00:00 What's up everybody, Pablo Schreiber.
00:01 I play the Master Chief on the Halo TV show
00:03 for Paramount+.
00:04 Talk to you today a little bit about my diet
00:06 and eating for training and staying in shape.
00:09 [upbeat music]
00:11 The overall philosophy is calories,
00:20 lots and lots and lots and lots of calories.
00:22 When I'm not working, I go around 5,000 calories a day
00:25 in order to gain weight.
00:26 But when I'm working, we're up to 7,000 calories a day.
00:29 And so the challenge there is just getting enough food
00:32 in the body.
00:32 You know, we're up to I think six or seven meals a day
00:35 to make it somewhat comfortable
00:37 because to get that amount of food in your body
00:39 with less meals than that,
00:40 you just have to eat for like an hour.
00:42 I was lucky enough when I was in Budapest
00:44 that production was helping me out
00:46 by sending me meals every day
00:47 so I wouldn't have to worry so much about food
00:49 'cause eating is such a big thing
00:51 that for me to meal plan
00:52 or make every meal would be impossible.
00:54 So they hired a wonderful place in Budapest
00:56 called The Cool Kitchen,
00:57 started by Katinka Hoshu,
00:59 who's the Iron Lady of swimming,
01:00 the Michael Phelps of swimming.
01:02 She's one of the most gold medals
01:03 for women in swimming history.
01:05 And they made amazing, really healthy food,
01:07 really delicious.
01:08 But we split it up a bit and I'm just all,
01:10 I'm actually just eating all day.
01:12 So anytime I'm out of the suit
01:13 or I have a chance to take the helmet off,
01:15 I'm just chowing.
01:16 So we'd start with breakfast.
01:17 I like to get a lot of carbs at breakfast
01:19 because especially if we're bulking,
01:22 it's hard to get the amount of carbs that I need in a day
01:24 without like going crazy at night
01:26 and just feeling like really bogged down and heavy.
01:28 So I try to get as much carbs in at breakfast as well.
01:30 So big thing of healthy pancakes.
01:33 She would do these like apple cinnamon muffins
01:35 with healthy flowers and stuff,
01:36 but just big on the carbs,
01:38 lots and lots of carbs.
01:39 Then you would have four meals after that
01:43 that would all be pretty similar
01:44 and she would switch the menu every day.
01:46 So for second meal of the day,
01:47 I might have something like a chicken breast,
01:50 about 50 grams of chicken breast
01:52 with some brown rice
01:54 and a whole bunch of veg,
01:56 broccoli or green beans.
01:58 Third meal of the day,
01:59 we're gonna go with fish,
02:01 usually a white fish like tilapia,
02:03 sometimes salmon,
02:04 and we'll have a quinoa with that
02:06 and another veg.
02:07 Somewhere after that,
02:08 I would get my workout in
02:10 and they would make me a big smoothie.
02:12 I love mango,
02:13 I love banana,
02:15 I love berry.
02:16 So it's usually mango banana or berry banana.
02:18 And I'll throw some protein powder in there
02:20 just to get another extra 50 grams of protein in there.
02:23 And then for the last meal of the day,
02:24 for sixth meal of the day,
02:26 they're really good about giving me desserts
02:28 that are healthy.
02:29 So my favorite was chia seed pudding,
02:32 nice, just lightly sweetened
02:33 and they would make so much of it
02:35 that I would just be like gluttonous
02:38 right before bed eating all this delicious dessert.
02:41 Again, when you're training with this frequency
02:44 and working at the same time
02:45 and burning as many calories as I was burning,
02:47 it's just a challenge to keep the calories in
02:51 and keep them on.
02:52 So I got to eat a lot of carbs,
02:53 which was a fantastic treat.
02:55 The most important goal for the job of Halo in general
02:59 is just size.
03:00 We're just trying to gain size.
03:02 It's just gaining size everywhere is kind of the goal.
03:05 We went up to about 240, 245,
03:08 almost 250 at one point in bulking phase.
03:11 And then when we would lean out
03:14 for some of the shirtless
03:15 or whatever less clothed scenes,
03:18 we were leaning out to around 230, 230 pounds.
03:22 It's pretty uncomfortable to be honest with you.
03:24 Like as soon as you get to the place
03:25 where you start to lean out,
03:27 the first three, four, five days
03:30 of all protein and veg with no carb feels like heaven.
03:34 It's fantastic 'cause you're not having to stuff carbs
03:36 into your body.
03:37 So yeah, the first few days of that are amazing.
03:39 And then by like day six, seven,
03:40 you're like, please just give me some rice.
03:42 Just give me some sugar, please.
03:46 Just try to keep as much energy and focus as possible.
03:49 Sleep, I would say is probably like
03:52 the biggest thing of all, right?
03:53 Do whatever you want with your diet.
03:55 You can train as much as you want,
03:56 but if you don't get enough rest,
03:57 your body's not gonna recover.
03:58 Your muscles are not gonna grow.
03:59 It's just impossible.
04:00 So yeah, focusing on getting at least six
04:04 or seven hours of sleep a night.
04:05 I prefer eight, but it's pretty much impossible
04:08 when you're on a production schedule.
04:09 So yes, rest, mobility obviously,
04:13 and stretching are huge as parts of our training regimen.
04:17 So we do a pretty basic like bodybuilding,
04:20 Olympic weightlifting kind of workouts.
04:22 So that is pretty standard,
04:24 but then in order to keep the explosiveness
04:27 and the mobility that you wanna have
04:29 for all these kind of stunt scenes
04:30 where you're moving fast, we really have to,
04:32 and at my age, I'm 46, you know,
04:34 we really have to work pretty hard on the mobility
04:36 and stretching and being flexible enough
04:38 to get through everything and not hurt myself.
04:42 I would say the, I don't know what's harder,
04:45 probably the training.
04:46 I mean, it's just for the amount of time
04:48 that I have to put in.
04:49 And when I'm working, especially on a show like "Halo"
04:51 where I'm the lead, I'm in almost every scene,
04:53 shooting 10 to 15 hours a day.
04:55 Finding where you put your training in
04:57 in relation to that is probably the hardest part.
04:59 So when we're in Budapest and we're shooting,
05:01 I'm waking up at 4 a.m. to go to the gym and do weights,
05:05 working for 10, 15 hours a day,
05:07 either doing some band mobility stuff
05:10 while we shoot during the day
05:11 or doing another session at the end of the day
05:13 around, whatever, eight, nine, 10 o'clock.
05:16 So it's a full-on schedule,
05:18 and just finding time to get everything in
05:19 is probably the hardest part.
05:20 The diet is kind of, it's just numbers, it's just science.
05:23 So it's like, and I have pretty good discipline,
05:25 so just making myself eat this, not eat that
05:28 is kind of the simple part.
05:29 I mean, the truth is I didn't really start training
05:32 for my body or to be bigger as an actor
05:36 until I got the role "13 Hours,"
05:38 Michael Bay movie about Benghazi.
05:40 And I was playing a former Army Ranger stuck in Benghazi.
05:44 And all of us decided that for the look of the thing,
05:47 we're all playing these kind of beefy,
05:48 bearded ex-military guys
05:50 that we all wanted to put on as much weight as possible
05:53 and gain as much muscle as possible.
05:54 So that was the first time.
05:55 At that time, I was probably around 195, 200 pounds,
05:59 and that movie, I went up to about 230,
06:02 and that was the first of my sort of big muscle gains.
06:04 Ever since then, it's been a bit of a staple in my work,
06:07 whether I'm dropping weight a little bit for a role
06:10 or gaining, it's always stayed somewhat in shot.
06:13 So after that, it was "Den of Thieves,"
06:15 which was another tough one,
06:16 put on a bunch of muscle for that as well.
06:18 And now, of course, playing Master Chief in "Halo"
06:20 was the next and final and hopefully largest step for me.
06:24 Yes, because I worked with The Rock.
06:30 And when you work with The Rock,
06:32 you take every tip you can get.
06:33 My favorite tip from The Rock when we were working together
06:35 was that you should always eat cookies for cheat day
06:38 and as many as possible.
06:39 He said that cookies were good for the biceps.
06:41 Mm, probably The Rock, sorry.
06:45 Sorry to call you out twice there, buddy, but yeah.
06:47 Of all the actors I know,
06:49 I think he's probably the only actor
06:50 that eats more than I do on a regular basis.
06:53 Merriman from "Den of Thieves."
06:57 Ice cream, coffee.
07:00 [laughs]
07:03 The secret to a good protein shake is your protein.
07:06 You gotta have a clean, clean, good whey protein.
07:09 My favorite non-powdered protein is probably salmon.
07:13 It's also high fat, so you have to use it in the right place.
07:16 Last meal I cooked for someone else
07:18 was scallops and filet steak on the terrace
07:23 watching the sunset.
07:24 Ooh, well, there's an amazing taco place
07:27 in San Jose del Cabo where I go frequently,
07:30 and it's called La Lupita.
07:31 And they do the most creative, delicious tacos ever.
07:34 And they have a scallop taco, Baja scallop taco.
07:38 So it's like the Baja fish taco,
07:39 but with deep fried scallops, and it's amazing.
07:42 So that's it.
07:43 Thanks for sticking with me,
07:44 learning about my diet a little bit.
07:45 Please check out "Halo" season two.
07:47 It's on the air already on Paramount+.
07:50 Depending on when you see this,
07:51 I don't know what episode you're gonna get,
07:52 but watch it 'cause it's dope.
07:54 And keep working out, keep eating healthy,
07:57 and keep taking care of yourself.
07:58 (upbeat music)
08:01 [BLANK_AUDIO]
Comments