Getting in shape is one thing, but staying in shape is another.
One man who doesn’t seem to have that problem is Oscar-winning actor Jared Leto.
The man, who is in the band 30 Seconds to Mars and played The Joker in Suicide Squad, has rarely been out of shape for the past two decades.
In fact it’s safe to say he’s never really lost his abs in more than 20 years since his film debut in the mid 90s – with the exception of putting on 70lbs eating bucket loads of ice cream, olive oil and soy sauce to play John Lennon’s killer Mark David Chapman in the film Chapter 27.
He famously dropped down to a painful 116lbs to play a transsexual woman battling AIDS in the film Dallas Buyers Club by fasting for a whole month. The role earned him a Best Supporting Actor gong at the Oscars.
His physique has certainly bounced back from the drastic weight cut and he has featured on the front of this month’s Rolling Stone magazine.
Leto is 50 but doesn’t look anything like the fifty-somethings you’ll see down the pub and he’s still in the same shape he was when he was in his twenties.
How does he do it? Leto put it down to two main factors in his interview with Rolling Stone.
“Twenty solid years of eating vegetarian/vegan and taking care of myself,” Leto told the magazine. “It’s probably just down to sleep and diet.”
Yes his diet is constantly on point – but not in a measuring calories or tracking macros kind of way.
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Leto is vegan – so he lives off a high carbohydrate, low fat diet and gets all his proteins from plant sources instead of meat and dairy. It keeps him year-round shredded.
And the restorative benefits of sleep in terms of increasing muscle and cell repair, flushing your system with natural growth hormone and regulating metabolism are widely know – we take a deeper look at them here.
Also since the hell-raising, drug-taking days of his youth, Leto has knocked all drink and narcotics on the head, telling Rolling Stone he is essentially ‘straight-edge’ these days.
It’s this mix of a clean, natural, whole-food diet and no inflammation-causing alcohol which keeps his physique sharp and looking young.
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“Studies suggest that free radicals [toxic molecules that form in the body] contribute to ageing,” Physician Dr Neal Barnard, author of 21-Day Weight Loss Kickstart, said in his book.
“A vegan diet — rich in fruits and vegetables — is full of antioxidants which help protect the body from damage by free radicals.”
For exercise Leto mixes it up between yoga, hiking and cycling. Yoga is interesting as it’s a great builder of core strength but it’s also anti-stressing, so it helps reduce the pro-inflammatory hormone cortisol in your body – the kind that makes you pile on belly fat.
He told Billboard Magazine that he had had to bulk up for his role as The Joker on vegan food, adding more overall calories and higher protein to his diet.
“I’m trying to gain a lot of weight, he said. “It means I have to eat every couple of hours—and I’m terrible at eating a lot.”
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This article originally appeared on JOE UK, in 2016.
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