask for consent (often!), and I move that
we change the rules of sleepovers, too.
Nobody sleeps well with a new partner,
and some of us even have trouble sleeping
with people we’ve been with for a long,
long time. I used to think that if I didn’t
sleep with someone after we had sex, the
sex would be somehow cheapened, but
curling up together for half an hour
after sex can be just as pleasant a cap-
stone as spending the night together,
and you won’t spend the next day feeling
destroyed, resenting your partner for
disrupting your sleep cycle. But before
you barrel out of your lover’s apartment
under the banner of enlightenment,
it can help to understand some of the
anxieties at play here.
I, for example, have always harbored
a fear that I’ll unknowingly do some-
thing unattractive in slumber. When
I’m on a date, I may appear charming
and relaxed—even smooth, if I’m on my
third drink—but actually every organ is
engaged in an effort not to do anything
ugly. When I’m lying next to someone, as
much as I want to fall asleep, I’m also bat-
tling the temptation to remain awake and
totally in control of my faculties. Maybe
the Thanksgiving-dinner-level fatigue
men get after they ejaculate overwhelms
these concerns, or maybe I’m just extra
self-conscious. When you regard it as a sex
act, sleeping next to someone is as inti-
mate as it gets. My body might betray me
Kyle Hilton (Larson)
in any number of ways, or my mate might
study me in the dead of night—drooling,
hair akimbo—and decide that I am hid-
eous. We like to believe in a social contract
“
Be specific,
honest, and,
ideally, self-
deprecating
about why you
don’t want to
sleep over.
that prevents us from judging each other
for things we do while we’re sleeping, but
I did judge the sleep-pisser. And even if
my ex didn’t judge me per se, the incident
clearly carries an outsize weight in his
memory of our time together.
On the other hand, I was relieved to
learn that my worst sleep infraction,
horrifying as it was, was an isolated
occurrence (or so I hope). A much greater
fear is that I habitually do something
that disrupts the sleep of my bedfellows:
If my ex had told me I snored, I would
have spiraled. Like many women, I often
struggle to balance my own needs with
my pathological courtesy. (One time on
a plane, a man asked me if he could sit in
my aisle seat, because his legs were “too
long for the middle”—they weren’t—and
I said yes, even though I’d paid extra to sit
on the aisle.) The thought of someone else
losing sleep on my behalf literally keeps
me up at night. When I said as much to a
light-sleeping friend, she nodded som-
berly. “I haven’t slept well in two weeks
because I feel bad kicking out the guy I’m
dating,” she said. “He lives an hour away,
and I don’t want to inconvenience him.”
A martyr for the ages: She would rather
subject herself to six hours locked in
sleepless torment than subject a man to
one hour on public transit.
”
Especially early on, there’s a good
chance that your mate will be secretly
relieved if you don’t stay over, but you
still have to be delicate about leaving
(and even more delicate about asking
someone to leave). Because of the stigma
rom-com culture has placed on leaving
after sex, broaching the subject deserves
a larger discussion. Be specific, honest,
and, ideally, self-deprecating about why
you don’t want to sleep over. Saying, “I
snore and I don’t want to keep you up,
so I probably won’t stay over” makes
you seem respectful and responsible,
whereas saying, “I have to get up really
early tomorrow” as you’re putting on
your clothes makes you seem like a jerk.
Even if you really do have to get up early
tomorrow, the context makes it feel like
a rejection. If there’s a window, deploy
your excuse earlier, precoital, when
you’re on your way up to her apartment
or your apartment—when, in short,
you’re sure it’s on. When you move to
leave later, it won’t feel like a slap in the
face. It will feel like the plan.
Then, when you’re starfished in your
own bed, don’t lose any sleep over it:
She’s starfished in her bed, thinking not
of the dumb face you make while you’re
sleeping but rather of your six-pack and
lumberjack arms.
MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 57
 LIFE
ASK HER ANYTHING
What thrusting speed feels
best for women during sex?
I like to speed things up, but
don’t women prefer it slower?
—KEVIN, Brooklyn, NY
Don’t assume that all we want to do is “make love.”
Women like hard and fast sex just as much as the slow
and sensual kind. I think the stereotype stems from
the fact that a majority of female orgasms come from
clitoral stimulation, which, depending on your body,
can be easier to do through a grinding motion. Truly it
comes down to the foreplay and the context. Looking
for a five-minute quickie standing up by the kitchen
counter? Energizer bunnies welcome. Hoping to get it
on at the end of a long workday? Ease your way in there
with some oral sex and slower penetration to start. But
generally, keep that jackhammering to shorter bursts.
Varying the speed makes the whole—ahem—shebang
more exciting, anyways.
58 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH
SHE’S OBSESSED WITH
INSTAGRAM, AND IT’S
GETTING ANNOYING. CAN I
STAGE AN INTERVENTION?
—RYAN, Oklahoma City, OK
I’ll admit, updating the feed can
be addicting. If she enjoys show-
ing off her passions, I can’t blame
her. But the constant photo
shoots and on-the-go editing? It
can drive your partner away. An
intervention might be overkill,
but you need to have a conversa-
tion about how it makes you feel.
You can ask her to limit her app
use around you, but she doesn’t
have to go cold turkey. If it’s that
important to her, share the shar-
ing experience. Ever heard of an
Instagram boyfriend—where
you act as her de facto photogra-
pher? If you want no part of that,
maybe she’s not your match.
MY GIRLFRIEND ISN’T INTO
WATCHING PORN TOGETHER,
BUT I WANT TO TRY IT. ARE
THERE TV ALTERNATIVES TO
HELP GET HER IN THE MOOD?
—JERROD, San Antonio, TX
Yes! The sexiest shows on TV
right now pepper in plenty of
scenes that could be considered
soft-core porn. And it’s defi-
nitely an easy way to dip a toe in
voyeurism. Is she into period
clothing and romance? Start
with Outlander on Starz. Want
more drama? Binge The Affair
on Showtime. Simply want a lot
of sex scenes? Go for She’s Gotta
Have It on Netflix. There’s always
Game of Thrones, if you like your
sex scenes to include bloodshed
and overtones of incest.
MY WIFE AND I SEEM TO BE
BICKERING ABOUT IRRITATING
HOUSEHOLD CHORES LATELY.
HOW DO WE RISE ABOVE THIS?
—PATRICK, West Jordan, UT
It’s not fair when one partner
feels like they’re carrying the
weight, especially with some-
thing like housework. Talking
about how to split it up fairly
shows some initiative, but you
know, it’s not really about the
dusting. It’s more about equal
contribution and appreciation.
She might resent feeling like
she has to play the nagging wife
(or you the nagging husband).
Best strategy is to get ahead of
it. Be aware of her mental to-do
list. That may mean asking
her what’s on it. Something as
simple as “Hey, what can I do for
the house today?” will take you
a long way.
I NEVER KNOW IF I’M OVERDOING
IT WHEN TEXTING A NEW PROS-
PECT. ARE THERE RULES TO THIS?
—JOHN, Nashville, TN
A text has no context. Without
your tone of voice or body-lan-
guage cues, your coy responses
might not translate in a chat
bubble. Not saying you shouldn’t
be flirty and funny in your texts,
but it’s easy for a less direct mes-
sage to miss the mark. In the
first few weeks, use texting to
set up your IRL dates, offer some
insights about your interests,
and let her know you’re thinking
about her. You don’t have to play
games, but less is still more.
MY WIFE AND I WANT TO SCHED-
ULE SEX. (I KNOW, I KNOW.) DO I
JUST PUT IT ON THE CALENDAR?
—DERRICK, New York, NY
The scheduling isn’t just about
JOEL ARBAJE (Piercey), Desiree Mattsson/The Licensing Project (main image)
regularly getting off (although
hopefully it does that, too). It’s
about creating the anticipa-
tion of sex, which can be a huge
turn-on, or at least a good way to
throw a little gas on long-burn-
ing embers. Don’t put too much
pressure on the dates you decide
on, because the last thing you
want is her to be dreading it or
annoyed by your persistence.
Start small. Kiss her on your/
her way out the door tomorrow
and say, “Are you free tonight?
Let’s plan on having some fun.”
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 LIFE

Will you be my...wait,

what are we again?
Here’s how to use a
Hallmark holiday to size
up your relationship,
no matter how long
you’ve been together.
BY JULIE VADNAL

ONCE YOU GET past the

chalky conversation hearts
and sappy Instagram cap-
tions, you start to notice that
Valentine’s Day is a pretty
useful holiday for kicking the
tires on your relationship.
“Tune in to your own feel-
ings and don’t get too pres-
sured by all the hype,” says
sex therapist Susan Block,
Ph.D. Plus, research shows
that couples who do regular
maintenance on their rela-
tionship—aka discussing its
future direction—like each
other more and report more
relationship satisfaction
than those who tend to place
greater focus on themselves.
So here’s how to use February
14 to your advantage as a
couple, whether that means
defining a new relationship
or strengthening the one
you’ve already got.

THE TALK: Making V-Day plans when
you’re brand-new can be a good
YOU MET ON way to see if she’s feeling you. Try
this suggestion from comedian Lane
TINDER Moore, author of How to Be Alone:
THE PLAN: Go out, but keep it chill—
somewhere nicer than Chipotle
(like, nicer than Panera) but nowhere
with words like emulsion on the
menu. Try a quiet neighborhood bar
Prop styling: Miako Katoh

LAST WEEK “Hey, I know Valentine’s Day is

coming up; are we in a place where
we’d do the whole thing? Or are we
casual and not there yet?” Whatever
you do, don’t ignore the day.
where there’ll be other couples doing
the same I-like-you-but-I’m-not-in-
love-with-you dance. Or go for a
daytime ice-cream date, which takes
pressure off you (and your wallet).

60 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH PHOTOGRAPH BY DON PENNY

 YOU’RE
SIX
MONTHS
STRONG
THE TALK: By now you’ve
answered the initial “Do
we like each other?”
question, and the L-word
is probably hovering.
Should you drop it on
Valentine’s Day? “Pressure
is the enemy of pleasure,”
says Block, so don’t feel
like you have to just
because Hallmark tells
you to. But if you’re ready,
this is one of the best
times to go for it, says
couples therapist and
intimacy expert Kat Smith.
“Women often already
think of that day as super
romantic, so it’ll make an
impact,” she explains.
THE PLAN: Dopamine,
serotonin, and oxytocin—
a cocktail of feel-good
brain chemicals—are likely
coursing through your
veins during this phase,
so you might want to go
big. Before you ask John
Legend to perform a
private concert, check in
with your partner—and
yourself. “If you’re not
the kind of person who’s
going to stroll up with 24
long-stem red roses, then
don’t,” says sexuality
expert Megan Stubbs.
“Do something that’s
going to matter to her.”
Start with a date that you
two already like, but amp it
up. Do you cook together?
Gift her a Le Creuset and
promise to make her
dinner. A personalized
present is worth a
thousand John Legends.
THE V-DAY
GIFT YOU’RE A
SPECTRUM
COUPLE YEARS
Sometimes the IN (BUT NOT MARRIED)
best expressions
of affection are as
cheap as a candy
bar while the
lamest cost three THE TALK: This isn’t your first rodeo, so now’s a good time to create
months’ salary. some new memories—in the bedroom. Make sure you’ve discussed
THOUGHTFUL- the plan first outside the covers, where there’s less pressure. “If
INEXPENSIVE you’ve had a conversation in the past, in a neutral location, and
you’ve both expressed interest in lingerie, some light bondage, or
a sex toy, then sure, definitely spring it on Valentine’s Day,” says
Back rub Stubbs. Trust us, she won’t think it’s weird. “It’ll all fall in line with
the whole super-romantic, lustful kind of night,” Stubbs adds.
Home- THE PLAN: Do plans even matter when you’ve just agreed to tackle
cooked meal a new page from the Kama Sutra? Forget leaving the house for a
pricey dinner and instead cue up the SZA and set the mood with an
indoor picnic in front of the fireplace, Smith suggests.
Homemade
gift
certificates
THE TALK: When you’ve been
together forever, it’s easy to
YOU’RE
think, What relationship benchmark
Picture frame
(with the
placeholder
MARRIED haven’t we reached yet? It’s okay
to use the day to toast each other
and reflect on your successes as a
photo) couple over the past year, suggests
Stubbs. Remembering the times
you rocked it—like crushing it on
Lingerie the dance floor at her cousin’s
wedding—makes you more likely to
want to keep the good times going.
Long-stem
roses THE PLAN: Celebrating Valentine’s Day when you’re married is a built-in
date night and a welcome refuge from the kids. Give her something
chic and sentimental, like a full-size bottle of the Le Labo shower gel
she coveted from your last hotel stay. Then try something new. It
Gold-flecked doesn’t have to be skydiving; checking out that new cocktail spot,
ice cream even if you’ve been together for years, can increase sexual desire, and
sundae in turn increase relationship satisfaction, according to new research
published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Novel
experiences with a long-term partner can help reignite passion and
LAME-EXPENSIVE take you back to the puppy-love feelings you had when you first met.
...OR SCREW On February 15, the ancient Romans didn’t give each other foil
chocolates or red roses. Instead, they sacrificed goats and then
VALENTINE’S DAY priests ran around whipping women with leather thongs. (It was
supposed to increase a woman’s fertility, or something.) No, you
AND CELEBRATE
can’t smack your girlfriend’s rear in public—please never be that
guy—but a little love tap on her back pocket during your walk
LUPERCALIA from the parking lot to dinner is a hot way to get your Lupercalia
on without earning funny looks from the restaurant hostess.
MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 61
 LIFE

call him Diego. Diego was from Spain. I

knew him a little from middle school. He
was dashing and handsome in a distinctly
European fashion, the kind of guy maybe
destined to spend a lot of time on yachts,
and he was a demon striker. I always
dreaded the prospect of Diego charging
down the field, weaving past everybody
until it was up to me to contain him. It took
all my energy just to stay in his vicinity,
and once he got by me I’d be huffing and
puffing behind him, whereupon he’d actu-
ally turn his head back, a gorgeous sneer
on his face, and mimic my heavy breath-
ing. Then he’d laugh, turn back toward the
goal, and crank an effortless screamer into
the corner of the net.
After hearing this story, my daughter
patted me on the shoulder as though to say:
COOL DAD “That sucks for you.” But she didn’t roll her
eyes. I’ve seen her struggle on the field, and

Fatherhood, from I’ve seen her improve. I’ve also seen her
go out in the rain by herself with a ball to

the Sidelines practice, to do drills, conditioning. I never

Many parents coach their kid to athletic
glory. SAM LIPSYTE’s approach? Leave that
to people who know what they’re doing.
did that. So in a way, I deserved what I got
from the cruel and beautiful strikers and
sweepers of northern New Jersey.
My daughter loves the camaraderie of
her team and being out on the field. She is
learning all the important lessons of our

I
’M A S U B PAR soccer parent. I give
it my best. My best is maybe pret-
ty lame. I come to my ten-year-old
daughter’s games, talk to her about
her practices, give her all of my love and
support. But other moms and dads spend
hours with their kids streaming clips from
the Premier League or the U. S. women’s
team games, analyzing strategies, study-
ing tactics. I would if I could. My daugh-
ter loves soccer, at least at the moment.
(She seems to have a special drawer in her
bureau just for her shin guards.) Some-
times she goes to her best friend’s house
to watch games. There’s a soccer dad there
who knows his stuff. She comes back brim-
ming with the latest developments at Tot-
tenham. I nod and try to keep up.
My daughter’s coach forbids us parents
to shout instructions from the sidelines.
I’m relieved. I wouldn’t know what to yell,
anyway. Vague exhortations are permit-
ted, and I’m a master of those. When I
encourage my daughter or her teammates,
it’s usually some overexcited, half-garbled
inanity like “Go-yeah!” or “Up-kick-now!”
Thing is, I’m not some American lug who
lacks experience with the beautiful game.
I’m an American lug who grew up with it.
In our suburban New Jersey town in the
late ’70s and early ’80s, there were these
amazing soccer-mad dads, from Italy, from
Ireland, from Armenia, who coached us in
their beloved sport until it became ours too.
I was a fullback on one of the town-league
teams. And that’s really where the trau-
ma began, because I was what you’d call
a no-tool player, possessed of a stunning
combination: physical slowness and zero
feel for the game. Not only could I not keep
up, but I was devoid of any sense of where
the ball or the other players were going to
be. I had no conception of space.
My daughter’s coach has told her that
she has good skills but needs to learn to use
them in space. It’s something I’ve latched
on to, and though I’d never shout it in pub-
lic, in our apartment I repeat a mantra to
my daughter many times a day: “Skills
in space!” “Skills in space!” After a while
she’ll roll her eyes, pat me on the shoulder
as though to say: “Thanks for trying, kid.”
At a certain point, I
also felt it was import- +
ant to share with her Sam Lipsyte
some of my a ncient is the author of
numerous novels.
soccer pain. Like my His latest, Hark, is
memory of one kid—let’s out January 15.
empowered soccer-girl nation about team-
work, fairness, and healthy competition.
I’m learning lessons, too. I used to be much
more anxious about my dearth of exper-
tise in an activity my daughter adores. But
let’s face it—I can’t make slime or a TikTok
video, or do her math homework, either. I
coach her every day in many aspects of her
life, but for some of her endeavors, it’s best
to lean out, let others lead her where she
needs to go. My job in this instance is to
be the moron on the edge of the pitch, full
of dumb love, cheering her in victory and
comforting her in defeat. Call it the good-
enough sports dad.
My daughter’s progress is palpable, too,
thanks to excellent coaching and her own
hard work. Last year she was afraid of the
ball. Last week she notched her first goal
of the season. It was a thrilling moment
for me, watching her put the ball in the
net and run back in ecstasy toward her
teammates. I don’t think my squeals of
“Shoot-go!” helped her score, but I hope
she felt my pride radiating from the side-
line. And I hope that even in her triumph
she retains her empathy, that she does not
become another Diego. But if she does, at
least she’ll be our Diego.

62 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH ILLUSTRATION BY MARK MATCHO

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 LIFE
WINTER SURVIVAL QUIZ
SEE WHO WILL WIN!
Take this quiz to find out if your get-through-to-spring
EDITED BY SCARLETT WRENCH
1. You’ve been rushing
from house to car to
office and back without
seeing the sun for days,
and you’re a little down.
You should grab . . .
A Five cups of milk
B 15 eggs
C A five-ounce salmon fillet
Answer: A, B, or C Each of the
above will meet your daily need
of vitamin D, which many of us
become deficient in over the
winter. Although we would advise
forgoing the 15-egg omelet in
favor of the salmon fillet.
2. When you have a
mild cold, you go to . . .
A Bed
B The kitchen
C The yoga mat
Answer: C, as long as your
symptoms are above the neck
and you don’t have a fever. Mild
exercise (on your own mat, in
your own home, thanks!) can help
open your nasal passages and
temporarily relieve congestion.
64
5. It’s freezing in here!
Do you turn up the heat
or grab a sweater?
A B
Crank it up Wrap it up
Answer: B Putting on a chunky
knit is a double play: You trim
your heating bill and maybe your
circumference, too. Researchers
at Virginia Commonwealth
University found that men who
slept at 66°F had a 42 percent
increase in brown-fat volume
compared with when they slept
at 75°F. Brown fat is a potentially
“good guy” type of body fat that
can help burn calories.
A
Your 10K time gets faster
Your 10K time gets slower
B Sit next to the fire,
as one does
C You can’t wait to get home
C Hit the gym to work out the Answer: A Your heart rate will be
muscles you didn’t use skiing lower in cooler weather than on
scorching midsummer runs since
Answer: B Relax next to the fire— your heart doesn’t have to work so
it can decrease blood pressure, hard to regulate your temperature.
according to University of That means better race times.
Alabama researchers.
4. The best way to
warm up if you feel
numbness due to
mild frostbite is with . . .
A A fireplace
B A warm bath
C A foot massage
Answer: B Hit the bath. Overstim-
ulation of the skin—with hot water
or intense rubbing—as well as
exposure to direct heat can
lead to tissue damage. Soak in
a warmish bath (99 to 104°F) for
about 30 minutes, or until your
skin returns to its usual color or
loses its numbness.

7. If seasonal affective
disorder makes you want
to scarf down carbs, the
best time to eat them is . . .
Sun Lee (kettlebell), Adam Nickel/Synergy Art (man skiing), Peter Crowther/Début Art (globe)
A First thing in the morning
B At dinnertime
C All the time
Answer: B Carbs boost the activity
of feel-good brain chemicals and
can offset depressive symptoms.
Concentrating your intake in the
evening may also support sleep,
unless you’re getting those carbs
from potpie crust or French toast
or . . . potpie-crust French toast
(how bad could it be?!), in which
case you have a different set of
problems. Keep your mood and
your body feeling great at the
same time by getting nighttime
carbs from brown rice, sweet
potatoes, and other whole foods.
8. The best thing to cover
when you go to sleep on
a cold night is . . .
A Your head
B Your feet
C Your webcam, because who knows?!
Answer: B At night, blood vessels in your
extremities dilate as part of getting you
ready for sleep. Socks may help your body
get to its nighttime state faster: In one
study, people wearing socks fell asleep
7½ minutes faster and slept 32 minutes
longer than when they slept sans socks.
HOW MANY DID YOU GET RIGHT?
0 to 3 Let’s get you next to
that fire...which we’ve set up
outside in the sun...and bring
some mulled wine.
If your mood is as dark as
the mornings, start your
day with a nice, juicy
orange: Its vitamin C may
help alleviate the body’s
response to stress.
JAN/FEB ’19
9. Where should you
put the blame for how
tight your pants are
this month?
A The gym membership
you used exactly once
since October
B Playoff wings, Super
Bowl wings, Pro Bowl
wings, checking-Gronk’s-
Instagram wings
C Winter itself
Answer: A, B, and C Sure,
winter so far has probably
included more calories and
less exercise. But a lack of
sunlight could also be packing
on pounds. A Canadian study
(for winter studies, always look
to the Canadians . . .) found that
insufficient sunlight may
inspire you to store fat. Try at
least getting out at lunch.
10. A mug of mulled
wine could sink your
risk of a cold by . . .
A 10%
B 20%
C 30%
Answer: C Consuming flavo-
noids, compounds found in red
wine (and in many fruits and
vegetables), could reduce your
risk of catching a cold by about
30 percent, according to a study
from New Zealand. Flavonoids
are thought to boost immune
function. Of course, washing your
hands also helps slash the risk.
4 to 7 Lean in to the cold. 8 to 10 Can we borrow
(Not too far.) your socks?
Escape your overheated You’re handling the big
home and strap on some freeze, so let’s put that
snowshoes. Participating bravado to the test: A PLOS
in nature-focused leisure One study found that
activities (hiking would people who finished their
work too) can enhance showers with a blast of cold
your psychological health water took 29 percent fewer
and well-being. sick days. Deep breath.
MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 65
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 MIND
75 .............................. GO A HEA D A ND
MEDITATE .
ON LY TA K ES
A MIN U TE .
78 W E N EED
.........................................
TO TA LK
A BOUT K A N Y E

What you need

to know in order
to get on, hold
tight, and power
through it all.
Jim Krantz

MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 67

What Is It and PEOPLE WITH GRIT

The Crisis
Why Do You Need It? Counselor
GRIT IS ALL AROUND US. At work retreats. On the basket- WHEN WE train
counselors for cri-
ball court. In your grandmother’s book club. It’s a sis work, one of the
buzzword now, the parlance of education advocates things we talk about
often is that you need
and business-school books in the past several years to take care of your-
thanks to the work of Angela Duckworth, Ph.D.: “a self if you want to be
able to take care of
combination of passion and perseverance for a sin- others. If you let your
own self-care become
gularly important goal.” Wait. That’s grit?! But that’s secondary, you’re not
so . . . big and profound and lofty. We think grit is going to be able to
serve people as well.
small and dirty and face-in-the-mud. It’s situational The things other peo-
courage. When you need it, you need it right now. ple bring to you are
going to become too
But how do you access it? How do the people who grit much to bear. If I’ve
it out for a living do the things that seem undoable— been working with

too hard, too messy, too much? Here’s how.
SIX-TIME IRONMAN Triathlon
world champion Mark Allen once
completed a race in eight hours and
Blank Archives/Getty Images (Henry), Everett (Elliott, Wayne, Eastwood, Bridges), MLB Photos/Getty Images (Robinson), Sovfoto/UIG/Getty Images (Tereshkova),
hurricane survivors or
witnesses to a shoot-
ing, at the end of my
time that day, I’m go-
ing to sit down with
another counselor and
say, “This is what I did;
this is how I’m feeling
about it.” That allows
another person to lay
eyes on it and weigh
in on whether I need
to take a step back.
FACE YOUR FAULTS
It’s using somebody
“You need to have awareness of the else to help me be ac-
things you draw back from—the countable to myself.

Spencer Platt/Newsmakers/Getty Images (Blaine), Gretel Daugherty/Getty Images (Ralston)

seven minutes. That included 2.4
miles of swimming, 112 miles of
biking, and a full 26.2-mile mara-
thon—averaging one mile every 3.5
minutes. Finishing wasn’t, it goes
without saying, easy. But before he
ever finished a race, he had to start
training, and that can be just as
difficult. Here’s how he pushed Play:
ASS. IN. SEAT.
“The grit is in the very beginning.
It’s in taking the first step.
You need to give yourself a little
block of time to dive in—to be
able to say to yourself, ‘I am
going to do this, I am now sitting
down, I’m starting on it.’ ”
more you’re aware of this happen- It also makes sure that
ing, over time the less frequently we’re keeping an eye
on what works well for
you’ll draw back. Start small: the the people who need
simple practice of affirming to our help, because
yourself that you have the ability that’s ultimately my
to do the things that are difficult.” focus. I want to make
sure I’m bringing them
the best that I have.
AAAAAND REPEAT
“We often resist starting some- GERARD LAWSON, PH.D.,
thing, but once you’re in and doing an associate professor
it, it’s almost always fulfilling. Every in the counselor-edu-
morning, I go exercise. My whole day cation program at
has huge potential because I’ve done Virginia Tech (as told
that. When it comes to doing things to Matt Goulet)
over and over, think of it this way:
If you do one run in your life, you’ll
feel good, but if you do a thousand
runs, it’ll completely transform you.”

A (TRUNCATED) John Henry, folk

legend, outraces a
Jackie Robinson
makes his Major
Valentina Tereshkova
makes 48 painful orbits

CULTURAL drilling machine. League debut.

around Earth as the
first woman in space.

HISTORY OF GRIT 1870 1944 1947 1963

68 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH
 SAY YOUR boss hates you.
You’ve been professionally
humiliated. Or you’ve gone viral
like a midmarket weatherman
biffing an in-the-field report.
You’ve still got to show up the
next day. Or, more likely, work
straight-up sucks. What do
you do when you are in a crum-
my situation that is ultimately
negative and harmful?

TALK TO YOURSELF
Stop and ask yourself one
simple question: “What do I
need?” Posing the question
to yourself gives you the courage
to do whatever you’ve got to do
next, whether that’s standing up
and saying no or finding ways to
get a new job. It’s part of some-
thing called self-compassion,
giving yourself the encourage-
ment you’d offer a friend in a
similar situation.

AND BUCK UP “WHY DID I even start this if I strength, and endurance),
The trick is to think about the wasn’t gonna finish?” I begin and its greatest challenge
best coaches you’ve had in every single workout thinking is the final moments of a work-
your life or, better, Eric Taylor about this. The internal voices out. Struggling through the
from Friday Night Lights— are at their chattiest in the end is why you’re in the gym
the ones who build you up final minutes or reps of any in the first place. Grit begets
with a certain recognition of workout, and it’s convenient more grit.
your limits and encourage as hell to listen to them and Once committed to the
you to work past what you mail things in. So I head them finish, I think of “slow
perceived them to be. If you off before they even get going: aggression” and keep plowing
can get yourself in a conver- “I’ve started this workout, so forward. Take one deep breath,
sation with your inner Coach I’m going to own the finish.” then muscle out a few good
Taylor, the setbacks will It’s when your lungs are reps or seconds of work. Then
seem more like steps on the burning and your heart’s take another deep breath and
way to something better. beating out of your throat and bang out a few more. You’re
—CHRISTOPHER GERMER, PH.D., your muscles are on fire that pacing out the hardest part of
Jim Krantz (cowboy)

a clinical psychologist at you’re getting the most out the workout so you can do good
Harvard Medical School and of the session anyway. The hard work again later. That’s
cofounder of the Mindful body needs to be challenged what keeps you in shape.
Self-Compassion program to adapt (and gain size, —EBENEZER SAMUEL

Aron Ralston gets trapped

David Blaine spends in a Utah canyon for five
63 hours encased in days and cuts off his own Gran Torino,
a block of ice. right arm to escape. Clint Eastwood.

2008 2010
MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 69

ONE FINAL PEP TALK: To stop
doing something that ulti-
mately isn’t all that good for
you, but in the moment is just
amazing, sucks. And requires
a form of perseverance that
isn’t that different from get-
ting through, say, a triathlon or
finishing a tough workout.
2015
QUIT LIKE YOU’D START
Putting down the doughnuts.
Dialing back on the porn. It
takes mental planning. Carve
out a moment to acknowledge
what you’re doing. Note how it’s
affecting you. (“It’s bad for me
if I do this; it’s good for me that I
don’t.”) And push on through.
NBA All-Stars
listen to Fergie’s
rendition of the
national anthem.
2018
PEOPLE WITH GRIT
The ER Doctor
I’VE HAD CASES with very
difficult patients, unruly
patients, where we had
multiple security guards at
the door, restraining them.
I go in there with no ego
and a little bit of patience,
and I sit down with this par-
ticular person. First of all,
I show them I understand
where they’re coming from.
You walk into a room where
there are security guards,
and some part of me says,
“You know, this person
is probably more scared
than anything.”
We learn techniques
about sitting down at a pa-
tient’s eye level. I tell them,
“I’m the person in charge
of what happens to you to-
day, and if I’m on your side,
you’re gonna be okay.” But I
only give them one chance.
It’s amazing the amount of
de-escalation that occurs
Jim Krantz (cowboys), Everett (DiCaprio), Janette Hil/Getty Images (bear), Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images (NBA All-Stars), Len Redkoles/NHLI/Getty Images (Gritty)
when you give them a lit-
tle bit of empowerment.
And give them a sense of
humanity. It’d be easier for
me to just tell security to re-
strain them. But then I’d lose
a little part of my humanity,
because I know I could have
done better. In order to be
able to cope, you have to
expend emotional energy.
In the moment of a tough
case, it’s understood that
you’re in a difficult environ-
ment. You can’t let your ego
get in the way. Patient care
comes first. And it’s about
not beating yourself up over
the fact that you weren’t the
superhero everyone wanted
you to be. As much as I talk
about difficult cases or pa-
tients and having to deal
with them, it really is the
most enjoyable part of the
job. Overall, it’s much more
stressful to keep up on the
charting. Me taking care of a
sick patient is exactly where
I want to be. It’s like a pro-
fessional athlete on the bas-
ketball court.
HAFEZ BAZZI, M.D., an
ER doctor at Ascension St.
John Hospital in Detroit
(as told to Matt Goulet)
2018
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 MIND

A New Year’s
Guide to
Daily(ish)
Meditation
One minute. Most days. Big results.
BY DAN HARRIS

T
HE NEW YEAR is upon us, a time
when many of us will inevita-
bly go about making, and then
abandoning, absurdly ambitious
resolutions—to do more burpees, to home-
brew kombucha, to easily reach ketosis or
achieve a permanent in-box of zero.
Let me instead propose an eminently
doable resolution: Try meditating for
one minute on most days—for j u s t
one month.
Forming healthy habits is hard, and
there’s a reason most of our resolutions
ultimately go down in flames. We may be
wired to fail. Evolution has bequeathed
us a brain that optimizes for survival, not
long-term health planning. Natural selec-
tion primed us for detecting threats and
finding food and sexual partners, not for
flossing our teeth. The fact that we are up
against this evolutionary challenge is why I
like this modest, monthlong proposal. Two
aspects make it easy to adopt:
First, aiming to meditate most days,
rather than every day, is a good goal.
Consistency counts—the more often
you meditate, the easier it gets and the
deeper and more enduring the benefits—
but if you miss a day, your inner critic
won’t have a chance to call you a failure.
I call this approach “daily-ish.” It has
elasticity, or “psychological flexibility,”
a key concept from behavior-change
research, which can help lead to an
abiding habit, be it a meditation prac-
tice, a new gym routine, or a commitment
Peshkov/Adobe Stock

to learn Esperanto.
Second, one minute is a supremely low
bar. The proposition of a single minute is
uniquely unintimidating. What’s more,

MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 75

 MIND
it’s scalable. After one minute of medita-
tion, people often think to themselves: I’m
already here; might as well keep going a bit.
As the meditation teacher Cory Muscara
explains, this is a key moment, because
you’re moving from “extrinsic” motiva-
tion (that is, meditating because you feel
like you have to) to the more powerful
“intrinsic” motivation (that is, meditating
because you want to). And the second you
opt in for more meditation, you’re doing it
out of actual interest, which makes it much
more likely to have a lasting effect.
My company, 10% Happier, has been test-
ing an annual monthlong “Mindful Minute”
challenge with employees from your friendly
neighborhood trillion-dollar company,
Apple. The goal is for participants to log at
least one mindful minute for 25 out of the
30 days, enabling them to get a taste for
how mindfulness can benefit their lives,
while also giving them freedom to miss
about a day a week without feeling like a
failure. (You don’t have to work at Apple to
participate. We’ve unlocked a bunch of one-
minute meditations for you to use for free at
10percenthappier.com/menshealth.)
Even with that low threshold, there are
more strategic ways to make a new medita-
tion habit stick:
THINK STRATEGICALLY
ABOUT YOUR SCHEDULE
Some people find that having a set time
every day—right before bed, first thing in
the morning, just after a workout—helps
establish a habit. Scientists who study
habit formation talk about “cue, routine,
reward.” You can experiment with con-
structing a cue-routine-reward loop that
gets you to meditate. For example, “After
I park my car [cue], I will meditate for five
minutes [routine], and I’ll feel a little calm-
er and more mindful [reward].” Repeat this
loop to ingrain the habit. You can even put
your daily meditation session in your cal-
endar, which you may find helpful. That
said, if, like me, you have an unpredictable
schedule, thinking strategically might
mean trying to fit your meditation in when-
ever and wherever you can.
MAKE YOURSELF
ACCOUNTABLE
Some people may not institute a healthy
habit on their own, but they will do it when
other people are holding them accountable.
76 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH
YOUR
MEDITATION
MASTER
Dan Harris
is a coanchor of
ABC’s Nightline
One way to create that kind of accountabil- and the weekend editions of
ity is to join a community of some sort. It Good Morning America. He’s the
can be as simple as just getting a few of your author of 10% Happier and
Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics.
friends together and starting. Another
option is to join a regular sitting group at
your local meditation center. Many major
cities have meditation centers where you
can drop in, such as MNDFL in New York much more likely to keep doing something
City or Unplug in L. A. There are also Bud- if it feels good and we get something out of
dhist centers, which may be a bit scary for it. There are at least two levels to this. The
some, but in my experience they go light on first level is to pay attention to how the act
the religion and tend to give good medita- of meditating in itself can be pleasurable.
tion instruction. Check it out for yourself, The other level is to notice the benefits as
however. Or form your own sitting group. they arise in the rest of your life, in terms
I’ve found that hanging out with other med- of both inner weather and outer com-
itators sets up a kind of HOV-lane effect. portment. I’ve found meditation can make
Being around people who take the medita- me feel better and act better.
tive principles seriously and are endeav- I believe that meditation is the über res-
oring to apply these concepts in their own olution—the healthy habit par excellence—
lives can create positive peer pressure. Or because a regular dose of mindfulness can
as meditation teacher Jeff Warren says, “It give you the clarity and sanity to figure out
sort of normalizes the whole weird thing.” which other resolutions to pursue, and how
best to do so.
FOCUS ON THE BENEFITS Give it a try. For the past few years,
In many ways, we are all like rats in a maze, whenever I’ve spoken publicly about med-
constantly pressing the levers that deliver itation, I have been issuing the following
food pellets to us. Behavior-change sci- challenge: Try meditation for a month,
ence strongly suggests that the best way and if it does nothing for you, hit me up on
to ensure a consistent meditation habit Twitter and tell me I’m a moron. During
is to identify where and how the practice this time, lots of people have called me a
is giving you pellets. Just like rats, we are moron on Twitter—but never for this.
WHAT A 60-SECOND reset
is intended to shift your
breathing. Count “one”
as you inhale. Imagine
HAPPENS attention from your breathing out any
DURING ONE mental preoccupations tension as you exhale.
to your breath. Here’s a Count “two” on the
MINUTE OF one-minute meditation next inhale.
MEDITATION you can use anywhere, See if you can make
anytime—after your it to ten without losing
morning coffee, after your focus. Explore
you park your car at how fully you can feel
work, after you put each breath, letting the
your head down on the world around you fade
60
pillow. We call it Ten out a bit.
Breaths. Simple as it If you get distracted
sounds. Wherever you and forget where you
are, in any situation are, start over from
or mental state, close where you got lost,
your eyes and count always with a sense
ten long, slow breaths. of humor about your
Kyle Hilton (Harris)
To begin, stop, no gnatlike attention span.
matter where you are. That’s it. Want more?
Bring your attention to Try it again. And again . . .
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 MIND
“Crazy”
Misunderstood
JOSHUA DAVID STEIN unpacks what “crazy” really means
in a world where it’s everywhere.
A
S FAR as spectacle goes, the
image of Kanye West embrac-
ing Donald Trump in the Oval
Office this past October fell
somewhere between the Krispy Kreme
backflip Vine and the series finale of The
Sopranos. It was confusing. It was com-
pelling. It was unhinged. It was, in short,
irresistible. The rapper’s widely broad-
cast ten-minute soliloquy was as rambling
as it was enticing, touching on everything
from male energy to Montessori to the
13th Amendment. West in the West Wing
was the perfect storm of celebrity, power,
and—for lack of a better word—content.
You would not be alone if you periodically
said, “Man, he’s crazy!” as you watched.
78 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH
And you wouldn’t be wrong, either. In
fact, you might be a little too right. West,
who not too long ago discussed his diag-
nosis of bipolar disorder with the world,
joins a list of celebrities who are open
about their struggles with mental health
and also struggle with their mental health
openly. They include SNL’s Pete Davidson,
who courageously (and hilariously) mined
his borderline-personality-disorder
diagnosis for material before engaging
in a public, brief, and somewhat torrid
love affair with Ariana Grande; Tesla
cofounder Elon Musk, who tweeted about
the corrosive effects of stress on his mental
health even as he bore those out in a series
of ill-advised (and possibly illegal) tweets
about his company; and Roseanne Barr,
who was diagnosed with dissociative
identity disorder years before she sent
a racist tweet in May that scotched her
comeback show. Their struggles have
played out in the white water of popular
culture, and it’s been a crazy ride indeed.
But when used to describe a person,
crazy is halfway between a common
adjective and an informal diagnosis. Toss
it out with little thought and it’s fun
and flirty. Think about it more—what it
really means, what’s really going on when
we say it, and what’s going on with those
we say it about—and the word becomes
heavier and heavier.
For the millions of Americans who,
like me, live with mental illness, crazy is a
heartbreaking and terrifying reality. Liv-
ing in the tide pools of sanity, I can confi-
dently say that whatever glimpse of crazy
you catch in public is vastly outstripped
by the private suffering you’ll never see.
Gary Gershoff/WireImage
That’s the suffering that rends the fabric
of primary relationships, that barges
into the cockpit of the self and messes
with the dials; it’s a suffering that doesn’t
care if you’ve got a blue verified badge on
 Twitter, a sitcom, Yeezys, or millions in
the bank. If you know what that suffering
is like, there’s no way to just sit and watch
a public meltdown with popcorn.
But that’s not to say we should simply
look away, change the channel, or fasten
ourselves to a different trending hashtag.
Any of these episodes can be an opportu-
nity to spur a genuine and much-needed
discussion about mental health. Granted,
this is a whole lot less fun, and it pries
open a can of morally slippery worms.
Does the fact that Roseanne has been
diagnosed with dissociative identity dis-
order absolve her of her racism? Does the
fact that Kanye may be bipolar render his
opinions about minorities invalid? This
conversation becomes even more difficult
in light of the silence of mental-health
professionals, who, bound by what’s
called the Goldwater rule, are barred
from offering a professional opinion
about the mental health of individuals
they have not examined personally.
Thus an illness goes unnamed and, in
the silence, dangerous and dismissive
confusion grows.
These incidents and others like them
also provide an opportunity to develop
empathy. You don’t have to suffer from
mental illness like I do to have compas-
sion for those who do. There’s a Buddhist
practice, meant to foster loving-kindness
for all creatures, in which one visualizes
that all sentient beings were, at some
point, your mother or will, at some point,
become your mother. Now, you might
have a complicated relationship with
your mother—I know I do—and you might
not believe in rebirth. But that way of
thinking, of considering another person
as a loved one, even for a second, is like
catching a glimpse of a set of keys that fell
into the sidewalk grate. It’s heartbreak-
ing. It’s eye-opening.
Ultimately, no one can deny the bril-
liance of the sparks as someone—espe-
cially a high-profile someone—runs off
the rails. Such a spectacle will never be
ignored and probably shouldn’t be. But
try not to marvel at the sparks and then
ignore the passenger in danger. What’s
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
there isn’t just a celebrity self-immolating
but a person suffering, too. Take it from
one who has also suffered. Crazy deserves
our compassion, not just our clicks, and
we owe it to ourselves to see through the
spectacle to the human—on both sides
of the screen.
A PERSONAL MISSION TO
CHANGE THE CONVERSATION
In the days following the West-Trump
tête-à-tête, Charlamagne Tha God, a
radio host and the best-selling author
of Shook One: Anxiety Playing Tricks
on Me, made headlines for canceling a
panel conversation with Kanye West
about mental health. CTG, as he is
known, Instagrammed that the New
York Times–sponsored event would be “a total distraction
from the point of the convo which is to eradicate the stigma
of mental health especially in the black community.” But
as someone who has suffered from anxiety for years, CTG
remained eager to keep the discussion alive. We spoke to
him just before he boarded a flight to Los Angeles from New
York. He was, perhaps understandably, anxious. —J. D. S.
No matter who you are, famous Given your role in the hip-hop
or not, it seems that one of the community, do you see
difficulties of discussing one’s mental-health issues rippling
own mental health is that it under the surface?
makes you vulnerable to say, Of course—we just didn’t know
“Yes, I need help.” what it was. It was just like the
Yeah, man. I wrote a book about Geto Boys sang: “Your mind’s
it and it’s not even a conversation playing tricks on ya.” There are
I’m comfortable having yet. But I a lot of guys out here struggling
recognized that things could be with depression and anxiety;
better for me. All that talk with we chalk it up to the lifestyle. If
friends and family is cool. All the you’re out here doing dirt, doing
self-help books are cool. All the things you have no business
talk with spiritual advisors is cool. doing, whether it’s being in the
But sometimes you have to sit streets, packing guns, or what-
down and talk to a professional. ever, there’s danger and fear
that comes with that. But what
One of the overall stigmas in if you don’t live the lifestyle any-
the African-American commu- more and you still feel that way?
nity in particular is that ther-
apy seems to be considered What spurred you to
a “white-person thing.” Was cancel the talk with Kanye
that part of your experience? West this past October?
That’s part of it. The first time The conversation should be
I heard the word therapy was that Kanye needs to deal with
on Frasier. I had no idea that his mental-health issues, that
there was someone out there he needs to sit down and figure
who could help me organize it out. We help reinforce stig-
my feelings, who I could go to mas when we act like we don’t
and chop it up with when I was hear this person crying out for
feeling overwhelmed. If I knew help. What I told Kanye is that
about black therapists, maybe I nothing is more powerful than
would have felt more comfort- two brothers having a talk about
able talking to them. But then mental-health issues, but I
again, who wants to share don’t think you’re ready to have
their deepest, darkest secrets that conversation if you aren’t
with a stranger, no matter what dealing with your own mental-
color they are? health issues.
MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 79
W H AT I T M E A N S TO

You ready? Because The

Punisher’s Jon Bernthal
is about to school you.
Actually, scratch that—he’s
late for his kid’s soccer game.

BY MOLLY KNIGHT

PHOTOGRAPHS BY
ERIC RAY DAVIDSON

MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 81

 THE SUN HAS ALMOST SET on a warm
October evening, and I can’t find Jon ask him if this is the only adjustment
Bernthal anywhere. I’m walking along a he’s had to make to fill Iacocca’s shoes.
He laughs. Then he says he wanted the
racetrack against an exploding lilac-and- part badly, but he jumped into film-
ing just two days after wrapping sea-
orange sky in the middle of the desert two son 2 of The Punisher (which will be

hours outside Los Angeles. The sound of released on Netflix in mid-January)

and felt like, well, a superhero out of
revving engines is so loud that yelling his water. “At the center of this movie is
this man’s dream,” says Bernthal.
name is futile. A few hundred people buzz “When [Iacocca] comes into an idea,
it’s just like, How can we make this
about, carrying cartons of cigarettes and work? It’s so different from Frank
department-store dinner jackets and Castle, who literally lives in darkness
and is not interested in even getting
porkpie hats and scripts and lights and through the day. He’s interested in
the momentary quieting of the noise.”
everything else a summer-tentpole budget Bernthal says he felt intimidated and
scared those first several days on the
can buy to transform our present-day set. “One of my best friends, Sean
digital hellscape into sweet, simple 1966. Carrigan, came to set after my first
week, and he saw how I was and he
said, ‘Hey, man, don’t forget who the
fuck you are. You’re Henry Bernthal’s
I’ve spent the past week holed up in an underground On page 80: father, you’re Billy Bernthal’s father, you’re Adeline
lair with Bernthal, sort of, watching and rewatching his Denim jacket with Bernthal’s father. You are who you are, and you’re
shearling collar ($695)
devastating turn as Frank Castle, aka the Punisher—a by Coach 1941; coach what you’ve been through. Do not let this fuck you
combat-veteran action hero whose superpower is his quest .com. Cotton stretch up.’ ” He shakes his head at the memory. “I came

Styling: Ted Stafford, prop styling: faethgruppe, grooming: Sussy Campos/Art Department, tailoring: Saira Huff/Lars Nord, production: Barbie Duarte/MJ68
for justice fueled by the anguish and rage he feels after his T-shirt ($59) by Michael back the next Monday a different man.”
Kors; michaelkors.com.
wife and children are slaughtered in front of him—so I Jeans ($148) by Double “A different man” is a trope of most Bernthal
like my chances of being able to spot him in this traveling Eleven; doubleeleven profiles, and though he describes himself that way
.co. Chronograph watch
circus. I’m confident I’ve memorized each tiny jut of way- by Emporio Armani. to me more than once, he insists he’s sick of his
ward bone in his nose, which has been broken 14 times. own personal street-fighting-kid-turned-leading-
When I don’t find Bernthal in his trailer, I walk toward the starting man narrative. Yes, he got into a lot of scraps as a teen in Wash-
line and look for the biggest, most tatted-up loner. So I’m shocked ington, D. C., in the ’90s, and later, after he moved to L. A. “But
when a reasonably sized dude with a side part and an A-list smile I’m so bored with that story of my life,” Bernthal says. “I put that
waves me down; sticks his hand out; says, “Hi, I’m Jon! So happy guy to bed a long time ago. I’m a father and I’m a husband and
you made it!”; and begins introducing me to half the crew. Castle is I’m an artist, and I take my work seriously.”
a man of few words and even fewer friends who communicates with So, back to the work. The scenes Bernthal is filming today are
his eyes and his fists. The guy who plays him responds to every one of mostly reaction shots in which he says nothing. Cars whiz by
my questions with thoughtful, multiple-paragraph soliloquies and on the track, he stands against a fence watching them, and the
is bros with everyone on the set. cameras watch him. After the crew finishes with close-ups of his
Bernthal is a day from wrapping the three-month shoot of his face, we head 100 or so yards to his trailer. His personal effects
latest movie, an epic drama about Ford’s push to build a race car are his boxing gloves and a water bowl for his pit bull Bam Bam,
that could finally beat the mythic Italian automaker Ferrari at the and that’s it. His mini-fridge is stocked with LaCroix and noth-
Le Mans world championship in France. The odds are good that the ing else. He’s hoping shooting will wrap in the next hour so that
film—directed by James Mangold (Logan) and also starring Matt he can jam out of here and drive back to his home in the sleepy
Damon and Christian Bale—will boost Bernthal’s profile when it hippie town of Ojai to make it to his kid’s soccer game.
premieres this summer.
In the film, Bernthal plays Lee Iacocca, the American auto BERNTHAL’S CR A Z Y work schedule—The Punisher’s second
executive who brought sexy, fast cars like the Ford Mustang to season shot for six months in New York—means that he misses
baby boomers as they came of age. It’s a huge departure from the more games than he would like. (His wife, Erin, brings the kids
brass-knuckled characters the actor has typically portrayed, such to New York each summer when they’re on break.) The distance
as a veteran who gets beaten to death trying to prevent his girlfriend gnaws at him. He tells me he draws on the pain of being separated
from being raped (Wind River) and a rodeo cowboy grappling with from his own family to play the grieving Frank Castle. “I know
early-onset Parkinson’s disease (Sweet Virginia). As I shake his there’s a ticking clock on this career, and one day the phone is
hand, I notice stage makeup caked on his right wrist to cover up a gonna stop ringing,” he says. “Above all, I have a responsibility
tattoo, which bears the name of his acting teacher Alma Becker. I to take care of my family, but it’s hard because it takes me away

82 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH

from the people I love. . . . If I’m going to be away from my
kids, I want one day for them to look at it and say, ‘Well, Dad
was gone, but he was giving everything he had.’” He makes
a fist with his right hand to emphasize that last point, and
I notice a jagged scar just below his thumb. “That’s where
I broke my hand on the first day of filming the first fight
scene of the year for The Punisher 2,” he says. “I kept on
fighting, and on day two I tore ligaments, then on day three
I dislocated it and had to get emergency surgery.” He tells
me he was knocked unconscious during filming, and rolls
up his shirtsleeves to reveal several more scars up and
down his arms. “Was it the smartest thing to keep fighting
with a broken hand? Maybe not. Maybe I could have been
out for a shorter time. But I look at filming a scene like that
the same way I look at a boxing match. I’m not gonna be the
one to say I’m gonna walk away.”

THE JOURNEY toward becoming Henry’s and Billy’s

and Adeline’s father and remembering who the fuck he
is almost didn’t happen. After leaving Skidmore Col-
lege in 1999, Bernthal took Becker’s advice and joined
the Moscow Art Theatre in Russia. While there, he
boxed, took ballet, and played catcher on a pro baseball
team. He lived in squalor and listened to a lot of Willie
Nelson and Waylon Jennings. On the night he returned
to D. C., the following year, his friends threw him a
welcome-home party at a local bar. He noticed one of
his buddies talking to two women, so he went over to
josh him. “I came over and was just rudely messing
around, and I know this is the corniest thing in the
world, but when I actually saw Erin, it was literally
like angels were singing,” he says. “I had never seen
anyone so beautiful.” He wound up talking to the young Shirt ($385) by Eleventy; Bernthal as a one-note tough-guy performer.
eleventy.it. Jeans ($675)
Georgetown University Hospital trauma nurse for by Dolce & Gabbana; He’s best when he’s at his most vulnerable: ner-
45 minutes. They started dating, but he was only in dolcegabbana.it. Suede vous about being around a woman he might like,
his early 20s and had no idea where it would go. When boots ($395) by Allen scared he’s going to screw up as a surrogate dad
Edmonds; allenedmonds
Bernthal moved to Boston to study acting at Harvard, .com. Heritage Series to a boy mourning the loss of his father, flashing
Erin followed him, taking a job as a nurse at Mass Gen- watch ($850) by Movado; back to the horrifying carnage he’s witnessed.
eral. After they moved to L. A., there was a brief break in movado.com.
Bernthal says he has a collection of music related
their relationship when Bernthal “did a bunch of dumb to his wife and kids, and listening to it gets him
stuff” and Erin dumped him and moved to San Francisco. into that dark Frank Castle headspace. He uses it selectively
Whenever he didn’t have auditions, the devastated actor would and says even talking about it makes him want to throw up—
drive up to the Bay Area and put flowers and poems on her car. Then like this second. To burrow into Castle’s psyche, Bernthal has
one day when he thought she might be softening, he was able to also become close with a number of tip-of-the-spear Special
rustle up two tickets to see Willie Nelson at the Fillmore. “I snuck Forces veterans who have shared what it’s like to live with PTSD
backstage. I found this beautiful postcard and wrote Willie this and what it really means to come home. “I know how much this
long letter and rolled him a beautiful joint and told him the situ- character means to people,” he says. “The fact that people in the
ation with me and my woman,” says Bernthal. “I told him she’s a military have worn that skull into battle and fought and died for
good-hearted woman in love with a good-timin’ man, and I asked this country really means a lot to me.”
him to play this one song ‘Always on My Mind’ for us, and he did.” The Punisher, of course, operates under a strict moral code.
That night they got back together for good. But Bernthal understands how imperative it is in American
A superhero in the Marvel universe is the role of a lifetime for society right now to separate fact from fiction, and it’s part of
any actor, especially for a man like Bernthal, who in a different why he’s reluctant to glorify the street fights he got into when
life might have been a professional boxer. But the thing I like best he was younger. “Our country is being inundated by this false
about The Punisher is that it’s a searing meditation on loss; each machismo and people who talk tough and have never actually
episode goes deeper than the one before it in exploring the trouble fought for anything in their life,” he says. “I’m afraid patrio-
that humans, particularly men, have in accessing their emotions tism and masculinity are being confused and bastardized in
and cauterizing their wounds. It would be a mistake to dismiss a way where it’s just become bravado and bluster. I’ve boxed

MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 83

 Rapid
Fire
in gyms all over this country and the world. FAVORITE EXERCISE? “pouring love into our Thermal crew-neck
“Right now, I’m into
And through that journey, I learned the loud- daughter every step of shirt ($30) by Levi’s;
doing burpee pullups levi.com. Jeans ($675)
est guy in the gym is always the one you don’t with my five-year-old. the way.” She has since by Dolce & Gabbana;
have to worry about.” We do about ten reps made a full recovery. dolcegabbana.it.
Suede boots ($365)
When I ask him how he and his wife are rais- of burpee pullups.” “People t a l k ab out by Timberland;
ing their seven- and five-year-old sons in a cul- bravery like fake macho timberland.com.
WORKOUT ANTHEMS?
ture currently reckoning with masculinity, he “Podcasts and Howard
bravery, but my wife Canfield Chrono watch
($900) by Shinola;
says the role of father is the most important job Stern. I like listening didn’t flinch,” he says. shinola.com.
he’ll ever have. Henry and Billy, he says, walk to a good story.” “What I saw in my wife
three-year-old Adeline to school every day and was courage and beauty unlike I’d ever seen.”
carry her bag. They’ve also been doing jujitsu HERO? After we’ve talked for an hour, Bernthal’s
“My wife.”
since they were two, because Bernthal wants friend (he hates the word assistant) Lauren
his boys to be able to handle themselves, to PARTY FUEL? tells him he’s done filming for the day. The
protect their own families and anyone else who “Marijuana. I don’t sun has long set, so making it back to Ojai for
might need to be defended from bad guys. drink. After I got into soccer is not possible. He excuses himself to
some trouble in 2009,
“By the way, I want them to learn how to play I stopped drinking.
change out of his dress pants and shoes
piano and do their schoolwork with the exact Now I’m to a point and into sweats and combat boots he might
same level of fierceness,” he adds. “Whatever where I can handle it, have borrowed from Frank Castle. Walking
they do in this world, I’m okay with it, as long but I don’t like the way in Castle’s boots has taught Bernthal how
it makes me feel.”
as they go full bore. That’s the real challenge precious time is, he says, and nearly losing
of fatherhood, to try to divorce yourself from KARAOKE SONG? Adeline cemented his ethos of not wasting
your own bullshit and to realize I want these “Has to be Waylon too many moments. He’s been thinking a lot
kids to be better than me. I don’t want them Jennings’s ‘Lonesome, about how to best squeeze the marrow out
to make the same mistakes I did.” During On’ry and Mean.’ ” of 2019. In January, he’ll go to Romania to
the weekend he took to sort himself out after THE MEAL YOU COOK film the dark cowboy shoot-’em-up comedy
that rough first week of filming the Ford- FOR YOUR FAMILY? Snow Ponies. He’ll likely do another movie
versus-Ferrari movie, he realized Iacocca “I can crush this old and then start season 3 of The Punisher. He’s
wasn’t alien to him. “I see a lot of my old man in family pasta recipe also spent six years researching and writing
with a light cream
him,” says Bernthal. “He’s just as strong and a true-crime story about cops and gangs in
sauce, peas, and
tough as any soldier or cop that I would have prosciutto. I made it Shreveport, Louisiana. But he says he has
played, but his strength comes from his integ- for my kids and they only two goals for the new year: to make it
rity and his honesty and the fact that he can be hated it! I loved it to as many of his kids’ games and spend as
counted on and his unwillingness to give up.” when I was a kid.” many nights in his own bed next to his wife
as possible.
T FAMOU ple are reluctant to talk On the night before the photo shoot for this
heir fam reporters, but Bernthal tells me he’s grateful story, Bernthal was at a Willie Nelson concert at the Hollywood
’ rested, b e a lot has happened in the past year and he’s Bowl with his family and friends when his children started run-
o ow ready t uss it. In November 2017, the day after the first ning amok. “I turned to them and said, ‘Hey, guys, this is Willie
sea The P i er debuted, Bernthal was supposed to begin Nelson, and he’s real important to your mama.’” The trio of tykes
film ng his rol tronaut Dave Scott alongside Ryan Gosling settled down, and the music washed over them all. In the past,
in Fir t Man. But out of nowhere, his daughter, then two, had a sei- he’s been frustrated with profiles written about him that ask the
zure and fell into a coma. He dropped out of the film and raced to be question “Will the Punisher ever find peace?” “I’m sitting there
by her side. Diagnosed with encephalitis—a potentially fatal viral at the show with my kids and thinking, This is the best moment
infection that causes swelling of the brain—Adeline remained in of my life. This is peace.”
a coma for three days, and when she awoke she did not recognize
her family. While Bernthal was, understandably, a panicky mess, MOLLY KNIGHT is the author of The Best Team Money Can Buy and
he says his trauma-nurse wife helped Adeline by staying calm and writes for ESPN the Magazine and The New York Times Magazine.

The secret to Jon Bernthal’s Punisher physique.

PUNCH UP YOUR STRENGTH BY EBENEZER SAMUEL, C.S.C.S.

Long before Jon Bernthal

was Frank Castle, he started
training with his friend Sean
Carrigan, a former pro boxer.
The Punisher star dropped 20
pounds for the series, in part by
boxing daily. It’s the backbone
of his fitness routine.
1 Fight Your
Shadow
Early on in every workout,
Bernthal shadowboxes: Throw
various combos (think: jab-jab-
cross) at the air. “Concentrate
on technique,” says Carrigan.
2 Punch First, Ask
Questions Later
“Jon wasn’t a guy who asked
lots of questions,” Carrigan
says. Save analysis for the
boardroom. Learn a punch,
then start trying to throw it.
3 End with Body
Weight
Bernthal’s workouts end with
this finisher: 50 to 100 pushups,
200 to 300 crunches, and 30 to
50 leg lifts. “It builds strength
and stamina,” says Carrigan.

84 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH

 ILLUSTRATIONS BY

MATT NEEDLE

YOUR
HEALTHIEST
YEAR
EVER
Sagging energy, climbing cholesterol, mounting
worries, and gut trouble are so 2018. This is the
year to turn your health around. While your friends
will be eating overpriced salads and working out
for three hours a day, you’ll be taking the smarter,
easier route to total wellness. This is how to get there,
no DNA test or whole-body scan required.

BY JESSICA MIGALA MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 87

 YOUR BRAIN
SUPERCHARGE YOUR FOCUS
TEST YOURSELF
Go somewhere you can talk out loud.
Then read the words in color twice:
First Read:
Say the names of the
colors aloud (so you’d say
the word red as “red”)
and record your time.
Second Read:
Read the list aloud again,
but this time say the color
each word is printed in.
So if the word red is printed
in green, you’d say “green,”
not “red.”
88 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH
HOW DID YOU DO?
Compare your two times. If there’s little difference
between them, you can focus well and think quickly.
Your attention, processing speed, and flexibility are
all high. If you stumbled over the second reading and
it took a lot longer than the first, your overtaxed brain
may just need some tweaking.
THE TUNE-UP
Flex your concentration muscles with brain-train-
ing games like those from Lumosity and other sites,
says Sanam Hafeez, Psy.D., a neuropsychologist at
Columbia University. Or try giving a conversation all of
your attention, says Chris Bailey, author of Hyperfocus.
That means focusing less on what you’re going to say
and more on what the other person is trying to express.
 YOUR HEAD

LIGHTEN YOUR MOOD

TEST YOURSELF HOW DID YOU DO?

Ask yourself this: An answer of several days or more on
both items means you may be experienc-
Over the past two weeks, ing clinical depression, as nearly 9 million
how often have I had the men in the U. S. do each year. Depression
following problems? can be sneaky. It can lie to you and tell you
that your boss’s bad management style
or your partner’s mood is causing what
1. Had little interest or you’re feeling. (Anger and disorganiza-
pleasure in doing things
❑ Not at all
THE TUNE-UP
❑ Several days
❑ More than half the days We won’t sugarcoat it: You may need
to talk to a therapist or other professional.
❑ Nearly every day
Depression is a treatable medical problem,
and like a leaky pipe, the earlier you
2. Felt down or hopeless
address it, the easier it is to manage. You’re
❑ Not at all not always in for meds or years of ther-
❑ Several days apy—some forms of counseling involve
only several weeks of concentrated work.
❑ More than half the days
But for a lot of men, “that first step into
❑ Nearly every day therapy is kind of a doozy,” Dr. Sharp says.
tion can be signs of depression in guys.)
When men think there’s something else
to blame, they “feel like they only need to
endure or compensate, which explains
why they’re less likely than women to seek
help,” says psychiatrist John Sharp, M.D.,
of Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical
Center and author of The Insight Cure.
If it’s easier to talk yourself out of it than
to go, try the gym: Exercise can help lift
mood. If that’s not going to happen, either
(not easy, we know), the digital world may
offer some reprieve via apps like Mood-
Mission (moodmission.com) or This Way
Up (thiswayup.org.au). Or search for
others on Psyberguide.org, a nonprofit
affiliated with Northwestern University
that reviews mental-health apps.

YOUR BLOODSTREAM

STEADY YOUR BLOOD SUGAR

TEST YOURSELF THE TUNE-UP

Check the box next to each item you consume in a given Nix the sugary drinks first.
“These are the number-one
day and add up the points. source of added sugar in the
American diet,” says White.
T 1 2-ounce TP
 acket of instant TE
 nergy drink TT
 wo tablespoons Soda is a prime target, of
(nondiet) soda flavored oatmeal (even an organic of bottled course; a single can contains
(+10 points) (+3 points) one) (+9 points) salad dressing
(+0.5 points) 89 percent of a day’s sugar.
T6
 -ounce T 1 /2 cup of TT
 ablespoon But there are so many other
container of ice cream of ketchup T Energy bar
flavored yogurt (+3.5 points) (+1 point) (+5 points) ways you may be downing
(+3 points) sugar, like in sweetened
TT
 hree cookies TP
 acket of sugar
TF
 lavored latte like Oreos in coffee coffee (eight grams in two
(+4 points) (+3.5 points) (+0.75 points) teaspoons of sugar) and bot-
tled Frappuccinos (as many
HOW DID YOU DO? as 32 grams per bottle).
You don’t have to go into
If you scored: Each point represents about one Even when you’re generally eating taste-bud deprivation and
teaspoon of sugar, and the upper what you think you should, too shift straight to tap water.
0–9 points: Nice.
limit of added sugar for guys is nine much sugar may still affect your Flavored waters have really
That’s where you’re
supposed to be. teaspoons a day. (That’s 36 grams of body, says exercise physiologist Jim upped their game, says White.
added sugar, or 144 calories. So, not White, R.D.N., A.C.S.M. Beyond Get a sweet taste with zero
10+ points:
Overload! But you a lot.) Our quiz may not substitute adding pounds, sugar overload can sugar from bottles like Hal’s
probably knew for a blood-sugar test at the doctor’s devastate your insides, raising Seltzer Water, Bubly, Water-
that already. office, but can be a major eye-opener. heart disease and diabetes risk. loo, and Hint.

MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 89

 YOUR HEART

BUILD A
HEALTHIER
HEART
TEST YOURSELF

Grab a tape measure and

locate your waist. (It’s at
belly-button height, not the
undergut spot your belt may
have migrated to.) Pull the
tape measure around you,
exhale, and get the digits.

HOW DID YOU DO?

There’s only one right answer: less than

40 inches. No matter how tall you are. “More
than 40 inches is associated with a whole
bunch of problems, like diabetes or high YOUR BLOOD VESSELS
blood pressure or cholesterol—if you don’t
already have those,” says John Higgins,
M.D., a sports cardiologist with McGovern
Medical School at UTHealth in Houston.
TUNE UP YOUR ARTERIES
THE TUNE-UP TEST YOURSELF

Don’t just reflexively reach for a baby aspi-
rin. If you don’t already have heart disease,
says Dr. Higgins, its benefits likely won’t
outweigh the risks.
Of course, your waist (and risks) shrink
when you eat well and exercise, but try sleep,
too. People who went from six to between
seven and eight hours a night gained less
abdominal fat over six years than short
sleepers, says a study in Obesity.
BONUS TUNE-UP:
L E N G T H E N YO U R L I F E
Sit on the floor, then get back
up. People ages 51 to 80 who
could do this without using their
hands or knees for help, without
having to place their hands on
their knees, and without losing
their balance had lower death
rates over an average of six
years than people who had to
give themselves help. Practice!
Sit on the floor with your back flat against a wall,
legs straight out in front of you. Place your hands
on top of your legs and slide your fingertips toward
your toes. (Bending your knees is cheating.)
❑ I can touch my ankles and/or toes
❑ My ankles are too far away
HOW DID YOU DO? THE TUNE-UP
If you can reach your The test is the cure. The act of stretching
ankles or beyond, it means may actually help your arteries become
good things for your arter- more elastic, Dr. Higgins explains. If you
ies. People with more flexi- want to do more than just reach for your
ble bodies likely have more ankles, you can reliably increase flexibil-
flexible arteries, according ity with a couple minutes of foam rolling
to a 2017 research review in before and after a workout, says Michael
The Journal of Physical Fit- Conlon, P.T., owner of Finish Line Physical
ness and Sports Medicine. Therapy in New York City. But there’s more
“This test might uncover to it than simply rolling up and down on a
someone who has untreated muscle a few times. Ideally, you should roll
cardiovascular disease or in two different directions. For instance,
high blood pressure,” says if you’re working on your quads, don’t just
Dr. Higgins, as stiff arteries move the roller up and down them; move
are related to both issues. your quads side-to-side on the roller, too.

90 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH

 YOUR INTESTINES

SOOTHE A GRUMPY GUT

TEST YOURSELF HOW DID YOU DO? THE TUNE-UP

Do the turn-around test—look before The “type” you fall into “is Eat more fiber. Most guys con-
a reasonably accurate predic- sume less than half their quota
you flush. Where would your poop tor of colonic transit rate,” of 38 grams a day. Getting fiber
land on this chart? (Not literally.) says Michael D. Brown, M.D., from foods like whole grains,
director of the GI/Hepatology legumes, fruits, and vegetables
Types 1, 2: Separate, That means: Fellowship Program at Chicago’s is preferable to taking supple-
hard lumps, like nuts Constipation. (Transit time: Rush University Medical Center. ments, says Dr. Brown, as real
or sausages. 55 hours or more.) That’s the time it takes for food foods contain a host of vitamins
to move from bite through bowel, and phytonutrients that are also
Types 3, 4, 5: Sausage- That means: It’s all and it’s an indicator of your gut’s good for you. To hit your daily
shaped, but with cracks on good—any of these is health. The longer it takes, the mark, you’ll probably need to
the surface (3); sausage- or ideal. (Transit time: more time bacteria has to feed work for it. A cup of oatmeal has
snakelike, smooth surface about 24 hours or less.)
and create harmful byproducts, three grams; an apple has five—
(4); soft blobs with clear-
cut edges (5). says researcher Tine Rask Licht but that gets you only about a fifth
of the National Food Institute at of the way there. To pile it on, turn
Types 6, 7: Fluffy with That means: Diarrhea. the Technical University of Den- to legumes for help. For instance,
ragged edges or mushy (Transit time: about two mark. And those by-products, a salad bowl from Chipotle with
(6); entirely liquid (7). hours or less.) she says, may be associated with black beans, fajita veggies, guac,
colon cancer. and fresh salsa delivers 16 grams.

YOUR GOODS
BONUS
AT- H O M E C H E C K :
PROTECT YOUR PENIS D O YO U G E T
M O R N I N G WO O D ?
TEST YOURSELF Yes?
Good.
Sit on the couch. Open up the browser on your phone. Start your day.
No?
Order an STD kit. Pee, drip some blood from your fingertip, Well . . . something’s
or swab. Send in the sample. Wait for the results. going on.

This is one of the first questions

HOW DID YOU DO?
The year 2016 was a record breaker for all the
wrong reasons: Rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea,
and syphilis were at all-time highs, with more
than 2 million cases, according to figures from
the CDC. “If you’re sexually active, you should
get an STD test once a year,” says Jamin Brahm-
bhatt, M.D., a urologist at Orlando Health.
(Testing after every partner is even better.)
“Don’t assume you’re fine if you don’t have
signs. Not every guy will have symptoms like
burning with urination, discharge, or pain.”
With at-home STD testing kits like myLAB
($189; mylabbox.com), there’s no excuse not
to check. “You may not like spending a couple
hundred now,” says Dr. Brahmbhatt, “but
you’re avoiding problems like scarring in your
urethra, chronic pain, and fertility issues.”
THE TUNE-UP
Glove up. Cool condom companies
are changing the game with nicely
packaged products you can order from
your sofa. Some to try:
• The LELO Hex has a premium-
vodka-style logo and a superthin feel
($35 for 36 at lelo.com).
• My One is available in 60 differ-
ent sizes (starting at $10 for six;
myonecondoms.com).
• Sustain Condoms are fair trade and
vegan. Honestly, the company markets
its condoms to women—but they’re
vagina-friendly, and you get bonus
points for being vagina-focused
($14 for 10 Ultra Thin or Large Com-
fort Fit; sustainnatural.com).
urologists ask guys with erectile
dysfunction, says Dr. Brahm-
bhatt. If you’re hard upon wak-
ing, everything’s working under
the hood. If not, there may be a
lifestyle problem—”things like
stress, anxiety, lack of sleep,
and relationship issues factor
in,” he explains—or a medical
problem. “Even if you have the
biggest penis, it still has some
of the smallest blood vessels
in the body.” Heart disease can
affect blood-vessel function
all over your body. If there’s
not enough blood flow, you’ll
be limp. “We found early heart
disease on a couple guys this
year because they came in
with erectile dysfunction,”
Dr. Brahmbhatt says.

MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 91

 TRANSFORM

BODY
YOUR

MIND
AND

THE STORIES OF TEN PEOPLE (YOU MAY RECOGNIZE A FEW) WHO’VE COMPLETED
EPIC FITNESS JOURNEYS, BATTLING OBESITY AND DEPRESSION AND OFTEN
BOTH AT THE SAME TIME. HERE’S WHAT THEY’VE LEARNED BY LEAVING THEIR OWN
LIVES—AND ABOUT A BILLION POUNDS—BEHIND. (PLUS: ROB FREAKIN’ LOWE!)

PHOTOGRAPHS BY
STEVEN LIPPMAN
 LIFT YOUR SPIRITS

WHAT
(EVER) IT
TAKES
How DAN REYNOLDS,
frontman of Imagine Dragons,
uses exercise, diet, and therapy
to battle an inflammatory
disease and depression.

I
BY WILL COCKRELL

T SHOULD HAVE been one

of the happiest years of Dan
Reynolds’s life. In 2012, his
band Imagine Dragons inked
a deal with Interscope Records
and his wife gave birth to their
first child. Soon the band would
release the single “Radioactive,”
the moody rock anthem that would
be downloaded more than six
million times. Yet a painful reality
almost paralyzed Reynolds.
For years, the lead singer had
been living with a rare autoim-
mune disease called ankylosing
spondylitis (AS), which causes
inflammation in the spine and can
lead to pain in different parts of
the body. It had become so painful
that he was having trouble lifting
his newborn daughter and could
barely perform live. “I’d hobble
onstage and just stand perfectly
still,” says Reynolds.
And AS wasn’t his only health
issue—Reynolds had already been
dealing with ulcerative colitis for
several years and had faced periods
of depression since his teens. But
instead of derailing his dreams,
the pain ignited a top-to-bottom
transformation that has left him
ache-free and happier than ever,
and turned him into a rock star

MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 93


known for energetic—and shirt-
less—performances.
Indeed, when Reynolds, 31,
walks into Gold’s Gym in Glendale,
California, for his MH photo shoot,
the first thing someone asks him
is whether he wants his shirt on
or off. “Off,” he fires back (with
unusual vigor for a celebrity). “This
has been my healthiest year yet,”
he says. “It’s also been my hardest
year.” But it’s been a long journey.
His transformation began slowly,
as he first sought to learn as much
as he could about his diseases.
He addressed his depression
first. The Las Vegas native has
been open about how growing up
Mormon forced him to conceal his
most basic impulses, everything
94 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH
from his sexuality to his creativ-
ity. Reynolds spent two years on a
Mormon mission, was kicked out
of Brigham Young University for
having sex with his girlfriend, and
had to write songs in metaphor to
hide things from his parents. “The
reason I started writing in the first
place was for refuge,” he explains.
Reynolds found a therapist who,
he says, helped him realize that
the root of his depression was the
fact that he’d spent much of his life
living for others—for the Mormon
church and anyone else who had
an opinion. He had lost sight of his
own needs. “That’s when every-
thing changed for me,” he says. “I
decided with every decision I made
from that point on I would ask
myself, Is this my truth? ” It had
YO U C A N D O I T almost a domino effect. He started
reexamining everything. In April
INSTAGRAM =
INSTAFIT 2018, he announced that he would
be divorcing his wife of seven years,
Tap into the supportive
side of social media with whom he has three daughters.
and it can make a Another thing he learned along
difference. It helped the way was that he wanted to beat
one attorney lose the back both his physical and mental
60 pounds he gained
during three intense ailments without the help of drugs.
years in law school. “Pain medication ruins your vocal
“Instagram is my secret cords, and immunosuppressants
weapon,” he says. made me get sinus infections all the
“My goal was to post a
time,” he says. “I really had no other
picture every time I did
something positive— option than to completely clean up
and if I had nothing to my diet and exercise every day.”
post, then I realized I In early 2017, Reynolds met trainer
needed to accomplish Brad Feinberg, a guy who he said
something that day.”
—Kevin Conner, 31, looked like a Viking and a badass.
Grooming by Sunnie Brook/TMG, overleaf: Janette Pellegrini/WireImage (Reynolds before)
lawyer, Gainesville, Using Feinberg’s program,
Florida Reynolds eventually reached an
intense level, working out for one to
three hours seven days a week.
Workouts during the tour usu-
ally included squats, deadlifts, and
lunges, as well as Turkish getups
and jump variations. But Feinberg
says Reynolds also wanted to look
like a superhero, which meant
high-volume upper-body drills,
kettlebell swings, pullups, and
curls. Plus, every workout had
20 minutes of cardio—low intensity
(same speed), medium (four
minute-runs with one minute
of recovery), and high (one-minute
sprints, with one minute of rest).
 TRANSFORM YOUR
BODY & MIND BELLY OFF!

Recovery was just as important, he can embrace excess and clean

adds Feinberg. “Touring is living without either seeming
extremely stressful—the perfor- inauthentic.
mances, the emotional stress— At one point, Reynolds mentions
so we also emphasized deep breath- he’s “straight edge,” referring to
ing and mobility.” the ’80s punk ethos that celebrated
Touring plays a huge role, too, sobriety. And when I press him to
in dictating Reynolds’s diet, which clarify whether he is completely
basically requires constant eating. sober—whether paparazzi might
Couple the training with epic ever catch him drinking a postshow
two-hour live shows and Reynolds beer—his answer is refreshing.
METHOD:
sometimes needs to down 6,000 “Oh, it could happen,” he says with
calories a day just to maintain his a smirk. “They might even catch me Had Gastric-Bypass Surgery
weight. His body fat hovers around doing worse than that—I believe in
MARCUS COOK
6 percent. His meal plan: oatmeal, living in the moment.” 46, BUSINESS-DEVELOPMENT VP, HOUSTON
berries, bananas, salads, sweet Reynolds says he owes his new-
potatoes, brown rice, chicken, found calm to being more honest BEFORE
lamb, and lots of olive oil. with himself, and that’s evident in 489 LBS
It took Reynolds more than a the songs on the band’s new album, CURRENT
year to go from skinny-fat to shred- Origins. “I’ve finally resolved a lot 225 LBS
ded. When I point out that six-pack of these issues in my life,” he says.
abs and Thor-like biceps seem like “This has been the first time in ten LOST
264 LBS
overkill for battling AS, he says, “It’s years that I can say I have no depres-
a statement. It embraces the spirit sion. Sadness? Hell yeah—it’s
of rock ’n’ roll. I grew up loving included some of the saddest times
Iggy Pop, Mick Jagger, Freddie in my life—but no depression. I’m
[Mercury]—showmen.” Somehow, stronger than I’ve ever been.” THE WAKE-UP CALL I had a mentor at
work. One day he pulled me into
his office and said, “I’m dying
THE THUNDER-AND-LIGHTNING FINISHER because I have cancer; you’re
dying because it’s your choice. I
would give anything to be you. You
Dan Reynolds’s trainer, Brad Feinberg (bradfeinberg88 on Instagram), recommends this have to promise to live for your
total-body burner as a finisher or as a short workout (as long as you do 3 to 5 rounds). family and employees.” A few
Choose weights that are heavy enough that fatigue sets in after around 1 minute but not so heavy months later, in September 2015, I
that you compromise form. Do each move for 60 seconds. Rest 3 minutes and repeat up to 5 times. had gastric-bypass surgery.

THE BIG STEP People tell me I took

KETTLEBELL (OR
DUMBBELL) SWING
Hike the kettlebell and
swing to chest height. Do
single-arm swings on
rounds 2 and 3 if you get
bored easily.
DUMBBELL ALTERNATE RENEGADE ROW
Al Bello/Getty Images for IRONMAN (Cook after)
DUMBBELL DUMBBELL GOBLET
OVERHEAD PRESS SQUAT the easy way out with gastric
bypass. But there’s nothing easy
Start with the dumb- Aim to get your thighs just about having your intestines
bells at shoulder height. below parallel to the ground rerouted. I overhauled my diet. I
Press straight up. and push up rapidly. started exercising, walking 20
minutes a day—uh, night, because I
didn’t want anyone to see me.
Before long, I was up to 40
minutes. Once I could run, I signed
up for races and eventually a half
Ironman [1.2-mile swim, 56-mile
bike, 13.1-mile run]. I trained for that
for about half a year. Last October, I
completed the Ironman World
Championships in Kona, Hawaii. It
felt incredible to do what I never
PLANK JACKS thought was possible.

Do a pushup with your hands on dumbbells.
Raise one dumbbell, then the other.
If it’s too difficult, switch to a standard plank.
THE NEXT LEVEL Once I changed my
Doing multiple rounds, alternate star planks.
life, I changed other people’s lives
too. After the half Ironman,
Hurricane Harvey hit. I went out
with a buddy in his johnboat and
helped a family who had been
stranded for two days; water was
starting to creep into the house. I’m
so grateful I lost weight and was
able to help these people.

MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 95

 BELLY OFF! TRANSFORM YOUR
BODY & MIND

METHOD:

Learned to Cook
FITZROY POWELL JR.
23, STUDENT, MATTHEWS, NORTH CAROLINA

BEFORE
348 LBS

CURRENT
215 LBS

LOST
133 LBS

THE WAKE-UP CALL I’ve always been

heavy, but in college, I felt direction-
less, so I sought comfort at the
dining hall. I ate everything: pizza,
chicken, burgers, cakes. In the next
two years, I put on another 30
pounds. Halfway through college, in
the spring of 2017, I stopped at Taco
Bell on the way home and ordered
almost everything on the menu. I
ate most of it on the ride home
and polished off the leftovers later

2011: 
that night. A few hours later, I ate RUN FOR YOUR LIFE “I HIT 300-PLUS POUNDS.” Busi-

THE ‘MINI’
again. I felt sick and remember ness was two things: celebra-
thinking, Why am I doing this to
myself? Finally, I thought, Enough tions that revolved around food and stress
is enough. that revolved around food. I was gaining

THE BIG STEP The first thing I did was
cut out soda and other sugary
drinks and replace them with water.
Then I tried staying away from the
drive-through and cooking my own
meals. Cooking is a lot simpler than
people who don’t cook make it out
to be, because there are no rules!
You’re making food for yourself, and
as long as you don’t burn the house
down, you can do anything—you’re
free to have it taste how you like. I
usually take a day to meal-prep for
the week, and it saves me money
and time. I now find joy in cooking,
MOGUL
Hip-hop CEO CHARLIE
JABALEY—aka Charlie
Rocket—hit it big run-
ning a multimillion-
dollar management
company at age 22.
When his weight
weight, but I was also always on a diet. I’d
wake up and say, “Today’s the day; I’m
gonna do this.” Then by the end of the day,
I’d mess up, eat a ton of fast food, and it was
“Tomorrow’s the day.” I got so big I didn’t
want to leave the house. I became severely
depressed, insecure, and mentally was in a
really, really bad place.
2012: STARVED MYSELF TO LOSE 100 POUNDS.
I was only eating like 500 calories a day.
I couldn’t exercise, because I didn’t have
the energy to move. Then I started binge
Jennifer Rocholl (Jabaley after)

because I know it’s helping me in my
journey. There are so many quick
and easy recipes out there that
make cooking simpler. My current
go-to: ground-turkey-stuffed
peppers with a little bit of cheese on
top. Healthy, easy, filling!
climbed and his mood
dipped, this 30-year-old
took charge. See how he
shed 130 pounds.
AS TOLD TO MARISSA STEPHENSON
eating, and all the weight came back.
2015: BEST FRIEND CHALLENGED ME TO A MARA-
THON. Scott Cameron said, “No more diets.”
I wasn’t a runner. When you’re 300 pounds,
you can hardly walk a mile. We trained

96 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH

BELLY OFF!
RAY: Living in New Orleans, I
saw plenty of buffets—and
worked a desk job. But it
wasn’t until we had kids—a
daughter, then twins 13
months later—that my
waistline really ballooned.
METHOD:
STEPH: I gained about 40
Helped Each Other pounds with the twins.
Caring for two newborns and
RAY (40) AND STEPH (35) DOMINGUE a toddler and starting my
IT (RAY), WOMEN’S-SHOP OWNER (STEPH), boutique was exhausting.
THIBODAUX, LOUISIANA Exercise wasn’t on my radar.
BEFORE
RAY: 240 LBS
STEPH: 220 LBS
CURRENT
RAY: 195 LBS
STEPH: 160 LBS
LOST
RAY: 45 LBS
STEPH: 60 LBS
RAY: Once the twins were
about a year old, things
settled down a bit. Even so, I
kept buying bigger jeans
every six months. Once I
reached a size 42 waist, I
knew I had to make a change.
STEPH: Around that time, I
weighed myself. When Ray
saw the number, he said,
“Oh, look, we’re almost the
same weight!” I was like,
“Thanks, honey.” He took up
running soon after that, and
the weight just fell off. It
motivated me to start
working out too.
RAY: I started running just a
mile around the block. In a
few months, I could run three
miles, and after a year, I’d lost
about 40 pounds.
STEPH: I’m not a runner, but I
started lifting weights at a
small gym. I do a typical bro
split—legs one day, back and
arms the next.
RAY: When she’s at the gym, I
stay with the kids, and when
I’m running, she watches the
girls. Then we’ll play outside
with the kids or walk the dog
or go for a bike ride. Now we
cook dinner together, too,
and we eat a lot more
healthfully than we used to.

hard, but I also kept eating—way
too much. I did three marathons
but gained ten extra pounds for
each one. There would be nights
where I’d eat thousands and
thousands of calories, insane binge
eating. You just can’t outrun that.
2016: HIT ROCK BOTTOM—OR SO I
THOUGHT. I was at 2 Chainz’s house
in late 2016. When I woke up one
morning, I reached for a pair of
socks and fell down and passed
out. I knew something was really
wrong. A brain tumor I had since
childhood—it’s in my pituitary
gland [and probably always
will be]—had started growing.
I thought about why this was
happening, and I figured tumors
came from an imbalance in the
body. My gut was telling me that
the imbalance was the way I was
eating all these years, all the pro-
cessed foods, the meat from the
ketogenic diets I’d put myself on.
That’s when I decided to go vegan.
Believe it or not, I gained 20 more
pounds. I didn’t know how to do it
right. I was eating fries and pack-
aged goods—vegan junk food.
JANUARY 2017: MADE A CONTRACT WITH
MYSELF. I picked the most difficult
thing in the world I could imagine,
something so big and so bold that
when I told people I was gonna do
it, I was forced to follow through:
an Ironman triathlon. Setting a
goal like “I’m going to run every
day” wouldn’t work for me. There’s
no accountability.
ALSO 2017: BECAME CHARLIE ROCKET.
I retired, left Atlanta, and moved
to Santa Monica, California. I
wanted to reinvent my life, eat bet-
ter, become an athlete, and learn
how to help people.
I embraced the concept of “liv-
ing food.” I had never really heard
anybody put it that way and ask, “Is
that food dead or alive?” But it made
perfect sense to me. I ate heaps of
vegetables—living. I got rid of a lot
of oil—which is, to me, dead—and
salt, dead. I ate lots of fruit, and I
stopped binge eating sugary cook-
ies, pastries, doughnuts.
STILL 2017: TRAINED FOR AN IRONMAN
LIKE AN EIGHT-YEAR-OLD. I woke up
every day with the outlook that
“I’m going to have fun and play.”
I trained that way for ten months,
gradually going farther, playing
more. There were times it was
intense. But eating and exercising
this way, I lost 130 pounds.
MARCH 2018: COMPLETED AN IRONMAN
IN TAUPO, NEW ZEALAND (16:41:01).
Crossing that finish line felt good.
After the race, I was like, “Okay!
YO U C A N D O I T
BUILD AN
OUTDOOR GYM
“After being over-
weight for decades, I
finally decided to make
a change at age 51. I
had two rules: I wasn’t
going to run, and I
wasn’t going to exer-
cise indoors. So I cre-
ated an outdoor home
gym with dumbbells, a
yoga mat, and a Pilates
machine. I also work
out at the Red Rocks
Amphitheatre in nearby
Morrison, where I run
stairs and do leg lifts off
the bleachers—one rep
for each of my 57 years!
Six years later, I’m 59
pounds lighter.”
—Scott Deuty, 57,
power-electronics
engineer, Denver
What’s next?” That’s when I
started thinking about helping
other people’s dreams come true.
[His cross-country cycling Dream
Machine Tour gave financial help
to a preschool aide in Arizona,
which paid for cancer treatment,
and a homeless high school honors
student in Houston.]
SUMMER 2018: “RUNNING GIVES ME A
WAY TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT MYSELF.” I’m
still about 30 pounds overweight.
But now I know running can be my
medication. It’s my prescription
for my anxiety, my depression,
which I still fight. I can push the
limits; I can go farther than I
did last time. That brings me so
much confidence, so much good
energy, so much joy. And I believe
it’s helped my tumor, which is
shrinking.
FALL 2018: RELATE TO THE ROCKET.
When rockets first take off, they
use up more fuel than the entire
rest of the journey. Once they’re
up there, though, there’s no more
pressure; they can go faster than
ever with less energy. Think about
the rocket when you’re in mile one
of anything, when it’s hard and it
doesn’t feel like you’re going any-
where. Know that if you just push,
push, push, push, eventually it’s
gonna get easier.

MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 97

TRANSFORM YOUR
BODY & MIND
PRIORITIZE YOUR HEALTH
What we can learn from
ROB KARDASHIAN’s
public struggle to reach
a healthy weight.
C 
BY ALEX PAPPADEMAS
best known for her prepos-
terous glutes, the 11-year-old
E! series Keeping Up with
the Kardashians has always
been a show about bodies. But in
recent years, the hard physical
effort required to stay perpetually
camera-ready has become more
central to the show. Someone is
always sculpting a “revenge body”
or shedding baby weight, and for
every exposition-heavy conversa-
tion that takes place over a meal,
there’s a punishing workout session
that doubles as a chance for a
sisterly heart-to-heart. And then
there’s Rob Kardashian, 31, whose
relationship with his body has
pushed him into one of the strang-
est spaces in American pop culture.
No matter how you felt about
Kim, Kourtney, and Khloé as they
ascended from pseudocelebrity
to actual fame, you at least had to
admire their hustle. Rob doesn’t
even meet that baseline of respect-
ability. In the beginning, he was
the Kardashian who lacked basic
98 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH
Kardashian skills—he was bad at
YO U C A N D O I T pretending that his fake job (the
hosiery company Arthur George)
EAT THE
HEALTHIEST was actually difficult, and he was
STUFF FIRST bad at breaking up in public. The
“At restaurants, I eat other Kardashians tended to rise
the vegetables from like toned, confident phoenixes
my entrée first to help from the ashes of their doomed
fill me up. Usually, I end
relationships; Rob lashed out at his
up with a to-go box of
leftovers—most often ex Rita Ora (without naming her
a cut of meat.” —Nick specifically) by posting accusa-
Wolny, 31, marketing tions of infidelity online, and last
strategist, Houston year he leaked revenge porn of his
daughter’s mother, Blac Chyna.
But beginning in 2013, Rob’s
struggle to keep his weight down
became a long-running and some-
times humiliating Keeping Up
story arc. We witnessed him hid-
ing candy wrappers and bingeing
on takeout. When the family
traveled to Florence in 2014 for
Kim’s wedding to Kanye West, Rob
became ashamed of his weight
after feeling uncomfortable in his
threads and skipped the ceremony.
We watched Rob—who was
diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at
the end of 2015—try to change his
diet and exercise more, and we saw
him fall off those wagons, distance
himself from his family, and grow
depressed.
It all came to a head on 2016’s
Rob & Chyna. Rob, who weighed in
at 263 pounds in the first episode,
clearly wanted to be anywhere but in
front of a camera. There are Leon-
ard Cohen albums less depressing
than Rob & Chyna. It lasted one sea-
son and ended with Rob relating his
myriad issues to a mental-health
professional, who responded, “That
sounds like a mess.”
Rob and Chyna have since split
up, and after that, Rob went into
hiding. He’s all but dropped out of
Getty Images (Kardashians)
Keeping Up and exists in its nar-
rative as a cautionary tale; during
season 15, when Kendall shared
Kourtney’s plans to miss Christ-
mas with their family, Kim asked if

Kourtney was “the new Rob.” The
social-media accounts Rob once
used to publicize his drama appear
carefully managed these days. By
Kardashian standards, he’s practi-
cally gone black-ops. He’s become
the rarest type of celebrity bigfoot—
the one member of a family
of omnipresent public figures who
does not want to be seen.
Reportedly, Rob turned to food
for comfort, and his weight passed
300 pounds. Lately, though,
something strange has happened.
According to one report, he has
taken huge steps to improve his
health both physically and men-
tally, dropping 30 to 50 pounds. He
has a daughter he needs to be there
for, and he’s recalibrated his pri-
orities around diet and exercise.
Rob’s mother, Kris Jenner, told
Us Weekly last August that we may
see more of Rob in Keeping Up’s
16th season.
All this sounds positive, except
the last part. Because the show
focuses on the perspectives of Kim,
Khloé, Kourtney, and momager
Kris, Rob’s weight problem has
mostly been presented as a heart-
break for his mother to endure or
a problem for his sisters to solve.
And because family and work are
so hopelessly and problematically
intertwined in the Kardashiverse,
Rob’s choice to distance himself
from the family business—because
he didn’t want to be fat on camera,
which is totally understandable—
is a professional decision with
personal consequences, a betrayal.
What no one ever talks about—
for obvious reasons, since it would
call the whole enterprise of Keeping
Up into question—is the possibility
that leaving the show is the health-
iest thing Rob could possibly do. It
makes perfect sense that he had to
step outside the narrative flow of
reality TV in order to meaningfully
change his way of living. Whether
you’re lifting logs alone on a
mountaintop or hashtagging every
#LegDay on Instagram, everyone’s
fitness and mental-health journeys
are ultimately personal. In order
to see himself clearly, Rob
Kardashian had to disappear.  
BELLY OFF!
THE WAKE-UP CALL I weighed in at
about 260 pounds in high school.
I knew I was bigger than other
people, but I just didn’t realize
how much bigger. What got me
there wasn’t really food—it was
video games. In middle school, I’d
run upstairs when I got home,
playing until 1:00 or 2:00 A.M. I ate
snacks that wouldn’t get my
controller too dirty: cookies, cans
of Pringles. I could kill an entire
box of Sprite every night, easy. In
June 2017, I visited a walk-in clinic
for a rash on my leg. Turns out,
the skin infection was no big
deal—the weight was. I’d climbed
METHOD: to 315 pounds. I was shocked.
That’s when I knew that I was
Quit Gaming and addicted to gaming.
Started Moving
THE BIG STEP The next day, I listed
FRANCISCO MEDEIROS my Xbox on Craigslist. I re-
25, BEST BUY ASSOCIATE, EAST searched diets online and
PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND stumbled across Reddit’s “loseit”
channel, where I heard about
BEFORE CICO: calories in, calories out.
315 LBS You try to eat less than your body
naturally burns at your current
CURRENT weight. I tracked calories on the
186 LBS My Fitness Pal app. At first, I ate
the amount to lose one pound a
LOST week, then the two-pound-a-
129 LBS week option. I’m still counting!
I’ve been using the app for 495
days in a row, and I’m the most fit
I’ve been since grade school.
THE WAKE-UP CALL After graduating
from the academy, Lohman settled
into his job as a New York City cop—
and packed on 140 pounds in nine
tough years. But a nightmare about
being thrown off a rooftop and the
realization that his daughter would
grow up fatherless if it happened
made him go on a weight-loss
program the next day.
THE BIG STEPS
He held himself accountable: Lohman
started tracking calories and
eventually began weighing his food.
He also packs his lunch daily. “I’m fine
with boring,” he says. “I’ll eat eight
METHOD: ounces of chicken and six ounces of
a sweet potato every day.”
Created Accountability
Lohman turned negativity into a
AARON LOHMAN positive: Not long after he started
36, POLICE OFFICER, NEW YORK CITY working out, a coworker mentioned
the 40-mile NYC Five Boro Bike Tour.
BEFORE When the other cops overheard
425 LBS them, he says, “they were like, ‘Yeah,
right, Aaron’s going to do a bike tour.’
CURRENT It made me so mad I thought, I really
277 LBS am going to do it.”
LOST He tracked his progress: Lohman
148 LBS posts how he’s doing on Instagram
under huge_fat_loser. (He has 18,000
followers.) “Everyone should try it,”
he says. “The idea of failing in public
keeps you motivated.”
MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 99
LOWE-
STAY THE COURSE
CARB
LIFER
It might seem like ROB
LOWE represents the
anti-transformation.
But his consistent look is
due to an evolution in his
diet and exercise plans.
BY ALEX BHATTACHARJI
100 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH
W 
HEN ROB LOWE looks
in the mirror, he expects
to find the same person
looking back at him
every day: a lean, toned,
fresh-faced man in peak
physical condition—himself at 28,
the age when he had already gotten
sober and married Sheryl Berkoff.
“I feel exactly like that guy,” Lowe
says. “And I see him.” It’s not that
Lowe, 54, is oblivious to the passage
of time—he’s just made himself
impervious to it. “I’m fitter than
I’ve ever been. More experienced.
Smarter,” says the actor, who
landed his first major TV role in
1979 and whose breakthrough came
in the 1983 film The Outsiders. “I’m
not looking at a 20-year-old kid in a
cape as my due north,” he adds. “I’m
looking at a guy like Springsteen.”
Lowe’s man in the mirror is
YO U C A N D O I T familiar to anyone who’s watched
him. As his Parks and Recreation
DOG IT
alter ego, Chris Traeger, would say, he
“Along with setting a
looks li-trilly unchanged. Consider
Grooming by Jason Schneidemann/Solo Artists/The Perfect Paste by the Men’s Groomer
calorie limit for myself
in 2016, I started taking the meme “Incredible timelapse gif
my dogs, Major and showing Rob Lowe ageing [sic] over
Frank, for a walk every the last 30 years,” which is, in fact, a
day. Within a year, I had
recent still image of him—psych. “I
lost 102 pounds, Major
had lost eight, and treat it as a compliment,” Lowe says,
Frank had lost four. We but he chafes at any suggestion that
still walk or run every making time stand still is a passive
day. When we come endeavor. Lowe’s status as a real-life
home, we all eat pop-
corn; they’ve gotten
Dorian Gray is based on a rigorous
pretty good at catching exercise regimen, a dedication to a
kernels out of the air.” low-carb diet (last year he became
—Patrick Stokes, 49,
financial advisor, Tyler,
a spokesman for Atkins, the eating
plan that emphasizes protein and
Texas
healthy fats), and a love of outdoor
sports. It doesn’t hurt that he is,
by both profession and personal
inclination, invested in self-care.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY STEVEN LIPPMAN

(He launched Profile, a skin-care
line including an under-eye serum,
moisturizer, sunscreen, and shaving
gel, in 2015.) Or that he’s open about
his desire to look good. “Men deny
having vanity—that’s the greatest
vanity,” Lowe says. “Not me. I’m
vain as fuck.”
Lowe remembers getting his
first real taste of working out as a
teenager while filming The Out-
siders: He joined costars Emilio
Estevez and Tom Cruise, who
would drive 45 minutes to the one
health club in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
with Nautilus machines. “They
were animals about it,” he recalls.
“I was just kind of doing it because
they were doing it.” His fascina-
Getty Images (Lowe), Everett Collection (1983 Lowe)
tion with fitness took hold a few
years later while he prepared to
play a hungry hockey prospect in
Youngblood. The role required him
to bulk up, Lowe recalls: “It was
the first time I ever had a trainer
and did proper weight work.” He
also skated and practiced hockey,
leaning over the boards to vomit.
“It was brutal,” he says.
After reaching
idol status, he went
through a speed-
freak phase, when
he trained with the
UCLA track team.
As his penchant
for partying grew,
Lowe, one of the
’80s Brat Pack,
would use fitness
to plaster over his
alcohol abuse, work-
ing out like a demon to reassure
himself he didn’t have a problem.
In his mind, no matter what wild
stuff he did, if he could still run a
60-second quarter mile, he was
fine. Inevitably, he could—and he
still can today.
At 26, in 1990, Lowe managed
to get sober, and exercise played a
new role in his life. “It became an
outlet for all of the tension, stresses,
compulsivity,” he says. “I funneled
the addiction, frankly, into that.”
Today, after 28 years of sobriety,
Lowe’s devotion to fitness qualifies
as a dependency in its own right.
A typical day starts with a 45-
minute Peloton bike ride or a run.
He follows that with traditional
lifting and circuit training. He pre-
fers to exercise alone: “I don’t want
to have the smoothie stand. I don’t
want to look at beautiful women
when I work out.” He also never
wears earbuds. “I like the forced
mental solitude of it,” he says.
“Inevitably, it will force you to start
working through things you’re not
going to if you’re listening to Jay-Z.”
TRANSFORM YOUR
BODY & MIND
For a long time, Lowe felt this
routine meant he could eat what-
ever he wanted. As he approached
40, that started to change. He was
aware of Robert Atkins, M.D.,
“from the beginning,” he says. He
became a convert to the high-
protein, low-carb plan. He scoffs at
the thought that it’s a license to eat
two In-N-Out burgers without buns,
because as he practices it, Atkins
is a program built to maintain, not
yo-yo. He’s also experimenting with
intermittent fasting, and often
skips breakfast. His typical menu
on no-breakfast days: Greek yogurt,
berries, and nuts for a snack at 11:30
NO WRINKLES A.M., chopped-chicken salad for
IN TIME
Four decades of lunch, and steak and vegetables
Rob Lowe. for dinner. He’ll allow himself rare
cheat meals (pizza and a chocolate
milkshake). When we meet, he
has just come from a fitting for his
new show, Wild Bill. Normally a
nerve-racking affair, it was no prob-
lem for Lowe, who has had the same
1 97 9
measurements for 20 years.
In his lighter moments, Lowe
admits he’s been scared skinny,
driven by fear of a dad bod. Yet
thanks to fatherhood, he’s found
his way of combating it: surfing.
1983
Although Lowe grew up in Malibu, he
only took up the sport at age 40 after
his sons, Matthew and John Owen,
did. “They got me into that, and I’ve
gotten them back into the gym,” he
says. At this point, Lowe’s surfing
1986 skills have far surpassed those of his
sons, who are 25 and 23, respectively.
Surfing has offered Lowe proof
that the immutable man is chang-
ing. “I had the best surf day of my
life three days ago,” he says, describ-
1 9 87 ing his last session at a Santa Bar-
bara break known as Little Rincon.
“Set waves. Double overhead. Not a
drop of wind. Seventy-five degrees.
Pumping. Guys were getting
barreled.” He pauses to ponder the
1999 sport’s particular appeal to him as
someone in recovery and obsessed
with continuity. “You’re always
chasing a high that you’re probably
not going to ever repeat,” he says.
“Conditions change, so no waves
2012 ever just stay the same. Nothing can
ever stay the same. Nothing.”
MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 101
 THE
MEN’S HEALTH

GURUS
GUIDE TO

Muscle. Fat loss. Enlightenment. Whatever you’re

searching for, there’s a person with an arsenal of hashtags
and inspirational quotes, plus a sprinkle of science, to
help you find it. But how much can you really trust them?
ILLUSTRATION BY EDDIE GUY

it did, having sex was way better than

WHAT ARE WE EVEN LOOKING FOR? having big biceps. I still stand by that.
I soon found myself uncomfortably
Confessions of a guru junkie. straddling two worlds—those of the
seeker and the sought-after. Just like
BY NATE GREEN
my idols, I had become a fitness guru.
Guru. Everyone I know—including
I remember when I found the bodybuilding website Testosterone me—hates that word. And yet there’s
Nation. I was a 17-year-old skinny kid with shitty grades and no idea what truth to it. When you witness the influ-
I wanted to do with my life. I devoured every article from every fitness ence of some bloggers and podcasters,
expert on the site. They told me to train hard, eat big, and try to make it can feel like a kind of religion.
something of myself. I got to work. Call it the Church of Self-Improvement.
That was 16 years ago. In that time, I gained 30 pounds of muscle, became We are all disciples and we worship daily:
a personal trainer, started a popular blog, and scored a book deal to write a two-hour podcasts, YouTube videos,
workout guide called Built for Show. I began receiving thousands of emails Instagram stories. What are we looking
from men around the world asking for my advice. for? Salvation, of course. But we’re also
One was from a guy who wanted to know if having sex with his girlfriend looking for meaning. We know we’re
would reduce his testosterone levels and wreck his ability to gain muscle. going to die, and, dammit, we want to live
I told him no, it wouldn’t—I’d Googled research that said as much. Even if our #bestlife before we do.

MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 103

 So we wake up early, put butter
in our coffee, meditate, do burpees,
and dream of starting a travel blog
while drinking ayahuasca and
THE GALLERY OF GURUS
living in a refurbished van in Peru.
Or whatever.
We live in a time when anyone
can get into the business of giving
advice. Following that advice could
change your life. That’s obvious.
What’s not so obvious is who’s
worth listening to. There are a lot of
people doing good work out there.
But there are also a lot of frauds. TIM ROBB MARK JOSEPH
I don’t much give straight-up FERRISS WOLF SISSON MERCOLA, D.O.
advice anymore. It’s presumptu- Known as: Early Known as: Former Known as: Triath- Known as: Osteo-
ous, and we’re different people with investor, author, research biochem- lete, the Google of pathic physician,
different histories. I can’t tell you self-experimenter. ist, author. ancestral health. natural-health
expert, debunker.
what to do. But I can share my expe- The reach: 300 The reach: Two The reach:
rience. And that’s this: The people million downloads NYT best sellers, 600,000 monthly The reach:
I’ve found who are worth listening of his podcast, The including The visitors to his blog, 25 million monthly
to are the ones who’ve had success Tim Ferriss Show; Paleo Solution. Mark’s Daily Apple page views
five New York Times (self-reported). (self-reported).
in some part of their life but who
best sellers. The message:
don’t perpetuate the idea that every Take your cue from The message: Fol- The message:
part of their life is amazing. The message: evolutionary biol- low the guidance of Take on Big Pharma
Yes, the gurus can help us Adopt the strategies ogy and anthro- this ripped 65-year- and target the
change our lives. Sometimes we of the world’s most pology and eat old to return your causes rather than
successful people and move the way health to its genetic the symptoms
simply need a shot of inspiration and maximize your humans were sup- roots (by buying his of ailments, often
and someone to show us the path. time, output, fit- posed to. products). via alternative
But we also need to be willing to ness, life. medicine.
pause the podcast and start walk- The solid advice: The solid advice:
ing on our own. The solid advice: Emphasize unpro- Along with Wolf, The solid advice:
“What we fear cessed foods in your Sisson helped pop- He’s been ahead
doing most is usu- diet and get lots of ularize paleo eating of the medical
ally what we most varied exercise. plans, which reject community in tout-
need to do.” processed any- ing the benefits
The suspect: His thing, especially of nutrients like
The suspect: Fer- claim that the paleo fast food and soda. omega-3’s and

YOU CAN GURU, TOO! riss has touted met-

formin for glucose
control. According
diet is the best
way to be healthy
remains scientifi-
The suspect:
He’s selling paleo
CoQ10.

The suspect: Dr.

Phillip Faraone/Getty Images (Ferriss), Johnstone Studios (Wolf), courtesy Mark Sisson (Sisson), Taylor Castle (Mercola)
to Dr. Katz, met- cally unfounded, in a box, including Mercola has also
Just about anybody can do it. formin is effective says Dr. Katz. ingredients like been ordered by
Here’s how: for treating diabe- coconut oil, despite the FDA to cease
tes, but it has no Aimed at: limited evidence of making false claims
❑ 1) Find a podcast studio. Or at benefit in healthy Protein-forward- its long-term health regarding his own
least set up a microphone in people and can diet junkies. benefits, says Dr. products, sold on
your bathroom. injure the kidneys. Katz. his website.
❑ 2) Spout platitudes and speak in
Instagram quotes, like “We’re all Aimed at: Those Aimed at: Protein- Aimed at: Health-
human beings; we’re all just trying looking for an extra forward-diet junk- conscious conspir-
to figure it out” and “Find something hour in the day. ies who can’t cook. acy theorists.
you love and chase it,“ from the
podcast Live Life Better with Scott
Eastwood (son of Clint).
❑ 3) Get an Instagram following. Post
photos of yourself, in your glory, THE PAYOFF EQUATION
working out, hawking products. Is following a guru’s advice worth it?

( )+
❑ 4) Take ideas from studied-only- Do the math to find out!
TIME SPENT

- =
in-animals science and posit their
application to listeners. LISTENING OR PSYCHIC
READING ACTUAL MONEY WORTHINESS
❑ 5) Have other gurus, experts, PHYSICAL ENERGY
“experts,” and authors on the show, SPENT SCORE
whether highly qualified medical PERCEIVED BENEFITS EXPENDED
researchers or self-appointed BENEFITS
sex-and-relationship authorities.

104 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH

 JOSH AXE, JOE DEEPAK GWYNETH AUBREY LEWIS
D.N.M., D.C., C.N.S. ROGAN CHOPRA, M.D. PALTROW MARCUS HOWES
Known as: Doctor Known as: Come- Known as: Physi- Known as: Actress, Known as: CEO Known as: Pod-
of natural medicine, dian, UFC commen- cian, integrative- entrepreneur, and founder of caster, author,
clinical nutritionist, tator, podcaster. medicine expert. founder of Goop. Onnit, psychedelic- mentor, former
health nut. medicine advocate. pro athlete.
The reach: 30 The reach: 3.28 The reach: 2.4
The reach: 1.4 million+ monthly million Twitter fol- million visitors The reach: 10 mil- The reach: 80 mil-
Courtesy Josh Axe (Axe), Michael Stewart/WireImage (Rogan), Sean Zanni/Patrick McMullan/Getty Images (Chopra), Ian Gavan/Getty Images (Paltrow), courtesy Onnit (Marcus), Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images (Howes)

million subscribers downloads of his lowers; more than per month to lion+ podcast down- lion podcast down-
to a YouTube chan- podcast, The Joe 85 books authored Goop.com (valued loads (self-reported); loads (self-reported).
nel featuring Dr. Rogan Experience. or coauthored. at $250 million). the NYT best seller
Chelsea, his wife; Own the Day, Own The message: If
authored the best The message: The message: The The message: Let Your Life. a small-town boy
seller Eat Dirt. Listen to mind- OG of alternative a beautiful movie can make it big and
expanding con- medicine and the star share her unbi- The message: achieve his dreams,
The message: versations with new age fuses mind ased travel, shop- With the right then so can you.
Whole foods and guests like climber and body, Vedic ping, and health training and sup- Listen to inspiring
natural remedies, Alex Honnold and a science and West- advice while giving plements, a regu- authors, athletes,
like essential oils stoned Elon Musk, ern medicine, to a platform to her lar person can do and influencers to
and herbs, can covering topics reduce stress and own cadre of men- everything better. start believing in
make you healthier from supplements improve diet. tors and experts. yourself, champ.
and happier. to space-time. The solid advice:
The solid advice: The solid advice: The Onnit Gym is a The solid advice:
The solid advice: The solid advice: Dr. Chopra was an High-quality aroma- leader in functional The actionable
Natural before “Be nice to people. early proponent of therapy products training, emphasiz- motivational talk
artificial. Organic And do what you mindfulness as a and sex toys are ing fun, safe ways will get you taking
before modified. really want to do in salve for everything self-care, too. to build muscle and on new goals.
this life.” from stress to sleep boost mobility.
The suspect: Dr. to eating. The suspect: The The suspect:
Katz notes that Axe The suspect: site recently settled The suspect: Tak- Sometimes he’ll
is perhaps overly reli- Rogan doesn’t The suspect: Sug- a consumer lawsuit ing pills to be your host questionable
ant on supplements sell his own line of gesting that some over the veracity of “best” is a worrisome health and dietary
and trendy foods supplements, but of the supplements health claims about concept, according authorities, includ-
like broth. “There’s he’s endorsed ones associated with him its vaginal jade to Dr. Katz. Many ing Goop’s Steven
no evidence of the from other guru can help with mind- eggs. formulations offer Gundry, M.D., whose
health benefits of types, like Aubrey fulness “hints at an vague promises like claims about lectin
bone broth,” he says. Marcus (see right). effort to ‘cash in,’ ” Aimed at: Those “boost athletic per- have been derided.
says Dr. Katz. with disposable formance.”
Aimed at: The Aimed at: Enlight- income looking to Aimed at: Those
family that ketos ened sports-radio Aimed at: The buy a gift for a girl- Aimed at: Fitness who wish Tony
together. listeners. spiritually minded. friend. buffs with a new- Robbins were more
Book readers. age bent. affable.

THE MOST BATS#%T THINGS SAID ON THE JOE ROGAN EXPERIENCE PODCAST
“You can eat human meat—it doesn’t do anything. It’s human brains that is the real issue.” “Stilettos . . . I see
women walking in them, and this is so crazy that this is a choice. I can’t imagine wearing something that
would physically compromise me to the point where I literally can’t run away.” “There’s an equal number of
things that people would say that are like the harmonica. Like you should be able to do slam poetry. . . . I can feed
myself; I can house myself. I can do slam poetry.” “I struggle on the toilet. I’m not judgmental. I eat a lot, man.
I take some horrific shits.” “I’ve shaved my butt. . . . I just had this conversation about this with someone the
other day. . . . It changes the sound of your farts; they become more ducklike.” “ ‘I want you to spank me because
I want you to spank me.’ ‘I don’t want you to spank me because you want to spank me.’ Big difference.”

MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 105

 BIOHACKER
DAVE ASPREY
BUILT HIS
MULTIMILLION-
DOLLAR BRAND
BULLETPROOF
AROUND HIS
OWN NOBLE
QUEST TO
LIVE TO 180.

BUT WHAT IF
IT’S ALL JUST
SMOKE AND
SUNGLASSES?

106 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH

BY RACHEL MONROE
PHOTOGRAPHS BY IAN ALLEN

THE
GURU’S
DILEMMA
T
TEN DAYS BEFORE I met him at his home in
British Columbia, Dave Asprey went to a clinic
in Park City, Utah, where a surgeon harvested
half a liter of bone marrow from his hips,
filtered out the stem cells, and injected them
into every joint in his body. He then threaded
a cannula along Asprey’s spinal column and
injected stem cells inside his spinal cord and
into his cerebral fluid. “And then they did all
the cosmetic stuff,” Asprey told me. “Hey, I’m
unconscious, you’ve got extra stem cells—put
’e m eve r y wh e re!” Eve r y whe re m e a nin g h i s
s c alp, to m a ke h i s h air m ore a b u n d a nt a n d
lu st rou s; h i s fa c e, to s m o ot h o u t wrin kle s;
a n d h i s “m ale o rg a n s,” fo r—we ll, I’ll le ave
t h at pa r t u p to you r im a g in atio n .
According to Asprey, what he’d just endured was “the most extensive stem-
cell treatment that’s ever been done on a person at one time.” All told, it was an
expensive and invasive procedure, which is particularly striking considering
that there’s nothing wrong with him. Nothing wrong, that is, other than regu-
lar old human aging, which is not part of Asprey’s plan. As he’s fond of saying,
he has no interest in being average. Asprey, who is 45, has made the widely
publicized claim that he expects to live to 180. To that end, he plans to get his
own stem cells injected into him every six months, take 100 supplements a
day, follow a strict diet, bathe in infrared light, hang out in a hyperbaric oxy-
gen chamber, and wear goofy yellow-lensed glasses every time he gets on an
airplane. So far, Asprey says he’s spent at least a million dollars hacking his
own biology, and making it to 2153 will certainly take several million more.
Currently, Asprey is best known as the founder of Bulletproof Coffee; he’s
the reason everyone started slipping a pat of butter into their coffee a few
years back. At least one of the Kardashians is a fan, and Jimmy Fallon has
extolled the virtues of the high-fat beverage on The Tonight Show: “It’s the
most delicious thing ever. But it’s actually good for you. It’s good for your
brain.” Asprey estimates that people have drunk more than 150 million cups
of the stuff since he first posted the recipe online in 2009. Various bottled
versions are now the three highest-selling ready-to-drink coffees at Whole
Foods. But while the coffee is what put Asprey on the map, his aspirations are
much bigger than that—and having the longest human life span ever record-
ed is just one part of his plan.
Asprey has parlayed the success of the coffee into one of the most covet-
ed roles in 21st-century America: He has become a lifestyle guru. Over the
past decade, he’s published five books on subjects ranging from fertility to
“how to kick more ass at life,” including Game Changers, which came out in
December. His podcast, Bulletproof Radio, has been downloaded more than
75 million times. He tweets inspirational messages, tagged #BeBulletproof,
to his 332,000 Twitter followers. Asprey happily shares his opinion on how
often men should ejaculate (once a week, but have sex more often) and how
108 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH
long they should sleep (six hours is good;
eight hours is too much). He thinks you
should go to Burning Man (because it’ll
activate your creativity) and stop eating
kale (because it contains trace amounts of
oxalic acid). This eclectic advice all falls
under the general umbrella of biohacking,
which Asprey defines as the use of “science,
biology, and self-experimentation to take
control of and upgrade your body, your
mind and your life,” or “the art and science
of becoming superhuman.”
At a period of American history when
mistrust of institutions seems endemic,
Asprey is a man suited to his times. He has
no medical degree or nutritional training.
Depending on whom you ask, this makes
him either a visionary willing to explore
bold new frontiers or a huckster who over-
states the results of mouse studies. Where
the gurus of the 1960s promised access
to arcane spiritual secrets, Asprey cites
research and sells supplements. But the
underlying appeal is not so different: Your
life needs to transform, and this guy is the
one who can tell you how to do it.
A
+ + + + + + + + +
A FEW YEARS AGO, Asprey and his wife, a physician
he met at an antiaging conference, concluded that the
Bay Area wasn’t the best place to raise kids, so they
relocated to Canada, where they live in bucolic splen-
dor (and where Asprey can take a short flight to the
Bulletproof offices in Seattle). The property features
an extensive vegetable garden, a small flock of sheep,
and two charming pigs—Brussel Snout and Sven—
whom I tried not to get too attached to, seeing as they
were due to be butchered in the near future.
His home office, which he’s nicknamed Alpha Labs,
features a number of gadgets and gizmos that he uses
regularly: a cryotherapy chamber, a bed of infrared
lights, a platform that vibrates 30 times per second, an
atmospheric cell trainer that virtually transports you
from the top of Mount Everest back to sea level within
a few minutes. Alpha Labs also has high-tech versions
of exercise machines, including a recumbent device
fitted with cooling compression cuffs that leads you
through a high-intensity interval circuit and promises
to deliver two and a half hours of exercise in 21 min-
utes. In person, Asprey is a dimpled, affable guy with
an undercurrent of intensity, like a dad you might
meet at a PTA meeting who’d casually mention that
he runs ultramarathons. (Not that Asprey would run
an ultramarathon; it’s an inefficient use of time. Plus,
as one of his podcast episodes warns, “Aerobic Exer-
cise May Be Destroying Your Body.”) He speaks with
an unflappable confidence born of years of self-study.
 To hear him tell it, he’s been adjacent to many major developments of
the Internet era. In college, he was “the first guy to sell anything over the
Internet,” he told me. (It was a T-shirt that said CA FFEINE IS M Y DRUG OF
CHOICE, which he listed for sale over Usenet; buyers faxed him checks.) He
says he “taught working engineers how to build the Internet” via a teaching
job at the University of California-Santa Cruz’s Silicon Valley extension. He
worked for the company that hosted Google’s first server. He did ayahuasca
“20-something years ago, before it was cool.” (It was actually in 2003.)
At the same time, Asprey didn’t feel like his best self. Over the years, he’d
been variously diagnosed or self-diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome,
attention-deficit disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, oppositional
defiant disorder, arthritis, fibromyalgia, Hashimoto’s disease, chronic Lyme
disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, and chronic strep throat. At his heaviest,
in college, he says he weighed 300 pounds.
At first, Asprey followed the standard medical advice for losing weight—
restrict calories, exercise—but even when he was working out for 90 minutes
and eating 1,500 to 1,800 calories a day, he wasn’t dropping pounds. “I got
healthier, I was probably stronger, I could max out every machine but two at
the gym,” he said. “But I still weighed the same amount.” Doctors were no help;
they took one look at him and assumed he was sneaking Snickers bars.
Asprey comes from a family of experimenters—his grandmother was
a nuclear engineer who worked at Los Alamos. “There seems to be strange
inventor genes on that side of the family,” he said. “The other side’s from Ros-
well. So I’ve got aliens and radiation. That explains a lot of it.” Fed up with
his conventional options, Asprey decided to experiment on himself. He tried
out a low-carb diet he’d read about in a bodybuilding magazine and lost 50
pounds. “That taught me that what I eat matters more than how much I exer-
cise,” he said. “And from there I started learning.” He ordered $1,200 worth
of smart drugs from Europe, which pepped him up just as he had hoped they
would. He promised himself that he would learn more about these miracle
medications: “Every night after I finish work, I’m going to go home and just
read about this stuff and study. I’m going to troubleshoot this myself, because
I am not getting help from the medical establishment. And I did that for four
years. Every night, I would just study.”
Eventually, Asprey’s roving curiosity about how to optimize his body and
mind led him to the Silicon Valley Health Institute, a collection of Bay Area
residents who met to discuss health, nutrition, and longevity. By the time
Asprey came on the scene, most members were decades older than him, but
they found common ground nonetheless.
Courtesy of Upgrade Labs
As Asprey continued to experiment on his body, downing a daily cock-
tail of supplements bolstered by modafinil (a so-called smart drug for
“wakefulness” that was originally developed to address narcolepsy) and
testosterone, he was also experimenting on his mind. He took personal-de-
velopment workshops, explored his traumatic birth (his umbilical cord had
Bulletproof Coffee (left) in Santa Monica is the brick-and-
mortar extension of Asprey’s butter-coffee empire. Next
door to the cafe is Bulletproof Labs (center and right), what the
company calls “the world’s first human upgrade center,” where
you can test-drive the very biohacking technology Asprey has
installed in his own home.
been wrapped around his neck), and used an EEG
machine to train his brain to be less reactive.
In the mid-2000s, Asprey was still working for var-
ious tech companies; in his spare time, he began put-
ting some of the information from the health institute
online. Many of Asprey’s preoccupations—biofeed-
back, the dangers of fluoride in drinking water—were
familiar, fringy New Age ideas. His genius was adapt-
ing them for a tech-obsessed world.
After feeling like an outsider for much of his life,
Asprey was thrilled to discover that the rest of the
world was beginning to catch up with him. In the
hypercompetitive environment of Silicon Valley,
people were looking for whatever edge they could get.
Tech executives began touting the benefits of medi-
tating: It improved productivity! It boosted creative
problem solving! Psychedelics and pills were no lon-
ger the domain of hippie losers. Now start-up guys
were flying shamans in from Peru on private jets for
personal ayahuasca ceremonies. Suddenly everyone
was talking about nootropics and microdosing. Jeff
Bezos got swole. Mark Zuckerberg started training
for a triathlon. Everyone was desperate to upgrade.
Biohacking was the perfect ethos for the moment.
It took Silicon Valley’s obsessive preoccupation with
productivity and disruptive technology and added a
dash of L. A. in the form of herbal supplements, vague
spirituality, and self-help. Finally the time was ripe
for Asprey, a guy who had been tweaking his own
internal systems for years; who knew how to help you
get a better return on your meditation investment;
who claimed he could feel when his mitochondria
were underperforming; who promised strategies for
turning humans into superhumans.
Bulletproof initially launched as a food and bev-
erage company, selling coffee, collagen, and supple-
ments. Asprey also opened a flagship coffee shop in
MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 109

Santa Monica where the baristas are called coffee hackers. The products took
off, and Bulletproof was soon doing a brisk online business. Even so, Asprey
never expected to get venture-capital funding—“we’re in too many catego-
ries, we’re not a fit”—but it turned out that the VCs disagreed. “We think
lifestyle brands are important,” Asprey said his eventual funder told him.
In 2015, Bulletproof got $9 million in initial funding from Trinity Ventures,
an early investor in Starbucks and Jamba Juice. Another $43 million from
other investors followed in the next few years. Asprey’s biohacking empire
was on its way to greatness.
B
+ + + + + + + + +
BEYOND HIS OWN goal of life extension, Asprey speaks of biohacking as
empowerment. As wearable devices become increasingly sophisticated,
even those of us who aren’t wealthy and who aren’t scientists have the abil-
ity to turn our bodies’ confusing signals into clean, personalized data.
Asprey dreams of a world where, instead of deferring to medical experts
and profit-driven drug companies, we become experts in our own systems
and experiment on them at will.
Unsurprisingly, this has made Asprey suspicious of regulation. “Regula-
tion got us the food pyramid that causes heart disease, cancer, and diabetes
in unprecedented numbers of people,” he told me. “It got us an incredibly
slow-to-innovate medical system that’s now being disrupted. It is antihuman
to tell someone that they do not have the choice to put whatever they want into
their bodies. It’s a basic human freedom. I think it’s unethical that I need to
110 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH
Dave Asprey estimates he’s spent about $700,000
on Alpha Labs, his home “gym,” which includes an
atmospheric cell trainer.
spend $150 and an hour of my life to get a permission
slip to take a substance. There is no, no reason for that.”
(Asprey’s wife disagrees.)
All this self-experimentation is not without risk.
Asprey once took a nap surrounded by ice packs,
since cold exposure has been said to correlate with
increased resilience; he woke up with first-degree
burns over 15 percent of his body. Another time, he
zapped himself with infrared light to test the assump-
tion that it would help him learn faster; instead, his
speech was garbled for hours. Some of Asprey’s more
extreme interventions, such as the stem cells he gets
injected into his brain, are not yet supported by stud-
ies in healthy humans. Two weeks after my visit, some
of the most widely celebrated evidence of stem cells’
effectiveness in treating heart failure turned out to be
a large-scale fraud.
Most of Asprey’s acolytes aren’t likely to take things
as far as he does, but even low-key biohacking has poten-
tial problems. The Bulletproof Diet advises getting
50 to 70 percent of your calories from fats, compared
with the 20 to 35 percent that the USDA recommends.
While nutritionists have begun to back away from the
1970s-era assertion that saturated fats are harmful to
the heart, that doesn’t mean that going to the opposite
extreme is necessarily a good idea. For every online
anecdote about a devotee who lost 50 pounds on the
Bulletproof Diet, there seems to be someone else who
received alarming results on their lipid panels after
they began putting two tablespoons of butter in their
coffee every morning. In any case, there’s a lack of
large-scale, long-term research in humans to back up
Asprey’s more grandiose claims about his diet.
Fad diets tend to succeed based on black-and-white,
anxiety-stoking pronouncements, and Asprey’s is no
different: He asserts, for example, that olive oil is a
suspect food, that kale can be toxic, that legumes are
inflammatory, that gluten should be avoided by every-
one, not just those with celiac disease—ideas that are
disputed by mainstream dietitians. “This follows the
same pattern as every fad diet. They all say the same
thing: oversimplifying the situation, promising a
life-changing experience, making unrealistic weight-
loss claims,” says Abby Langer, a registered dietitian
based in Toronto. “Part of the appeal is psychologi-
cal. People like to feel like they belong to a group with
access to secret knowledge.”
If you follow Asprey’s advice to a T, you’ll be spend-
ing a hefty amount on dietary supplements with names
like NeuroMaster and Unfair Advantage. The evidence
for their ability to “provide brain-enhancing energy”
or make you “feel cognitively sharper” is not as clear-
cut or definitive as Asprey makes it sound. (Some also
have the unfortunate side effect of causing what he
 Whether the science is robust or
reproducible matters less than
refers to as “disaster pants.”) The nootropic
smart drugs that Asprey touts aren’t prob- whether a product delivers results.
lem-free, either; some users report jitteri-
ness, difficulty sleeping, and addiction issues.
“Cognitive enhancement is most likely a zero-
“The bottom line,” he says, “is
sum game,” says P. Murali Doraiswamy, M.D.,
a brain scientist and physician at Duke Uni- if the risk-reward ratio is pretty
versity Health System and a member of Men’s
Health’s advisory board. “When you enhance good, why not try it?”
certain cognitive functions, it usually comes
at the expense of others.”
Langer points out that Asprey’s lack of
official credentials benefits him in two ways.
“There’s a huge distrust of mainstream medicine now, so not being a doctor
probably actually does him favors,” she says. “Also, it’s hard to make false
claims when you have a licensing body overseeing you. If I said some of these
things, I’d be investigated.” To critics like Langer, Asprey points to his track
record: “Whether or not you have a piece of paper isn’t a great indication of
whether you’ll help hundreds of thousands of people.” Whether the science is
robust or reproducible matters less than whether any given product or strat-
egy delivers results. “The bottom line,” he says, “is if the risk-reward ratio is
pretty good and you want to be in control of your own biology, why not try it?”
Asprey’s enthusiasm can make it difficult to determine where his desire
to educate ends and the sales pitch begins. In his books, podcasts, and
blog posts, he is a proponent of several companies he either owns or has
a stake in: the one that sells yellow-tinted glasses that protect you from
“junk light”; the one that sells stickers you put over your devices’ lights;
the one that sells five-day, $15,000 brain-training retreats that promise
to raise your IQ and put your mind in the same state as that of a Zen monk
who’s been meditating for 40 years. He insists that most coffee beans are
tainted with toxic mold—a claim that even Joe Rogan rolls his eyes at—and
also happens to sell mold-free coffee beans that cost $20 a pound. It’s not
always easy to parse which of the many biohacks Asprey touts are scammy
or overstated, which are plain old common sense, and which are poised to
become the hot new thing.
Back in my hotel room that evening, I sipped on a Bulletproof Fatwater and
tried to determine whether my mitochondria felt any perkier. It was hard to
say. Here’s the thing: A lot of what Asprey says makes sense. So many of us
have lifestyles that could use a little hacking. We’re tethered to our electron-
ics, anxious and overworked and not sleeping enough; we self-soothe with the
very processed foods that are likely to end up making us feel worse. If we’re
fortunate enough to have insurance, we’re treated by a health-care system
that often acts as though it doesn’t have our best interests at heart.
It’s not so wild to feel that something is wrong with the way we’ve been
incentivized to live our lives. At the same time, we’re unhelpfully inundated
with information about what that wrong might be. The Internet is chock-full
of studies and articles and dubious Facebook posts: Did you hear that aero-
bic exercise is actually bad for you? Did you hear that kale has arsenic in it?
Did you hear that putting collagen in your coffee will make your hair glossy?
The process of sorting out what’s bullshit from what’s legitimate is, frankly,
exhausting. If you opt into the current trend—intermittent fasting or krill oil
or cryo—are you a sucker? If you opt out, will you be left behind, foggy brained
and unvital, as everyone else goes on to conquer the world?
I’ve felt it myself, the desperate desire to have someone just tell me what to
do. Doctors hem and haw; they speak in hedged probabilities and avoid mak-
ing bold claims. Asprey, in contrast, is happy to tell me that there are “abso-
lutely” several ways to reverse Alzheimer’s, that he can more than double the
average life span, and that we are all able take control of our own biology and
make our bodies do exactly what we want them to.
I
+ + + + + + + + +
I N 2 0 1 7, Asprey opened Bulletproof Labs (now
expanding as Upgrade Labs), a gymlike facility in San-
ta Monica where you can play around with his favorite
biohacking tools. I went a day after meeting Asprey.
I got cryogenically frozen for two minutes. I climbed
inside a float tank that was supposed to help me med-
itate faster through a combo of high-frequency sound
waves and strobing lights, but that mostly just stressed
me out. I was zapped with electromagnetic pulses by a
PEMF machine that was supposed to activate my cell
regeneration, improve my circulation, promote bone
healing, and relieve the symptoms of depression.
The coffee shop next door to Bulletproof Labs serves
only Bulletproof-approved food and drink, and there’s
a vibrational platform you can stand on while you wait
for the grass-fed butter to get mixed into your coffee. A
sign on the wall reads WAKE UP. CRUSH IT. REPEAT.
I spoke to a bald, affable man there who assured me
that he’d been into biohacking since the late 1990s,
way before Asprey made it trendy. He went to the con-
ferences, read the research papers, swallowed the
supplements. So when he was diagnosed with stage
IV prostate cancer in 2016, he developed a plan that
incorporated both conventional and alternative treat-
ments. He went into remission, started a website, and
began to be featured on blogs and podcasts: “How Eric
Remensperger Cured His Own Cancer.”He started
writing a book; maybe he, too, could be a lifestyle guru.
But then a few months ago, the cancer came back—
in his bladder this time. He had a new treatment pro-
tocol and was feeling optimistic. Still, it had been a
humbling journey. Sometimes, no matter how hard
you try, your biology won’t behave. Sometimes the
superhumans turn out to be humans, too.
I spoke to Asprey one last time, a few days after his
forty-fifth birthday. He was choosing to look at aging
in the most positive way possible. “I think of it as, I’m
now 25 percent of the way to my minimum goal [of liv-
ing to 180],” he said. “So I’m officially a young adult. Is
living a long time a kind of superpower? Yes. Although
I might die trying.”
RACHEL MONROE is a writer based in Marfa, Texas. Her
book Savage Appetites will be published later this year.
MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 111
 KETO
NATION
How b o d y b u i l d e r s , b i o h a c ke r s ,
s c i e n t i s t s , n u t r i t i o n n e r d s , a n d h u c ks t e r s
helped an extreme die t g o ma i n s t r e am.
BY MICHAEL EASTER PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE VOORHES

GREYSON LOPEZ’S friend was
about to be kicked out of the military for
being too chubby. It was late 2017, and
Lopez noticed his friend started losing
weight—fast. “He’d lost 20 pounds in 20
days,” says Lopez, 23, who works in IT for
the Navy. “So I asked, ‘How’d you do it?’ ”
Searching for a lose-it-quick plan, the
rapidly becoming-less-fat guy explained,
he’d gone to Reddit, where he glommed on to
a thread on the “ketogenic diet.” People in
the 870,000-strong /r/keto subreddit post-
ed about losing 52 pounds in as many days,
not feeling hungry, and even being able to
focus better. However, the diet was, to put
it mildly, contrarian in the same way you
Next, you’re limited to 100 grams a day,
at most, of protein, that muscle-building
nutrient embraced by nearly every other
diet. What’s left? Fat. Lots of it: marbled
steak, oily fish, yolky eggs, and streaky
bacon. Top it all with butter, olive oil, and
lard. A classic keto diet consists of 90
percent of calories from fat, 6 percent from
protein, and 4 percent from carbs. The diet
is, indeed, a giant F-U to the food pyramid.
But Lopez’s friend said the crazy diet
was science-based: The absence of carbs
and abundance of fat pushes your body
into a biological state called ketosis,
during which you burn fat instead of
glucose. Lopez—who was five foot nine,
a professor of physiology at the University
of South Florida.
“It was interesting to hear a scientist
talk about what he eats and why,” says
Lopez. D’Agostino is not a salesman, and
he did not create the diet. Which raises the
question: Who did? That’s when things get
weird, involving a two-time felon, medical
misconduct, and multiple deaths. But
Lopez didn’t know about keto’s history. He
just wanted to find out if the hype could be
real. “I threw out all my carb-heavy foods,
like ramen and Hot Pockets,” he says.
“Then I grabbed as much bacon, grass-fed
butter, and steak as I could find.”

WHAT MAKES A fad diet tip? That’s

might say American politics is “divided.”
First, you eat very limited carbs.
Low-carb isn’t radical, but ketogenic is
ultralow: less than 50 grams a day. (The
average American hits that at breakfast.)
Fruit is mostly a no, and you strictly cap
vegetables. Yes, vegetables.
200 pounds, and “a bit portly”—was
intrigued. His online digging led to the
Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Rogan, a
college dropout and self-described “silly
bitch,” unpacks complex topics with no
pretense. He was interviewing the top
keto researcher, Dom D’Agostino, Ph.D.,
a question Adrienne Rose Bitar, Ph.D., a
nutrition historian at Cornell University,
has spent her career answering. “Most
diets start with some unhappiness we
have with our lives and bodies,” she says.

112 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH

MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 113
Then you need a simple, counterintuitive
message that resonates at the right time
and place and blames a single culprit for
your dissatisfaction. Low-fat diet: Fat is
bad; don’t eat fat. Paleo: Processed foods
are bad; eat only preindustrial foods like
a caveman. With keto, you just do what
your doctor (and mom) told you not to: Eat
fat and skip the veggies. While this partly
explains keto’s rise, it overlooks a critical
aspect. The keto diet, it turns out, wasn’t
engineered for weight loss.
Fasting has been used as a treatment for
epilepsy since 500 B.C. Your body usually
runs on sugars harvested from the carbs
you eat. You store around 2,000 calories’
worth of sugars in your liver and muscles.
Your body burns through that in about
48 hours, which is when an evolutionary
survival mechanism kicks in. Your body
switches to its stored fat, some of which
is converted to a fuel called ketones.
This state is called ketosis (defined as
registering 0.5 to 5 millimoles of ketones
per liter of blood). In the early 1920s,
Mayo Clinic doctor Russell Wilder, M.D.,
started tinkering with a fat-centric diet
that mimicked the effects of fasting by
depleting the body of sugar. He tested his
“ketogenic” diet on people with epilepsy,
and ever since, it’s been an effective
treatment for seizures.
Weight loss entered the fold in 1972,
when Robert Atkins, M.D., published
his first diet book. The first weeks of his
eponymous diet centered on eating fat
and very little carbs to induce ketosis, a
“happy state . . . [in which] your fat is being
burned off with maximum efficiency and
minimum deprivation.” That was how
keto blipped on the radar of Stephen
Phinney, Ph.D., an MIT–trained nutri-
tional biochemist, who began researching
this way of eating for endurance sports.
Then, in 1976, a ketosis-leveraging
method called the Last Chance Diet
took off. Its rule: You drink a fat- and
protein-rich concoction until you lose
your desired amount of weight. The diet’s
creator, osteopath Robert Linn, D.O., sold
$40 million worth of his elixir. But you
were also supposed to have a physician’s
supervision to ensure you were getting the
necessary vitamins and minerals, says
Phinney. Few people did. Robbed of miner-
als, your body can’t perform certain func-
tions, like sending electrical impulses to
your heart. As a result, the Last Chance
Diet contributed to the deaths of at least 60
people. The fallout included new regula-
114 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH
tions, a negligence lawsuit for Dr. Linn,
and Phinney and his research on ketosis
being banished to academic Siberia.
Still, Phinney forged on, conducting
studies that, for example, showed that
liquid ketogenic diets with adequate min-
erals don’t cause heart problems. In 1988,
Optifast emerged. Like the Last Chance
Diet, it was a liquid diet, but with sufficient
vitamins and minerals, plus a celebrity
endorser: Oprah Winfrey. “She did it for
four months,” says Phinney. “One day she
opened her show pulling a red wagon that
contained 67 pounds of pig and beef fat.
And she points to it and says, ‘That’s how
much weight I’ve lost.’ ” The Oprah Effect
was soon in full effect: Optifast immediately
received more than 200,000 inquiries,
and keto research surged in the early ’90s.
That’s when the diet was adopted
by the hard-core bodybuilding under-
ground. “I first heard about keto from
this guy named Dan Duchaine,” says
D’Agostino, as did a handful of other key
nutrition researchers interviewed for
this story. Duchaine, who passed away
in 2000, was a two-time felon credited
with promoting the steroid movement of
the ’90s and, yeah, reviving keto as a way
for bodybuilders to drop fat quickly for
competition. And with the rediscovery of
the Atkins diet in the 2000s, new gener-
ations of Americans warmed to the idea
that low-carb could be a safe diet tool.
THE SCALING UP of keto starts
with a study published in Science in
January 2013. Scientists at the Gladstone
Institute, a San Francisco–based research
center, found that powerful antioxidant
and anti-inflammatory genes are activat-
ed by beta-hydroxybutyrate, a ketone body
produced when you limit calories or carbs.
The keto diet could, as the press release put
it, “slow the aging process and may one day
allow scientists to better treat or prevent
age-related disease, including heart
disease, Alzheimer’s, and many forms
of cancer.” Nutritionally woke biohack-
T h e KETO DIET , i t t u r n s
out, wasn’t engineered
for weight loss.
ers—interested in keto for fat loss, athletic
performance, productivity, and longevity
in equal parts—began to self-experiment.
Among them was Tim Ferriss, the
Princeton-educated, Silicon Valley–
based podcaster and author of The 4-Hour
Work Week. He’d dabbled in keto—writ-
ing that it’s “incredible for simultaneous
fat loss and lean muscle gain, though
perhaps needlessly complicated for
non-athletes.” In 2013, he posted to his
blog a video of Peter Attia, M.D., a longevi-
ty expert. Dr. Attia talked about his battle
with metabolic syndrome and how keto
changed his body and health in ways exer-
cise and vegetables could not. He revealed
graph after graph plotting keto’s positive
impact on his triglycerides, cholesterol,
and blood glucose levels.
Ferriss’s one million monthly followers,
people obsessed with data and anything
that would give them a quantifiable edge,
tested out the keto eating plan. Traditional-
ly, diets were religious: halal, kosher, Lent.
“Many diets were actually plans to purify
the soul—and an impure soul meant you
could go to hell,” says Bitar. “But recently
diet has become a means to creating an
optimized self.” In place of dogma, you
have data. The number of people search-
ing for the keto diet immediately doubled
and continued to trend upward as other
lifestyle gurus, like Dave Asprey and Mark
Sisson, jumped aboard.
As keto’s popularity increases, the med-
ical establishment cautions that although
the diet is considered safe when done right,
the emphasis on saturated fat and the
lack of nutrients may affect heart health
over time. “We still don’t have enough
long-term evidence on what happens
to your body after ten years of ketosis,”
says Stephan Guyenet, Ph.D., a nutrition
researcher and author of The Hungry Brain.
Keto’s other benefits—reduced hunger
and increased focus—stoked the biohack-
er bros. “Keto does control hunger,” says
Guyenet. The driver, he says, may be the
extreme nature of the diet. “Carbs and fat
together stimulate dopamine release and
activate motivational circuits in the brain
that drive us to eat,” he says. Consider ice
cream: It’s only so appetizing because it’s
both sweet and fatty. As for the mental clar-
ity that many advocates swear by? Contro-
versial. Any effect is probably due to eating
less junk food, which can cause a blood-sug-
ar roller-coaster effect and impact mood,
says Nicole Avena, Ph.D., a neuroscientist
at Mount Sinai in New York City.
However, there are people for whom keto
does deliver unique benefits: type 2 diabet-
ics. Recent research by Phinney showed
that those who followed a ketogenic diet
and received diet counseling for a year sig-
nificantly decreased diabetes-medication
usage and lost an average of 30 pounds.
Thanks to the Internet telephone
effect, the claims for keto became
grander. Then something happened that
pushed the diet to the top of Google News.
On November 3, 2015, Ferriss aired a
podcast with D’Agostino. “That is the tip-
ping point of when the diet comes into the
vernacular and zeitgeist of the country,”
says Andy Galpin, Ph.D., a human-

KETO THRIVES IN the vortex

performance researcher at California
State University, Fullerton.
The episode’s title: “Dom D’Agostino on
Fasting, Ketosis, and the End of Cancer.”
Ferriss told the story of a friend with tes-
ticular cancer who would fast for three days,
entering into ketosis, before chemotherapy.
D’Agostino noted that anyone with cancer
needs medical supervision of their diet, but
also said: “If you put your physiology into a
state of fasting ketosis, that puts tremen-
dous metabolic stress on cancer cells that
are highly dependent for survival and
growth on high levels of glucose and insulin.
By subtracting them of those growth needs,
they can [die], and you could potentially
purge yourself of some precancerous cells.”
When asked about that quote, D’Agostino
says, “The episode’s title is unfortunate,”
but he points out that his research does
suggest keto can help slow the progression
of some cancers, though it speeds up others.
“It’s much more complicated than ‘starve
your cancer of sugar,’” he says. (Ferriss
declined to be interviewed for this article.)
The Ferriss podcast was a gateway to The
Joe Rogan Experience, and soon Rogan’s
30 million monthly listeners were hearing
from keto experts, including D’Agostino
in November 2017. As keto spread from
Silicon Valley to the rest of the country, the
emphasis shifted from self-optimization
to the concerns of the everyman still work-
ing 40-hour weeks: weight loss.
of social media. It’s highly viral because
it’s photogenic, offering swift results
and dramatic befores and afters on
Instagram. “Short-term carbohydrate
restriction can cause 5 to 10 pounds of
almost immediate water loss,” says Gal-
pin. And you have lots of data. Ketosis is a
moving target: Some people lapse into it
when they eat less than 20 grams of carbs
a day, while others can eat up to 50. So you
need to collect data and check your levels
with a device. And because a single carrot
can toss you out of ketosis, you need to
quantify each meal, weighing your food
and using a nutrition app to calculate the
exact ratio of fats to proteins to carbs.
Within a year of the Rogan podcast,
keto cookbooks flooded the market,
searches for keto hit 17 million per month,
and Orian Research estimated keto is a
$5 billion industry. A modified version,
with 80 percent fat, 15 percent protein,
and 5 percent carbs, has emerged as the
most popular, and keto cycling (doing one
week of keto per month) became a thing.
And because people on keto often lack
nutrients like vitamin C, magnesium,
and fiber, there’s been a supplement gold
rush for brands behind products that
make staying on the diet easier.
Which brings us back to Lopez and the
question: Does keto work for weight loss?
In the short term, yes. “But the weight-
loss effects are primarily driven by the
suppression of appetite, which in turn
regulates calorie intake,” says D’Agostino.
In other words: When you limit what you
eat, you...limit what you eat. Weight-loss
diets usually come down to eating less.
Consider the results of an influential
2018 study in JAMA. It found no signifi-
cant difference in the amount of weight
loss at one year between people who ate a
low-fat diet and those on a low-carb diet.
But the study’s results suggest an import-
ant factor about diets: individual prefer-
ence. Some people lost 65 pounds; others
on the same diet gained 20.
Greyson Lopez is now 12 months into
his keto journey. “I’m down 50 pounds,”
he says. His friend, meanwhile, bailed
after three months, when a cross-country
move made it hard to stay on keto. “The
thing is, you can’t cheat, or it knocks you
out of ketosis,” says Lopez. He prepares all
his meals at home. A go-to is steak topped
with butter and asparagus spears. Lopez
plans on sticking to the diet, even though
it makes him “that picky asshole” in social
settings. “I recently listened to this debate
on Rogan with D’Agostino and Layne
Norton [Ph.D.], an expert who was more
moderate,” he says. “And the conclusion
was that the best diet is whatever diet
works for you. Keto works for me.”

MEN’S HEALTH / January • February 2019 115

 THE (Above)
AVERAGE GUY
HOW DO YOU RATE?
THIS
MONTH

The Last Jedi), VirtuStudio/Getty Images (popcorn), Frank Masi/© Paramount Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection (Baywatch), Claire Folger/© Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection (Central Intelligence), Jasin Boland/© Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection (San
MOVIE TIME MEN’S FAVORITE

Dziggyfoto/Getty Images (man on couch), Scott Olson/Getty Images (Oscar), Laurie Sparham/© Walt Disney Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection (Beauty and the Beast), Jonathan Olley/© Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection (Star Wars:
MOVIES BY GENRE
9 P.M. (in descending order)

to
10 P.M.
When men most often
stream a movie on Hulu

Action
THE MOVIES
MOST OFTEN STREAMED
BY MEN ON HULU IN 2018
Baywatch
Transformers: The Last Knight
The Magnificent Seven

90%
Comedy

OF MOVIES WATCHED
BY MEN ARE SCREENED
44
The average age

Andreas), Frank Masi/© Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle), © Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection (Rampage)
of Best Actor
Thriller

AT HOME.
Oscar winners
10% of movies

$10,000,000
watched by men are
screened at theaters.

AVERAGE TIME MEN SPEND WATCHING TV AND MOVIES AT HOME

How much a movie may decrease Adventure

2.59 Hours per

3.79 Hours per
weekend day
in revenue when the male lead is
over the age of 42

OF ALL MOVIE-THEATER
50%
The highest-grossing
movie overall in 2017

Star Wars: AUDIENCES ARE MEN. Sci-fi

The Last Jedi
Men made up 60%
3.7 THAT’S WITHOUT BUTTER
MEN PREFER
of the audience.
Average number of

TO WATCH AN
movie screenings a
man attends per year

ACTION MOVIE
movie overall in 2017
OR A COMEDY
TWICE AS MUCH
the Beast
1,090 AS A ROMANCE
of the audience. Calories in a large 190 oz
tub of movie popcorn
OR A WESTERN.
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116 January • February 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH