Wahlberg’s fitness plan
starts strong at 3 a.m.
He eats seven meals a day, has a gigantic home gym outfitted like a 24-Hour Fitness and strictly limits interviews to allotted times. This one went exactly 10 minutes.
Yeah, I like working hard and need that seven and a half hours of sleep for recovery and healing. During the week, I like to be out of the gym, showered and have breakfast by 7 a.m to take the kids to school. Or if I golf in the morning, I’ll schedule my cryo and lunch meetings before I pick them up and head off to workout No. 2 at 4 p.m.
Easy. At 3:15 a.m., I start out with egg whites, almond butter, Ezekiel bread and avocado for breakfast — or maybe steel oats, peanut butter, blueberries and eggs. Post-workout is a salad, turkey burger, sweet potato and a protein shake — a Vanilla Latte Shake from Performance Inspired Nutrition [his company]. At 10:30, I might have 10 turkey meatballs or a grilled chicken salad with two hard-boiled eggs, olive, avocado, cucumber, tomato, lettuce. For lunch at 1 p.m., I’ll go for three turkey burgers, five pieces of sweet potato or a New York steak with green peppers. At 3:30, before the second workout, it might be grilled chicken with bok choy. Then the post-workout family dinner at 5:30 or 6 o’clock might be a beautiful piece of halibut or a cod or sea bass.
When my head stopped being so hard — and I stopped trying to look like a bodybuilder. A few years ago, I realized that I needed to be able to look like a normal person but perform like a professional athlete. From all the super-heavy body-builder lifting, I had injuries to my shoulders, trouble with disks in my back ... something had to change. Lifting like that for years takes a big toll on you.
I’ve been bodybuilding since 15. I felt like I knew everything. But now that I’m getting a little bit older, I’m learning so much more.
If F45 (his Aussie gym franchise) had been in my life 20 years ago, I don’t think I would’ve had half the ailments. But at least it helped clear them up.
These functional movements and smart exercise allow me to run, jump, keep up with my kids. I still have roles where I have to bulk up — like right now, I’m preparing to play a big muscle-bound priest who died of a rare muscular disease — but I have to be smarter about how I do it and take better care of my body.
Sometimes, I don’t take enough time to stretch, warm up or cool down. I run out of time. I spent three to four hours in the gym when I was doing “The Fighter” [in 2010]. From F45, I know now I could have done it in 45 minutes.