Tom Brady's surprisingly sensible diet
At the age of 43, Tom Brady remains at the top of his sport. It’s a remarkable achievement, essentially unprecedented to be at the top of this sport at such an age.
It’s not surprising that Brady attributes a significant amount of his athletic longevity to his diet and exercise regimen.
A lot of coverage of Brady’s regimen, which he terms the TB12 Method, reports his diet as maniacally strict and unnecessarily restrictive. Some of the reports even describe what he eats as “insanity.”
The top line review from the media makes it sound like Brady has a crippling case of orthorexia. But when I dug into this a bit more, I came away with the impression that Brady isn’t the insane one, his critics are. The Tom Brady diet is surprisingly rational, especially for an elite performer.
Of course, there are some idiosyncrasies in what he eats, but it’s a much more normal approach than I expected based on the way it’s covered.
What are the TB12 diet principles?
On his website, there are a handful of different big picture principles laid out:
Hydrate and replenish electrolytes frequently. Drink at least one-half of your body weight in ounces of water daily.
Be mentally prepared to leave the table feeling 75 percent full, and then stop eating when you reach this point.
At lunch and dinner, follow the 80/20 rule: fill up 80 percent of your plate with vegetables and greens, and the remaining 20 percent with a lean protein (such as fish or organic chicken).
Try to eat only real, whole foods — these are foods that were grown, not manufactured. Rule of thumb: if it’s in a box or a bag, it belongs there — don’t take it out.
Take a multivitamin. Nobody’s perfect, and you never know what you may have missed.
Fuel your body properly around your workouts
Tell me, which part of that is extreme?
He’s eating a lot of vegetables, drinking water, not overeating, and avoiding processed food. He takes a multivitamin. He has a protein shake around his workouts.
Seems pretty normal to me.
He isn’t a zealot about this either, but he tries to make his indulgences things that he really enjoys, rather than eating crappy takeout:
"If I’m craving bacon, I have a piece. Same with pizza. You should never restrict what you really want. We’re humans, here for one life," the quarterback told Men's Health. "What’s changed as I’ve gotten older is now if I want pizza, I want the best pizza. I don’t eat a slice that tastes like shit and then wonder, 'Why am I eating shit pizza?'"
Coverage of Brady’s diet focuses on the idiosyncrasies
When you read about the TB12 diet, you’ll see his avoidance of nightshades mentioned a lot. Nightshades are a group of plants such a tomatoes, potatoes (but not sweet potatoes), eggplant, bell peppers, and a bunch of others.
The nightshade thing came to attention after Tom Brady’s personal chef made news discussing some of the restrictions in his diet:
“No white sugar. No white flour. No MSG. I'll use raw olive oil, but I never cook with olive oil. I only cook with coconut oil. Fats like canola oil turn into trans fats. I use Himalayan pink salt as the sodium. I never use iodized salt.
[Tom] doesn't eat nightshades, because they're not anti-inflammatory. So no tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms, or eggplants. Tomatoes trickle in every now and then, but just maybe once a month. I'm very cautious about tomatoes. They cause inflammation.
What else? No coffee. No caffeine. No fungus. No dairy.
The kids eat fruit. Tom, not so much. He will eat bananas in a smoothie. But otherwise, he prefers not to eat fruits."
Now, I’ll admit that there’s some weird stuff from his chef. You can question whether there’s anything wrong with some MSG (there probably isn’t), disagree that it’s any better to use Himalayan pink salt than iodized, and think it’s odd that someone health conscious doesn’t eat too much fruit.
But let’s take a look at some of those ideas.
It’s not crazy to think that we might have some intolerances to certain plants
Vegetables and fruits have a health halo around them because of their antioxidant components and the fact that many of these compounds have anti-cancer and cardioprotective properties when studied in a lab.
So while you may think of these “healthy” compounds in plants as being unequivocally beneficial, that’s probably an overly simplistic view of things.
After all, these are compounds that exert pharmacologic effects. Why do you think they might fight cancer?
It’s not because they are biologically inert.
So it makes perfect sense to me that some people might not respond well to them. While these reactions aren’t necessarily on the traditional spectrum of food allergies, it’s certainly biologically plausible that some of the compounds in an eggplant or tomato might cause distress to some people.
Think about celiac disease or gluten intolerance. Or even the concept of a low FODMAP diet - a well recognized diet plan that recommends minimizing group of plants that are generally considered healthy because some people are intolerant to them.
Plus, people have more arbitrary reasons for not eating different plants all the time. Tom Brady doesn’t like the smell of strawberries so he doesn’t eat them? Sounds a lot like a variation of the type of preference that almost everyone I’ve ever met has about one item or another.
The oils that we cook with matter too
Brady’s chef makes a big deal about the oils that they cook with. He only uses coconut oil to cook. He doesn’t use seed oils like canola. And he doesn’t cook with olive oil.
Even if this isn’t “proven” by the best nutritional science that we have, it does take the precautionary principle and apply it in a rationale way.
Heating unsaturated fats like vegetable oils very to very high temperatures can cause the creation of toxic compounds. There’s theoretical risk from cooking with things like canola oil or soybean oil. And I’ve written before about the potential reasons to be worried about these hyperprocessed oils.
Coconut oil has a high smoke point and can be heated without worrying about creating oxidized fatty acids that may potentiate heart disease.
Rational people can disagree about whether cooking with olive oil is bad for your health, but taking a cautious approach here doesn’t strike me as crazy.
The bottom line: Tom Brady’s diet is sensible
There’s nothing extreme here, maybe apart from his adherence.
Why shouldn’t someone who has the fitness goal of winning a Super Bowl at age 43 stick to his diet pretty consistently?
With diet, there’s no one size fits all, but when it comes to health, consistency matters more than the precise macronutrient breakdown.
Some people respond very well to having a clear prescriptive framework - you can eat this, you can’t eat that. And others respond better to a first principles approach - these are the guidelines, and you can adjust the details to your preferences.
Tom Brady’s diet works because he focuses on real food, doesn’t overeat, and drinks water. He indulges from time to time, but consistently prioritizes healthy foods. There are some plants that he avoids, and he watches the oils that he cooks with.
It all seems totally reasonable.
In my eyes, the crazy people are the ones who think he’s crazy.
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