The Real-Life Diet of Ethan Zohn, A Three-Season Survivor Legend

Ethan Zohn holds a special place in the annals of Survivor history. The Survivor: Africa victor and three-time contestant (Africa in 2001, All-Stars in 2004, and current season Winners at War) remains a beloved figure largely for the same reason that he was able to win the show 19 years ago: he’s a good hang.

Zohn’s affability and go-with-the-flow mindset has come in handy on Winners at War, where getting voted out—which happened to him early on in the season—doesn’t mean the end of the game. Instead, contestants are sent to the Edge of Extinction, an even more desolate island that Zohn says is “designed to break you.” There, they compete for the chance to re-enter the main game—and possibly win the whole thing.

Since he last competed in 2004, he’s overcome cancer twice, undergoing intense stem-cell treatments and chemotherapy. Naturally, his next challenge was to return to a deserted island. GQ connected with Zohn before the Final Tribal Council (the Survivor finale is May 13th) to talk about preparing for a game as draining as Survivor, the lifestyle changes he made during his recovery from cancer, and what it would take to get him to step down from an immunity challenge.

GQ: What does your diet look like these days?

Ethan Zohn: When all of this hit, my wife and I looked at each other and were like, how long can we go without going out? I figured we can do this for a year, so right after we came to that conclusion, I got a chest freezer and filled it full of food. We have a vegetable delivery company and a beet delivery company as well, because I’m not leaving the house. Blood cancer patients are three times more likely to contract it than the average person. I live in the middle of the woods, we have our own water source, we have a lake with fish, we grow wild blueberries and keep a garden, so we were already trying to be more self-sustaining, and then all this started happening.

You were a professional soccer player, so it’s safe to assume you knew how to take care of your body when you first competed on Survivor: Africa. But the show was very much in its infancy then. There weren’t Reddit threads on how to prepare your body for it. Did your diet at the time play a role in preparing for the show?

I just tried to gain as much weight as possible. I was still working out at a pretty high level and also as much as I possibly could, waking up in the middle of the night to drink protein shakes and snack on peanut butter. Having said that, when I got out there, my body kinda went into shock. I was used to full meals and a ton of calories. I was actually a vegetarian for 14 years before going out there, so I had to break that if I was going to get any protein. I ate meat for three or four days before going to the island so I wouldn’t get sick. But being there wrecked my body. I lost 32 pounds in 39 days. You’re averaging less than 150 calories a day and it’s all carbs.

"When you go through a stem-cell transplant you’re in isolation for 100 days, and I’ve done that twice."

What is Edge of Extinction like? [Zohn was voted out fourth.] It seems genuinely terrible compared to the main island, and it’s not like the main island is a spa.

It’s horrible. The worst place on Earth, on purpose. They want you to quit. They want you to go through a transformational moment where you are contemplating everything, which you can clearly see me doing out there. People were struggling.

As I understand it, coconuts have been a food staple since the show started filming in Fiji full-time, and they can sometimes act as a natural diuretic, so you’re often faced with the choice of either eating them and getting sick or avoiding them entirely. Confirm, deny?

Confirmed. There are different forms of coconut you can eat. You can drink the water, eat the flesh, or when it’s harder and older, you can toast them, which is actually my favorite. But sometimes it’s rancid and a little bit sour, and you only have so many coconuts, so you definitely end up shitting yourself here and there.

Contestants have given up their spot in immunity challenges for everything from nachos to peanut butter and cookies. If you’re in one of those challenges, what does Jeff Probst have to offer you to get you to give up your chance at immunity?

Understand something: we spend, on average, three or four hours a day talking about food. I have to walk away at times because you’re going around the circle creating menus and lists of what they’re gonna eat when they’re home. This last season, I was craving something fresh with a crunch to it, like cucumbers. I wanted a cucumber and tomato salad, something crunchy and watery. When my wife came for the family visit I was just like, you have to buy pounds of this stuff for when I get home. But the other one is pizza, which is on the little Edge of Extinction menu [in exchange for Fire Tokens, a reward-based currency introduced this season]. I was so tempted all the time, so pizza I probably would have stepped down for, even if pizza in Fiji sucks.

Former contestants have noted that winning food in a reward challenge can bite you in the ass a few hours later given that your body isn’t used to processing anything other than rice. You’re not really getting the full nutritional value.

Fully agree with that. In Africa, I did win one reward with Lex [van den Berghe]. Ate some french fries and got some diarrhea on national television, which was not the greatest moment of my life. When I came back, I thought, Okay, I don’t want to win a reward ever again no matter how much food is available. And honestly, I always felt I was better at not eating than anyone else. I’m Jewish, so I already fast once a year for a week for Yom Kippur. It became part of my strategy.

So you win Africa, and then in 2004 you do All-Stars in Panama, which looked especially brutal. But at that point, you’d done this before. How did your diet prep change knowing what to expect?

I worked out harder and really tried to gain muscle mass versus quick weight. I was in really good shape at the time but wasn’t as into strategic, coordinated lifting weights. So going into that one, I bulked up. I was 176 [pounds] going in. And then after gaining the weight, I weaned myself off food so my body wouldn’t go into shock like it did in Africa. Those last two or three weeks before filming I cut out protein and just ate carbs, tried to get to a level where my stomach wasn’t huge but I could still perform at a high level.

Do you feel like having that foresight and applying it to your prep for All-Stars paid off?

I do, yeah. A lot of people get out there and their bodies start to panic a little when they realize they don’t have access to food and water. You don’t perform as well, you make bad decisions, and you’re scrambling. It happened to me in Africa. And it was way different back then. In Africa, we got our own water and boiled it, and we plucked corn out of cattle feed and ground it up for food. All-Stars we mostly just had the green bananas that grew on the trees around us.

Between All-Stars and Winners at War, you were diagnosed with cancer twice and had to go through some intense treatment. It’s been 11 years since your initial diagnosis. How's that battle affected your diet and lifestyle?

When I was 14, my dad was diagnosed with cancer. When that happened, my mom made a decision for the family to do a macrobiotic, fully holistic diet. He passed away, but that connection between food and health has always stuck with me and been paramount in my family. When I got sick, I fully shifted my diet, partially because I had to—when you go through a stem-cell transplant you’re in isolation for 100 days, and I’ve done that twice. And then outside of that, you can’t really go to restaurants because you’re immunocompromised. I cut out all meat, all caffeine, all sugar to fight the cancer. When I was in remission, I slipped back into a more normal diet. These days, my wife and I are on a modified paleo diet—high in meat, high in vegetables, low in sugar, carbs, and dairy. But to be honest, when you’ve got cancer, it’s not going matter what you’re eating. It won’t give you more cancer [laughs]. But mentally, it made me feel better. When there’s a bug inside you trying to kill you, and the doctors tell you to do something, you do it. It creates a little semblance of control in an uncontrollable situation. I tried to do that with everything: Exercise, diet, meditation, visualization, all that stuff helped.

You mentioned in the current season that when you were going through treatment and recovery, the prospect of being able to compete on the show again was a source of motivation. How do you prepare this time around, being 15 years older and a cancer survivor?

Man, when they reached out a year-and-a-half ago, I was sitting on the couch, smoking weed, eating Doritos, you know? I was like, Fuck, I’m gonna have to do this fucking thing. My wife and I moved from New Hampshire to a wellness community in Atlanta for four months called Serenbe. I hired a trainer, an old soccer buddy of mine who’s worked with the Minnesota Vikings and NHL guys. I was super out of shape, so first I had to cut out sugar and dairy and caffeine and weed. The diet plan we created was a cycle. We’d do a week trying to gain weight, then two to three day stints of reduced calories, then reduced fasting. We’d cycle through that on a two-week basis to get my body used to the ebbs and flows of eating and not eating while still gaining mass. I was crushing a lot of mass-gainer protein powders. I’m usually about 155-ish and I got up to about 167 before I left for Winners at War.

What was the fitness plan like?

I started getting my body used to working out again and then moved into a modified Crossfit-type program. A lot of legs and core. Once I got in decent shape and we ramped up towards departure in May, I worked my fine motor skills. A lot of balancing, knot-tying, jumping, and plyos. I was shooting hoops, throwing baseballs, and doing uphill sprints. Heavy days I wouldn’t eat for 24 hours and then go do a hard workout. I’d see how that would feel and figure out how to adjust from there.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Real-Life Diet is a series in which GQ talks to athletes, celebrities, and everyone in-between about their diets and exercise routines: what's worked, what hasn't, and where they're still improving. Keep in mind, what works for them might not necessarily be healthy for you.

The viral star is filling his time at home with extended garage sessions and YouTube workouts.

Originally Appeared on GQ