The Real-Life Diet of Adam Rippon

The 2018 Olympics are over, the medals have been handed out, and the oversized novelty podiums have been wheeled back into storage. But Adam Rippon hasn’t slowed down since returning from Pyeongchang, where he earned a bronze medal in figure skating (for his performance in the team skate competition) and a gold medal in our hearts (for fearlessly calling out Vice President Pence’s stubborn penchant for homophobia). Since the Games' conclusion, the United States' first openly gay Winter Olympian has maintained the confidence required of someone who has dubbed himself "America’s sweetheart," wearing a leather harness on the Oscars red carpet, fielding matchmaking attempts from celebrity moms, and being the subject of a TIME 100 profile authored by Cher herself.

That confidence isn't unearned, though. Making it to the Olympics in any sport is tough, but figure skating is a special brand of grind: The movements are counterintuitive and punishing, the public attention is scant in non-Olympic years, and God help you if your face gets tired of smiling. And with all the other firsts going on, it's easy to forget that Rippon went to Pyeongchang as the oldest Olympic figure skating rookie in U.S. history. We recently caught up with him to learn his diet and training have prevented decades of skating from ruining his body.

GQ: Before we get into all the big-deal Olympic stuff, you just won Dancing with the Stars. How was training for that different from training for the Games?

Adam Rippon: Training for the Olympics was obviously incredibly intense—it’s the Olympics. It’s the biggest competition of your life. So when I was focused on getting ready, I was on the ice for four hours a day, and working off the ice for three hours a day, and getting a ton of sleep, and eating well.

When I was doing Dancing with the Stars, it was after the Olympics, and I was doing tours with Stars on Ice at the same time. My training changed completely, because I was in the dance studio for four or five hours, and then I was doing a show for another five hours. We would start around six in the morning and end around 1:00 A.M. every night. I think that because I was in such good shape from the Olympics, I was able to make it through all of those nights where I slept for, like, two hours. I became really good at time management.

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It seems weird to say this, but it sounds like Olympic training... was easier?

Oh my God, training for the Olympics was luxurious in comparison. It was also something I had trained for my whole life, so I knew what I was doing. I was comfortable and confident. Dancing with the Stars was something I had never done before. I’ve always worked with movement and music, but going into dance was like learning a foreign language, where someone teaches you the words but you still don’t know what you’re saying and you’re just repeating what you’ve heard. I can speak the language of skating. I might be able to say the words in dance, but I still didn’t really know what I was saying.

What were the three hours of off-ice training like?

On the ice, it was tons of cardio, tons of jumping drills. Off the ice, especially closer to the Olympics, my training was focused on keeping myself balanced and doing a lot of exercises for injury prevention. It was a lot of core work—a lot of basic strength exercises so I could stay balanced. In skating, we are one-side dominant. So for every 100 jumps, I’m doing 100 jumps onto my right leg, too, to correct that imbalance. For all of the work you put in on the ice, you have to put in the same amount of work off the ice to stay healthy and stay injury-free.

So you essentially have to repeat everything you did on the ice just to keep your body from getting out of whack?

Totally. The more you do on the ice, the better you’re going to feel. But you’re going to realize that you walk funny, too, because your right side is overdeveloped. And when it’s overdeveloped, you’re going to compensate when you’re on the ice. Skating is not like riding a bike. When you take a week off, it shows. You need to be on the ice almost every day so you can keep that feeling, because it's not natural—to be on ice wearing a shoe with a knife on the bottom. You’re always fighting that feeling of gliding. You know when you walk and just keep your weight forward? When you’re skating, even if you’re going forward, you have to move your weight back. It's a different way of distributing your weight and movement.

During Olympic training, what was your normal breakfast like?

I would wake up and have either a bowl of cereal with regular milk, or a bowl of oatmeal—just something kind of carb-heavy so I had some energy to burn throughout my first few practices. When I do cardio on a full stomach, I feel like I’m going die and throw up and have diarrhea at the same time, and I just...don’t want to do that.

I would add more protein later in the day for recovery and muscle building, so lunch was usually a chicken breast or fish, and a bunch of vegetables—something super clean and lean. That would take me through one of my off-ice training sessions. I would have one more session later in the night, and then have another protein-heavy meal, like a piece of salmon, or chicken and rice. But I kept my diet pretty simple so that it was easy for me to repeat the meals, and make them quickly. As a skater, you want to be as lean as possible, so I just experimented with seasonings and sauces.


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So you were doing your own cooking this whole time?

Yeah, I was cooking my own food, or going to this place really near my house called—I forget what it was called. But it pre-made stuff, like a chicken breast on a whole bed of vegetables. I would grab a few meals from there when it was a really busy week, or go to the grocery store and make five chicken breasts at a time and throw two on a bag of frozen vegetables. I wasn’t really trying to get a Michelin star.

You mentioned experimenting with seasoning and sauces. What are some things that you tried?

I love to over-salt things. Cholula is one of my favorite sauces. It's amazing—it's, like, zero calories. [Ed. note: Checks out.] You can’t go wrong with ketchup, either. I know I’m white trash because I love ketchup and yellow mustard together. But it’s not my fault. I’m from Scranton, Pennsylvania. I also love pickles. I know this is not the interview you thought you were going to get, but here we are.

Did you ever program in cheat days?

You know, I didn’t really think, I’m going have a cheat day. I did have cheat moments, where I didn’t plan on them, but I didn’t try to limit myself because I knew I was otherwise being so strict that I would be okay. Some days, life takes over, and you’re like, Well, I guess I DID just have a full bag of sour watermelon gummies, but I’m going to deal with that later.

What about calorie counting?

Tried to. But I have such an obsessive personality that it drove me crazy, and it drove me crazy to check the scale because my weight would vary all the time. For someone who wants to be as lean as possible, you see that and think, Oh my God, my world is coming down, when really it’s just because there’s still a pound of conditioner in your hair. So I focused more on feeling good. I tried not to worry about calorie counting, and instead ate the foods that made me feel like I performed better.

Going by feeling can be really tricky, especially when you need to stay lean.

I found low-calorie ways to get high-calorie satisfaction. For me, that was salty stuff, like pickles. And ketchup and mustard and Cholula. No matter what, I still loved putting ketchup on everything.

So what did you go for when you were off that structured diet?

A burger. Are you kidding me? Just a juicy burger. It’s funny, sometimes I’ll crave some of those silly things I would make that were super low-calorie but delicious, though. Like a pickle taco—I would put Cholula on a flour tortilla, and fill it with arugula and a few slices of pickle in the middle. If you don't have Cholula, you can spread hummus on there, too. I’m telling you, it’s one of the best things I’ve ever had, and it’s about 150 calories.

That sounds... pungent. Like it’s got a lot of punch to it.

I’ve got a lot of punch to myself, so it makes sense.