The Real-Life Diet of Zac Brown, Who Cut Out Seed Oils and Embraced NAD Therapy

Zac Brown doesn’t look much like the guy who blew up 17 years ago when his band’s hit song “Chicken Fried” reached No. 1 on the country charts. Back then, Brown took a hard-partying, devil-may-care approach to life on the road. Physically, that caused his weight to balloon, but mentally, it led him to a breaking point. Brown says he realized that he was constantly pursuing things that his mind, body, and spirit wanted to do, rather than what they actually needed to do. But after making sweeping changes to his life, the Grammy-winning singer understands the importance of long-term decisions over the short-term ones that provide instant gratification.

“Seeing the results that come from it, and my psychology around it, it made it easy to sacrifice what I wanted in order to get where I want,” Brown shared.

Things are much different now, inside and out. Brown has shed over 65 pounds from his peak weight, and he’s no longer drinking on tour. He’s not drinking at all, for that matter. Rather than toting a case of beer around with him, he carries a special bag of snacks to keep him on the straight and narrow dietary path. The 46-year-old has also cut out seed oils and become very diligent about reading food labels, something he says his children—an 11-year old son and four teenage daughters—are starting to get into as well. Beyond his family, Brown has also started dishing out health and wellness advice to other musicians. Whether it’s about the wonders of the paleo diet, the perils of prescription drugs, or the power of keeping junk food out of your house, Brown has a deep well of knowledge to pull from.

We spoke to Brown on the heels of an announcement that his band will have a residency at Sphere in Las Vegas this upcoming December and January.

Brown during a recent television performanceDebra L Rothenberg/Getty Images

GQ: I think, as it pertains to you, the first thing that people are going to want to know about is the weight loss and the physical transformation that you've undergone. How’d you do it?

Zac Brown: Well, first of all, being at a point in your life where you're really ready to apply the discipline that it takes. That want and need balance, it comes clearer into my mind with a little age and a little wisdom. I think if we do the things we want all the time—if we drink a six-pack of beer and eat a whole pizza and lay around—we don't get where we want to be. Doing the things we need to do actually gets us where we want to be. It's funny, we get so addicted to eating; we get so addicted to sugar. There's so many things like, “Oh, I can never give up bread,” or, “I can never give up sugar.” It's just a matter of what you want out of your life. Do you want to feel really good? Do you want to have your mobility, your flexibility? Do you want to be able to do all the activities that you love to do? I love to spearfish. I love to run up and down mountains. I love to be out in the wild.

If you can conquer really just not doing what you want all the time, then you can have a higher level of discipline. Also, I was at a point in my life where I was ready to engineer my choices around my end result. Nothing tastes better than feeling really good, being able to do things, and having a clear mindset.

But it's also in part because I hired an incredible trainer. I'm working with this guy Luke Richardson. He was an NFL guy for a lot of years. He took the Broncos to two Super Bowls as a strength and conditioning coach. His approach was entirely different. Any time in the past when I'd hired a trainer, we'd work out really hard and then things would get short. I wasn't stretching, I wasn't taking care of my soft tissue. So, 10 days into training really hard, all of a sudden I'd pull my back out or something like that. His approach is a lot more taking care of your soft tissue, using foam rollers, using vibrating balls, using a TRX band, a lot of isometrics, a lot of laying on the floor and kind of rolling around. It's not that it's fun, but you definitely notice a range of motion thing.

His wife—you kind of get them as a package deal—his wife is a nutritionist. She was an Olympic gold medal swimmer and does a lot of meal planning for people that are training for the Olympics. I've just been doing the workouts that he sends, and I've been eating the things that she tells me to eat. I have to carry around my food with me. But the diet is pretty simple. It's based on three meals a day that are about four hours apart. After your last meal, you fast for 14 hours. And as far as what you're eating: it's a lot of paleo, vegetables, good, clean proteins, whole foods, things that aren't just processed in a bag or in a box. I'm gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, alcohol-free.

Wow! Walk me through the methodology.

So, it seems like you’d love all those things too much [to give them up]. But it's just a choice. I'm not perfect on it. I've been traveling so much these last couple months, doing press and finishing this album. I've put on a little bit more weight just from not being as disciplined with it. The kind of oil that you intake, only avocado, olive, or coconut oil. That cuts out a lot, on top of those other restrictions. Everything has some kind of seed oil in it, sunflower oil or canola oil or something. Once your psychology gets around feeling good, then that gives you a lot of strength to just sacrifice things. I love pizza.

Who doesn’t?

But to get to my goal, I'm making my choices based on how I want to feel, how I want to look, and the amount of energy I have. My discipline for the workouts, the days that I don't feel like working out, those are the days that you really need to do it the most. It pulls you out of whatever funk you're in.

On top of that, I've been doing stem cells to help regenerate, and I've been taking peptides. I take NAD [nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide]. I do a monthly IV with some exosomes and NAD in it. I take my vitamins and my supplements. I've got a great regenerative medicine doctor that I work with, and we do blood work every month. When I get my IVs, they draw blood, they do testing, they see what I need to optimize my system. The thing you realize ... How old are you now?

I’m 30.

Well, your warranty runs out when you turn 40.

Start investing in the way that you feel. It's unfortunate because a lot of America—because of their choices of what they eat—they suffer. But for me, it was really finding people that I could trust to do this path. Seeing the results that come from it, and my psychology around it, it made it easy to sacrifice what I wanted in order to get where I want.

On the want vs. need thing, when did that shift for you? Was there a catalyst, or a final straw, where you were like, “You know what? This thing that used to give me pleasure, I don't feel that way anymore. I'd rather go the other way.”

Yeah, man. I tried a lot of things. I even tried going vegan for six months. I was eating pounds of cashews and I was gaining weight! I gained 15 pounds. Also, there's lots of sweet stuff. I wasn't monitoring the sugar and then I was juicing a lot. You think you're being healthy by drinking juice, but then your insulin spikes, which actually makes you gain weight as well.

The last seven years I've been on a spirit quest to be as well—mentally and physically—as I possibly can. Within these last two years I've really found the people. I know now if I do what they say, I'm going to feel good, I'm never going to get injured from just doing normal things. Back then I remember just reaching for something and my back spasming and tweaking, and then it hurts for three days. There's a proactive solution to it, but you just have to be hungry for it. Nobody could have told me that I needed to stop drinking before I knew that it was time to do it. But there were times when I had hangovers and I'd look at myself in the mirror and go, “One day, I'm not going to do this anymore.” You kind of feel like [alcohol] is this feel-good friend that's always around, that's whatever, but nobody's life gets better because they quit drinking. And I can testify to that a hundred percent.

I had a great drinking career, and I'm retired from it now. You have to redefine what success means to you every year or two, educate yourself, and then apply the discipline to doing it. For people that want to do it and feel like it's impossible, just start with a month. Your amygdala is directly connected to your stomach and your brain. The more sugar that you consume, the more your brain is telling your body that it has to have it. If you can go sugar-free, dairy-free, and gluten-free for a month, then your body doesn't crave it, and it becomes 90% easier.

I asked Bruce Springsteen when I first met him to tell me something that was invaluable to his career. He said, “I sweat for an hour a day, no matter where I am, what I'm doing, I sweat for an hour a day.” He's like, “It'll change your life.” I started doing that when I was home or even on the road. I built a trailer that has a full gym in it.

I heard about this!

I have an overactive brain, so being able to play Madden or Fortnite while I'm on the Arc Trainer for an hour, it makes an hour go by like that. In my mind, I'm like, I'm going to go down and play a game. I'm not thinking, I'm going to go down and torture myself with an hour of cardio. Figuring out a hack, playing pickleball is another one too. If you've got somewhere where you can go and run around, you're not even thinking about how much you're exercising or what you're doing. That helped keep my mind occupied while doing something monotonous.

I like what you said about thinking of your drinking days like a career you’ve retired from. It sounds like when athletes realize they can’t keep playing.

I went cold turkey. It's always around. It's always at a party. It's always at a meeting. It's always at a dinner. It's everywhere, socially. Being a musician, I lived in bars for the first 10 years. As time moves on, you have to be willing to go, “Okay, what's serving me now. Where do I want to go? Am I smart enough and disciplined enough to apply those things and move toward that?” I'm not a master of it. I have nights that I'm like, I'll just go eat a snack late-night, if I feel like it's been a stressful week. But when I do the things I need to do, I never feel better.

I grew up in the South, where people love each other and love their children by giving them sugar and garbage. There's type-two diabetes everywhere. I don't judge anyone. Nobody regulated what I ate as a kid. I've been up to like 265 [pounds] before. It’s not about judgment. We're here to sharpen each other. We're here to lift each other up and share our wins with each other. Your circle of friends will directly determine your success.

Of the four things that you cut out—gluten, dairy, sugar, alcohol—which one was the hardest to give up?

Well, at first it’s sugar because we’re straight addicted to it. If you drink alcohol, you're getting liquid sugar all the time. That's the hardest one to give up. You need 30 days of suffering so that you don't suffer for the rest of your life. Now, if I have a little bit of gluten, it makes my joints hurt. I can tell when I wake up. My team, Luke and Anita, they really showed me this is what's going to get you results. I did that for a year, and then I was down to below 190 [pounds] for the first time since I was 13, 14 years old.

Is that about where you’re at right now?

I'm at about 200 right now. I've put on about 10 pounds the last two and a half months, but I'm going back the other direction now. I'm probably a little under 200 right now. 265 was the biggest. I was a big boy.

It's a reminder, man, whatever your belief system is, that becomes your reality. If you believe that everything is fucked and everything's going to hell and the world is ending, that's going to be your reality. If you believe that there's growth and that there's love around you and that everything is a positive force pushing you, that becomes your reality too. I really try to keep my mindfulness intact. I have a lot more to give to my family, to my craft, to my band, my crew, all of it.

What's the thing that’s surprised you the most about the way that you feel now?

It's just the speed that I can activate in the morning. When I eat right and exercise, I feel lighter. All the things that would be normally really stressful, they aren't that bad.

As somebody that has ADD [Attention Deficit Disorder], I took study aids and stuff when I was in school. It wasn't Adderall back then. I think it was Dexedrine. That messes with your emotions, then you don't rest properly, then things happen or whatever. It's so cliche to tell people, but diet and exercise are the best proactive medicine that there is. It's the best medicine to get out of being depressed and turn off all the voices that are on the news, on social media, those things.

The one hour of sweat every day, are you mostly doing that in the morning?

That's what I do when I'm at home. But sometimes with my kids, I get up and I'm with them. I normally do it in the evenings. I've got a sauna at my properties. I get on my Arc Trainer, I do my isometrics, I do my workout with Luke. He sends me a menu of what I need to do every day, and I don't really have to think about what I’m going to do. But in the morning, it kind of gets your engine going, it clears the fog. That's a great time to just get up and knock it out if you're disciplined enough to get up before your day starts. I have my kids every other week, so when I'm with them, that's all I do. But it doesn't matter what time you get it in, as long as you get it in.

The weeks that I have [my kids], I just clear the deck and I get to be a servant to them, which is priority one for me. I don't share that side of my life with the public because I don't let the public into my bubble. That's also the reason that I'm not out schmoozing more and deepening the relationships and things business-wise. I never really wanted to be a celebrity, I just wanted to play music, be the best musician that I could be, and move people with my music. It’s a blessing that I get to do that for a living, but I fight pretty hard to try to keep my bubble, and I'm learning a healthy way to do that. Sharing things that have made a difference in my life—especially with young people—I think that's worth doing. A lot of people don't know me if they're not in my circle. My lady's helping me understand a different perspective on that right now, so I'm grateful for that.

Brown in 2009Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Do your kids talk to you about your health journey and what it’s like to watch it through their eyes?

They do. As the older ones got to be about 15, now they're reading the labels on things. The other thing is, don't have crap in your house! If it's not there, you're not going to eat it. You're not going to have a weak moment and smash the whole thing of Oreos. Keep them out the house.

It backfired because they would go to friends' houses and they'd go spend $40 at CVS on pounds of Sour Patch Kids and hide it all over the house.

Do other artists—or even people outside of the entertainment business—come to you and be like, “Hey, man, I like what you're doing. How can I get on this path?”

For sure. There’s been several people, and some are at a point where they’re ready to jump on it. Some people are just not there yet. But for sure, I've had lots of people come to me and ask me what I'm doing, how I'm doing it, what's going on. You only got to get through one day at a time. If you think about it as, “Man, it's going to take forever," it's not! You got to do it one day at a time, and then over time you start to see results, and then you want to just keep that momentum going.

In Real-Life Diet, athletes, celebrities, and other high performers talk about their diet, exercise routines, and pursuit of wellness. Keep in mind that what works for them might not necessarily be healthy for you.