01.2020 FEATURES
68 NO CHOICE BUT TO STAN
After graduating from Marvel B-character to leading hero on Disney’s new streaming series, Sebastian Stan is poised to take 2020 by storm. BY LAUREN LARSON
76 BUILD YOUR OWN IRON PARADISE The smartest minds in fitness are reshaping at-home exercise. Here’s what you need for your New Year’s home-gym revolution. BY BEN COURT
82 TRANSFORMATION 2020
Whether you’re Jamie Oliver, Timbaland, or just a regular guy, all lifealtering changes start with one thing: a first step. Find yours, then improve who you are. BY THE EDITORS OF MEN’S HEALTH PHOTOGRAPH BY CARTER SMITH
“MY BODY RIGHT NOW IS PROBABLY THE BEST IT’S EVER BEEN.” —SEBASTIAN STAN, p. 68
92 30 DAYS OF 30/10
Enough with what you can’t eat. The 30/10 thirty-day meal plan emphasizes protein and fiber and will help you drop weight and gain muscle. Plus, it’s delicious. BY PAUL KITA
98 NEW WAYS TO SEE THE DOCTOR
Good primary-care physicians are hard to find and harder to keep. These six alternatives will save you time, stress, and needless Google searching. BY JENNIFER WOLFF
104 AMERICAN HORROR STORY
In a small West Virginia town, the estimated cancer rate is 80 percent, doctors are alarmed, and residents are fearing which of them will get sick next. Here’s how they’re fighting back. BY AC SHILTON On the cover: Sebastian Stan photographed by Carter Smith exclusively for Men’s Health. Styling by Ted Stafford. Set design by Brian Crumley/Rob Strauss Studio. Grooming by Kumi Craig/the Wall Group. Production by Kaia Marie Balcos/Kranky Produktions. T-shirt by Alex Mill; pants by Dockers; watch by Tudor. This page: Tank by Todd Snyder + Champion; necklace by Title of Work.
MEN’S HEALTH
/ January • February 2020
1
GLORIOUS GAME-DAY GRUB
You can do so much better than bar wings. Roast. Sauce. Top. Eat. Smile.
LIFE
35 Curious about
“sober curious”? As alcohol loses its health halo, more people are reevaluating their drinking habits.
40 Give your game day wings. These wings.
42 Super Bowl–worthy supermarket salsas. Plus: grocery guac!
44 A six-pack of the best winter beers.
46 Upgrade your
wardrobe, save the planet. Win-win!
50 Thinning hair?
Excess sweating? Try these high-tech fixes.
52 Perfect the art of
special-occasion sex.
54 The one text you should never send after a date.
56 Ask Her Anything: What’s the rule on keeping a former partner’s sex toys?
MH WORLD
7 New year, new decade: These real guys made changes that transformed their lives for good. Follow their lead and reinvent your next several decades.
BODY
22 Plow through
“snacks” trend by breaking up your workouts into fiveminute segments.
24 The pros and cons
18 6 A.M.: A Fitbit VP
“detox” ingredients.
13 Bite into the fitness
hits the trails before hitting the office.
20 Kick-start 2020
with a total-body, backto-basics workout.
2
January • February 2020 / MEN’S HEALTH
winter with this coldweather running gear. of pre- and probiotics.
26 Demystifying
28 Download this
59 Special: The election year is (finally) upon us! Here’s how to get through it with your sanity intact, according to pundits, congressmen, therapists, and a former campaign manager (current title: dad). + 112 Above Average
Guy: Everything Coffee
app and . . . avoid wearing glasses?
32 This playlist will
power your entire day. PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTOPHER TESTANI
Food styling: Jamie Kimm. Prop styling: Megan Hedgpeth.
MIND
Knock out free radicals.
Need more antioxidants in your corner? P∂M Wonderful 100% Pomegranate Juice is here to help you fight the free radicals that cause oxidative stress, with 700mg of polyphenol antioxidants per 8oz serving. Drink it daily. Feel it forever.
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Richard Dorment
Jack Essig
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
SVP/PUBLISHING DIRECTOR
Jamie Prokell Creative Director
Chris Peel Executive Director, Hearst Men’s Group
EDITORIAL Ben Court, Mike Darling Executive Editors Jordyn Taylor, Spencer Dukoff Deputy Editors Marty Munson Health Director Paul Kita Senior Editor Ebenezer Samuel Fitness Director Brett Williams Associate Fitness Editor Melissa Matthews Health and Nutrition Writer Evan Romano Associate Editor Joshua St. Clair, Temi Adebowale Editorial Assistants
ADVERTISING SALES NEW YORK (212) 649-2000 Caryn Kesler Executive Director, Luxury Goods John Wattiker Executive Director, Fashion & Retail Doug Zimmerman Senior Grooming Director Kim Buonassisi Advertising Sales Director Joe Pennacchio Eastern Automotive Sales Director John Cipolla Integrated Account Director Brad Gettelfinger Sales Manager, Hearst Direct Media CHICAGO (312) 964-4900 Autumn Jenks, Justin Harris Midwest Sales Directors LOS ANGELES (310) 664-2801 Patti Lange Western Ad Director Anne Rethmeyer Group Sales Director, Auto SAN FRANCISCO (510) 508-9252 Andrew Kramer Kramer Media DETROIT (248) 614-6120 Marisa Stutz Detroit Automotive Director DALLAS (972) 533-8665 Patty Rudolph PR 4.0 Media
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Samantha Irwin General Manager, Hearst Men’s Group Karen Ferber Business Manager Paul Baumeister Research Director Alison Papalia Executive Director, Consumer Marketing Chris Hertwig Production Manager Aurelia Duke Finance Director Zoe Fritz, Toni Starrs, Jake Heffez, Annie Merrill, Erica Miller, Samantha Wolf, Olivia Zurawin Sales Assistants PUBLIC RELATIONS Nathan Christopher Public Relations Executive Director Lauren Doyle Associate Director, Public Relations MARKETING SERVICES Cameron Connors Executive Director, Head of Brand Strategy and Marketing Stephanie Block Integrated Marketing Director Jaclyn D’Andrea Marketing Coordinator Alison Brown Special Events Director Jana Nesbitt Gale Executive Creative Director Michael B. Sarpy Art Director CIRCULATION Rick Day VP, Strategy and Business Management PUBLISHED BY HEARST Steven R. Swartz President & Chief Executive Officer William R. Hearst III Chairman Frank A. Bennack, Jr. Executive Vice Chairman HEARST MAGAZINES, INC. Troy Young President Kate Lewis Chief Content Officer Debi Chirichella Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer Catherine A. Bostron Secretary Gilbert C. Maurer, Mark F. Miller Publishing Consultants Simon Horne SVP/Managing Director Asia Pacific and Russia Richard Bean Director of International Licensing and Business Development Kim St. Clair Bodden SVP/Editorial & Brand Director Chloe O’Brien Deputy Brands Director Shelley Meeks Executive Director, Content Services
HOW TO REACH US: Customer Service: To change your address, pay a bill, renew your subscription, and more, go online to menshealth.com/customer-service, email mhlcustserv@cdsfulfillment.com, or write Men’s Health Customer Service, P.O. Box 6000, Harlan, IA 51593-1500. Editorial offices: 300 W. 57th Street, New York, NY 10019. Feedback: mhletters@hearst .com. Licensing & Reprints: Contact Wyndell Hamilton, Wright’s Media, (281) 419-5725, ext. 152, hearst@wrightsmedia .com. Absolute satisfaction guaranteed. Scent-free subscription available on request. From time to time we make our subscriber list available to companies that sell goods and services by mail that we believe would interest our readers. 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.
Men’s Health carries the latest health, fitness, and nutrition reporting to provide you with useful information about your health. But every body is different; individual diagnoses and treatments can come only from a health care practitioner. Printed in USA.
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January • February 2020 / MEN’S HEALTH
Men’s Health is a registered trademark of Hearst Magazines Group, Inc.
MEET THE MEN’S HEALTH ADVISORY PANEL We know a lot about health and fitness, but we don’t know as much as the doctors, scientists, and trainers who keep us honest and up-to-date. BRAIN HEALTH: P. Murali Doraiswamy, M.D. David Perlmutter, M.D.
CARDIOLOGY: John Elefteriades, M.D. David Wolinsky, M.D.
DERMATOLOGY: Brian Capell, M.D., Ph.D. Adnan Nasir, M.D., Ph.D.
EMERGENCY MEDICINE: Jedidiah Ballard, D.O. Robert Glatter, M.D. Travis Stork, M.D.
ENDOCRINOLOGY: Sandeep Dhindsa, M.D.
EXERCISE SCIENCE: Martin Gibala, Ph.D. Mark Peterson, Ph.D., C.S.C.S.*D Brad Schoenfeld, Ph.D., C.S.C.S.
GASTROENTEROLOGY: Felice Schnoll-Sussman, M.D.
INTEGRATIVE HEALTH: Brenda Powell, M.D.
INTERNAL MEDICINE: Keith Roach, M.D.
MENTAL HEALTH: Thomas Joiner, Ph.D. Avi Klein, L.C.S.W. Drew Ramsey, M.D.
NUTRITION: Chris Mohr, Ph.D., R.D. Mike Roussell, Ph.D. Brian St. Pierre, R.D., C.S.C.S.
PAIN MEDICINE: Paul Christo, M.D., M.B.A.
SEX & RELATIONSHIPS: Debby Herbenick, Ph.D., M.P.H. Justin Lehmiller, Ph.D.
SLEEP MEDICINE: Mary Carskadon, M.D. W. Christopher Winter, M.D.
SPORTS MEDICINE: Michael Fredericson, M.D. Dan Giordano, D.P.T., C.S.C.S. Bill Hartman, P.T.
TRAINING: Mike Boyle, M.Ed., A.T.C. Ben Bruno, C.F.S.C. Alwyn Cosgrove, C.S.C.S.*D David Jack David Otey, C.S.C.S. Don Saladino, NASM
UROLOGY: Elizabeth Kavaler, M.D. Larry Lipshultz, M.D.
WEIGHT LOSS: David Katz, M.D., M.P.H., FACPM, FACP Jeff Volek, Ph.D., R.D.
EASY CHOICE. Make another easy choice by switching to GEICO.
JHLFR FRP _ $872 _ /RFDO 2IĆ FH Some discounts, coverages, payment plans and features are not available in all states, in all GEICO companies, or in all situations. GEICO is a registered service mark of Government Employees Insurance Company, Washington, DC 20076; a Berkshire Hathaway Inc. subsidiary. GEICO Gecko image © 1999-2019. © 2019 GEICO
WORLD
Keto—lost 100 pounds, and finally working in law enforcement, fulfilling a lifelong dream. Tom Costigan, Washington
I gave up alcohol, and learned arned to be a better person physically, mentally, emotionally and a better human being to my peers.
I came out of the closet at 27.
I quit my desk job and opened up a gym!
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.
I got married at 63! Jay Dzik (@blindeye3.0)
1) Deciding not to care what other people think about me. Freedom at its finest! 2) Getting back on the mat at the age of 43 (after quite a few years away)! I’m training 6 times a week for a kickboxing tournament in March. Anybody who tells you you are too old, well, just don’t listen to them!
Andy Fernandez (@andyplankd)
Zach Bruno, New York
Andy Rodriguez, Texas
Chris Dinsdale (@chris.dinsdale.7)
Cleared myself of o all pharmaceuticals my doctors had me on. Quit drinking, smoking and lost 127 lbs.
I stopped smoking and completed a full Ironman.
Jason Talbot, New Brunswick
tting clean Getting and sober. Everything else followed. Gary Saylor, Ohio
Making my mental health a priority. Jacob Christensen, Minnesota
Having kids. Stopped my carefree lifestyle dead. Made me grow up, and understand that I couldn’t be selfish and just run away from my problems anymore. Chris Johnstone (@chris. johnstone.7311)
Troy Mamangun, California
There’s a reason “Lose weight” doesn’t often work as a New Year’s resolution. It’s vague, and that can make it unattainable. This year, take inspiration from men who kick-started their own transformation with a specific goal. Here’s what some of our followers said was the greatest change of their lives.
No big ones, really. Everything was small and incremental. But the highlights are: 1. Moving out of home. 2. Coming out of the closet. 3. Quitting drugs and toxicity in general. 4. Learning meditation and pursuing personal development. 5. Learning yoga. 6. Getting out of debt. 7. Riding a bike to work every day. 8. Buying a house. 9. Getting married. Howie Grace, Australia
Survived cancer by changing my lifestyle. Manuel Lozano, Alberta
Saying ‘No, sorry, I can’t do that for you!’ and sighing a sigh of relief! Yasmin Bashir Ghani (@yasmin6xlove)
Getting help. I was near to killing myself, and then I found the strength to get help. As it turns out, I have bipolar disorder and I didn’t even know. There was a reason for how I was feeling. It’s still trial and error with the drugs, but I’m hopeful.
My underwear. And I hope to do it again one day. Brandon Soyka (@squir1y)
Matthew Quinn (@matthew.quinn.927)
MEN’S HEALTH
/ January • February 2020
7
WORLD
ASK THE EDITORS
ASK MEN’S HEALTH Q. What does “plant-based diet” mean, anyway? And should I be on one? —EDDIE, Sioux City, IA
Depends who A. you ask! Some
Rich and the Winter Soldier himself are both gearing up for a big 2020.
WHAT’S YOUR
view on Pilates for men over 40? —@brianmasefield I LOVE A simple question that really only
requires a thumbs-up emoji yet still lets me riff on stuff I’ve been thinking about lately. Re: Pilates post-40, I am . When you know what you’re doing—or, more likely, working with a pro who can help you master a reformer—Pilates can be astoundingly effective at strengthening your core and counteracting all of the weird stability, flexibility, and balance issues that pile up with birthdays. I remember going to my first Pilates class a few years ago with one of my sisters—it was the morning after Thanksgiving, I felt lousy, and, like, how hard could it be? And . . . well, I’ll let my Instagram caption from that day speak for it: “Nothing like trying to take a selfie with an EXTREMELY ENGAGED CORE and having your hand shake after an hour of spider lunges and mega donkeys.” In short: Pilates is great. But what’s even better, especially for anyone who’s getting a little older (which would be, uh, all of us), is trying something new. Like most of you, I’ve
WHERE TO FIND US
We’re on all your favorite platforms.
8
Have a question for Rich? Tweet us at @MensHealthMag with the hashtag #AskMHRich and ask away.
been working out for a long time, mostly at gyms. And at gyms, most of the time, there are barbells, and there are treadmills, and there’s maybe something new to play with—look, it’s a power plate!—but most gyms are pretty much . . . just gyms, where the potential for revelation can be limited. And that, to me, is what this issue and, hopefully, this coming year are all about: discovery. Whether it’s boxing (see Timbaland’s uppercut-fueled physical transformation on page 82) or one of the wellness crazes that Sebastian Stan gives a go (page 68), the idea of trying something new is often the first step to a healthier, stronger, happier life. Before you do anything for the first time, you’ve gotta do your research—talk to a doctor, if you can find one (and we can help with that on page 98), or talk to a trainer—and if you get the green light, give it a shot. Maybe you’ll love it. Maybe you won’t. But every new thing has the potential to become your new favorite thing, and I am wishing you all a transformative year of favorite new things.
—BRIAN ST. PIERRE, R.D., C.S.C.S, DIRECTOR OF PERFORMANCE NUTRITION AT PRECISION NUTRITION
For more on eating well in the new year, check out page 92.
LIKE WHAT YOU SEE? Richard Dorment, Editor-in-Chief
Men’s Health looks even better on your front steps. Subscribe at subscribe.menshealth.com.
Follow, tweet, comment, like, respond, and tag us. You could be featured in MHWorld. Instagram & Twitter @menshealthmag
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January • February 2020 / MEN’S HEALTH
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On the web menshealth.com
And send us your feedback at MHletters@hearst .com. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.
Carter Smith (Dorment and Stan)
+
Q+A WITH THE E.I.C.
use it interchangeably with “vegan diet”— plants only, no animal products. Others mean “plant-forward diet,” which includes some meat. “Plantbased” is a pretty mild term. However, it’s being weaponized in the diet wars, with some trying to frame plant-based diets as anti-meat diets. You don’t need to eat meat to be healthy, strong, or fit. But you also don’t need to give up meat. Want to improve your diet? Begin by eating more whole, minimally processed foods. Focus on getting more protein and vegetables.
A walnut pesto that teaches you
how to warm a room with an ice cube tray
Find out how to make a walnut pesto you’ll want to enjoy week after week, how an ice tray can make that simple, plus hundreds of other recipes made with heart-healthy* California walnuts at walnuts.org.
Per one ounce serving. *California walnuts are certified by the American Heart Association.® Heart-Check food certification does not apply to recipes unless expressly stated. See heartcheckmark.org/guidelines. Supportive but not conclusive research shows that eating 1.5 ounces of walnuts per day, as part of a low saturated fat and low cholesterol diet and not resulting in increased caloric intake, may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease. (FDA) One ounce of walnuts provides 18g of total fat, 2.5g of monounsaturated fat, 13g of polyunsaturated fat including 2.5g of alpha-linolenic acid – the plant-based omega-3.
So Simple. So Good.®
WORLD
FUN WITH POLLING
Meanwhile, on Instagram
EXCITED ABOUT
This Is Us star Sterling K. Brown ’Grammed his appearance on our November cover. Celebrity hazing ensued.
WHICH ACTION FRANCHISE’S RETURN ARE YOU MORE PSYCHED FOR?
THIS MONTH IN
THINGS YOU’RE
Bad Boys for Life (the Bad Boys franchise) vs. The King’s Man (the Kingsman franchise) Based on 573 Twitter responses to @MensHealthMag.
Mandy Moore,
62%
38%
Bad Boys
Kingsman
WHAT’S YOUR DAY-AFTER-THE-SUPER-BOWL PLAN?
@mandymooremm (This Is Us costar)
Catherine Bell,
Dang, SKB.
@therealcatherinebell (Army Wives costar) Oh @sterlingkbrown I remember the day on set you let me fondle that 12 pack! damnnnnn!!! Congrats my friend!! So well deserved!!!!
Take the day off work vs. Fight through the guacamole hangover Based on 264 Twitter responses to @MensHealthMag.
35%
65%
Day off
Fight
sterlingkbrown Honored to be on the cover of healthmag. Like I told Andrew, when it comes to acting, I want to inspire, make the world a better place and help people better themselves . . . and hopefully I can do that all the way to 100! Full story in bio . . . now back to my pull-ups. #ThisIsUs #Waves #Frozen2
STAR TREK: PICARD PREMIERES JANUARY 23. Will Star Trek ever be cool? Based on 559 Twitter responses to @MensHealthMag.
12% I could get into this one
Chrissy Metz, @chrissymetz (This Is Us costar) Okaaaaay then!!!! THE MEN’S HEALTH TWITTER POLL
10%
No booze in 2020 for me.
Dwyane Wade, @dwyanewade (NBA legend) What you know about hooping tho haa Reply @sterlingkbrown @dwyanewade if your ankles are solid, I can show you...
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January • February 2020 / MEN’S HEALTH
35%
I’m just going to drink less.
8%
I’m going to do a Dry January.
47%
I don’t think I’ll change my drinking habits this year. Based on 1,769 Twitter responses to @MensHealthMag.
Beau Grealy (Brown). Kyle Kaplan, © 2019 CTMG, Inc. (
Dialing back on booze is a thing this time of year. So much so that we investigated the “sober curious” movement (page 35). Curious? Looks like a chunk of our 1,769 Twitter respondents were, too.
Don’t be the person that brings a veggie platter.
®/©2019 Tyson Foods, Inc.
N ATUR A LLY
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SLEEP
*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Š Procter & Gamble, Inc. 2019
Our liquid is infused with a unique botanical blend, while an optimal melatonin level helps you nod off naturally with no next day grogginess.*
A GY M J U MP STA RT FOR YOU R N E X T RU N
your daily trip to the gym. BY ANDREW HEFFERNAN, C.S.C.S.
T
HIS IS SUPPOSED to be
your moment. January, start of the new year and the new, fitter you. The only problem: It’s harder to find 30 minutes to get your sweat on than you thought. The solution: Learn to “snack” on your fitness. Instead of devouring a full workout, squeeze in five minutes here and there for short
PHOTOGRAPHS BY LAUREL GOLIO
THE FITNESS SNACK! MEN’S HEALTH
/ January • February 2020
13
segments of exercise—say, a few sets of 20 pushups or a circuit of five squats, five lunges, and a 30-second plank. These tiny doses of fitness—let’s trademark them as “fitness snacks”—help your overall health more than you’d expect, burning fat and building muscle over your entire body. Heck, they may even recalibrate how you view the term workout. CrossFit, group classes, and eight Rocky films’ worth of montages may have left you feeling every workout has to be epic. “Not everyone can find time for an hour-long workout,” says trainer Gunnar Peterson, C.S.C.S., who’s worked with the likes of Sylvester Stallone and the Los Angeles Lakers. “But everyone can find a few quick minutes a few times a day.”
Spend minutes between meetings doing the fitness equivalent of chomping on a handful of almonds (okay, fine: M&M’s) and you excite muscle fibers and nudge your heart rate upward without wiping out your body. And since you’re never pushing yourself to max levels, you don’t even need a warmup. “The only problem with this approach is that no one believes it’s going to work,” says Dan John, a Utah-based fitness historian and strength coach. Science says it can be effective, though. A 2018 study from the National Cancer Institute revealed that short bouts of vigorous movement throughout the day— taking the stairs, walking, and cleaning—prolonged life span as effectively as
BITE-SIZED BENEFITS!
4 ways a fitness snack pumps up your life.
Sharper Brain Function A quick bout of mild exercise, like slow stationary-bike pedaling, can improve memory.
14
Rosier Mood A 15-minute daily session of higherintensity exercise, like running, can reduce depression risk by 26 percent.
January • February 2020 / MEN’S HEALTH
Faster Fat Burning
Zippier Metabolism
Shorter-interval workouts lead to greater fat loss than long, low-intensity sweat sessions.
Three 20-second all-out intervals can boost insulin sensitivity for a whopping 72 hours.
longer workouts. A separate Australian study showed that a few 30-second bursts of high-intensity training can power up your mitochondria (the energy dynamos of your cells), reducing your risk of chronic disease. This approach has an older pedigree forged in the gym. In the ’90s, trainer Pavel Tsatsouline, known for bringing Soviet workout principles to the Navy SEALs, championed something he called greasing the groove. That training technique involved doing, for example, a few sets of five reps of a difficult exercise every hour up to ten times a day. It’s still one of the best ways to master pullups. Now more and more trainers are embracing fitness snacks. Sure, they’d love for you to be in the gym for hours, but they also know your routine’s greatest benefits occur early on. “Ten to 15 minutes earns you 80 percent of the value of a longer workout,” says Angelo Poli, who’s worked with NFL star Aaron Rodgers. All of this is practical in part because it’s closer to traditional training than you might think. Classic bodybuilding sequesters you in the gym for more than an hour, but that includes warming up, changing weights, and resting between sets. Calculate the time actually spent working hard and it’s often 20 minutes or less. Or, you know, four daily intervals from our menu of muscle-building, fat-melting, and metabolism-fueling snacks.
Grooming: Eloise Cheung
For a simple fitness snack, try the wall sit (above). Want more of a challenge? Attempt the L-sit (far left).
BODY WELCOME TO THE FITNESS SNACK BAR Order the perfect workout for your craving.
THE STARTER SNACK
THE SWOLE SNACK
6 MINUTES Fitness snacks are great
7 MINUTES Yes, you can
for gym vets—and even better for those who don’t exercise at all. If you’re going from a sedentary lifestyle to fitness snacking, expect to see major changes. Rip through this 3-move workout with no rest 3 times a day.
build muscle with your bodyweight. Just use a tempo, says bodybuilding coach Menno Henselmans. Do this circuit that way. HANDCUFF Lie on your stomach, arms lifted. Keeping your thumbs up, draw your arms outward in a wide arc. As they near your hips, bend your elbows and point your thumbs toward each other. That’s 1 rep; do 8. TEMPO PUSHUP Get in pushup position. Lower your torso to within an inch of the floor; take 3 seconds to do this. Pause. Push back up. That’s 1 rep; do 10.
Stand with arms extended. Lift your left foot, a pad or pillow on the floor under your left hip. Bend your right knee and lean forward slightly, lowering until your left shin touches the pad. Stand up. That’s 1 rep; do 5 per side.
THE STRENGTH SNACK Get on your hands and knees, hands below shoulders, back flat, abs tight. Lift your right leg and left arm off the floor; keep your hips and shoulders square as you do. Return them to the floor. Repeat the process on the other side. That’s 1 rep; do 20. PLANK PUSHUP Get in a plank, elbows below shoulders. Put your right palm on the floor below your right shoulder; straighten that arm. Do the same with your left arm; you should be in pushup position. Return to plank position. That’s 1 rep; do 20. WALKING SQUAT Stand with your feet just wider than shoulder width. Step your right foot 6 inches forward. Bend at the knees and hips until your thighs are parallel to the floor. Press back up. Step your left foot forward, in front of your right by 6 inches, and repeat. That’s 1 rep; do 10.
THE WEIGHT-LOSS SNACK Ben Mounsey-Wood (illustrations)
5 MINUTES Your heart rate stays
elevated after just a few minutes of ultra-intense activity, so the right move at the right intensity can send
3 MINUTES The “every hour
on the hour” workout can help you improve. Pick a challenge move from the list below and, at the start of the hour, do 2 or 3 reps of it. You’ll do 18 to 40 reps daily. L-SIT Sit on a desk or chair, hands near your butt. Lift your legs, driving your knees straight. Straighten your arms, lifting your butt in the air. Hold for 3 seconds. That’s 1 rep; do 3. PISTOL SQUAT Stand, then lift one leg off the floor. Bend at the knee and sit back, lowering your butt near the floor; hold a chair if needed. Stand back up. That’s 1 rep; do 3 per side.
SUPPORTED ONE-ARM PUSHUP Get in pushup position, grasping a support with one hand (the leg of your desk will work), palm turned forward, arm fully extended. With your other arm, slowly lower your chest to the floor; press back up. That’s 1 rep; do 2 per side.
SEAL JACK Start standing, arms in front of you, hands together. Jump lightly, opening your feet as
MOUNTAIN-CLIMBER BURPEE Start standing, then squat, place your hands on
extra calories. Do these 2 moves back-to-back and you’ll believe it. left leg. Do 4 total mountain climbers, then stand quickly. That’s 1 rep; do 15. MEN’S HEALTH
/ January • February 2020
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BODY
THE 6 A.M. WORKOUT W/
The FitnessTracking Cyclo-Cross Fanatic Nothing calms and inspires Fitbit VP of design Jonah Becker quite like a pulse-pounding, bunnyhop-filled morning ride. BY AUSTIN MURPHY
T
HERE’S NOT really another word
for it. Jonah Becker is playing on his bike this morning, bunnyhopping logs alongside a trail in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, executing borderline-balletic dismounts and remounts and hucking up his back wheel, a move that mountain bikers call an “endo” or “nose wheelie.” But Becker, vice president of design at the fitness-tracking giant Fitbit, isn’t on a mountain bike. He’s on the shockless, canary-yellow Canyon that he uses for cyclo-cross, a 30- to 60-minute race around a 1.5- to 2-mile loop filled with obstacles. You dismount your bike and carry it over logs and hurdles, a midrace challenge that the 47-year-old loves. “I need a sport,” he says. “I think that’s why I still love jumping rope and doing ladder drills. I like feeling that I can still move athletically.” Becker spends every morning reminding himself of that—and indulging what
BREAK OF BRAWN
Can you handle Becker’s hourlong speed session? Try it to improve your ability to accelerate up hills. Do this session outdoors or on a stationary bike indoors.
18
During his sessions, Becker doesn’t just bike. He leaves ample time to stretch, and also practices dismounting on tricky terrain.
he calls his “lifelong competitive streak.” In addition to his daily bike commute from his home near San Francisco’s Duboce Park to Fitbit’s Embarcadero offices, he will spin west to Golden Gate Park for intense interval work on the dirt track encircling the Polo Field. When those “hot laps”
are done and his heart rate has returned from the red zone, he rides nearby trails to hone all those bike-handling skills. It’s a twoish-hour morning routine that takes Becker’s edge off, settling him for an otherwise tame day. At home, he focuses on his wife and two daughters. On Fitbit’s
The 5-Minute Warmup
The 15-Minute Bike Primer
The 35-Minute Ladder
Spend 5 minutes warming up your lower body for the mayhem to come. Do 30 seconds of bodyweight squats, followed by 30 seconds of walking lunges and 30 seconds of planks. Repeat 3 times without stopping, then rest for 30 seconds.
Get on your bike and start pedaling at a relaxed pace; make sure it’s relaxed enough that you can have a conversation. Do this for 10 minutes. Then, for the final 5 minutes, alternate between 30-second intervals of hard pedaling (you shouldn’t be able to talk) and relaxed-pace pedaling.
Alternate vigorous efforts with 2-minute recovery sequences. Battle through the program below.
January • February 2020 / MEN’S HEALTH
2
3 2
Minutes Hard Effort 4 5 4 3 2 2 2 2 2 Minutes Recovery
2 2
The Cooldown Pedal lightly for 10 minutes.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY SAM KWESKIN
BETWEEN INTERVALS Favorite cheat meal?
Almond croissants are probably at the top, and French toast is close behind. Sporting hero?
My grandfather was a twosport college athlete, played baseball and basketball. As the first grandchild, I spent a lot of time going to sporting events with him, and he was the PE teacher in my elementary school in his 70s. Favorite exercise?
Jump-roping. It’s great, easy to travel with, and has loads of street cred since Rocky. Most hated exercise?
I’m not a fan of the stairclimber machine. Boring. Who plays you in your biopic?
My wife says Bradley Cooper, but she may have a different agenda. I’ll go with a younger Kevin Bacon, since he’s got some cycling background.
campus, he’s at his forward-thinking best, staring at stats and blueprints for new watches and device updates on a tablet screen. It’s all unlike his life on his customized Canyon, which has notches on the piping so he can grip it more easily as he hurdles obstacles. “This,” he says, “is just being in the moment.” Cyclo-cross is Becker’s chance to test his athleticism—and not get injured in the process. He’s dealt with injuries since his college days, when he majored in philosophy, minored in art history, and occasionally flashed an aggro side as a Cal Berkeley tennis player. After redshirting as a freshman, he eagerly awaited his sophomore season. But he’d trained too hard that summer, and his shoulder “basically fell apart,” he says. “I could no longer lift [my arm] over my head.”
That ended his tennis career, but not his habit of practicing like an animal. Cyclo-cross, however, includes built-in restraints: Unlike other styles of biking, “you don’t need to train for hours and hours and hours,” he says. “You race hard, but everything before and after is pretty congenial.” So Becker rarely skips a practice session, and he did five races last year. Oh, and he had fun. Three laps into one recent five-lap event, Becker was in the lead when he accepted a shot of peppermint schnapps from a spectator. (Yes. Midway through a race.) The shot “did not sit very well” with his stomach, he recalls, and he slipped to third place. He didn’t get upset. “I still had a blast,” he says proudly. When you pop endos and bunny hops on a bike every morning, it’s hard not to.
BODY YOUR FITTEST YEAR EVER
JUMP START Begin the year with a total-body circuit. You’ll fire up
bodyweight moves infused with boxing flavor. Do this sessions. On your off days, go for a 20-minute run.
THE WARMUP Start with 30 seconds of jumping jacks, then do 30 seconds of high knees, running in place while driving your knees upward. Then do 1 Spider-Man T-spine stretch (see below) on each side. Rest 30 seconds. Repeat twice.
(a)
(c)
core tight. Hinge forward at the waist and push your butt back until your torso is nearly parallel to the floor. Let the dumbbells hang naturally. This is the start. Keeping your core tight, row the dumbbells toward your rib cage. Pause, then return to the start. That’s 1 rep; do 20. (a)
2
Romanian Deadlift
(b)
Grooming: Deepti Sadhwani
(b)
Start standing (a), and hold dumbbells at your sides, core tight, shoulder blades squeezed, and feet hip width apart. Hinge forward at the waist and push your butt back, lowering your torso. Lower until your torso is parallel to the floor or you feel your hamstrings tighten— whichever comes first. Pause (b), then straighten up, squeezing your glutes. That’s 1 rep; do 20.
Spider-Man T-Spine Stretch Start in pushup position (a). Step your left foot to your left hand. Keep your right leg straight; squeeze your right glute hard (b). Press your left arm into your left leg. Reach your right arm toward the ceiling (c), feeling the stretch in your back and abs. Step your left foot back to pushup position. That’s 1 rep. 20
January • February 2020 / MEN’S HEALTH
LEGGINGS BY LULULEMON; SHORTS BY UNDER ARMOUR; SNEAKERS BY PUMA.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY KAT WIRSING
YOUR MUSCLE MASTER
Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S., Men’s Health fitness director, is a certified strength and conditioning expert who has trained with professional and Olympic athletes.
FEATURED TRAINER Ngo Okafor is a two-time Golden
Gloves boxing champ and the owner/founder of Iconoclast Fitness Studio in Manhattan. He constructs workouts around classic bodybuilding moves, with occasional dashes of boxing spice, as you’ll see in the burpee below.
3
4
Reverse Lunge to Overhead Press
Pushup
Start standing with a dumbbell at your left shoulder and core tight. Step back with your right leg and lower into a reverse lunge, keeping your chest up (a). Once your left thigh is parallel to the floor, pause, stand, and then press the dumbbell overhead (b). Return the weight to your shoulder. That’s 1 rep; do 10 per side.
EB SAYS:
“Stop lowering before your back knee touches the floor. Doing so will challenge your leg muscles to continue firing.”
Start in pushup position, core tight and glutes squeezed, hands directly below your shoulders. Bend at the elbows and shoulders, lowering your torso until your chest is an inch from the floor. Pause, then push back up. That’s 1 rep; do 20.
(b)
(a)
5
Burpee to Punch Combo
Start standing. In one motion, place your hands on the floor, get in pushup position, and do a pushup (a). Stand quickly and throw 6 punches at the air. Start with 2 jabs and 2 hooks (b). Finish by throwing 2 uppercuts (c). That’s 1 rep; repeat reps for 60 seconds.
(b)
(c)
EB SAYS:
“Think of each punch as an opportunity to strengthen your abs. Rotate through your hips and be powerful.”
(a)
6
Mountain Climber
EB SAYS:
Start in pushup position, core and glutes tight, eyes on the floor directly below. Keeping your core tight, lift your right foot, driving your right knee to your chest. Return your right foot back to the floor and quickly repeat on the left. Continue alternating, picking up speed as you go. Repeat for 60 seconds.
MEN’S HEALTH
“It’s convenient to let your butt ride up high when you get fatigued during mountain climbers. Resist that urge and keep your butt below (or on the same level as) your shoulders.”
/ January • February 2020
21
BODY #NOEXCUSES
Cool Running
UNDER ARMOUR RUSH COLDGEAR This tight-fitting hoodie is made from a lightweight, mineral-infused fabric. The shirt stays close to your skin, wicking away sweat, and it keeps your face as warm as possible— a high collar doubles as a face mask. $80; underarmour.com
Don’t let a polar vortex trap you on the treadmill. Dominate the elements and your next 5K or 50K with this innovative, lightweight, weatherproof gear. BY EBENEZER SAMUEL, C.S.C.S.
TRACKSMITH INVERNO GLOVES Touchscreen-capable finger pads mean you can change the songs on your playlist or check your route on Strava without ever taking off these toasty fleece gloves. $32; tracksmith.com
ADIDAS AGRAVIC WINDWEAVE INSULATED JACKET Unlike most rain- and windproof shells, this jacket stretches so you can run unencumbered. Hot spots (like your armpits) have a looser weave, and cold zones (your chest) have tighter panels. $139; adidasoutdoor.com
2XU WIND DEFENCE COMP TIGHTS Specially designed front upper panels block both wind and cold from your thighs while 2XU’s compression design optimizes blood flow throughout your legs. $110; 2xu.com
NIKE INFINITY REACT New rocker tech helps you transition from heel to toe quickly, and a wider midsole delivers the improved foot stability you want on slushy runs. $150; nike.com
JEFF DENGATE, Runner’s World top dog, shares two winter rules:
2. As it gets colder, wear gloves, shorts, and a tee. When it hits the 40s, add a longsleeved tee. The 30s, add tights. Below freezing, add a jacket.
22
January • February 2020 / MEN’S HEALTH
Garmin Venu An ultrabright display lets you quickly check heart rate, distance, and more anytime. $400; garmin.com
Lululemon Escape and Explore Socks
AO x Tracksmith Charles
Thermoregulating merino wool keeps feet warm. $24; shop .lululemon.com
Blue polarized lenses reduce icy glare. The frames are nonslip. $255; tracksmith.com
PHOTOGRAPHS BY LAUREL GOLIO
Grooming: Eloise Cheung
FINISHING TOUCHES
1. No cotton. You don’t want to be wet and cold. Merino wool is a good base layer.
BODY SUPPLEMENT LAB
Are Gut Boosters BS? Supplement companies claim that prebiotics (which are one thing) and probiotics (another thing!) can strengthen immunity, aid weight loss, and even extend life. MELISSA MATTHEWS fact-checks all that.
PREBIOTICS
PROBIOTICS
WHAT THEY ARE
WHAT THEY ARE
They’re soluble fibers, so they attract water during digestion. They also contain oligosaccharides, sugars eaten by gut bacteria, says Bethany Doerfler, R.D., a clinical research dietitian at Northwestern University. After your gut bacteria feast upon these oligosaccharides, they release short-chain fatty acids, which may relieve discomfort in people who have inflammatory-bowel disorders or conditions like IBS.
They’re microorganisms found in fermented foods like yogurt and kimchi, says Jack Gilbert, Ph.D., a researcher at the University of California, San Diego. Companies claim their probiotic supplements can improve your immunity or help you lose weight. The jury is still out on those benefits, but science does show that probiotics can relieve symptoms of Crohn’s disease, inflammatory-bowel disease, and food allergies, says Gilbert.
WHY TAKE THEM
IF YOU BUY THEM
Go with a mix of soluble fiber, such as psyllium, and an oligosaccharide that has at least five grams of fiber per serving, says Doerfler. (The label may list chicory root, artichoke hearts, inulin, or oligosaccharides—same difference.) Ignore claims about a company’s “signature” blend. It’s just marketing.
WHY TAKE THEM
You suffer from chronic constipation, diarrhea, or other gastrointestinal distress— and your physician recommends taking something, says David Poppers, M.D., Ph.D., a gastroenterologist at NYU Langone. Everyone else can save their money, because there’s no evidence that probiotic supplements offer any benefit to already healthy people, says Gilbert. IF YOU BUY THEM
Your doctor will recommend a probiotic shown to help with your specific complaints, says Dr. Poppers. For example, one bacteria, Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG, is better for those with diarrhea, compared with other strains, Gilbert says.
THE BOTTOM LINE: If you’re a healthy man without GI concerns, you should put your money toward fiber-rich whole foods rather than supplements. (See page 92 for ideas about where to start.) Head to the doctor, though, if you suspect a food allergy or an inflammatory-bowel condition is behind your stomach woes. It’s best to let them decide on the pre- or probiotic you should take.
24
January • February 2020 / MEN’S HEALTH
Jamie Chung/Trunk Archive
If you’re not hitting the recommended 38 grams of fiber daily, you’re at risk of constipation (at best) and heart disease (at worst). Prebiotic supplements help with fiber intake, but Doerfler says she likes to see the $30 to $40 per month that people might spend on a dietary supplement go toward buying healthy foods that are rich in prebiotics.
®©2017 TYSON FOODS, INC.
Hillshire farm® turkey is slow roasted for hours. And devoured in seconds.
®
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.
BODY
A new class of detox drinks and energy potions promise to help you de-stress, focus, and soothe what ails you. BRITTANY RISHER asked top dietitians just how effective their “active” ingredients really are.
GREEN TEA
APPLE CIDER VINEGAR
THE CLAIM: Spider-Man-like focus THE TRUTH: Green tea contains caffeine and the
THE CLAIM: Smooooother digestion THE TRUTH: There have been no studies looking
amino acid L-theanine, which, when combined, improve performance in attention-switching tasks, according to a 2017 study review. A separate review found that the same combo could boost brain function. Aim for a 40 milligram dose.
at apple cider vinegar’s effect on digestion. None. If anything, it’ll upset your stomach more, says Dana Angelo White, R.D., especially if you have acid reflux or GI issues. Also: It tastes nasty.
TURMERIC
disease-causing inflammation THE TRUTH: This bright orangeyellow root is indeed an antioxidant. Science doesn’t yet know how much of the spice you should consume to reap its anti-inflammatory benefit—but consuming it with black pepper can help with absorption. So find a drink that has both.
26
January • February 2020 / MEN’S HEALTH
CBD
GINGER
THE CLAIM: So! Much! Energy! THE TRUTH: While the bite of ginger
may wake up your taste buds, no science links it to energy. If a shot promises more pep, check the ingredients, because it likely contains a stimulant (though ginger is anti-inflammatory).
THE CLAIM: So you can chill, man THE TRUTH: Scientists are still trying to determine
whether CBD decreases anxiety and, if so, at what dosage. Your best bet: Buy a drink from a company that publishes a certificate of thirdparty, independent lab analysis, proving that its bottle contains the amount of CBD advertised.
PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTOPHER TESTANI
Food styling: Jamie Kimm. Prop styling: Megan Hedgpeth.
THE CLAIM: Tamps down
S
JUNK OR SCIENCE?
Can You Read Me Now? An eyesight-boosting app that helps fighter-jet pilots see better and may work as well as Lasik? Maybe. BY CHRIS DIXON 28
January • February 2020 / MEN’S HEALTH
EVERAL YEARS AGO, while I
was doing final sweeps through a book I’d just written, I began to notice that my eyes were having a hard time speeding through the manuscript. That didn’t really bother me, because the protagonist, a big-wave surfer named Greg Long, had such bad eyesight that he had trouble spotting giant waves on the horizon, and my situation wasn’t anywhere near that. Still, this was problematic. I’d always been a speedy reader who didn’t sweat small fonts, and I’d never needed glasses for navigating tricky terrain while mountain biking, surfing, or skateboarding. Yet one night, there I was, barely into my 50s, highlighting typos with a pair of 1.5x readers draped across my nose. I wondered, Is this my future? What was happening to me—and will eventually happen to you, your younger brother, and Tom Brady—is called presbyopia. You don’t notice this condition initially, but presbyopia can start as early as age 30. Every five years after that, you’ll lose the ability to focus on one more line on the eye doctor’s letter chart. By 40, most of us will start noticing it, squinting here, moving the iPhone a little farther away from the face there, whether or not you’ve ever worn glasses. And right around the big 5-0, nearly all of us are afflicted. Because I’ve never been hindered by a need to keep track of eyeglasses but I need to do a lot of reading for work, I dreamed of some outside-the-box solution rather than glasses or contact lenses. The first thing I learned is that presbyopia is correctable with surgery—monovision Lasik, corneal implants, or lens-replacement surgery— but I’m leery of having laser beams or scalpels etch my corneas. Then one night while Googling the condition, I was led to an app called GlassesOff. It promises to help you read type 50 percent smaller than you can right now and perhaps improve your reading speed significantly. There was even research indicating that it could help you respond a few milliseconds faster to, say, a baseball flying at you, by improving a brain activity called visual processing. GlassesOff asks you to spend less than 15 minutes three times a week reacting by touch screen to tiny, blurry striped balls called Gabor patches as they flash across a featureless gray background. Early on, the patches are larger, slower, and better
BODY
defined. As you progress, they appear and disappear more rapidly, eventually becoming mere ghostly dots that can be incredibly hard to see. And that’s the point. The very idea that this might be effective seemed suspicious, since nobody I knew who needed to wear reading glasses was talking about this $10-a-month app. And it seems even more far-fetched when you take biology into account. Presbyopia occurs when your eye’s flexible lens—which is the shape and size of a soft Skittle—isn’t so flexible anymore. To focus up close, you contract the muscles that hold the lens in place. As you age, that Skittle hardens. You compensate by squinting, but in time, not even that helps. Presbyopia is a game of dominoes, and your lens is only the first to fall. The next is neurological: That blurring of everything you should be seeing hampers your ability to discern contrast and interferes with how smoothly your neurons stream visual data to your brain. Basically, presbyopia chokes visual processing, slowing down reading and even response times. About 12 years ago, a neuroscientist named Uri Polat, Ph.D., director of the Visual and Clinical Neuroscience Lab at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Israel, wondered if he could get around that by harnessing the science of neuroplasticity—essentially training your brain to process what it is seeing faster and more clearly. This might have the benefit of enhancing not only near vision but also reaction times. Low image quality puts a load on your visual-processing abilities “and probably creates a bottleneck for the cognitive levels of the brain,” says Polat, now chief scientific officer of the company that developed GlassesOff. In a recently published study, Polat’s app was tested on guys whose visual acuity really matters: Israeli fighter pilots. Their visual clarity improved by an average of
THREE OTHER APPS THAT KEEP YOU AGILE
35 percent, and their responsiveness to visual cues went up 25 percent—crucial when trying to recognize a camouflaged enemy plane streaking toward you at 700 miles an hour. Research on American baseball players showed similar results. A study by Polat in Nature Scientific Reports found that users were able to speed through lines in the smallest font they could discern on a reading chart 25 words per minute faster than they could when they started using the app. People with the most advanced presbyopia had the greatest gains, raising reading speed from about 47 to 85 or so words a minute. Those figures were impressive enough for me to be intrigued. GlassesOff is not the only vision-improvement app on the market, but it’s the only one with any serious scientific study. (One competitor, Ultimeyes, was fined by the FTC for claiming that it could improve vision without having published data to back it up.) But to believe it, I had to test it myself. Since I wanted to know whether I was just imagining things or my eyes had really changed, I visited Hugh Wright, M.D., a lead ophthalmologist with the Roper St. Francis Hospital System in South Carolina, where I live. He measured both my distance and near vision at around 20/25. My near vision is better than average—on a par with that of a person in his late 30s— but now that I’m 52, my presbyopia is likely on an accelerating path. I devoted the recommended ten minutes to GlassesOff almost daily and used it for eight weeks, the minimum required time to see results. The app is at first novel and challenging, but the repetition becomes monotonous. A month in, though, I was squinting less. Headlights and road signs seemed sharper. I stayed with it, and three months after my first visit to Dr. Wright, my chart vision remained pretty much the same, but I was
now reading without glasses again. What was tough for me to decipher before—the five-point fine print on a Dale’s Pale Ale can—was clear to me now. It could be because, according to the app, my contrast sensitivity had increased by 51 percent and what Polat terms my “brain processing speed”—the rate at which I’m able to recognize a Gabor patch onscreen—shot up by 80 percent. Dr. Wright wasn’t ready to fully endorse GlassesOff, saying the evidence is too limited to wholly support enhancing neuroplasticity to reverse presbyopia. But he didn’t dismiss it, either. “Standard vision screening in clinics typically doesn’t assess for contrast sensitivity or visual response times, which GlassesOff does,” he said. “If patients see improvement in these areas, then I see it as a plus.” Those two measures are critical when dropping into a steep wave or skating vert, and that may matter to me more than what a static eye chart says. “Neuroplasticity is a very real thing,” Dr. Wright added. Making more connections is good for your brain performance, regardless of what it might do for your eyes. But, doctor that he is, he warned that the app shouldn’t be used in place of getting your eyes checked regularly or wearing glasses if you need them. Ultimately, both men agreed that nothing will completely halt presbyopia. Polat, of course, suggested that sticking with the program’s maintenance regime (12 minutes a day once every two weeks) would help prevent my vision from declining significantly. Even if it’s not perfect, I’m still a writer and need to continue reading. And despite a skateboarding-related broken shoulder I wrote about for this magazine, sharing runs at the skate park with my ten-year-old son is about as rewarding as life gets. I need all the help I can find, so I’m going to stay with the app.
Improve your hearing
Improve your vocabulary
Improve your focus
Clear Ears (clearworks4ears.com) aims to use neuroplasticity to improve word recognition, particularly in noisy situations.
It doesn’t get simpler than the Vocabulary.com app, which gives you a “word of the day,” plus a dictionary at your fingertips.
You hone your attention through the m-word here (meditation), but the Headspace app makes it painless and kind of entertaining.
MEN’S HEALTH
/ January • February 2020
29
M E N ’ S H E A LT H X G N C
In paid partnership with GNC
HOW SERIAL ENTREPRENEUR AND ENDURANCE ATHLETE ERIC HINMAN STAYS
ALL-IN
ALL THE TIME
Eric Hinman is never not moving. The Denver-based angel investor, content creator, entrepreneur, and two-time Kona Ironman is always working—on his fitness, his portfolio, or both, often simultaneously—and he’s all-in, all the time. In that pursuit, Hinman has to “multitask without multitasking.” He achieves this by adhering to a meticulously crafted personal routine that eliminates decision-making fatigue. For example, Hinman eats the same salad, every day. “That’s my meal prep,” Hinman says. “I know every day at 12 I’m gonna be at Green Seed, I’m gonna have the same salad, and I’m gonna have a meeting or take a phone call. I put eating on autopilot to allow myself to make other, more important decisions during the day. It’s not something I have to think about.” The rest of Hinman’s day is equally regimented to maximize his mental energy and decision-making potential. Every morning he’s up before 7 (no alarm necessary), then heads straight to the kitchen for a double espresso; a 24-ounce glass of water; a power-packed smoothie bowl of nut milk, spinach, plant-based protein, banana, and avocado; and a packet of personalized vitamins and supplements designed specifically for him by GNC4U. “Men want to have a system—they don’t want to overthink it. That’s what I want. I like delegating, automating, and eliminating everything I don’t have to do,” Hinman says. “I can answer a few questions about how I live my day, how active I am, and GNC customizes a formula for me that becomes part of my system and fits my morning routine.”
THE MORNING BURN While training for upcoming races, Eric will swim, bike, or run during each morning workout. Two or three days a week he’ll also focus on strength training. A typical routine for Eric includes some classic strength-training moves with a gymnastic finish. FRONT SQUATS:
5 sets of 2 at 80% of one-rep max
>
POWER CLEANS:
4 sets of 2 at 80% of one-rep max HIGH VOLUME THRUSTERS: 4 sets of 8 GHD SIT-UPS:
4 sets of 25 BAR-FACING BURPEES:
As many as 20 burpees, every other minute for 12 minutes HANDSTAND WALKS:
4 sets of 80 feet each
That customized daily vitamin regimen sure looks good on you.
Joe went to GNC4U.com and took a free quiz. We took his answers, and designed a regimen just for him. Now, each month he gets the industry’s best vitamins and supplements, in personalized daily packs delivered right to his door. A personalized plan would look good on you too. Go to GNC4U.com. Get started.
BODY
Better Listening Through Science Tuning in isn’t just for dropping out. Research shows that your soundtrack can make you more creative, productive, and non-grumpy. Find out what to play at what time of day to become ultra-you. BY ELIZABETH BACHARACH AND SPENCER DUKOFF Choose gentle, upbeat tunes like “Coming Home,” by Leon Bridges, and “Way to You,” by Brandi Carlile, that won’t startle you first thing. Not only are earsplitting sounds a bad way to start the day, but they can affect your breakfast choices. A loud environment ratchets up your stress level, which may lead you to reach for high-calorie foods.
8AM
Win Your Workout
Ever try to bench 225 while rocking out to “I’m Yours,” by Jason Mraz? Us neither. Studies show that faster, more intense hits like “Welcome to the Jungle,” by Guns N’ Roses, or “People,” by the 1975, can boost strength, endurance, and efficiency when lifting and HIIT-ing. 32
10AM
Switch Your Music, Power Your Brain
Music (be it Mozart or Eminem) can keep you energized when you have mindless tasks to complete. When it’s creativity you’re after, make an effort to go wide: Listen to unfamiliar songs and shuffle through a variety of genres. These can help you think outside the box, says Indre Viskontas, Ph.D., author of How Music Can Make You Better.
12PM
Reboot with Vocals
Lunch is the right time to slow down and reset. Turn on some softer, slower vocal tracks—Sam Smith ballads could be the ticket—to calm your heart rate and allow yourself to be more mindful and in the moment.
January • February 2020 / MEN’S HEALTH
6PM
Recover en Route
Use your commute to decompress with instrumental numbers à la Miles Davis (or anything mellow, Viskontas says). You might want to go with a chorus: A study in PLOS One found that listening to soothing choral music lowered stress markers in the body faster than nature sounds or no music. Pro tip: Avoid boredom and frustration in an already irritating train or traffic situation by changing up your tracklist regularly. To save you some searching, just use our recent adds: “Cover My Tracks,” by Ruston Kelly, and “Walking on a String,” by Matt Berninger and Phoebe Bridgers.
10PM
Power Down
Before you sleep, press play on something more Zen, like Brian Eno or yoga
music. (Spotify has hours and hours of that genre to choose from.) The tempo is fine-tuned to promote restfulness, and you won’t get distracted trying to follow lyrics.
WEEKEND
Chase Away the Dreaded Sunday Scaries The antidote to your emotional (and possibly physical) hangover at the end of the weekend: Reach back in time to ’80s Billy Joel or Fleetwood Mac. The potent mix of accessible, uptempo nostalgia jams and heartsick ballads actually helps soothe Sunday-night melancholy. When the artist you’re listening to expresses what you’re feeling at that moment, according to Viskontas, you get a hit of oxytocin, a feel-good hormone, and you lower the stress hormone cortisol.
Sarah Leituala (illustration). Getty Images (source images).
7AM
Rise Right
YOU’VE GOT 23 RESOLUTIONS. AND ALMONDS CAN BE ALL OF THEM.
© 2020 Almond Board of California. All rights reserved.
Start the new year off on the right snack with the 6 grams of natural protein in almonds. OWN YOUR EVERYDAY. EVERY DAY.
CURIOUS
ABOUT
Dan Saelinger/Trunk Archive
As alcohol loses its health halo, more people are reevaluating their relationship with it. BY AMOS BARSHAD
T
H E F I R S T TI M E I remember
hearing about the concept of not drinking in January, it was with my basketball buddies after a rec game in the East Village in New York City. This was a winter night more than a decade ago, over a table of chicken sandwiches. One guy, who worked in commodities, was explaining
to a group of us how, after the excesses of the December holiday season, he liked to take the month off from drinking. To detox. To refresh. To healthify. It felt like a strange secret from a better, more progressive place—particularly coming out in this postgame huddle. That night, the sweaty dude was just full of rarefied wisdom. MEN’S HEALTH
/ January • February 2020
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LIFE
Nowadays the concept of a sober January doesn’t feel so exotic. In fact, as known by its pop-lexicon title, “Dry January,” it’s practically a brand. According to a YouGov poll, 23 percent of Americans over 18 had plans to attempt a booze-free January in 2019. That would correspond to an astounding 58 million temporary soberers. I have what I consider to be a pretty good relationship with drinking. Plainly: I’m a fan. I wasn’t a young drinking prodigy. It was when I moved to New York, at 21, that I fell in love with bars and the things that can happen in them. I met some of my best friends that year. I also puked more that year, quite possibly, than in the rest of my life combined. Over time, I’ve calibrated my intake choices and minorly dabbled in drugs, from gateway to stronger stuff. It’s all brought me back to the same initial conclusion: In drinking, I have all the vice I ever need. And yet I’ve been swept up, too: I’ve attempted Dry January three years running. Meanwhile, beyond episodic fads, sobriety has morphed into a lifestyle, the sober curious, a term popularized by the author/podcaster Ruby Warrington via her 2018 book of the same name. These people don’t just do Dry January—they hang out at sober bars, download sobriety podcasts and apps, and consume content from self-branded sober gurus. “I feel like alcohol is the new cigarettes,” says Warrington. “Smoking was completely socially acceptable 20 years ago. Fastforward a couple of decades and people will drink and use alcohol much differently.” As Dry January has boomed and cross-pollinated into sober curious, it’s also become divisive. If you have partaken, you know. Some people get it. But turn down a drink during the month of January and someone will declare, as if they’ve caught you: “You’re doing Dry January?” You have to be ready—aesthetically, morally, spiritually—to defend your decision. To me, that makes total sense: The rapid permeation of the sober-curious wave has given it a slight tinge of mass psychosis. We’re talking about millions of people, largely people who don’t believe they have a drinking problem, giving up the sauce. Why would anyone willingly stop drinking? 36
January • February 2020 / MEN’S HEALTH
PEOPLE DON’T JUST DO DRY JANUARY—THEY HANG OUT AT SOBER BARS, DOWNLOAD SOBRIETY PODCASTS AND APPS, AND CONSUME CONTENT FROM SELF-BRANDED SOBER GURUS.
W
ELL, OKAY: YOU STOP drink-
ing because it is, almost surely, not all that great for you. In 2018, The Lancet published what it called “the most comprehensive estimate of the global burden of alcohol use to date.” Its widely publicized conclusion contradicted years of prior research and general common wisdom and declared, dramatically, that, actually, there is no safe level of drinking. That even one drink a day correlates to an increased chance of health problems. And that more drinking correlates to, yes, more problems. While some criticized the study’s observational tactics and other research points to the potential benefits of moderate alcohol intake, its conclusion resonated widely. Perhaps that’s because sobriety is attaining an increased cultural cachet. Sober curious is part of a more general move to open up decision-making trees in various aspects of modern life. People used to be either something or not that thing. But you can temporarily quit meat, or only do gluten when you’re partying. It’s not just all-or-nothing. Nowadays there are all sorts of gradients. There are so many reasons to choose sober-ish. To learn more, I belly up to the bar at Redemption in London, where the food is vegan and the drinks are non-
alcoholic. And there are sober bars like this across America and, of course, an app, Loosid, to help you find like-minded sober folks. Zoey Henderson, head of ops at Redemption, tells me about how her cocktail menu has moved away from “homemade kombucha, shrubs, tinctures, and essences” and toward an influx of nonalcoholic “plant spirits” and bottle brands that replicate gin and rum flavors in cocktails that are a combination of “mixology and alchemy.” The Redemption bartenders, Henderson explains, are using “older recipes and herbal tonics that give you all those wonderful, positive reinforcements that you look for in a drink. They make you feel a bit buzzy. They make you want to dance.” She specifically recommends Redemption’s hibiscus sour, “a powerful botanical elixir.” And as for what a night out at Redemption is like, it’s “exactly the same” as a social outing with alcohol, Henderson says, “except the toilets stay cleaner, nobody gets rowdy, glassware is smashed a lot less—all the positives, none of the negatives!” Another group of people sliding into sobriety are those on restrictive eating plans. Well-known lifestyle diets like keto and Whole30 famously restrict or eliminate your alcohol choices. I
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have two very smart scientist friends in Boston: Rachel, who is a physician and scientist at Harvard, and Greg, a scientist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Both are paleo. “I use paleo more as a framework for a low-glycemic-index diet, which is the diet that has the most data behind it as being good for overall health,” Rachel explains. “I do still drink, but being on a paleo/ low-glycemic-index diet has made me more conscious in general about what I take in and how I feel after eating/drinking things.” For Greg, paleo helps him maintain “an overall healthy lifestyle” and “control in the amount of alcohol I consume.” And even when drinking, he stays paleo via grape-based Ciroc. “Thank God,” he says, “for Diddy.” While Greg gets loose on grape vodka, many more are relying on a buzz from a different botanical source, popularized by West Coast rappers like Snoop Dogg. Though the legalization of marijuana has not impacted the sales of spirits, it has illuminated a spectrum of usage that ranges from “cross-fading” (spirits and weed) to “Cali-sober” (weed only). Writer Katie Heaney recently chronicled her Cali-sober journey, detailing how smoking marijuana has helped take the edge off cutting back on alcohol. As Heaney told me, “I don’t necessarily relate to the more wellness-y aspects of sober curiosity. I think it’s great if anyone wants to drink less. But I think that’s a decision most people have to come to on their own, for their own reasons. For some people, having a like-minded community might really help with that, but it’s just not my thing.”
CRUSH IT
Use these tips to thrive whether you’re doing Dry January or leaning into sober curious.
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However, data on overall alcohol consumption for the past several years does reveal year-on-year declines, so people are drinking less, especially millennials. Annie Grace, another author/influencer/ podcaster, credits social media for this trend and says young people “don’t want to be embarrassed on a platform that lives forever. I certainly am glad there was no photographic record of what I did in my early 20s.” It’s not just about embarrassment, though. As The New York Times put it in a recent sober-curious story: “Beyond the health risks, the booze that flows freely at fraternity parties or holiday mixers has started to look to some women like a tool of oppression in the age of radical consent.” Grace adds another factor in the decision-making of millennials and GenZers: “Their experience with their own parents drinking. It seems that they feel alcohol is their parents’ drug.” Instead, the kids want to get high on . . . wellness?! You know, yoga, meditation, adult coloring books, wheatgrass shots, CBD everything, and so much more. “Once a person begins the journey into health and wellness, alcohol often sticks out as a sore thumb,” says Grace.
I
PERSONALLY DIDN’T dip a toe into the sober-curious pool, via Dry January, because of sober bars, sober gurus, diet, weed, or youth. It wasn’t thanks to the sweaty hoops player either, but through the wisdom of someone even more impressive: my girlfriend. If I were ever to try it, trying it with her seemed like the most palatable
option. I thought cutting out one twelfth of my yearly alcohol intake seemed like a pretty good idea. I’d save money, lose weight, focus better, blah blah blah. I succeeded, with pluck and guile, in my first attempt. I found that all the clichés were true. I did want to socialize less. I did want to eat more ice cream. I also found out that, after the first week or so, it got easier. That once I got even a little bit of a head of sober steam, the booze cravings weren’t crowding my brain. I slept better! I also felt, slightly, like I was living in stasis. There are many reasons to stop drinking, either temporarily or altogether. For me, the reason is this: I need to check with myself that, while I love drinking, I do not need it. And not to get carried away here, but if you’re not questioning everything in 2020, as the world tilts on so many axes, maybe you’re not thinking hard enough. We should be analyzing our relationships with our coworkers, our romantic partners, our families, our best friends. We should be thinking about our booze. We can do that in January. Or we can do it whenever. And if it’s January and we’re not feeling good about our fast, we can just—stop! Years ago, I was with a pal at breakfast, contemplating getting a doughnut. I hemmed and hawed and muttered to myself how it was “bad for me.” He looked at me and he pointed to his brain and he said something I’ve honestly never forgotten: “It’s good for the mental, though.” Yes, even one drink is bad for you. But even one drink can be damn good for the mental.
IF ALCOHOL HELPS YOU DECOMPRESS AFTER WORK, do another
IF YOU ENJOY THE RITUALS OF DRINKING, plan your alcohol-free
IF ALCOHOL IS YOUR SOCIAL LUBRICANT, you may
activity that helps you relax. It could be a short workout, like a fitness snack (see page 13), or committing to a daily stroll. Or something more explicitly stress-busting like meditating or writing down whatever is on your mind, says psychiatrist Drew Ramsey, M.D.
stand-ins at home and out. Think about what you like most about your go-to drink and give yourself alcohol-free options, whether it’s a nonalcoholic beer or mocktail or seltzer or kombucha, advises Jenna Hollenstein, nutritional therapist and author of Drinking to Distraction.
need professional treatment. Talk therapy is a proven way to deal with social anxiety, says Dr. Ramsey. Or talk to a doctor about meds. Alcohol calms by enhancing the same neurotransmitter effects as Xanax.
January • February 2020 / MEN’S HEALTH
LET’S HIT THE ROAD road & Track Experiences A series of high-octane automotive events
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ground pepper. Place the wings in a single layer on the prepared racks. Bake until cooked through, about 35 minutes, flipping once.
2
Sauce and Top
While the wings roast, whisk the sauce ingredients in a large bowl. Then transfer the cooked wings to the bowl, toss to coat, and finish with the toppings. All this makes 4 servings. 40
January • February 2020 / MEN’S HEALTH
SRIRACHA BUFFALO
Sauce: 3 Tbsp melted butter, 1 Tbsp cider vinegar, 2 tsp Sriracha sauce, 1 minced garlic clove Topping: ⅓ cup crumbled Gorgonzola
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRISTOPHER TESTANI
Sauce: ¼ cup mayonnaise, 2 Tbsp yellow mustard, 1 Tbsp honey, ½ tsp onion powder, ½ tsp garlic powder
zest of
Topping: 2 Tbsp chopped chives
Sauce: ¼ cup
2 tsp curry
Topping:
Food styling: Jamie Kimm. Prop styling: Megan Hedgpeth.
3 Tbsp
H U Y FO N G C H I LI GA R LI C S AU C E
C H I P O T LE P E P P E R S I N A D O B O (F I N E LY C H O P P E D)
Tastes like: Sriracha, but with more funk and less bite.
Tastes like: Wooooooowwwieee, that’s hot! Smoky, too.
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a l s S a e s s Are e h T MILD
VERD
SPICE LEVEL:
E
SPICE LEVEL: MRS. RENFRO’S GREEN
tomato-y flavor” and a “good
things out. Beyond chip dipping, it works well atop scrambled eggs or even mixed into meatloaf. FIND IT AT: Walmart, ShopRite, Kroger, Whole Foods
your only choices at the supermarket. Now there’s chipotle, cantina style, black bean, and even pumpkin habanero. We tastetested 49 (49!) varieties of dip. These salsas reigned supreme.
SPICE LEVEL:
Balance is key to a good green salsa. Too many of those we tried had either a slimy texture or too much acidity. This jar, however, had “heat, freshness, tang—it’s all there,” according to one tester. Warm some up and spoon it over a seared pork chop or salmon fillet. FIND IT AT: Walmart, Albertsons, Kroger, Hannaford
C WILD
ARD
SPICE LEVEL:
So many medium salsas tasted so . . . mild. “FINALLY SOME HEAT,” one tester wrote, adding that this smooth, brick-red salsa was “deep and roasty up front, slightly sweet in the middle, with a burn on the back.” Roasted jalapeños provide that complexity. Try it as a chicken marinade, too. FIND IT AT: Walmart, Wegmans
SPICE LEVEL: SALSA GOD HOT FIRE ROASTED RED
Habanero peppers team up with jalapeños to clobber your palate in a jab-hook beatdown. “There’s an opening salvo of tongue-popping heat, followed by a slow-building burn of intense power. Milk! Milk!” wrote one tester. Careful now. FIND IT AT: Whole Foods, Albertsons, Safeway, Tops
JARDINES SASSY LAVENDER AND PEACH
No, we’d never experienced this flavor combination before, either. But it really works. The lavender, which tastes a little like fresh oregano, cuts through the sweetness of the peach chunks. “Get me some shrimp tacos,” requested one tester. FIND IT AT: Walmart, Publix, Kroger
THE BEST GROCERY GUAC: A TIE! WHOLLY GUACAMOLE CLASSIC and WHOLLY GUACAMOLE CHUNKY This brand keeps its ingredients list simple—no “natural flavor,” no “ascorbic acid”—so the guacamole tastes vibrant and clean, not chemical. The classic is awesome as a sandwich spread or slathered on toast. The chunky is your go-to for dipping.
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January • February 2020 / MEN’S HEALTH
Christopher Testani (chip). Food styling: Jamie Kimm. Prop styling: Megan Hedgpeth.
TENAYO ORIGINAL
YOU CAN’T SHUT DOWN YOUR NEIGHBORS BUT YOU CAN SHUT DOWN YOUR COLD SYMPTOMS
THE NIGHTTIME SNIFFLING, SNEEZING, COUGHING, ACHING, STUFFY HEAD,
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1. Guinness Foreign Extra Stout By piling more hops into its brewing, Guinness reinforces its classic with a pleasant bitterness. At 7.5% ABV, “this is your wind-down-bythe-fire beer,” says Jon Streep, co-owner of Alidoro in N. Y. C. 44
2. Ayinger Celebrator This 6.7% ABV doppelbock pours the color of a log cabin and tastes like a stack of homemade pancakes: doughy, slightly sweet, and with just a touch of vanilla. Up to you if you want to drink it at breakfast.
January • February 2020 / MEN’S HEALTH
3. Left Hand Brewing Milk Stout Nitro Natural lactose sugar softens this 6% ABV beer, made even smoother with nitrogen, which creates smaller carbonization bubbles and results in a more luscious pour, says Streep.
4. Allagash White It’s an old-standby 5.2% ABV hazy wheat that produces a head like fresh powder. The flavor is peppery and citrusy, with a backbone of banana. “It pairs excellently with my favorite cheeses,” says Josiah Citrin, chef of Charcoal Venice in Los Angeles.
5. Cigar City Brewing Jai Alai India Pale Ale This is the 7.5% ABV can of liquid courage you’re going to need to sneak in a few more late-day runs. “It’s light, refreshing, and recharging,” says Sarah Simmons, CEO of City Grit Hospitality Group.
6. Hitachino Nest Red Rice Ale The Japanese brewery turns to pineytasting Chinook hops to balance the barley in this slightly fruity brew, which has a touch of sweetness from the rice. It’s invigorating at 7% ABV. Enjoy it with a cheeseburger.
PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTOPHER TESTANI
Food styling: Jamie Kimm. Prop styling: Megan Hedgpeth.
Schmancy ski-town bars hawk mulled wine and spiced cider as ultimate winter warmers. But the snow-crazy chefs we talked to said that no drink fortifies and replenishes better than a beer. Here’s what they crack open after a long day on the slopes.
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REQUEST A CATALOG | 1-877-246-9495 | www.sleepnumber.com/menshealth *For a summary of clinical studies, visit sleepnumber.com. †2-Year Limited Warranty on SleepIQ® technology. Warranties available at sleepnumber.com. ‡Restrictions and exclusions apply. Does not apply to adjustable bases, Upholstered Collection, closeout/clearance or demo/floor model purchases or mattresses already exchanged under another In-Home Trial period. You pay return shipping. Refunds will be made to the original method of payment less original shipping/delivery fees. Visit sleepnumber.com for complete details. SLEEP NUMBER, SLEEPIQ, SLEEP NUMBER 360, the Double Arrow Design, and SELECT COMFORT are registered trademarks of Sleep Number Corporation. ©2020 Sleep Number Corporation
LIFE Eco-friendly clothing used to mean hemp and fleece and all manner of Phish merch. But as brands get serious about sustainability by investing in recycled materials, waste-mitigating manufacturing, and clothes meant to last and last and last, it’s never been easier to look good and do right by the planet. Here, actor IAN SOMERHALDER tries on four ways to show off our green streak.
SUSTAINABLE STYLE
BY EVAN ROMANO
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January • February 2020 / MEN’S HEALTH
1 The ultimate recycled jacket. WELLEN builds this
cold-weather essential with recycled nylon, which doesn’t sound comfortable, but ohh, man. The pockets are flannel-lined, so they double as mittens, and the coat’s insulation defends against all elements. In other words, the jacket hits the trifecta: It looks cool, retains heat, and does a solid for the planet, too. Jacket ($188) by Wellen, available at huckberry.com; shirt ($125) by Tact & Stone; Wellthread jeans ($128) by Levi’s; sneakers ($100) by Veja; recycled cashmere hat ($69) by Patagonia.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALLIE HOLLOWAY
$'9(57,6(0(17
Your Guide to Losing Weight Need to drop some pounds? Take it off with a morning shake. 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.â€? 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 DUWLÂżFLDO LQJUHGLHQWV DGGHG VXJDUV V\QWKHWLF dyes, preservatives and cheap proteins; the kind of proteins that keep you fat no matter how hard you hit the gym, sap your energy and do nothing for your muscles. Disappointed after reviewing this “newâ€? 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. :KLOH , ÂżUPO\ EHOLHYH WKDW WKH J\P LV D QR talk focus zone, I had to ask, “Hey Zee, what protein shake are you recommending to your clients these days?â€?
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.â€? 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 PHOW DZD\ WKH PRUH GHÂżQLWLRQ \RX JHW LQ \RXU arms, pecs and abs. The makers of INVIGOR8 were determined to make the ÂżUVW FRPSOHWH QDWXUDO QRQ *02 superfood shake that helps you lose fat and build lean muscle. The result is a shake that contains JUDVV IHG ZKH\ that has a superior nutriHQW SURÂżOH WR WKH JUDLQ IHG ZKH\ IRXQG LQ PRVW shakes, PHWDEROLVP ERRVWLQJ UDZ FRFRQXW RLO KRUPRQH IUHH FRORVWUXP to promote a KHDOWK\ LPPXQH V\VWHP 2PHJD ULFK FKLD DQG
Ă€D[VHHGV, superfood greens like kale, spinach, broccoli, alfalfa, and chlorella, and clinically tested FRJQLWLYH HQKDQFHUV 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 KLJK FDOLEHU QXWULWLRQ you get from INVIGOR8. While there are over 500 testimonials on Amazon about how INVIGOR8 “gave me more energy and staminaâ€? and “melts away abdominal fat like butter on a hot sidewalkâ€?, what really impressed me was how many customers raved about the taste. So I had to give it a try. 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 \HDUV WR DFKLHYH WRWDO GHÂżQLWLRQ 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. $ FRPSDQ\ VSRNHVSHUVRQ FRQÂżUPHG DQ H[clusive offer for Men’s Health readers: if you order INVIGOR8 this month, you’ll receive RII \RXU ÂżUVW RUGHU E\ XVLQJ SURPR FRGH Âł0(1 ´ 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.Invigor8.com or by calling 1-800-958-3392.
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Purpose-built, planetfriendly pants. If, like Somerhalder, you travel often or spend the day shuffling between meetings, this pair of travel pants from Paskho will help get you where you need to go. They’re made with environmentally conscious Swiss Tech fabric, which is nice. But they’re also loaded with pockets for storing passports, plane tickets, and protein bars, which is even nicer. Tech Travel henley ($58) and Tech Travel trousers ($168) by Paskho; parley ocean plastic UltraBoost20 sneakers ($180) by Adidas Originals; Eco-Drive watch ($425) by Citizen Watch.
3
Stylish sneakers with plans for the short- and long-term. Some companies pay lip service to going green. Adidas partnered with NASA’s ISS National Lab to create the UltraBoost20 running shoes (above). And Veja’s Esplar trainers (right) feel great thanks to a lining made of organic cotton and a sole of wild Amazonian forest rubber. Traceable wool jacket ($895) and trousers ($398) by Boss; vest ($60) by REI Co-op; shirt ($125) by Tact & Stone; sneakers ($120) by Veja.
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January • February 2020 / MEN’S HEALTH
Styling: Ted Stafford. Grooming: Losi/Honey Artists. Tailoring: Carol Ai/Altered Agency. Special thanks to Industrial Carting.
4 The well-built boots that also give back. Going to the recycling center: not very fun. Wearing Timberland’s new ReBOTL boots: so much fun. They feel sturdy even though Timberland makes them from up to 50 percent recycled plastic. And you can even see that eco-friendly concept— the ReBOTL lining is literally green, right on top of the Timbs you know and love. Sweatshirt ($105) by Jungmaven; Indigood jeans ($149) by Wrangler; ReBOTL boots ($185) by Timberland.
FOR SOMEONE WHO’S been a fi xture on
series like Lost and The Vampire Diaries for nearly 20 years, Ian Somerhalder, 41, has a relatively basic sense of style— which is surprising, considering his shows are anything but basic. “Because life is so insane and I’m just a dude, the simpler the better,” he says. That means jeans and T-shirts, the latter of which he buys 75 at a time from Alternative Apparel’s Eco line (which makes use of nearly 1.8 million recycled plastic bottles annually). This Steve Jobs-ian attitude of clothing-as-uniform helps Somerhalder streamline his wardrobe, buck trends, and ultimately devote his decision
making to more important endeavors. His passion is tackling climate change: He helped with the cleanup after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill off the coast of his native Louisiana, and he’s a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for its environment program. Now Somerhalder is starring on, producing, and even occasionally directing Netflix’s V Wars, a medical thriller involving a vampiric uprising. If that seems outthere, the actor gets it. “Not to sound like a douche,” he says, “but the last two shows I was on were these tentpole watercooler shows. I’ve learned enough that I don’t have any desire for the show to not have that same impact on an audience.” MEN’S HEALTH
/ January • February 2020
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GROOMING
Extreme You Makeover It used to be that whatever your lot in life—sweaty, balding, chubby—the best you could do was try to prevent it or cover it up. Now we have plasma to save your hair, injections to make you sweat less, and lasers to kill toenail fungus. Is any of it right for you? BY GARRETT MUNCE PAIN RATING
AVERAGE TREATMENT
OLD FIX
NEW FIX
1. Thinning hair
Prescription shampoo and a hat
Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is drawn from your blood and then injected into your scalp. Studies have shown that several treatments of PRP can increase hair quantity, density, and stability. “It’s like injectable fertilizer for your hair,” says plastic surgeon Benjamin Paul, M.D. Around 70 percent of patients see improvement, but the results are not permanent.
2. Patchy beard
Hair dye and a toothbrush
Nowadays transplants can be done with individual hairs instead of large swaths, giving you a fuller beard. “Donor hairs are typically harvested from the back of the scalp and divided into single-hair follicles,” says plastic surgeon Jason Champagne, M.D. They are then inserted to match the existing beard hair and begin growing in three to four months.
One long session of three to six hours
3. Excess sweating
Extrastrength deodorant and a prayer
Botox, commonly used to smooth forehead wrinkles, is also FDA approved to treat axillary hyperhidrosis: sweating so much that it interferes with your quality of life. That’s because Botox targets the neurotransmitter controlling those glands, says dermatologist Macrene Alexiades, M.D. You’ll sweat less after one 15-minute session, but it lasts only four months.
One session
4. Beer belly
8-Minute Abs DVD and cutting carbs
EMSculpt uses MRI-like magnetic waves to contract muscles. One 30-minute session “induces 20,000 supramaximal muscle contractions to burn fat and build muscle involuntarily,” says cosmetic dermatologist Paul Jarrod Frank, M.D. Some studies show a 16 percent increase in muscle and a 15 percent decrease in fat after several treatments.
Four sessions two weeks apart
5. Toenail fungus
Shower sandals and smelly spray
“Topical treatments never penetrate the actual layer of the toenail,” says podiatrist Suzanne Levine, D.P.M. She uses a Q-Clear Laser. It’s tuned to a specific wavelength to target and kill fungi living beneath the surface without hurting the nails or skin. The treatment can feel uncomfortable, but results are visible after only a few months.
Three sessions about a month apart
6. Lack of sleep
Earlier bedtime and eye cream
The Gharieni Spa Wave table uses sound and vibrations to slow brain waves, similar to REM sleep. One 30-minute session can decrease stress and anxiety, improve concentration, and reduce signs of depression and chronic pain. Think of it more as meditation than as a sleep replacement, says Men’s Health sleep advisor W. Christopher Winter, M.D.
We dare you to do it just once
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January • February 2020 / MEN’S HEALTH
(higher if scared of needles)
Three sessions about a month apart
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LIFE
The Stress-Free Guide to
Should you make time for sex on birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays? Yes. Should it be stressful? Absolutely not. BY JULIE VADNAL
P
LANNING A sexathon on an
anniversary or a birthday may seem cliché—“Dick in a Box” came out, what, more than a decade ago? But that just means you have to be more creative, because a memorable sex session makes for one of the best gifts of all. (Hold the wrapping paper, please.) “Especially in longtime relationships, things can get really monotonous, and 52
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having sex around special occasions spices things up,” says sex therapist Kristie Overstreet, Ph.D. “And there can be a really big payoff.” As in, stronger orgasms (for you both!) and increased bonding. But amping up your game for a special occasion can also add pressure. How far do you have to go—in terms of both adventurousness and budget—to give her an unforgettable experience? Relax. You
don’t need to hire a skywriter to make her swoon; oftentimes just expending a little more effort—like sending an anticipatory text—can have a sizable effect. “What people will remember most is the time and energy their partner put in,” says clinical psychologist Seth Meyers, Psy.D., eHarmony’s resident relationship expert. Use these four strategies to make special-occasion sex even more special. PHOTOGRAPH BY JEFFREY WESTBROOK
CRE ATE AN IG FILTER IRL We’re not saying you need to light more candles than the Vatican or scatter rose petals everywhere. But there are a few clever ways to create a mood without killing it—and yes, one of them involves candlelight. Candlelight is a real-life Instagram fi lter, and who doesn’t want that when they’re naked? Instead of buying a 50-pack of tea lights from Costco, which can be a fire hazard, invest in one statement candle. It’s a gift and a scene setter all in one. Besides buying candles, Melissa, 26, a publicist in New York, makes sure she and her partner can refuel and rehydrate after a special-occasion romp. Once, when they hadn’t seen each other for a while, she says she stocked the room “with post-coitus snacks— chocolates and flavored seltzers are my go-to—so we wouldn’t have to leave our island of sheets for hours.”
Leslie Xia (illustrations)
SLOW (WAY, WAY) DOWN We know you want to make her come— and that’s great!—but challenge yourself to go slow during foreplay. “Make an extra effort to spend time kissing, touching, nuzzling, fondling without the express goal of the ‘ASAP orgasm,’ or even penetration,” Meyers says. The less she feels pressured to climax, the more she’ll be able to enjoy herself, which ultimately makes a big O more likely. On a partner’s birthday, Andrew, 28, a writer in New York, decided to give her an erotic massage. “It started with just a regular massage, and when she was relaxed, I slowly moved into sexually pleasuring her,” he says. “By the time we actually had sex, it was incredible.” Relationship expert Sadie Allison suggests buying a bottle of massage oil and taking your sweet time. “Do some gentle stroking while making it a point to touch every inch of skin on her body,
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from behind her ears to under her arms, all the way down to the bottom of her feet,” Allison says.
PL AY WITH POSITIONING Hopefully you know the surefire ways to please your partner, especially if you’ve been together since before butt motorboating became a thing. But a birthday or an anniversary is a chance to try a new position that skews from your usual moves. That doesn’t mean you need to install a hanging sex swing. It can be as simple as adding this twist to missionary, suggests Allison: Get in position for missionary, but scoot her booty to the edge of the bed so that you’re standing. Though it’s a slight change, it makes a big difference in your stamina (thrusting while standing is easier than while kneeling) and gives you both super-deep stimulation. Or change up your scenery. “For my birthday, my boyfriend took us to a spa for a couple’s massage, but they gave you an hour in a giant tub prior to the massage,” says Jess, 33, a photo producer in New York. “It was clearly for sex, so yes, we had sex. It was amazing, and the feeling that we might get caught made it extra hot.”
MAKE AN X-R ATED TOY STORY Whether or not you’re already using toys as part of your regularly scheduled sexing, introducing a new one that stimulates you both will up the ante. That’s what Melissa and her partner tried to do on their first Christmas together, when he gifted her a “massive” butt plug. “It was supposed to be a very romantic evening of us exploring anal training—something we were both really turned on by—but because he got the wrong size, it was a really awkward backand-forth with lots of lube everywhere before we finally admitted defeat,” she says. Eventually, they switched to a normal-sized plug—with the help of Christmas-cookie-flavored lube. MEN’S HEALTH
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YOU GUYS
Have a Plan, Man LAUREN LARSON explains why a little
mental labor is the sexiest thing a man can do. EVE RY N OW AND THE N, someone asks
you a question that causes your eye to twitch, your limbs to lock, and your loins to crawl up into your body. “Do you know how fast you were going just now?” is one of those questions. “Do you have a second to chat?” is another one. But there’s one question that hardens my heart to the question asker forever: “When do I get to see you again?” This past summer, I went out with a guy I really liked. On the first date, we went for drinks. The day after, he texted me: “When do I get to see you again?” The 54
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question wasn’t a rage trigger for me yet; I thought it was sweet that he was direct about his interest. I told him I was free the following Tuesday, and we made dinner plans. The day after that, he texted me again: “When do I get to see you again?” The eye twitch began. I told him my weekend was wide open. “Great,” he said, “let’s do something.” I am a child of the Bachelor franchise, and as such I love a good activity date. I’ve gone on a lot of drinks dates in my time, and it’s always refreshing to do something different. I don’t need to bungee jump on
a beach in Singapore, à la The Bachelor, but it’s nice to have an interesting answer when my friends ask what we did. I would have done literally any “something” my date had suggested, short of heroin. The thrill of the activity date does not lie in doing the activity; most activity dates are kind of lame. The thrill of the activity date is having someone plan something for you. Some men know this intuitively. Those men are, invariably, happily dating or married to women who are way out of their league. My date didn’t suggest a “something.” He wanted all the benefits of seeing me without having to do any of the work to plan it. He was happy to lead the charge on timing, the easiest part of date planning, but he wasn’t eager to take on any of the actual stress of planning. We would be locked in a passive battle, each of us trying to foist the burden of planning on the ILLUSTRATION BY KAGAN M C LEOD
YOUR EXPERT
In this column and on MensHealth .com, Lauren Larson writes about the evolving dynamics between men and women—from hooking up to . . . everything else.
other, until one of us died. I texted him back with some things I like to do: museums, comedy clubs, zoos, saunas, etc. I felt like a math teacher trying to guide a student to an obvious answer—“Does two plus two equal four, 40, or 400?”—except there was no wrong answer. Finally I cracked. I suggested we go see Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood and get some dinner. But I’d had it: The next day, when he asked me again when he would “get to see” me, I said I had a busy week ahead. I don’t think I would have spurned him so coolly if I hadn’t recently dated a man who, bless his heart, could not plan. When I’d ask him to pick a restaurant, he’d say, “But you always pick such great spots.” He said this with the conniving innocence of someone saying, “Whenever I help with the dishes, I break one.” Good relationships require planning even when you’re in the Netflix-on-thecouch-with-Thai-food stage, and I felt like the burden was always on me. I imagined myself planning the rest of our relationship, then our wedding, then the minutiae of our kids’ days. I imagined myself in 20 years snapping and going on the lam.
Kyle Hilton (Larson)
THESE DAYS, WE (women, especially when
we’re stressed) talk a lot about “mental labor,” the invisible work that happens in a relationship. The term made one of its earliest appearances in a 1996 paper from Susan Walzer, Ph.D., in the journal Social Problems—coincidentally the title of my memoir. Walzer explored how the mental labor of childcare was divided between mothers and fathers. She divided that load into three categories: worrying, processing information, and managing the division of labor. Walzer described how women are socially programmed to worry about their babies, even feeling like bad mothers when they’re not worrying. Men are not worriers and don’t feel that their lack of worrying reflects on them as parents. Women, in turn, might worry more because they know the men aren’t worrying. Women also tended to do more research into what makes a parent
good or bad—that’s the “processing infor- researched the best new sake bars (manmation” part. And mothers spent more aging the division of labor). The flip side of my grievances is that by time “managing the division of labor,” meaning they spent more time trying to get planning a date, a man sets himself apart their babies’ fathers to take a more active immediately. Even if I’m iff y on a guy after role in parenting. Women were the logistics a first date, if he texts me with a plan (“We can meet at the 5:30 screening of The Farecaptains of the family. It’s kind of understandable, then, that well, then walk to a good Ethiopian place a lot of the men I’m dating now—men who nearby”), he’s getting a second date. The were being raised in 1996—have an aver- same goes for boyfriends and husbands: sion to planning. Nobody taught them Most malfeasances can be brushed away how to do it. There’s really only one type of by a well-planned evening, or even just an occasion when men do, stereotypically, earnest attempt at a well-planned evening. If “When do I get to see you again?” is have to take over planning from women: promposals and marriage proposals. Many one of the most stressful phrases in a relationship, then “I made a reservation” may guys panic and turn to the jumbotron. For fathers, the message of Walzer’s be the sexiest. paper is clear: Don’t be the dad who’s got everything figured out. Be the dad who’s freaking out because one kid has soccer at 3:15 and one kid has piano an hour away at 3:20. Six considerations to For husbands, sharing menminimize stress (hers) and maximize tal labor in the relationship is brownie points (yours). a little less straightforward. It might mean making sure Convenience: If you’re meeting after work, pick a place she can get to easily from her you’re sharing in household office. If you’re meeting on a weekend, pick tasks, or taking charge of maksomewhere you can both get to easily. ing travel plans for the holidays. Noise level: People noise is fine—a crowded For those of us nibbling from restaurant suggests that you chose a popular the fine charcuterie of the meat spot—but loud music is not. You want bustling, market (dating): Our date is not bumping. our baby. Our objective is to Lighting: The restaurant doesn’t have to be plan a date that runs track, candlelit, but the lighting shouldn’t be fluoresexcels in STEM fields, gets into cent. Fluorescent is the opposite of sexy. Yale, and coddles us postreReservations: Make one for a reasonable time; tirement. I’m happy to take on if the only available reservation is at 4:45 P.M., planning sometimes—I really find a different spot. do pick great restaurants— Cost: Glance at the menu and make sure you’ll but sometimes I want to hand be comfortable footing the bill. My worst date over the reins. I don’t want to fear is the look of panic in my date’s eyes when stress about whether we’ll have he picks up the menu and realizes he suggested a place where the cheapest cocktail is $20 enough time to get from the and the only affordable dish is a side of green bar to the movie (worrying). beans. If you’ve eaten at the restaurant before, I don’t want to spend my day say, “This place is amazing,” and if you haven’t, reading up on the best new sake say, “I looked at the menu and it looks amazbars (processing information). ing.” This way, your date will know that you know how expensive it is. I don’t want to stress about whether you’ve stressed about Food: Look for a good mix of light “precoital” whether we’ll have enough time fare and heavy “I’m going to need to lie down and not move for five hours after this burger” fare. to get from the bar to the movie or whether you’ve thoroughly
HOW TO PICK A DATE RESTAURANT
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answers your questions about sex and relationships that Google can’t.
WHAT’S THE SMOOTHEST, LEAST AWKWARD WAY TO ASK SOMEONE BACK TO MY APARTMENT AT THE END OF A DATE? —JESSE, Queens, NY
“Would you like to come home with me tonight?”
WHEN MY WIFE AND I GO TO PARTIES, SHE TENDS TO GET REALLY DRUNK. HOW DO I HELP HER REIN IT IN? —SETH, San Francisco, CA
Are there preferred words for body parts in 2020? Can I still say p*** y and c* ck, or is there a new vocabulary I need to learn? —PHIL, Detroit, MI
Vulva. We doubt you’ve heard it from any of your buddies, but the word is gaining traction among enlightened women as the most accurate way to refer to their external sex organs, including the labia, clitoris, and vaginal opening. Saying it might transport you to fifth-grade sex-ed class, but since most people still say vagina when they really mean vulva, you’ll seem rather cultured if you use it correctly in conversation. (If you want to sound extra worldly, try the Sanskrit yoni.) But if you’re in the middle of actually having sex, p***y and c*ck will never go out of style. I approve of any dirty talk that turns you and your partner on. 56
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SHE SAYS SHE WANTS ROUGH SEX, BUT I DON’T WANT TO HURT HER. WHAT’S A SAFE STARTER MOVE? —CAMERON, Denver, CO
Just because she asked for it doesn’t mean you have carte blanche, so whatever you do, agree in advance on a safe word that either of you can use to dial things back in the moment. Then ease into it with some light hair pulling or spanking. For hair pulling, grab a fistful near the scalp—similar to running your hands through her hair—and squeeze gently. (Even though it’s called hair pulling, it’s not really about pulling—it’s more about adding pressure.) Unless she requests it, avoid a ponytail grab or anything else that could cause whiplash. For spanking, make sure you hit the meatiest part of the bum, and nothing above the cheeks, which can be painful—and not in a good way.
I HAVE SOME EXPENSIVE SEX TOYS FROM A PREVIOUS RELATIONSHIP. IF I CLEAN THEM, IS IT WEIRD TO USE THEM WITH A NEW PARTNER? —STEVE, Jackson, MS
If those toys went inside someone else, then the answer is yes. Even if you clean them, sex toys are personal, and you don’t want the ghosts of sex sessions past to be lingering in your bedroom. If your new partner is down, the two of you could try picking something out together—it’s one of the sexiest bonding activities you can do as a couple!
Adam Voorhes/Gallery Stock (rooster). Joel Arbaje (Piercey).
ASK HER ANYTHING
First of all, this is definitely a conversation you should have sober. Confess that her party habits make you uncomfortable, since she’s always three steps ahead of everyone else. Her initial reaction might be anger or denial, because you’ve bruised her pride, but ultimately she’ll want to know if she’s doing something that bothers you. As you talk, try to figure out what’s causing her to drink so much. If she just doesn’t know how to handle her booze, encourage the 1:1 rule: one glass of water after every alcoholic drink. If she’s drinking due to social anxiety or addiction, then it’s time to think about professional help.
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S O OT H I N G V I C K S VA P O R S F O R T H E W H O L E FA M I LY.
MIND
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YOU’V E J UST G OTTA SAY . . . SOMETHING ELSE
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STAY SANE IN A CRAZY ELECTION YEAR HOW TO
Twitter, talking heads, fake news, your nonstop neighbor, your opinionated colleague . . . gah! How to tune out the noise and keep your mental health intact.
EVERY ELECTION SEASON,
our merciless news cycle starts taking people hostage. I’ve been a therapist for about ten years, and many sessions that would normally revolve around my patients’ personal struggles suddenly acquire a political flavor—an argument with a racist uncle, nightmares about getting fired because of a rant posted on Twitter, excessive drinking after checking Nate Silver’s latest election analysis. My patients are not an anomaly. In a survey by the American Psychological Association after the 2016 election, 57 percent of respondents said that politics stressed them out. In another survey, from the University of Nebraska– Lincoln, about a fifth of people reported doing or saying something they later regretted as a result of feelings related to politics. Another 20 percent said that politics had negatively affected their relationships with friends and family. I’m thinking of more than one wedding that was almost called off because of things said around the dinner table. ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN TOMAC
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Why do we get ourselves into this state, and how does it happen? There are plenty of theories about that, but no matter what gets us to this place, I can tell you what’s happening inside all of us. It might start with a push notification that drives you to Twitter to see what people are saying, then someone’s ridiculous comment catches your eye, your blood pressure rises, you text a friend to vent, and now you’re off to the races. The whole system has us stuck in a feedback loop seemingly designed to push our buttons and activate our stress response. Having that response on high alert 24/7 isn’t just bad for your relationships and your social-media feed; it can be disastrous for your health. We keep looking at the news or talking about politics in the hope that it will relieve some of this anxiety. But staying engaged can make it worse, since we’re powerless to change the political narrative of the moment, and there’s always more bad news. The more we feel threatened, the more our body relies on the hormones cortisol and adrenaline to survive. Constant exposure to cortisol leads to major health problems: weight gain, poor sleep, heart disease, diabetes, depression, anxiety— and that’s not even a full list. And, no surprise here, the worse we feel, the more likely we are to lash out at friends, family, and strangers—or “add to the conversation” with a witty tweet or comment. We seem to collectively whip ourselves into a frenzy with no way out. But take a deep breath. There’s hope for surviving this upcoming election season, and it doesn’t require giving up your smartphone and moving to the woods. The truth is, there’s no escape from partisan politics. People have disagreed about politics since the first government was formed, probably even before that. Defining the problem is the first step toward dealing with it. And in this case, the problem isn’t political conflict; it’s what we do about it. With the right habits and mind-set in place, you can make it through the 2020 election with your sanity and your relationships intact. —AVI KLEIN, L.C.S.W, psychotherapist in New York City and cohost of Hey, Man—The Advice Podcast for Men. 60
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SWEATING THE ISSUES Texas representatives Colin Allred (left), Democrat, and Van Taylor, Republican, run you through disagreeing— agreeably.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY NATHAN PERKEL
T H G I R ) THE T F E L D
(AN
WAY TO
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Two Texas congressmen. Two sides of the aisle. How they make things work.
C
OLIN ALLRED AND VAN
Taylor have a lot in common. They’re both freshman lawmakers in the U. S. House of Representatives. They’re both from Texas. They’re both used to being part of a team: Allred spent four seasons in the NFL with the Tennessee Titans; Taylor was in the Marines for nine years. But there’s one major difference: Allred is a Democrat and Taylor a Republican, and at a time when our government (and seemingly every aspect of life) is intensely polarized, you’d have every reason to believe these two aren’t friends and don’t get along. But they are, and they do, and Men’s Health caught up with them during an early-morning workout to learn how they manage it.
LOOKING OVER THE POLICY SECTIONS ON YOUR WEBSITES, WE DON’T SEE A WHOLE LOT THAT YOU GUYS AGREE ON. SO HOW EXACTLY DOES BEING FRIENDS WORK? TAYLOR: Colin was the first person I called to congratulate on election night in 2018. Our districts are intertwined—we have water issues together and transportation issues together— and I knew I was gonna have to work with him. I came to Congress to get things done for my district, and building relationships is the first step. A relationship begins with a phone call. ALLRED: And it does help that we’re friends. You could spend all your time focused on where you disagree with someone. You could have a good argu-
ment every day if you wanted to, but you wouldn’t get much done. And anytime you don’t have a relationship with somebody, it’s gonna be easier to demonize them. TAYLOR: You want to focus on what you can work on together. You have to accept the arguments on the other side as valid when they are. You don’t want to dismiss them—at least understand what they are so that you are able to converse. Because if you don’t know anything about what the other side is talking about, you’re not going to be able to understand their perspective. SINCE YOUR DISTRICTS ARE NEXT TO EACH OTHER, YOU GUYS AUTOMATICALLY HAVE SOMETHING IN COMMON. WHAT’S THE BEST WAY TO TALK WITH A COLLEAGUE YOU EITHER DON’T KNOW OR DON’T PARTICULARLY LIKE? TAYLOR: Start with family. ALLRED: Always ask about their families. Then: “How’s life treating you?” Especially with the new members: “How are you settling into D. C.?” The older members: “How did you settle in?” Once you start talking to each other along those lines, you pretty quickly realize how many similarities you have. TAYLOR: The other key to talking with people is to know where they are. Whenever I’m talking to anyone of Congress, I say, “Hey, this is what I think. This is why I think you should do this. But you need to do what’s good for you in your district.” It’s important to have those conversations and be honest with each other. MEN’S HEALTH
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ALLRED: I always have a harder time
ALLRED: Also, it’s not like “Allred and
TAYLOR: We need to think about
when I feel like somebody’s repeating talking points. It’s like: I’m trying to have a conversation with you; you don’t need to lobby me. You’re also probably not going to change my mind just with talking points that we’ve all heard on the news.
Taylor Come Together to Work on Moderate Bill” is raging news.
these conversations as an opportunity to educate ourselves and learn from other people. It’s a smart thing to have a diversity of perspectives. No two people agree with each other all the time. If you don’t believe me, ask your significant other. ALLRED: And there are important differences! Don’t get me wrong. And that’s what our elections are about. That’s democracy. That’s healthy. What isn’t healthy is when you assume that the person who disagrees with you is also a bad person. Because if you can’t disagree without thinking someone else is bad or evil, then you start pulling apart the seams of our country, and we have to be very careful about that.
HOW MUCH OF THE BICKERING AND VITRIOL THAT WE SEE ON TV IS REAL AND HOW MUCH OF IT IS JUST FOR SHOW? ALLRED: I don’t think that it’s as pervasive as it might seem on TV, but there are certainly people in D. C. who don’t like each other. TAYLOR: And TV gravitates toward those people. “Hey, wanna go on TV and bash the other side?”
MORE AND MORE, IT SEEMS LIKE THAT DIVISIVENESS IS SEEPING INTO OUR EVERYDAY LIVES. WHAT’S A SOLUTION TO THAT? OTHER THAN WORKING OUT TOGETHER. TAYLOR: You can’t just watch cable news to get your information. You have to get out of your ideological bubble. ALLRED: Same with social media. We’ve got algorithms that enforce your existing worldview. All of us now have to be more proactive about getting outside of our little bubble and have an understanding of all sides of the issues.
The Savvy Guy’s Guide to Changing the Topic You’re trying to have a nice time. Things get overheated. All you need is a little finesse to get the evening back on track.
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UNLESS AN UNFORESEEN tragedy befalls Randall on This Is Us, the presidential election will be the most important thing to happen on a Tuesday all year long. But that doesn’t mean you have to talk about it. Why would you want to? At this stage, very little good can come from additional conversation. What’s the best you could hope for? That you change someone’s mind? LOL, no. Hearts and minds are not won via cocktail-
party chatter. They evolve over time through lived experience. So when the election comes up in conversation—and it will, whether you want it to or not—you might want to change the subject, lest politics hang heavily over your social occasion like a lingering, noxious fart. The easiest way to extricate yourself is to say, “You know, I haven’t been following it lately. Instead, I’ve been . . .” and then talk about literally anything else. Or pivot with a question. If they say, “Hey, did ya watch the debate last night?” you say, “Nope! I watched the Rockets game. Think those guys can go all the way?” They say, “If my candidate loses, I’m moving to Canada.” You say, “Oh, man, where exactly will you go?” They almost certainly won’t have a real plan; empty threats like this are just how people talk about politics, and they’re yet another reason not to engage. But in the unlikely event that they’ve thought through their American exodus, you already know what to say next: “Can I help you pack?” —NICK MARINO
TIME OUT Jonathan Capehart takes a spin through D. C. to give himself the time and space to think about things.
once did I turn on the television. I discovered that by being completely detached, I became completely recharged. When I came back, it was like turning on All My Children if you haven’t watched it for 20 years. The story line has advanced maybe a little bit, but the characters and the themes are pretty much the same. Recently I’ve been thinking about how I can break away to give myself some mental space. I take long walks—sometimes six to ten brisk miles—to stop paying attention to what’s going on in the news and spend more time in my head thinking, while also paying attention to where I am, and how the light is hitting the Washington Monument or the way tourists are interacting with each other.
Chaos Management, According to the Pros How to keep from drowning in the 24/7 news cycle, by top journalists who do it.
1
TURN OFF THE
FIRE HOSE
Prize–winning editorial writer for The Washington Post, an MSNBC contributor and substitute anchor, and host of the podcast Cape Up. THE CHAOS: Capehart’s days are planned . . . until they’re not. “Ever since 2016, we’ve been on a roller coaster with no lap bar,” he says. So he expects interruptions in his preferred routine, which involves a 6:00 A.M. wakeup, a dose of Morning Joe and New Day, a scroll through Twitter and feeds from the likes of Politico and Axios, then a dive into the
newspapers, including The Washington Post and The New York Times. If he’s not writing, he’s nailing down his podcast or preparing for panels he’s on or moderating, speeches he’s giving, or appearances on news and talk shows. Breaking news means all bets are off. Here, his insights on how to survive the ride.
BUT WHEN YOU DO TUNE IN, REALLY TUNE IN If I were to write the way most people read news, I’d be fired. News consumers need to do a better job. I spend a lot of time reporting things, and I have yelled at people on Twitter who react to something I’ve written just based on the tweeted headline. In the press, when we make mistakes, we’re held accountable for them. News consumers aren’t held accountable for not reading the whole story or not clicking on the links that provide a broader understanding. When I react to people on Twitter, I try to hold them accountable. GET JUST ENOUGH FOOD AND AN ABUNDANCE OF SLEEP I used to think I needed to eat a big breakfast, lunch, and dinner and be stuffed. Now it’s less about eating until I’m full; it’s eating so I’m no longer hungry. I don’t want all that food in my stomach when I go to bed, and I want enough sleep so I’m not groggy and can’t think or write.
THE STRATEGIES GIVE THE NEWS A BREAK. YOU WON’T MISS MUCH. The best thing I did in terms of coping was to leave the country last July. I spent a month in Rome to work on a book I’ve been toying with for a while. I deleted Twitter. I only listened to music, and not
HANG TIGHT Just think of this year as one of those flights where it’s turbulent the whole time and you hope it’s not going to take much longer to get through the rough air. It’s uncomfortable, and it’s frightening, but you get through to the other side. MEN’S HEALTH
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START WITH A WIN Phil Mattingly hits the gym first thing—it lets him chalk up an accomplishment before news-cycle chaos gets going at full speed.
2
DISCOVER YOUR
ROUTINE
respondent for CNN, reports all day for the network, files stories for digital, and makes on-air appearances on shows like The Lead with Jake Tapper (4:00 P.M.), The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer (5:00 P.M.), Erin Burnett OutFront (7:00 P.M.), Anderson Cooper 360 (8:00 P.M.), and CNN Tonight with Don Lemon (10:00 P.M.). And he manages to get to the gym and spend time with his family, too. We caught up with him between stories to find out how. 2016 was a crazy year and a crazy election cycle. There were points when I was on the trail for 20-plus days a month, and it took its toll. About a month before 64
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Election Day, my mom called me and said in the kind yet blunt way that only moms can: “You look terrible.” I’d lost a ton of weight and wasn’t even trying to manage my health. A couple of months after the election, I realized I needed to figure this out, because it was having a tangible negative effect on everything else. I got very regimented in how I ate and exercised. The key ended up being getting into CrossFit—something I swore I would never do. Turns out I love the challenge, the energy, and how it carries over into my day. My wife especially appreciates me not being grumpy. And probably most importantly, no matter what happens the rest of the day, I already feel like I accomplished something by hitting the gym. It changes my mind-set and how I operate. I wake up at 4:00 A.M. every day. I’m one of those weird morning people that
most people hate. After I make coffee (with heavy cream to provide calories for the workout), I start reading all the major papers you can think of, fire off a bunch of text messages to a group of sources who are also dreaded early risers, and then I’m out the door by 4:45. I head over to the gym and work out from 5:15 to 6:15. I might phone some sources on the five-minute drive home to make sure I’m in the right place on things. When I get home, I make breakfast for my two boys, who are just waking up, and give my wife a break from our newborn daughter before I head to work. The gym is really the only hour of the workday when I’m completely off my phone. (On the weekends, I make a deliberate effort to put it down. My wife will tell you that effort is subpar, but it’s a work in progress.) The gym has almost become a safe harbor of time, where I have control when everything else seems to be spinning out of control. I think the chaos [of the news cycle] is the reason I’ve become so attached to my routine—it’s one thing I can control each day.
I don’t follow any specific meal plan, but I try to eat every two and a half to three hours. I keep myself well stocked with Rx, Quest, and Epic bars so I always have something to grab if I’m stuck chasing lawmakers in the Capitol or candidates on the road. I definitely have cheat days, but rarely during the week. The second I go off the wagon foodwise, it’s going to be a minute before I hop back on. We face tremendous pressure both externally and internally where we’ve got to break news, not get beat, and, most importantly, get it right. But the truth is, after three-plus years, you become conditioned to it all—to some degree, your metabolism sets itself to that reality. When news is breaking is weirdly when I feel the most calm. I can focus and identify what I need to do and get it done. I don’t think you exist in this environment if you don’t love it. Of course, that doesn’t mean things are a breeze. There are bad days, days where nothing makes sense, and days where you feel like you’re bad at your job. Getting beat on a big story you know you should have had is soul crushing. But the harsh reality is sometimes you just don’t have it all together. You oversleep and miss the gym. You make it to the gym and have a terrible workout. You eat like garbage because you just feel like it. The 24/7 news cycle, or requests from bosses, or public criticism of your work just kind of overtakes you. And that inability to pull it back together can linger for days. The biggest, probably most important thing, at least in my mind, is the recognition that it only takes one day—or one workout, or one good scoop, or one good night with my family—to get everything back on track. Figuring that out—and getting myself to that point—is probably the most important aspect of handling day-to-day craziness. Also, a little perspective helps. I have friends deployed in war zones, friends battling cancer, friends dealing with significant family issues. I’m beyond lucky to have three healthy kids, an unbelievably understanding and patient wife, and a job that sticks me at the center of history every day. —AS TOLD TO MARTY MUNSON
3
FIND CALM IN THE
STORM
NBC News White House correspondent and coanchor of Weekend Today, 43, appears on Today, NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, and MSNBC. Which means reporting and analyzing the news on live TV many times a day, starting at 7:00 A.M. Here’s how peace, health, and family fit in, too. 5:10 A . M .: I try to sneak out of bed without waking up my wife and my four-yearold daughter, who has surely crawled in with us in the middle of the night. I check my phone right away, because inevitably something happened overnight that’s going to impact coverage. 5:45: Breakfast is a couple of hardboiled eggs and fruit and maybe a yogurt; I throw more fruit into my bag before I leave. There are usually cashews or almonds in our White House booth. 5:55: Clean up and head out the door; I usually listen to Morning Joe while driving in, and I call in to the newsroom. 6:10: Arrive at the White House. There’s value to having those snacks I packed: I can be cooped up in our booth for 13 hours. You can’t leave the property for fear that there will be breaking news, so the goal with these snacks is to do anything possible to avoid grazing on junk, especially from the White House vending machine that’s just around the corner. 6:20: Call our producers at the Today show in New York, check in with sources, and then hustle out to the White House North Lawn, and the next thing I know . . . 7:00: . . . I’m reporting live in front of a national audience. 8:00 to 6:00 P. M .: There’s a hurricane of information coming at you all day long. I have six TV monitors in front of me, and I’m YOU CAN TAKE IT WITH YOU When you’re stuck in the White House booth all day analyzing fast-breaking news, you stock up on healthy food, says Peter Alexander.
making calls to sources and keeping up with tweets by newsmakers. You have to be prepared to walk in front of a camera on a moment’s notice and answer questions on any of more than a dozen topics. I just try to focus on what’s immediately in front of me. If you think too far in advance, it can be overwhelming. Just being calm in such a relentless work environment can be crucial. My sister, who has a rare disorder called Usher syndrome that’s causing her to lose her vision and hearing, has this motto: “Breathe in peace, breathe out fear.” I’ve tried to adopt that. 6:30: Report live for Nightly News. 7:30: When I get home, I put my phone down and focus on being with my wife, Alison, and our two daughters before bed and, frankly, before I start working on the next day’s story. The TV is off, there’s often a dance party, and we’re just together. It’s a head-clearing space, which is hard to find. My job requires being aware of so much at once, but I don’t think anybody can survive that way. You have to find space and time for yourself. 10:30: My goal is to get to bed as close to then as I can. If I get to bed before 10:00 P.M., which is extremely rare, I definitely feel the difference the next morning.
MIND
Your 2020 Election Media Diet
50¢
How to stay informed without the toxicity.
HAVE THREE MEDIA MEALS A DAY*
BACK WHEN YOU couldn’t get CNN in your cave, you were always on high alert for some crumb of news that would tell you it was safe to go out and score some dinner. You’d scan. You’d consume. Same with food. It was scarce; you stayed vigilant. Scarfed up every bit you got. Which is a pretty nasty evolutionary habit to break. Now that we’re bathing in an easily accessible glut of news, we’re suffering from a kind of cognitive gluttony. We’re just not built to handle what’s coming at us. So until evolution catches up, we gathered top experts to outline exactly what a healthy media diet looks like.
Unless your livelihood depends on knowing every single nuance of every single developing news event, you don’t need to check the news every minute. Look at the news and your social-media feeds once in the morning, once at lunch, and once in the evening, says Mary McNaughton-Cassill, Ph.D., who has researched the effect of news watching at the University of Texas at San Antonio. That’s it. *As with a regular diet, meal frequencies and sizes can vary depending on individual factors, such as your personality, profession, and comfort with ambiguity.
COOL DAD
Make Fatherhood Civil Again! How does a former campaign manager talk to his kids about the nastiest election of our time? He bites his tongue. BY DAVID PLOUFFE
CUT OUT JUNK Let’s start with social media, because, like the checkout counter at the mini-mart, its very nature is to serve up the most irresistible (and inflammatory) stuff possible. Cutting back also helps you avoid the ugly vortex of mindless scrolling. “Many people scroll when they’re bored, depressed, or anxious,” says McNaughton-Cassill, and news-related content can reinforce these negative emotions. No need to eliminate everything; just unfollow what annoys you. And if you see something alarming, click through to the original source, says journalism professor Karen McIntyre at Virginia Commonwealth University.
H
AVING SPENT my entire adult life working in politics, I sometimes have to check myself from trying to treat the 2020 elections as an extended civics lesson for my kids. It’s kind of like talking to them about sex. You may want to avoid the whole topic, but because it’s a good bet they’re hearing about it everywhere else, you feel like you should say something. Especially now. Depending on where you live, or what channel you watch, you may feel as if we are headed for another civil war. Odds are you’re frustrated with Washington. Congress’s approval rating rarely cracks 25 percent. Hemorrhoids, root canals, and traffic jams are all more popular. You likely feel compelled to discuss politics with your kids or when your kids are around. And maybe you even do so as you might on social media—with a snide comment or quick dismissal of whatever current crisis is threatening to suck the world into chaos. I have a 15-year-old son and an 11-yearold daughter. If I try to force-feed them how much I think they should care about something, or how to engage with it, it’s a virtual guarantee they’ll tune out. But that doesn’t mean they don’t care. They
Leslie Xia (media diet illustrations)
FIGURE OUT IF THAT BURGER IS IMPOSSIBLE
REACH FOR SOMETHING REALLY SATISFYING
Fake reported news, like fake meat, is really good at its game right now. While socialmedia giants are making efforts to tag false information, you can’t expect them to do the job for you. Refine your own BS detector: • Boost your analytical abilities with questions like “If I’m wrong, where can I find evidence that disconfirms my belief?” says Michael Bronstein, Ph.D., at Yale University. • Check what the other side says. Allsides .com links to articles reflecting the left, center, and right views on various issues. • Visit Factcheck.org, a site that verifies and refutes claims in news stories.
First, fill up on multiple, credible sources. No publication is perfect, but Knight Foundation surveys suggest that people perceive PBS News, National Public Radio, the Associated Press, ABC News, and CBS News to be the least biased news sources. If that leaves you cold, check the growing movement in news called solutions journalism. (Find stories at solutionsjournalism.org.) This will “flip the frame to show how people are responding to problems,” says McIntyre. Consuming this news may make you feel better about negative news you read later. —JULIE STEWART
just don’t seem to care with the same sense of zealotry or rage that drives most political “discussion” these days. Neither of my kids is a fan of Donald Trump—but they don’t want to hear criticism of people who are. They know the country is pretty evenly divided for and against. They are essentially patriots playing the long game. As my son put it, “We can’t write people off just because they think differently than we do.” My son has told me he thinks the media (this includes me, his father) treats everything that Trump or the Democrats say as super important when he knows only certain things are. He wants to decide for himself what to pay attention to. A daily monologue from me about the election or my sharing too much political content with him causes him to shut down. He’s open to hearing what I think, but not what I think I know. My daughter is more interested in rules, especially the Electoral College. She knows that Hillary Clinton collected more votes in 2016 and wants to understand better why she didn’t win. She doesn’t like to watch political coverage on TV because all the pontificators and gasbaggers just seem “mean” to everyone. No one seems to talk about the rules,
much less abide by them. And as an occasional pontificator myself, I hear her. I understand where all this fervor comes from. This election is important. The so-called discourse will intensify. The shouting matches will inevitably grow more mean-spirited. And it is this way largely because we’re thinking not just of our futures—but also those of our kids. But that doesn’t mean we as fathers have to treat our dinner-table or car-ride conversations like Facebook or Reddit. I’m starting to see this election as a way for me to model good citizenship behavior and good parental behavior. Yes, this means making sure that my kids know I believe the outcome of the election matters. But it also means making sure that my kids know they can decide what matters for themselves. In other words, I’m approaching this election like a well-behaved child instead of like a poorly behaved adult. That means I listen more and I talk less. When I do talk, I wait + for my turn. And, most difficult of all, if David Plouffe is a political strategist I don’t have anything and the author of nice to say when that A Citizen’s Guide to turn comes up, I don’t Beating Donald Trump, out March 3. say anything at all.
And If the Election Doesn’t Go Your Way. . . SOMEONE, EVENTUALLY, is going to win this election— which means many other someones will lose. Perhaps even your chosen someone will be swept into the dustbin of history. If this happens, do not despair. Resist the urge to purchase a piñata in the shape of the winner. That won’t help. What will help is moving off the sidelines and into the game. Instead of channeling your hopes into someone else, start a little grassroots activism yourself. March. Organize. Protest. Boycott. Write an op-ed. Run for local office. You’re a citizen. Act like it. Also, take solace in the fact that losing candidates typically land on their feet. John McCain returned to the Senate, where in 2017 he cast the decisive health-care vote. Even John Edwards bounced back from fathering a secret love child while his wife was fighting cancer; he’s now a civil rights lawyer. If you absolutely can’t quit your candidate, you’ll find a way to keep backing them. But frankly, it’s better to move on. Whoever loses the 2020 race will be just fine. And so will you. —NICK MARINO MEN’S HEALTH
/ January • February 2020
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LIGHT SHOW
Red-light therapy was originally used to grow plants in space. Here on earth, Stan tests a Mito device to activate muscle recovery. $450; mitoredlight.com
BY
E C I O CH T BU
LAUREN LARSON
NO
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
CARTER SMITH
TO
N A T S
To keep up with the Chrises,
SEBASTIAN STAN
upgraded his diet, training, and whole way of looking at the world. Now he’s starring on his own new Marvel series, and 2020 is shaping up to be his best year ever.
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/ January • February 2020
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THE COFFEE-SHOP staff is having a silent meltdown. The peppermint tea I ordered was forgotten as soon as Sebastian Stan walked in. He orders a coffee, receives it instantly, and goes to put it down on a table. The lid isn’t fully on, and the coffee spills. It’s almost a “stars are just like us” moment, but then a barista suddenly materializes with a paper towel in his outstretched palm. “It’s wet,” he says eagerly. Stan, 37, is wearing black shorts, a black T-shirt, midcalf black socks, and a gray hoodie missing its drawstring. He looks very off-duty SoHo, which he is: He’s back home in New York City on furlough from preparations for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, an extravagant collaboration between Marvel and newborn streaming service Disney+. He’s also wearing a blue baseball cap, which sits slightly higher on his head than it might on the head of someone with less va-va-voom hair. That hair sent the Internet into a tizzy recently, when a poster for Falcon showed Stan with a short cut. In the past when Stan has played the Winter Soldier (né Bucky Barnes), he’s had shoulder-length hair. Next to his forehead, which is giant—the White Cliffs of Dover of foreheads—the longer style made him look very sinister. Stan is somewhat less recognizable in street clothes, but women still side-eye him on their way to the bathroom. Maybe they recognize him; maybe he’s just a little too strapping not to be famous. As Stan talks, he maintains an unsettling deadpan, verging on a glower. “People always ask me if I’m okay,” he says, still glowering. “They’ve said I have ‘serial-killer resting face.’ No matter what I do, I’ve always had dark circles under my eyes that never really go away. Lately there might be a little moisturizer happening here and there, just in case. Preserving a couple years, or whatever.” The more reserved the actor, the more likely he is to become part of Hollywood mythology. Between Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) and Captain America: Civil War (2016), a rumor circulated that he had gotten too ripped for the arm he’d worn in the earlier film, a wraparound contraption meant to look like a machine prosthetic. Redditors called him “the Winter Swoldier” and “Bulky Barnes.” Stan laughs when I bring it up and clarifies that he used a new-and-improved arm in each successive fi lm. With the first iteration, he had to apply lube to slide his real arm into what was essentially two rigid metal tubes. “It was like having a massive hammer attached to me,” he says, “but it looked unbelievable in the movie, and it actually informed a lot of my body language.” Subsequent arms were more mobile, and Stan doesn’t have to lube up to get in there anymore: There’s a sleeve inside the arm for his next appearance as the Winter Soldier. But, he concedes, he did get too big for the arm used in Civil War. “I was so insecure being around these massive fucking guys, so I started lifting really heavy and ate a lot. I remember I showed up, and I was a little bit bigger than I had been in The Winter Soldier. The arm was a bit tight,” he says. “I was losing circulation.” 70
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Stan is not a new arrival in the Marvel universe: He made his superhero debut in 2011, with Captain America: The First Avenger. But recently he’s enjoyed a burgeoning late-term fandom as his roles (and arms) have ballooned. Beyond Marvel, he starred alongside Margot Robbie in 2017’s I, Tonya, as Tonya Harding’s jackass boyfriend. When we meet in October, he’s just returned from shooting the spy fi lm 355 in London, with Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, Lupita Nyong’o, and Diane Kruger. Another insecurity-inspiring roster. With Stan’s constellation of anxieties—he says he’s “terribly self-aware, to the point of detriment”—he is uniquely suited to
Page 68: Tank by Calvin Klein Underwear; bathing suit by Emporio Armani; bracelet by Shinola. Page 69: Tank by Todd Snyder + Champion; shorts by Armani Exchange; necklace by Title of Work. Above: Shorts by Armani Exchange; necklace by Tiffany & Co.; sneakers by Nike Air Jordan.
stardom in 2020. A decade ago, audiences wanted actors to be pillars of Hollywood hubris, strutting around in latex Marvel suits, muscly and impenetrable. We still want the muscles, but we also want stars to be genuine. Marvel fi lms can seem at odds with that national craving for authenticity. Steve Rogers, for example, becomes Captain America instantly, in the first ten minutes of The First Avenger: He goes into a machine and emerges fit, huge, and self-actualized. I ask Stan whether that narrative—man gets muscles and immediately earns the admiration and attraction of everyone in his midst— isn’t a dated, unrelatable picture of masculinity. “When I was watching Steve Rogers,” Stan starts in, “I saw him question his identity, his alliances, the government. ‘Who am I? What is this? What made me come into this is very different than
the role I am in now.’ I think it was very timely, in the sense that you could see that character evolve. Then he gives up his shield and is like, ‘I’m out. I’m going to do my own thing.’ He chooses his own life. It’s actually more relatable.” There’s an obvious metaphor there: Stan is Captain America, and stardom—and the press tours, the scrutiny, and the training that come with it—is his government, always invading his carefully fortified sense of self. As a result, he can appear very reticent in public, offering only occasional glimpses of the unguarded Sebastian Stan. Audiences live for those moments. Stan is the anti-celebrity in the year of the anti-celebrity. And his ambient hostility toward questioning is offset by the behavior of his Falcon costar Anthony Mackie. When alone in interviews, Stan can seem deflective and bored, but he gets an MEN’S HEALTH
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WHEN IT COMES
to fitness, Stan has also benefited from the influence of a charismatic spirit guide. He played soccer and basketball at his Rockland County, New York, high school, but he didn’t start running and going to the gym until he was in college at Rutgers University. And he didn’t get really into fitness until 2005, when he was cast in a film titled The Covenant, which Stan calls “really classic.” Really classic, indeed: The Covenant also stars Chace Crawford, whom Stan would later join on Gossip Girl (another classic), and Taylor Kitsch. Stan plays one of five prep-school boys endowed with supernatural gifts and sick abs. “I got a call,” Stan says. “And one of the producers said to me, ‘Look, you’re going to have to look like John Travolta in Staying Alive.’ He’s just glistening with muscles. It’s ridiculous. I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ I started to work out with a trainer, but it was my buddy Taylor Kitsch who got me into it.” With the trainer and Kitsch as his gym shepherds, Stan began exercising in earnest. Then, in 2013, ahead of The Winter Soldier, Stan teamed up with trainer Don Saladino, who’d also sculpted Ryan Reynolds, John Krasinski, and Liev Schreiber. That same year, Stan starred in a Broadway revival of William Inge’s Picnic, playing a character whose defining trait is his hotness. “Inge was w riting something ver y important about vanity and how people were perceived in terms of being quoteunquote good-looking, beautiful, or pretty,” Stan said in a Playbill interview in 2013. “In the play, there’s something shameful and dirty about it. Our obsession with beauty has not changed. When we see something that turns us on, we either appreciate it or judge it. It’s so primal. We still dismiss people if they’re pretty; we don’t care how they feel, because they should just be happy looking the way they do. That’s something we were trying to say with this production.” Stan is less philosophical about his Picnic bod these days. “I had to be basically shirtless every night, like eight shows a week,” he says. “I really zoned in on diet, and everything transformed.” He prefers exercising on an empty stomach, so he generally starts his day with coffee—and a rice cake with some almond butter and honey if he’s feeling depleted. Today he was feeling very depleted, he says, so he had some scrambled eggs with Brussels sprouts and aioli. “I’m not going to tell you the place where I got that,” he adds, unprompted and wary, as though I might start dining there daily in a stalker vigil. Stan is a proponent of “quality over quantity,” but that doesn’t mean he skimps on his workouts; he just knows that a 20-minute session that catapults his heart rate into the red zone is as effective as an hour of low-intensity bullshit. He runs (“I’m not going to tell you where”) when he’s feeling meditative. In advance of the Falcon shoot, Stan started lifting weights every morning and knocking out stunt training for the fight scenes. He points out that filming an action movie is a workout in itself: You spend whole days running Opposite: Sweatshirt by Hiro around and sweating in a heavy suit. “I mean, Clark; boxers by next to Evans and Hemsworth and all those Emporio Armani.
“I was so insecure being around these massive guys in Winter Soldier, so I started LIFTING REALLY HEAVY and ate a lot.”
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Styling: Ted Stafford. Set design: Brian Crumley/Rob Strauss Studio. Grooming: Kumi Craig/the Wall Group. Production: Kaia Marie Balcos/Kranky Produktions. Special thanks to Mito Red Light and Nordic Edge.
enormous kick out of Mackie, who has jumped in to rescue many an interviewer left to writhe on the hook by Stan. He is the Sebastian Stan whisperer, midwife to a charm that can be difficult to coax out. “When I’m trying hard to find the honest moment, he sort of unlocks me a little bit. We both laugh and we find a way to have a good time,” Stan says. When I tell him that I’m planning to mine Mackie for gossip, he laughs. “Here’s what he’s going to say: ‘He’s way too serious. It’s boring. He slows everything down. It’s always these questions and, like, the stare. Give this kid a Yoo-hoo! Somebody get him a chocolate milk. Good God, put a smile on his face!’ ” Mackie is the enthusiastic extrovert to Stan’s pensive recluse. Even though I reach him on the phone at 9:00 P.M. after a long day of shooting in Savannah—“I’m already going to bed,” Mackie says in a N’awlins drawl that sounds sleepier than usual—he’s forthcoming about Stan. He describes his costar as a hermit, a chronic Irish-goodbye-er who doesn’t offer much of himself at first. “If the FBI ever needed to get anything out of him, they’d be in very big trouble,” Mackie says. “I don’t know what the male equivalent would be of ‘resting bitch face,’ but Sebastian has nailed that 100 percent.” His first impression, which lingered for a long time, was that Stan was a very quiet, very reserved actor. They shook hands when they met, but it wasn’t a buddy-com bromance at first sight. It wasn’t until much later, when the two were on a press tour for The Winter Soldier, that they hit it off. Mackie hung out with Stan and a few of his closest friends, and they “unlocked” Stan for Mackie the same way Mackie now unlocks Stan on press tours. Their chemistry also plays well on set. They share a dedication to their work, and they both come from classical acting backgrounds. (“He went to Juilliard,” Stan says of Mackie. “He can do anything.”) Beyond that, they’re opposites, reining in each other’s moods to a perfect, workable middle. “He calms me down when I’m ready to rage against the machine,” Mackie says. In turn, Mackie bullies Stan into having fun. Case in point: When they were on a press tour in Beijing, they had one of those endless nights that make press tours seem glamorous. “It just went on and on and on,” Mackie recalls. “We had to do press the next morning, and he’s like, ‘I’m going to bed.’ I’m like, ‘Nope.’ I took his wallet and his cell phone so he couldn’t get into his hotel room. Then, by the time we got to the press, I was fine. He just looked like he’d gotten hit by a car.” Hollywood has always relished actor partnerships—from Robert Redford and Paul Newman to Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson—but now more than ever, buddying up feels like an imperative. Pairs perform, especially on social media. In November, when Stan and Mackie took over Marvel Studios’ Instagram to announce that they’d begun filming Falcon, fans were as thirsty for their friendship as they were for the show. Their dynamic is the stuff of memes: “[I] want someone to look at me the way Sebastian Stan and Anthony Mackie look at each other,” one fan tweeted. I know what that fan meant. When Stan does look at you without suspicion—when, perchance, he laughs at something you say—it’s like winning a battle.
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CHILL OUT
A dip in an icy bath can help strengthen your willpower, even if you’re the Winter Soldier.
Rapid Fire guys, I feel like I’m 50 miles behind. I don’t think I can get to that size, to be honest,” he says. That aside, Stan feels, in his late 30s, better than ever. “My body right now is probably the best it’s ever been.”
FRENEMY EXERCISE?
explains, but they haven’t. It upset him when they were the targets of scrutiny, particularly when that scrutiny came from his fans. Stan seems to be looking for earnestness in an industry that, on the whole, LAST APP YOU RECOMMENDED? disdains earnestness. He “tries hard to find the The ’80s camcorder app honest moment,” as he himself puts it (much like [VHS Camcorder]. how he saw a profound statement about “our obsesof Stan, age 15, on his sion with beauty” in William Inge’s horny play). Instagram. It’s a headshot from Stagedoor Manor, THE MEAL YOU In this, the Marvel universe is an improbably an acting camp that he attended while in high COOK MOST OFTEN? Scrambled eggs. good fit for him. We speak the week after Martin school. He’s recognizable from the brow up—he Scorsese said Marvel films “are not cinema,” and has the same broad forehead, the same voluminous FAVORITE Stan is as defensive of the fi lms as he can be withhair. His arms look pale and soft, like overcooked EUPHEMISM FOR SEX? out disrespecting Scorsese, one of his heroes. “All I linguine, and he’s staring down the camera with Dooooing it. know is that all movies affect people,” he says. “I’ve theater-kid intensity. CHEAT MEAL? certainly experienced firsthand many people who Stan lived in Romania until he was eight years Pizza. have been affected and helped by Marvel movies.” old. Shortly after the Romanian revolution, he and Captain America fans lean earnest. People have his mother moved to Vienna and stayed there for LAST TIME YOU CRIED? told Stan that Bucky Barnes helped them cope four years before heading to New York in 1995. No, Four days ago. with their PTSD. During Q&A sessions, he’s asked he says, he didn’t have a foreign exchange student’s WHY? questions like “What would Bucky Barnes’s major social cachet in middle school. “Maybe if I was from This is rapid-fire! be?” and “What happened to Bucky Barnes when France or something. But I am Eastern European. [Silence.] he fell from the train?” Stan fields those questions We left communism,” he says. “When I came here, I EMBARRASSING MUSIC without sarcasm or diversion. just wanted to be like everybody else.” ON YOUR PLAYLIST? “They think we are these people,” Stan says, I ask Stan which of his mannerisms are typically Bonnie Tyler, Meat Loaf, again without condescension. He’s content to take Romanian. “You’re kind of putting me on the spot Starship. questions about Bucky Barnes, especially if it disto define a whole nation—a guy who hasn’t been tracts fans from asking questions about Sebastian there for years,” he says. But he thinks for a second. “For me, based on my mother, the ‘Romanian temperament’ is Stan. “Now we’re much more obsessed with the personality rather perseverance—being able to handle more than you think you can. than the actor. We take people and swallow them and digest them At 27, my mother was working two jobs in a foreign country where and chew them up, and then we spit them out the other side. Then she barely spoke the language. There’s a sense of family and per- we’re done,” he says. “We’ve done that with numerous celebrities— people. I’ve seen people have massive ups and downs and stuff. All severance that’s deeply ingrained in the blood.” Even for someone who has experienced a certain degree of star- I can do is just try to be as honest as I can. And do my job.” dom, Marvel fans can be a shock to one’s sense of family. Certain Marvel stars acquiesce to the attention on some level, greeting fans LAUREN LARSON is a Men’s Health contributing writer who lives with a Chris Hemsworthian openness to scrutiny. Stan’s bound- in Brooklyn. Her goal for 2020 is to get The Covenant abs. aries are reflexive and firm, as though his sense of self is always under attack. (Which, to be fair, it may well be: “He’s so reserved,” BY EBENEZER SAMUEL, C.S.C.S. Mackie says, “but in this day and age that’s a very good quality.”) Start the new year off right by ditching winter fat and shredding yourself like a Winter Soldier with Sebastian Stan’s favorite ab workout. Designed by Don Saladino (@donsaladino on Instagram and the Stan is more protective of his personal creator of Men’s Health’s Superhero Shred workout video), it’ll help you chisel out your own six-pack. life than most actors. Celebrities often use social media to dispense calculated chunks of themselves in exchange for privacy. Stan occasionally opens up on Instagram: “Been working with this guy through years of self judgement and mental wars when it comes to fitness and LIFE,” he wrote of Saladino in a caption accompanying a gym selfie. But questions about the people in his orbit ping ineffectually against his poker face. He attributes this to only-vaguelyalluded-to incidents in HANGING LEG RAISE BEAR-CRAWL SERIES LANDMINE ROTATIONS which his family and Hang from a pullup bar. Get on your hands and Set a barbell in a landmine Opposite: Keeping your legs straight, knees. Raise your knees off (or in a towel in a corner). friends were subject to Robe and squeeze your abs and raise the floor, and take 10 steps Rotate the barbell, then drive bathing suit by public attention. As a pubyour legs until they’re paralforward with each hand. it back overhead. Repeat on Emporio Armani; lic figure, he has opted lel to the floor. Lower slowly. Take 10 steps backward. the other side. That’s 1 rep; necklace by David Yurman. into that attention, he That’s 1 rep; do 3 sets of 10. That’s 1 set; do 3. do 3 sets of 10. Squats are terrible but great for you.
THERE’S A PHOTO
Pete Sucheski (illustrations)
BUILD SUPERHERO ABS
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BUILD OWN
YOUR
IRON PAR
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
FINLAY MACKAY
BEFORE
ADISE
AFTER
The best part about having your own gym: You don’t have to share it (unless you want to!). There’s nobody “working in” with you on the bench, no one taking selfies with the battle ropes, no janky music on the speakers. No matter your budget or space, you can create your own home gym using these tips.
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TO HELP PICK THE BEST GEAR and
glean tips on how to build an affordable home gym, we consulted an Avengers-style fitness squad: Hollywood trainer Magnus Lygdback, who creates home gyms for stars like Ben Affleck and Alexander Skarsgård; Cooper Mitchell, editor-in-chief of GarageGymReviews.com; and MH’s fitness brains, director Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S., and associate fitness editor Brett Williams. Assuming you don’t have unlimited space or resources, like Dwayne Johnson, you’ll need to figure out what you want. Before you do anything, says Lygdback, ask yourself these three questions: 1. What do you like to do? 2. What does your body need? 3. Do you want to get better at something? Then use that info to guide how you divide your space and budget. If you like doing bodyweight work and circuits, your biggest costs may be a bench, a pullup bar, and kettlebells. If you like classic strength training, make sure you have enough room for a standard Olympic barbell, which is seven feet long. At minimum, nine square feet should set you up for everything from deadlifts to broad jumps. Don’t have much space? Technology to the rescue. These days, there are smarter do-it-all machines that enable you to perform hundreds of exercises, whether they’re basic like TRX or high-tech like Mirror. Like all of us, your home gym is a work in progress. After three months, take inventory. Ask those three questions again, and if need be, evict the stuff you’re not using and draft new equipment. It’s your gym! Whatever your space or budget, we have you covered. Get after it!
IN YOUR GARAGE MH EXECUTIVE EDITOR Ben Court (bottom left) suffers from fitness ADD. His favorite workouts involve lots of exercises with different objects to lift, swing, carry, and slam. Samuel (below) helped him convert his home garage into a dynamic space primed for intense metabolic circuits. B A R S TA R Forged from 11-gauge steel, Rep’s multigrip bar ($129; repfitness.com) offers a sturdy platform for pullups and leg raises. Plus, it doubles as an anchor for a TRX 2 ($200; trxtraining.com), which links to an app with hundreds of exercises.
H E AV Y S T U F F Popularized by CrossFit and military workouts, sandbags are awkward to lift, making them good tools for building functional strength whether you’re doing bear-crawl drags, clean and jerks, or farmer’s carries. GoRuck’s sandbags (from $95; goruck.com) are made of rugged Cordura and have padded handles, so they’re marginally easier to hold. They are available in weights from 20 pounds to a burly 120.
BENCH WORK An adjustable bench like the Rep AB5000 Zero-Gap ($499; repfitness .com) lets you do standard moves like flat presses as well as incline exercises and ab work. It has seven potential back angles and four seat angles so you can target different muscle groups. Even though it’s made of heavy-duty steel, it’s easy to move thanks to its wheels.
SWING SET Some trainers say the only weights you need in your gym are kettlebells—they’re that versatile. Kettlebell Kings Powder Coat bells (from $50; tractorsupply .com) are cast from one piece of iron, making them extra durable. They’re available in weights from 4 kg to 92 and have a lifetime warranty.
INSPIRATION BOARD A whiteboard is great for listing your workout and noting PRs. The Office Marshal magnetic dry-erase board (from $20; amazon .com) is easy to mount and clean and comes in five sizes. The Ikea Kallax ($40; ikea.com) provides deep, sturdy shelving for boxing gear, straps, mobility tools, and more.
KILLER CARDIO Few warmups get the blood flowing as quickly as a two-minute spin on the devil’s bike. The Schwinn Airdyne AD7 ($899; schwinnfitness .com) has a bright LCD display showing calories, watts, distance, speed, RPM, and heart rate. Hop on for everything from max-intensity one-minute intervals to 45-minute tempo rides. And thanks to its wheels, you can roll it away
to create space. Med balls
are great for home gyms because of their versatility. Use them for explosive moves like slams and floor-based ab stuff like Russian twists. The XD Kevlar med balls (from $26; xdfit.com) are grippy and durable and are available in weights from four pounds to 150. GymNext’s Flex Timer ($169; gymnext .com) pairs with your smartphone, enabling you to set intervals and display your heart rate.
B AT T L E R OYA L E Onnit’s 40-feet battle ropes ($150; onnit.com) are made of a flexible but durable nylon-polypropylene blend and have XL end caps, making them easier to grip. Everlast’s Nevatear heavy bag (from $50; everlast.com) is made of tough synthetic leather. The Hayabusa T3 boxing gloves ($130; hayabusafight.com) have plush padding and are easy to put on and take off.
POWER BASICS Don’t waste money on fancy flooring. Instead, get six-footby-four-foot, three-quarterinch-thick rubber Tractor Supply Co. stall mats ($45; tractorsupply.com). They’re made for horse stalls and provide dense padding, ideal if you’re doing box jumps or you drop your weights. Recruit a friend to help you pick them up. They’re heavy!
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IN YOUR CLOSET IF YOU LIVE in an apart-
ment or are just a minimalist, use these tips from Men’s Health associate fitness editor Brett Williams, who lives in a small Brooklyn apartment, to maximize your space and still get a serious sweat.
SR FIT BANDS Start with three resistance bands— heavy, medium, and light. SR’s bands have Velcro cuffs you can attach to your ankles for more exercises. From $14; srfitbands.com
BOWFLEX 560 DUMBBELLS Easily adjustable from five pounds up to 60. The range is great enough to challenge you on heavy floor presses but light enough to let you do lateral raises. $549; bowflex.com
XDFIT URETHANE BUMPER PLATE Even if you can’t fit a barbell in your apartment, pick up a 45-pound plate. You can curl it, use it for rows or lunges, and put it on your back for pushups. From $100 per pair; xdfit.com
HOIST MI6 FUNCTIONAL TRAINER A space-conscious cable machine that offers smooth resistance for exercises like cable rows and chops and has a pullup bar, too. $3,499; hoistfitness.com
R O G U E R M L - 3 W C P O W E R R AC K Go heavy with this 11-gaugesteel rack, then fold it against the wall. Pair it with Rogue’s burly 190 PSI steel 28mm Olympic bar. From $590; roguefitness.com
CONCEPT2: MODEL D ROWER Intuitive to use, smooth, and durable, the model D also has a new display, which features easy programming for custom workouts. $900; concept2.com
ROGUE RUBBER HEX DUMBBELLS Budget so that you have no wider range than 10 pounds—for example, 10, 20, 30 versus 10, 30, 50—to progress safely. From $25; roguefitness.com
X D K E V L A R F OA M P LYO B OX Kevlar boxes offer advantages over wooden ones: You don’t risk scraping your shins. These wide boys have a 36-inch-by-30-inch nonslip surface. From $155; xdfit.com
O N N I T 1 0 - P O U N D S T E E L M AC E Use this old-school strength tool for shoulder-mobility work, standing core exercises, and recovery sessions. It’s much harder to control than you think. $40; onnit.com
TO N A L Essentially, this is a wall-mounted flat-screen TV with resistance-training-cable arms. It’s great for guided solo or partnered workouts. $2,995 + $49 per month; tonal.com
N O R D I C T R AC K S 2 2 I ST U D I O CYCL E Like a Peloton, it has streaming workouts and a 22-inch touchscreen. But it tilts up and down to better simulate climbs and descents. $1,999; nordictrack.com
… SPARE ROOM THE ENTIRE MH FITNESS
squad helped test and select this gear, which is for guys who have space in their homes and want to do both traditional strength work and interval training. Yes, some of it is expensive, but it’s worth it. “Where I see people fail is when they compromise too much,” says Lygdback. “It’s an investment in your body and health.”
… LIVING ROOM MH FITNESS director
Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S., shares his favorite hightech strength and cardio machines, which also serve as statement furniture in your living room.
MIRROR The mirror/display empowers you to do on-demand workouts or get one-on-one training sessions for $40 with live feedback. $1,495 + $39 per month; mirror.co
FOR A BUDGET BODY BLAST All/Out Studio Men’s Health’s own fitness app is available on Apple TV, Google Play, and your iPhone for streaming workouts to your TV. Build muscle and blast fat with trainers like Andy Speer, Gideon Akande, and MH fitness director Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S. $9 per month; alloutstudio.com 80
January • February 2020 / MEN’S HEALTH
THE
GYM
THAT
BUILT MY FAMILY I needed a place to store wood. My five kids needed a place to play. But the space we made turned into something much bigger.
This outdoor gym, which doubles as a woodshed, thinks outside the CrossFit Box.
BY C . J. C H I V E R S
M
IDWAY THROUGH last fall, I
stepped into my yard to find eight kids brimming with excitement. One was swinging from a rope. Another hopped over a set of weight plates and declared himself “safe!” as he landed on each one. Two more kids were leaping from a tractor tire and challenging the rest to follow. These kids (only one of whom is mine) were not exactly working out. They were enthusiastically marking an unexpected turn in my youngest son’s tenth birthday party, as he and his classmates commandeered our open-air gym for play. A workout area that my older sons trained on for lifeguarding and military fitness testing had become an imaginary volcano or pirate ship. This scene fit our backyard’s evolution: A gym we planned as a repurposing of firewood storage has become, on its own, something akin to a neighborhood park. Along the way, my children have used the space to develop agility, stamina, and strength. It all began in 2015, when my teenaged sons and I sketched out a design for three firewood racks. With pressure-treated lumber, power tools, and plenty of labor, we began building on New Year’s Day 2016. After two weekends, we had a trio of racks that together could hold six cords of wood while also doubling as an alternative to a dingy basement gym. To one rack we added a high wall for wallballs. To another we fastened a pullup bar. For the third, we designed an angled beam
rising about 16 feet in the air, from which we suspended the climbing rope. To this rack we also affixed a crossbeam, and from it hung a TRX set and a pair of rings. By spring, we had stocked the racks with firewood and the gym with an Olympic bar, a set of plates, and kettlebells. Through a friend at her CrossFit gym, my wife found a free tractor tire. The gym was not perfect. The weight of the firewood and the softness of the soil caused the center rack to sink unevenly, a tic that remained even after we jacked up and braced the most offending corner. With time we came to accept the flaw, just as I accept my own limits and the joint pain that has come with advancing age. Friends teased us playfully. Some called the space a prison gym. Others asked if I came up with the idea on a combat outpost in Afghanistan, where I had previously worked. This latter question was fair. American troops in remote positions concoct novel ways to work out in confined spaces and under the open sky, often with makeshift equipment, including dumbbells made from packed sandbags and tent poles for pullup bars. My sons and I did not draw directly from any of those many designs. But war-zone gyms had proved to be both practical and fun, and demonstrated something too many big-box gyms miss: simplicity. They provided conceptual inspiration. Remember that word. Fun. Whatever the merits of this firewood-rack-andoutdoor-gym combination, once built, it
needed no sales pitch. The gym attracted users on its own. My oldest son, Jack, was a lifeguard at a state beach in the summers after his high school junior and senior years. Between shifts, he conditioned at the gym; we would see him shirtless, swatting mosquitoes as he put himself through wallball and kettlebell circuits, and mastered rope climbs without legs. My next oldest, Mick, is a high school senior with plans of joining the Marines. Often I see him on the rope or at the pullup bar, headset on, in the zone. These scenes were predictable. What we did not anticipate was that our gym would become a gathering place, too. Joe, now ten, was six when the gym appeared in his backyard. My daughter, Elizabeth, was 11. Both of them took to the gym as if it were a playground, and their friends joined them. In the summer, it’s a fortress to be defended or stormed in a water-balloon war. In the winter, the ammunition changes to snowballs. Sometimes I look out the window and see children from up and down the street clustered around the tractor tire or rope, engaged in games they have invented, complete with rules only they know. We built the centerpiece for all this training and play for less than the annual membership cost at the local fitness centers. Almost five years on, it’s hard to imagine money better spent. C. J. CHIVERS is a Pulitzer-prize-winning reporter for The New York Times Magazine and the author of The Fighters and The Gun. MEN’S HEALTH
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TRANSFORMATION 2020
No matter your challenge—obesity, addiction, debt—you can change your life. It all starts with taking a first step. These 14 comeback kings (and queen!) show you how.
“I had a dream that DEATH WAS NEAR.” How music producer Tim Mosley—you know him as Timbaland— stared down death, battled addiction, and shed 130 pounds.
O
Timberlake. In his run as a producer, perley will pour a glass of former, and label owner, he has thrived merlot, step through in the mercurial world of popular music. the sliding glass doors Yet he also understands the elusiveness of his spacious white of that shimmering view. A few years Miami home onto a patio ago, Mosley was staring into a different perched over Biscayne Bay, and, as eve- kind of emptiness, as the most important things in life—family, ning softens the subtropBEFORE: 2003 finances, and health— ical heat, gaze out over t u mbled ch a ot ic a l ly the waves at the horizon. around him. He almost Known to the world as lost it all, and that threat Timbaland, Mosley has sparked a renaissance. earned this vista. For It’s a journey he’s still on, more than two decades, but it has included years he has helped propel of b ox ing, dropping many of this era’s most more than 100 pounds, successful musicians, and gaining a new perincluding Missy Elliott, spective. But first he had Beyoncé, Jay- Z, Drake, to kick the drugs. Rihanna , and Justin N OCCASION, Tim Mos-
TIMBALAND, REMIXED As one of the music industry’s most dedicated and tenacious producers, Tim Mosley has worked with an extensive list of hip-hop, R&B, and pop titans. But after years of neglecting his physical and mental health, Mosley decided that he had to work on himself.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRISTAAN FELBER
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was a nightmare. “I had a dream that death was near,” he recalls. “I saw myself with a white face.” That’s when he woke up. Mosley has a daughter, 12, and two sons, 17 and 27. He realized he needed to save himself for them. “It’s like a bright light going on in your brain,” he says about raising children. “That’s how you know what true love really is.” Crawling out of the hole his life had fallen into required strategy and planning. He moved from a 14,000-square-foot mansion outside Miami to a 2,500-squarefoot condo downtown. “I had to downsize, get all that superstar stuff out of the way,” he says. He settled with the IRS. Then he worked to settle with his ex-wife. “The divorce at the beginning was very messy, but now we are good friends.” That left his addiction, and he decided to quit all by himself. “Just me and God,” he says, adding that there was no other option. “This was the path chosen for me. God was rebuilding my character.” Mosley, raised a Baptist and today a follower of
THE ABC S OF DBC Mosley trains at DBC Fitness in Miami. That stands for “dumbbells, barbells, and cables,” the gym’s tools for strength and performance. But its methods also hone balance and coordination to help build total-body functional fitness.
the nondenominational pastor T. D. Jakes, would lean heavily on spirituality in the fight to get clean. His method was to take fewer and fewer pills from his existing stock until there was nothing left. That took about two weeks. Afterward came withdrawal. “One of the toughest things I’ve been through,” he says, shaking his head at the memory. “The only things that got me through it were my kids, my girl, the help of God keeping my mind still.” By this point, Mosley’s girlfriend, Michelle Dennis, had moved to Miami to be with him. “I have a great woman who stood by my side through the whole thing,” he says. It was Dennis who found Punch Elite Fitness, in Miami’s Wynwood district. Mosley had never boxed before but liked the challenge. When he walked into the gym the first time, he was in rough shape, weighing about 350 pounds at five-footseven, recalls gym co-owner Ricardo Wilson. (Boxing coaches remember these kinds of details.) “He had a lot of aches and pains,” Wilson says. He had “glute and hamstring deficiencies” from lack of exercise, and he was hunched due to back pain. Before he ever stepped into a ring, Mosley had to work on posture and range-of-motion exercises, Wilson says, including hip openers, posture squats, and standing leg curls. Then came shadowboxing, jumping rope, and hitting the bag for ten three-minute rounds at a time. Eventually Mosley graduated to sparring. The workouts were hard, but nothing compared to withdrawal. “When you get beat up the way I got beat up mentally, this ain’t hard,” he says. As Mosley began losing weight, Wilson noticed another change: “His energy levels increased, and then he started challenging other clients in the gym, to push them.” And Dennis kept pushing Mosley.
Previous page: Kevin Kane/Getty Images. This spread: Christaan Felber.
↓ Looking back, Mosley wonders if the problems weren’t inevitable. “I had to get whipped, because I didn’t appreciate anything,” the 47-yearold says in his syrupy southern lilt. He’s seated at a white stone counter in his kitchen, dressed in gray workout clothes. Mosley, who sports a goatee with a bleached center stripe, looks you in the eye when he talks, searching for signs that you understand what he means. “All my life I felt it was a little too easy.” It’s true he has known mostly ascent. Success arrived early—working with Missy Elliott straight out of high school in Virginia Beach, then helping to produce Aaliyah’s double-platinum album One in a Million. Accomplishment may have come fast, but Mosley worked hard to keep it up, spending hours in the studio hunched over mixing boards, headphones on, eating vanilla ice cream through the night. Unhealthy eating habits aside, the intense focus on the creative part of his life made other areas vulnerable. In 2011, after receiving a prescription for painkillers following a root canal, Mosley started abusing OxyContin and Percocet. Then “my arm started bothering me,” he says, the remnant of an old injury—at 17 he was shot accidentally while working at a Red Lobster. More pain gave him an excuse to ask for more pills. As pressures mounted, his pill abuse worsened. Divorce proceedings with his wife, Monique, which began in 2013, dragged on for years. His finances fell into disarray. The IRS filed a $4 million lien for three years of unpaid taxes, a lapse that he attributes to confusion and inattention during his addiction. The painkillers put him in a place where everything felt all right, even when it wasn’t. “It put me in a great feeling of not caring, of just being free,” he says. “I’m like traveling, doing shows, popping ’em, having fun, just being ignorant.” He do esn’t rememb er how many pills a day he was taking, other than to say it was “way over the limit.” He began to feel foggy, dull. Mosley also started putting on weight and developed prediabetes. He grew sluggish. Tired. Lost. And then there
After a year, he had lost 50 pounds, and the couple started working out twice a day, boxing in the mornings and doing cardio and weights at night. When Mosley had dropped 40 more pounds, he decided he wanted to “level up” and train where the athletes train. While continuing to box on Sundays, he moved his weekday workouts to DBC Fitness. The gym specializes in biomechanics and works with a roster of pros, including Dwyane Wade, formerly of the Miami Heat, and the Dolphins’ Reshad Jones. For all the progress Mosley had made at Punch, DBC co-owner David Alexander still considered him “a work in progress.” His feet and ankles were not working right, Alexander says, and he came in “grossly overweight,” about 260 pounds. So Alexander designed a program around seven general movement patterns: squat, lunge, hinge, push, pull, twist, and gait. “He has a no-quit mentality,” Alexander says. “He understands that this is his new life. It’s not something that’s going to go away in three months. And he’s committed. Tim is one of the most mentally strong guys out there.”
Alexander put together a nutrition plan and hired a chef to create a menu of weekly meals to be delivered to Mosley’s home. Chicken, salmon, vegetables. Three and a half liters of water a day. No processed foods. “If it didn’t run, grow, crawl, or swim, we don’t eat it,” Alexander says. Mosley’s cheat is a weekend glass of red wine, poured from a bottle from his kitchen’s wall-length wine fridge; he enjoys it on that waterside patio now that his life has been restored and he is living in a luxury condo. He says he’s clearheaded and newly inspired, focused on growing what he started nearly 30 years ago. “I’m more about the team building,” he says. He recently fi nished work with big-timers Kanye West and Coldplay, but he’s also collaborating with young artists. “God has me under construction, which I’m still under,” Mosley says. “I don’t feel like I’m complete. I don’t want to ever feel like I’m complete, ’cause my mind would probably get idle. God needed me to be clear so I could see what is needed, not what I want.” —TRISTRAM KORTEN
↓
“Heart meds put me in a fog, and I was 100 POUNDS OVERWEIGHT.” Eric Dencklau, 40, a mechanical engineer, trained seven days a week, lost 90 pounds, and ran a marathon. He takes you through the steps. I WAS IN A CYCLE of setting a goal to lose
BEFORE: 2010
weight for an upcoming vacation or event, falling short, and then putting the weight back on. The medication I was on for my heart put me in a fog. When I was cleared of heart issues in 2013, I wasn’t happy with myself. So I made not a goal but a plan. FIRST STEP: I committed to working out seven days a week at the gym. Always. Sometimes that meant getting up at 4:30 A.M. to fit it in. Sometimes that meant a 9:00 P.M. workout. NEXT: I improved what I ate. One week I started packing salads for work. Another week I dialed back how many times I’d eat fast food. Then I’d pick something else I could cut out or cut back on. About 18 months later, I was 90 pounds lighter. POWER MOVE: Tenacity. I gradually built up my cardio endurance and ran a marathon. I was able to go from 275-plus pounds to doing something I never thought I would or could do. —AS TOLD TO MARTY MUNSON
BEFORE: 2017
“WE CLEARED $93,000 IN DEBT in 18 months.” Paul and Alex Spoon were about to hit their 30s still carrying
FIRST STEP: “We decided to
commit to paying this off before we did anything else,” Paul says. “Once you know what your priorities are, it becomes pretty easy.” They created a budget—“You can’t stick to a budget if you don’t have a budget,” he says—then made a spreadsheet and used it to monitor their expenses. That forced them to make their spending more deliberate. The first thing to go: cable. NEXT: They asked about everything, “Is it worth it?” For big purchases like cars or even bookshelves, “we had a policy that anytime we wanted to buy anything, we could wait,” Paul says. “We’d overanalyze the crap out of
it.” That was true even for spends as small as a $15 toaster. “We’d go without it for, say, a month and kind of challenge ourselves about whether we really needed that thing. That process really cools off your desire for something.” POWER MOVE: Cooking. Daily meals at home allowed them to save enough to do dinners out with family and friends. (“We didn’t say no to anything,” Paul says.) They chose their hobbies according to their goal, too, opting for disc golf instead of traditional golf. A budget and a plan are great, but what made this work was being on the same page. “We kept one another in check.” —ERIC LUTZ
“SLEEP APNEA almost felled me.” Signing up for a fitness challenge was the first step in Dustin Worth’s journey to get back in shape.
Courtesy Eric Dencklau and Dustin Worth
$93,000 of student-loan debt. It was standing in the way of their dream of buying a house. Here’s how they dug out of a dark hole.
Courtesy Anthony Brown
B
EFORE DUSTIN WORTH
decided to make a change, he couldn’t remember a time in his life when he was healthy. “As a kid, I was more into playing the saxophone than playing sports, and I didn’t know anything about proper nutrition,” he says. He snacked on too many empty calories. He avoided the scale. Denial persisted. “I was like a person who swipes their credit card but doesn’t look at their statement. I tried to avoid being in photos because I didn’t want to be confronted with the fact that I was overweight.” Worth reached a breaking point in early 2018 when he hit 270 pounds. From the outside, his life looked great. He was married and a father of four, with a good job at Apple, and his photography—a longtime hobby—was starting to gain recognition internationally. But inside, the damage grew. “I was also spending ten hours a day at a desk and eating a lot
of fast food—mainly pizza and breakfast combos from Tim Horton’s.” And his weight started affecting him in bed. “I had also developed sleep apnea and would sleep on the couch sometimes so as not to scare my wife when I woke up gasping for breath in the middle of the night. It was my choice: It wasn’t fair that my lack of health should harm her, too.” In June of that year, Worth signed up for Apple’s annual company-wide fitness challenge. “My wife had recently completed a marathon, and she was the motivational spark I needed to take up running,” he says. “I also wanted to be closer to her—I was proud of what she’d accomplished, and she was proud of me, but I wanted to build something together, and I thought that running would bring us even closer.” Almost every night, in the basement of his home, Worth racked up the miles. And the weight started to melt off. In the first few months, he lost about 20 pounds. Motivated by the changes to his waistline and well-being, he turned to his diet, using the Lose It! app for calorie tracking. “I’m a numbers kind of guy, which was why cutting calories appealed to me early on,” he says. “Once I understood the fundamentals of energy balance, I felt agency over my ability to control my body fat that I’d never felt before. I traded my extra-large iced coffees for small ones and the breakfast sandwiches for eggs with mozzarella cheese. I started drinking protein shakes and eating fish or lean cuts of chicken.” Later that year, Worth and his wife decided to move to Florida, which “has been like a second honeymoon to us,” he says. “Now we go to the gym together four days a week; I run with her, and she recently started weight training with me. It’s like our lives have become even more entwined, and we’re more in love than ever.” Worth says that he’s now the healthiest he’s ever been. After dropping to 170 pounds, he added about ten pounds of muscle while maintaining 12 to 15 percent body fat. His sleep apnea has disappeared. “Now that I have this new body, I have so many more goals I want to hit,” he says, “everything from climbing the rope at the YMCA to completing the Skydive Ultra, a choose-your-own-distance race that starts out with a skydive.” He and his wife have signed up for a skydiving marathon in January. Together. —MARIA MASTERS
BEFORE: 2009
“I was wearing 4XL T-SHIRTS.” Counting calories every day helped Anthony Brown, 35, an information-technology worker, lose more than 185 pounds. AT SIX-FOOT-FIVE, Anthony Brown
had always been a “big guy,” he says, and a steady diet of fast food didn’t help. But when his sister was diagnosed with diabetes in 2010—and he was wearing 4XL T-shirts—“I knew something had to change if I wanted to save my own life.” FIRST STEP: He researched healthy diets. After realizing that he couldn’t picture himself eating chicken breast, oatmeal, rice, and broccoli for the rest of his life, Brown focused instead on creating a calorie deficit. If his 375-pound body needed 4,100 calories a day, he figured he’d give it 2,400, in whatever form those calories took. “My only rules were: Stay in a calorie deficit, and if you can’t count it, don’t eat it,” he says. NEXT: Within six months, he was down to 300 pounds, but “like most overweight people, I was afraid of the gym. I didn’t want to be ‘the fat guy’ everyone would laugh at.” So he eased into workouts three days a week at his apartment building’s fitness center. When the weights there grew too light, he found himself a bigger gym. POWER MOVE: Intermittent fasting. “To maintain a caloric deficit, some people choose to eat several small meals that add up to their daily calories, and they don’t feel full after eating,” Brown says. “I choose to eat my calories all at once and feel stuffed.” —JESSE HICKS MEN’S HEALTH
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“Our grandmother died of DIABETES.” How the McGillivray family started working out together and lost 91 pounds.
BEFORE: 2015
Y
OU KNOW THE OLD
adage: Families that shred together stay together. Okay, fine, so maybe that’s not how the saying goes, but it’s certainly true of the McGillivrays from Manchester, England. Following the death of her mother from diabetes, Sue, 51, and her husband, Roy, 56, decided to start taking their health and nutrition seriously. Their sons, Ben, 24, and Simon, 28, were already gymgoers, and the boys welcomed the idea of a family challenge, so all four of the McGillivrays began working with trainer Anthony Paulhe at Manchester’s Ultimate Performance Fitness. Ben and Simon knew their way around the weight rack, but Paulhe wanted the entire family to address their diets
before they all started exercising on a regular basis. “There’s no need to do any of the training if you’re not going to sort out your food first,” Paulhe says. “The nutrition plan is the first thing you want to tackle.” Diet was Roy’s greatest hurdle. As the managing director of a company, he worked late and ordered pizza, and he would often grab a breakfast sandwich on the way to the office in the morning. Paulhe created a nutrition plan for each of the McGillivrays. And executing that plan meant they would have to step up in the kitchen. “The main challenge was the cooking,” says Paulhe. “The dad is 56, the youngest is 24—they have very different needs. They all have different jobs and routines and eat at different times.” As the family’s best—and primary—cook, Sue took
Courtesy McGillivray family and SNH Fotok
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Luke Fontana (Hussain)
on the task of developing meals centered on a nutrient-packed protein (mackerel, turkey, haddock, shrimp) and rounded out with a vegetable (cauliflower, mushrooms, asparagus) and a good fat (usually avocado or olive oil). Once the family began to eat better, Paulhe added on the fitness. Roy says the arduous first leg of training felt like all pain, no gain. “I didn’t see myself as obese—maybe a little unfit for my age, but not overly so,” he says. “We started out with a lot of cardio, and that worked well, but then you realize how weak you are when you start lifting weights. You think it’s going to be easy, and it’s not!” Those first few weeks at the gym were tough for the whole family, Paulhe says, but that challenge isn’t unique. “It can feel like a chore, but within a relatively short period, it becomes enjoyable. You start looking forward to your gym session and your healthy meal. It becomes habit.” Roy is a convert. “I started to feel ten or 20 years younger,” he says. “It’s only when you start working on your fitness that you discover how unfit you were.” Simon adds that the family dynamics gave their training an extra layer of accountability: “I worked out a fair bit with my brother. We’re fairly similar in terms of our fitness, so things did get a little bit competitive. Also, having the biweekly measurements and the progress pics really helped keep us motivated.” Roy and Sue fed off the competition between their sons, and soon the entire family was comparing pounds dropped and strength PRs achieved. And the benefits go beyond the fact that they all now look amazing. “We’re a lot more resilient, stronger, more proactive,” says Ben. “We’d become guilty of living quite a lazy lifestyle. We weren’t very active; weekends were all about TV and junk food. But because we wanted to get in shape together, we didn’t want to let each other down. It was really intense and difficult, but it’s something we can look back on and say, ‘We did this together.’ ” —PHILIP ELLIS
WHEN BLOOD SWEATS The McGillivray family lost weight, sure, but they also decreased their body fat to a striking degree. Ben went from 15.5 percent to 8.6. Simon dropped from 15.2 percent to 7.9. And Roy almost halved his body fat, from 25 percent to 14.5.
“Even though I was taking testosterone, I THOUGHT I LOOKED AWFUL.” Parker Price explains how the gym empowered him during his transition. WHEN I STARTED transitioning,
I thought that I’d start taking testosterone and, boom, I’d stack on muscle and look amazing. But when my appearance began to change, I thought I looked awful. Even though I believe that if you’re happy and healthy you can be content with however you look, that’s not how I felt about myself. At the time, I didn’t have a lot of support in my life, and so I turned inward and more negative. Then I remember thinking, Man, if I’m going to be in this much mental pain, maybe going to the gym and putting myself through physical pain will distract me. I figured if nothing else, the endorphins
might make me feel better. I found a trainer who asked me about my goals. I kept telling him that I wanted to get shredded, but he kept asking me why. His prodding made me realize that what I really wanted was confidence and to feel like I belonged. This sense of power through fitness became my motivator. It’s what pushed me to keep trying after I struggled to do just one pullup. It’s what allowed me to work up the nerve to ask for a spotter. And it’s what helped me grow into the man I am today—a man who doesn’t just feel more confident in the gym, but outside of it, too. —AS TOLD TO PHILIP ELLIS
“My blood sugar and cholesterol levels were pointing to DANGER.” Tanvir Hussain, a 44-year-old cardiologist, got his life together by going on a low-carb diet.
BEFORE: 2018
IF YOU’VE EVER been to the doctor and been told either that you’re prediabetic or that you have buildup in your arteries, you know what that feels like. You feel some embarrassment, maybe. There’s a certain sense of helplessness. And then there’s the impending doom of being faced with your own mortality. Now imagine that you are a heart doctor being told not just one of those things but both. Hearing that my blood-sugar levels and cholesterol numbers were off—and dangerously so— jolted me awake. I monitored my food intake with a calorie tracker and reduced my carbohydrates to less than 20 grams a day. That’s extreme, but I made sure to eat plenty of lean proteins and healthy fats for balance. Soon I found that my mood swings lifted and I was less hungry (not to mention less “hangry”) throughout the day. Granted, I also kicked it into high gear by walking three to five miles a day and hitting the gym three times a week. When I go to my doctor now, he’s amazed at my lab results. —AS TOLD TO JESSE HICKS MEN’S HEALTH
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“I BARELY RECOGNIZED MYSELF in a photo.” Matt Ellengold, 39, who works in private-equity investor relations, shed 60 pounds in 24 weeks. IT WAS A “THAT’S ME?” photo that made Matt
BEFORE: 2018
Ellengold realize, after years of promising himself he’d do it “tomorrow,” that he had to go to the gym. And not just go, but be held accountable for continuing to go. So he hired a trainer, James Ellis-Ford, who he felt had his back. “He believed in me from the beginning, when I definitely didn’t believe in myself,” Ellengold says. They worked out four days a week, while Ellengold did cardio on his own. Ellis-Ford taught him how to keep track of his macronutrients (protein, carbs, fat) in a log, where Ellengold also tracks his training progress. “I know I need to do at least the same thing the next time to keep moving forward,” he says. “I started doing barbell back squats after about six months. Now they’re my favorite lift. I love standing back a few paces, focusing on the bar, telling myself it’s me versus the bar and that I’ll get through the set. That squat down and driving up—really, literally pushing myself up— I love that.” —MIKE DARLING
A CHEF UNDER FIRE An intense work schedule of restaurant management, TV production, and cookbook writing caused Jamie Oliver to pause, rethink, and recalibrate. The result: a more balanced approach to eating—and life.
BEFORE: 2002
“I was a DRUG ADDICT.” Finding a workout group helped Carlos Hernandez get clean and off the streets. BEFORE: 2013
EVERYONE EXPERIMENTS when they’re young, Carlos Hernandez thought. That’s what he saw his friends doing. Bad grades and a tough home life led him to drop out of middle school, and soon he filled his free time with partying. Even though, in his 20s, he was married and had two kids, the specter of addiction lurked. A few years later, Hernandez was homeless and nearly hopeless. In January 2019, he went to the Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center in Dallas, where he found treatment. FIRST STEP: Hernandez noticed that one of his roommates at the Salvation Army was looking fitter. “I started asking him a ton of questions.” That’s how he learned that
his roommate trained with Back on My Feet, a nonprofit that helps the homeless through running. NEXT: The first time Hernandez went out with the group, “I only ran for 200 feet and I was out of breath,” he says. But he went back three times a week (a group requirement) for the next three months. He lost 50 pounds, and he completed his first 5K with Back on My Feet last April. He’s remained sober and has found his own house and steady work. POWER MOVE: Leaning on others. “Getting a support team behind you that puts their hand out and says, ‘You’re not alone; we can do this’ saved my life,” Hernandez says. —EMILY SHIFFER
“I was PHYSICALLY and MENTALLY EXHAUSTED.” Jamie Oliver, 44, suffered burnout. So he recalibrated, starting with his diet.
or four days a week now, and I think that’s a really healthy approach to take, both for your own health and for the planet. Writing my latest cookbook, Ultimate Veg, was a total joy. It gave me the chance to really celebrate a whole range of wonderful vegetables and think about really exciting, fun ways to cook and serve them. HAS YOUR VIEW OF VEGETABLES CHANGED OVER THE COURSE OF YOUR CAREER, AND IF SO, HOW? Growing up around food in my parents’ pub, then working with Gennaro Contaldo and later at the River Cafe in my early career, I’ve always respected vegetables. A lot of Italian food is naturally vegetarian, and when you eat seasonally, which we should all be doing whenever we can, you really get the best out of veg. So I wouldn’t say that my view has changed, rather that it’s been a pleasure to see the industry and the public’s view evolve over the years. Veggies are brilliant, and we should seize every opportunity to celebrate them.
Ultimate Performance (Ellengold). Chris Terry/Getty Images (Oliver in apron). Niki Nikolova/Getty Images (Oliver thumbs-up). Andrew Woffinden/Camera Press/Redux (Oliver seated).
IS THERE ONE RECIPE THAT YOU TURN TO TIME AND TIME AGAIN WHEN YOU NEED SOMETHING HEALTHY AND QUICK? AND WHY THAT RECIPE?
MH : WAS THERE EVER A POINT IN YOUR LIFE WHEN YOU REALIZED THAT YOU WERE NOT PRACTICING WHAT YOU PREACHED? OLIVER: When I wrote my Everyday Super Food book [in 2015], it was because I’d gotten to a point where I was physically and mentally exhausted. I was only getting a few hours’ sleep and wasn’t taking enough care of myself. Writing that book, I really focused in on creating nutritious recipes that delivered big flavors but were also good for you, and I also started to study nutrition around that time. I now have a Royal Society for Public Health
Level 4 Nutrition Award. It got me back on track, and I’ve carried all those principles forward. I’m really in tune with my nutrition team now. Don’t get me wrong, we still have the odd debate, but generally I know what they expect of me. WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE HAS BEEN THE KEY, BOTH PHYSICALLY AND MENTALLY, TO YOUR MAINTAINING A HEALTHY WEIGHT? It’s all about balance: lots of the good stuff and a little bit of what you fancy. Embracing vegetables is a massive part of that. Me and the family eat meat-free at least three
At the moment, I’m cooking a lot of quick noodle dishes, especially when I get home late from work. The possibilities are endless, and you can use whatever you’ve got in the fridge, and actually having odds and ends of stuff is perfect, as you can just shred it all up and chuck it in. In Ultimate Veg, for example, I’ve got a lovely mushroom noodle broth, a Malaysian-style noodle dish that’s more fragrant and spicy, and even a quick Thai-style noodle salad. So you can see what I mean: Noodles are a really versatile base to add bags of flavor to. I’d also say you can’t go wrong with a big chopped salad. —PAUL KITA MEN’S HEALTH
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1.
Breakfast Stack
Between the halves of a split whole-wheat English muffin, layer a sizzled chicken breakfast sausage patty, 1 broiled tomato slice, ½ cup sauteed baby kale, and 2 fried eggs. 483 calories, 30g protein, 57g carbs (10g fiber), 16g fat
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
CHRISTOPHER TESTANI
If there’s one thing that unites all diets, it’s
can’t. Diets tell you what foods you can’t eat, how much food you can’t eat, and now, with the rise of intermittent fasting, even when you can’t eat. Yes, depriving yourself of food can lead to temporary weight loss. But eating well is less about what you’re losing and more about what you’re gaining. Eating well means you’re building muscle, defending against disease, and harnessing more energy. Eating well involves freeing yourself from batshit diet rules based on pseudoscience. Eating well makes your life easier, not more complicated. Experts and reams of research agree that the easiest way to lose weight and improve your overall health is to eat at least 30 grams of protein and 10 grams of fiber at each meal. Thirty grams promote muscle maintenance and growth. Ten grams fi ll you up during mealtime and help you stay full until your next meal. It’s simple. Except that you might not know what a 30/10 meal looks like. So here’s one for every day of the month. They also feature another thing most diets don’t: deliciousness. BY PAUL KITA
BREAKFAST
2. Go Greens
4. Berry Bowl
Make a 3-egg omelet with ¼ cup shredded cheddar and 2 cups sauteed baby spinach. Serve with ½ avocado smashed into 1 thick slice of toasted whole-grain bread.
Top 1 ½ cups plain 2% Greek yogurt with ¼ cup of each of the following: blueberries, raspberries, sliced strawberries, blackberries, unsalted dryroasted shelled pistachios, and unsweetened coconut flakes.
3. Salmon Toast On 2 pieces of whole-wheat toast slathered with 2 Tbsp cream cheese, divide 2 oz smoked salmon, 1 Tbsp capers, some fresh dill, a little thinly sliced red onion, and fresh lemon juice. Eat with a medium-sized ripe pear. 551 calories, 45g protein, 55g carbs (10g fiber), 19g fat
Cook ½ cup steel-cut oats and then stir with 2 Tbsp peanut butter and 1 scoop chocolate whey-protein powder. PROTEIN POWDER ISN’T Top with ½ sliced banana, JUST FOR SHAKES. 1 Tbsp raisins, and 1 Tbsp Think of it as an ingredient. Try chopped walnuts.
some in yogurt, pancake batter, or the milk of your cereal. One scoop has 20 to 25 grams of protein.
740 calories, 42g protein, 84g carbs (13g fiber), 28g fat
7. The Bermuda Top 4 oz roasted cod with 2 Tbsp warmed salsa, with 1 roughly chopped large broiled russet potato on the side. Serve with ¼ sliced avocado and a hardboiled egg on the side. Skip the traditional banana. 579 calories, 36g protein, 75g carbs (10g fiber), 16g fat
You could slug back a mug of greasy butter coffee in the name of feeling “bulletproof.” Or you could start your day feeling satisfied and ready to tackle your workout—or the workout that is work.
571 calories, 34g protein, 30g carbs (10g fiber), 36g fat
6. PB Oats
8. Super Waffles Over two Kodiak Cakes highprotein waffles, divide 1 cup plain yogurt, 2 sliced peaches, 2 Tbsp unsalted dry-roasted shelled pistachios, 2 Tbsp whole flax seeds, and torn mint. 629 calories, 32g protein, 85g carbs (13g fiber), 23g fat
621 calories, 37g protein, 43g carbs (11g fiber), 36g fat
They taste great scattered atop peanut-butter toast, hash browns, or granola.
5. Turkey Hash In 1 Tbsp olive oil, sizzle 4 oz finely chopped leftover turkey breast and 1 large chopped leftover potato with ¼ minced onion, 1 small chopped zucchini, and 1 cup shredded Brussels sprouts. Eat this hash topped with plenty of hot sauce. 640 calories, 47g protein, 81g carbs (10g fiber), 16g fat
JUST 1 TABLESPOON OF WHOLE FLAX SEEDS HAS 3 GRAMS OF FIBER.
30/10:
OUT TO EAT
9
10
Au Bon Pain 2 Eggs & Turkey Sausage on a Skinny Wheat Bagel, with a side order of mixed nuts.
Chick-Fil-A Hash Brown Scramble Bowl w/Nuggets, a side order of hash browns, and a large fruit cup.
740 calories, 37g protein, 40g carbs (13g fiber), 52g fat
745 calories, 34g protein, 55g carbs (10g fiber), 46g fat
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LUNCH
START EATING FISH.
11. BBQ Kale Salad
13. Protein Plate
Onto a bed of 2 cups chopped dinosaur kale, scoop ½ cup barbecue pulled pork in the center. Add ¼ cup black beans, ¼ cup corn, 2 oz roasted red peppers, and ¾ thinly sliced avocado. Top with a southwest-style dressing.
Assemble the following: 1 (2 oz) single-serving hummus pack, 3 Wasa crispbread crackers, 2 hard-boiled eggs, 6 baby carrots, and a chunk of Swiss cheese. Snack away. 612 calories, 35g protein, 50g carbs (10g fiber), 31g fat
570 calories, 30g protein, 52g carbs (14g fiber), 31g fat
12. Power “Pasta” Zoodle-ify 2 large zucchini. Sautee in olive oil with 1 pint cherry tomatoes. Top with 2 leftover sliced boneless, skinless chicken thighs and ½ cup basil. 698 calories, 67g protein, 32g carbs (10g fiber), 36g fat
14. Beefy Salad Slice 4 oz cold leftover sirloin steak and serve next to a salad of 1 cup chopped arugula, 1 cup chopped romaine, and 1 cup chopped watercress. Top with ½ cup cooked chickpeas, ¼ cup roasted pumpkin seeds, ¼ cup roasted red peppers, and 2 Tbsp light Italian dressing. 526 calories, 42g protein, 34g carbs (10g fiber), 25g fat
Canned white, albacore, and light tuna all have low to moderate levels of mercury, but not enough to negate the hearthealth benefits of eating them.
15. Tuna Melt
Mix 1 can drained white tuna with ¼ cup 2% Greek yogurt and season with salt and pepper. Pile atop 1 slice of whole-grain toast and a thick slice of good cheddar. Heat under a broiler or in the microwave until the cheese melts. Eat with 2 cups red grapes and 4 celery sticks. 664 calories, 58g protein, 76g carbs (10g fiber), 17g fat
16. Fish on Rye Mash together 6 oz canned salmon with 1 Tbsp mayonnaise, ¼ cup minced celery, the juice of 1 lime, and ½ cup navy beans. Pile between 2 slices of dark rye. 754 calories, 62g protein, 81g carbs (11g fiber), 22g fat
17. Tempeh Chili In a large pot, cook 1 (28 oz) can crushed tomatoes with 1 (15 oz) can kidney beans, 1 (15 oz) can chickpeas, 1 (8 oz) package crumbled tempeh, 2 minced garlic cloves, and 1 chopped medium yellow onion until chili-like. Season, pack, and reheat as needed. TEMPEH? Makes 3 servings YEAH, TEMPEH! 526 calories, 34g protein, 82g carbs (20g fiber), 11g fat
30/10:
It’s a fermented soybean product with 34 grams of protein per cup. It may also help gut bacteria bolster your immunity.
OUT TO EAT
18 Wendy’s
19
Apple Pecan Chicken Salad (Full) and a small chili.
Panera Turkey Sandwich on Whole Grain (Whole) with a banana.
730 calories, 53g protein, 70g carbs (12g fiber), 28g fat
630 calories, 38g protein, 87g carbs (12g fiber), 17g fat
Food styling: Jamie Kimm. Prop styling: Megan Hedgpeth.
Unless you have a WFH gig, you’ll have to prep these meals during off-hours. Whatever, though—because they’re simple to make, you can easily double or triple them for meal prep, and they taste way better than another ham and cheese.
20.
Soba & Sword
Season and roast a 6 oz swordfish steak. Douse it in the juice of ½ lime and serve over 2 oz cooked soba noodles, ½ cup shelled edamame, and 2 sliced medium radishes. Drizzle with soy sauce. Top with cilantro. Serve with 3 heads cooked baby bok choy on the side. 553 calories, 47g protein, 61g carbs (10g fiber), 14g fat MEN’S HEALTH
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21.
A Big Ol’ Pot of Clams
In a big pot, steam 1 (25 count) bag scrubbed littleneck clams with ¼ cup white wine, 2 cloves thinly sliced garlic, 2 Tbsp butter, and 1 large, thinly sliced shallot until the clams open. Top with parsley. Eat with crusty whole-grain bread and 2 cups sauteed green beans. 819 calories, 49g protein, 92g carbs (10g fiber), 28g fat
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DINNER If you frequently find yourself pouring a bowl of cereal an hour after finishing dinner, you might not be eating enough protein and fiber at suppertime. These meals fix that.
25. Tofu Stir-Fry
22. Surf ’n’ Spud
In 1 Tbsp canola oil, stir-fry ½ block extra-firm tofu, ½ cup shelled edamame, and all of the following, chopped: ½ bunch asparagus, 1 cup broccoli florets, ½ red bell pepper, ½ cup water chestnuts, and ½ cup sugar snap peas. Season with rice-wine vinegar and soy sauce.
In an oiled cast-iron pan over high, sear 6 large sea scallops till done, about 1 minute a side. Serve with a medium roasted sweet potato topped with 1 Tbsp good butter and ½ cup pomegranate arils, plus 1 cup sauteed halved and seasoned Brussels sprouts. 452 calories, 34g protein, 52g carbs (11g fiber), 14g fat
530 calories, 35g protein, 37g carbs (14g fiber), 28g fat
23. Brat Rolls
26. Chop Chops
Into a whole-wheat steak roll,
Sear 3 seasoned lamb chops and serve drizzled with 2 Tbsp balsamic syrup and topped with 1 Tbsp minced mint. Serve with ¾ cup cooked green lentils and ½ large broiled tomato.
stuff a grilled Beyond Brat and top with ¾ cup warmed sauerkraut and spicy brown mustard. Serve with ½ cup potato salad. 654 calories, 30g protein, 72g carbs (15g fiber), 27g fat
398 calories, 41g protein, 40g carbs (13g fiber), 8g fat
24. Fish Tacos Season and roast a 4 oz salmon fillet, then flake and tuck into three 5-inch corn tortillas with 2 Tbsp black beans, 1 Tbsp guacamole, and 1 medium BUY CORN TORTILLAS. sliced radish. Add some hot One medium-sized corn sauce and cilantro on each. tortilla has 1.8 grams of fiber. 408 calories, 32g protein, 42g carbs (11g fiber), 14g fat
30/10:
A flour tortilla has 1. Wholewheat flour tortillas have more, but they taste bad.
OUT TO EAT
29 Red Lobster
30 Chipotle
Southwest-Style Tacos with Grilled Shrimp and a side Caesar salad.
Chicken Burrito Bowl with pinto beans, fajita vegetables, guacamole, corn salsa, and lettuce. 645 calories,
920 calories, 30g protein, 91g carbs (10g fiber), 50g fat
46g protein, 51g carbs (19g fiber), 32g fat
PAUL KITA is the food and nutrition editor of Men’s Health and the author of two cookbooks, Guy Gourmet and A Man, A Pan, A Plan.
27. Shrimp Pasta Saute 4 large peeled, deveined shrimp in 1 Tbsp olive oil with 2 minced garlic cloves, ¼ cup roughly chopped unsalted almonds, and 1 lb chopped broccoli rabe. Toss with 2 oz cooked whole-wheat spaghetti and 1 Tbsp freshly grated Parmesan. 708 calories, 38g protein, 70g carbs (13g fiber), 35g fat
28. Buffalo Bun Slide 1 boneless, skinless grilled chicken breast into a wholewheat bun with 1 Tbsp Frank’s RedHot and 2 Tbsp crumbled blue cheese. Eat with 1 cup raspberries on the side. 383 calories, 36g protein, 38g carbs (11g fiber), 11g fat
ENJOY PASTA AGAIN. Some diets label carbs as bad. Fiber is a carb—and fiber is good. One 2-ounce serving of whole-wheat spaghetti has 6 grams.