Ep. #464: Tom Brady’s Diet Is Healthy But Ridiculous. Should You Follow It?

Tom Brady’s diet has become something of an obsession for many Americans.

Since the publication of his 2017 health and wellness book, The TB12 Method, “Touchdown Tom’s” eating habits have gone mainstream in a major way.

Every major media outlet has weighed in multiple times and you can even find “I tried Tom Brady’s diet and here’s what happened” videos online.

And unlike many fly-by-night celebrity diets, Brady’s has earned staying power.

The main reason for this is obviously the halo effect. He’s indisputably one of the greatest and most accomplished athletes of all time, so anything he says and does is likely to be judged favorably.

Moreover, Brady isn’t just a Hollywood hunk who got jacked for a superhero movie. Brady’s a world-class athlete who appears to be invincible by normal NFL standards, which many players joke stands for “Not for Long.”

Due largely to the brutal nature of the game, the average NFL player lasts just 3.3 years, and many careers are cut short by torn ligaments, broken bones, severe concussions, and the like.

Not Brady, though.

He’s wrapping up his 19th year in the league with his 9th Super Bowl, and aside from a knee injury that sidelined him in 2008, he hasn’t suffered a major injury in his career.

How has he managed to stay so healthy?

Well, Brady says his unique diet has contributed to his robust health in a major way and enabled his body to endure and recover from levels of stress and punishment that would break the average person.

Hence its popularity.

So, what does the Tom Brady diet look like? Well, it mostly consists of plenty of fresh vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and a moderate amount of lean meats like salmon, turkey, and chicken.

In other words, it sounds like your average “healthy diet” that many obesity and nutrition scientists have been advocating for the last several decades.

It doesn’t stop with “eat a bunch of nutritious things,” however, which is where the controversy begins. Brady’s version of “clean eating” requires more or less only eating nutritious things and prescribes a menagerie of restrictions, including . . .

- No gluten, bread, pasta, or white flour of any kind
- No coffee or caffeine
- No cooking oil
- No potatoes, peppers, or mushrooms
- No drinking water during or around meals
- No eating within 3 hours of bedtime
- No eating fruits with other foods

In fact, once you’ve wound through all the twists and turns of Brady’s diet, as we’ll do in this podcast, you can’t help but wonder if there was any real method to the apparent madness.

I mean, if you were to tear random pages out of the bestselling diet books of the last 20 years and follow whatever you found, you’d likely end up with something similar.

Not only that, but thanks to the aggressive commercializing of the TB12 brand, the regimen also includes a number of Brady’s proprietary supplements and other products.

All that doesn’t necessarily mean the Tom Brady diet deserves the scrapheap instead of the spotlight, though.

As you’ll learn, Brady’s fastidious eating gets more right than wrong and is far superior to the average Western diet, but it’s not without major flaws and fallacies.

6:25 - What is the Tom Brady diet?
12:00 - Should I eat mostly anti-inflammatory foods?
19:16 - Should I eat mostly alkaline foods?
26:07 - Is it bad to combine food groups in one meal?
30:10 - Should I drink half of my body weight in ounces of water per day?
33:48 - Should I eat as little saturated fat and cooking oil as possible?
43:29 - Who is Alex Gurrero?
49:05 - How can I use food to optimize my body composition, well-being, and longevity?

Mentioned on The Show:

Books by Mike Matthews: https://legionathletics.com/products/books/