Fortnite, NAD, no seed oil — country musician Zac Brown’s approach to health isn’t what you’d expect.
In an interview with GQ published on Tuesday, the front man of the Zac Brown Band spoke about how his diet and fitness routine have helped him transform his body.
Brown told GQ he’s cut out gluten, dairy, sugar, and alcohol from his diet, and he now reads all food labels carefully.
His diet is simple and involves “a lot of paleo, vegetables, good, clean proteins, whole foods, things that aren’t just processed in a bag or in a box,” Brown said.
“It’s based on three meals a day that are about four hours apart. After your last meal, you fast for 14 hours,” he said.
Brown added that clean eating requires discipline and commitment, something that he still struggles with, especially when he’s on press tours and working on new music.
However, even small changes in his diet — like cutting out seed oil — can make a big difference in how he feels.
“The kind of oil that you intake, only avocado, olive, or coconut oil. That cuts out a lot, on top of those other restrictions. Everything has some kind of seed oil in it, sunflower oil or canola oil or something,” Brown said.
“Once your psychology gets around feeling good, then that gives you a lot of strength to just sacrifice things,” he added.
In recent years, there have been various claims that seed oils cause inflammation and are bad for health. However, nutritionists and health scientists tell Business Insider that the reality is more nuanced. Blaming seed oil also overlooks the bigger culprits behind chronic diseases.
“There are things that are way more important for you than to even think about seed oils,” Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist, told BI. “I want people to be avoiding super processed foods and to be avoiding refined flours and sugars.”
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Diet aside, Brown says he gets his bloodwork done every month with a regenerative medicine doctor.
“On top of that, I’ve been doing stem cells to help regenerate, and I’ve been taking peptides. I take NAD. I do a monthly IV with some exosomes and NAD in it. I take my vitamins and my supplements,” Brown said.
NAD, or nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, is a molecule found in living cells that’s required for energy production and cellular repair. As natural NAD production declines with age, NAD+ boosters have become a popular fix in the longevity and biohacking world.
As for his workouts, Brown said he built a trailer outfitted with a full gym for when he’s on tour. It’s inspired by a tip he once got from Bruce Springsteen.
“He said, ‘I sweat for an hour a day, no matter where I am, what I’m doing, I sweat for an hour a day.’ He’s like, ‘It’ll change your life.’ I started doing that when I was home or even on the road,” Brown said.
Brown says he’s also found a clever hack to make his cardio sessions more bearable.
“I have an overactive brain, so being able to play ‘Madden’ or ‘Fortnite’ while I’m on the Arc Trainer for an hour, it makes an hour go by like that,” Brown said. “In my mind, I’m like, I’m going to go down and play a game. I’m not thinking, I’m going to go down and torture myself with an hour of cardio.”
Brown says he’s lost over 60 pounds from his peak weight.
“I’m probably a little under 200 right now. 265 was the biggest. I was a big boy,” he added.
A representative for Brown did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by BI outside regular hours.