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31 Aug 2010

Concluding my food vs exercise debate

Ours is a highly visual industry so maintaining a stable default appearance is essential.

If you're required to put on weight or lose it for a role, it is normal to present yourself in your stable default size at the audition before these alterations can be considered. This means that you have to stay in shape - a shape you have chosen to be a marketable actor. Personally, I look better leaner, so that's the shape that I have chosen for myself.

Until recently, my approach entailed trying not to eat rubbish. The sometimes-not-so-small percentage of junk and booze that did pass my lips was (I believed) cancelled out (or so I thought) by a punitive, daily workout.

Then my wife went to see a nutritionist and I realised, after all these years, that staying in shape is 90% nutrition and 10% exercise. I lost a load of weight without exercise in my run up to Siren because I was simply too busy to go to the gym--and I stayed on plan. Surprisingly, I also didn't have the same daily muscle pains and niggling injuries that plagued me when I was working out savagely every day.

So, with this in mind, I'm going to focus on nutrition, flexibility and tone rather than ferocious cardio and super-quick weight sets. Eating right will take care of the body fat leaving exercise to potter about in an altogether more sustainable and more gentle place.

This past weekend, I joined an amazing gym with loads of natural light and facilities that lend themselves more to health and wellbeing, rather than to the body beautiful. Ironically, this approach, with good nutrition, does indeed make a body beautiful (and with comparatively less effort).

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