The Real-Life Diet of Layne Norton, Who Changed His Mind About Cholesterol

Photograph courtesy of Laye Norton; Collage: Gabe Conte

There are several reasons to listen to consider Layne Norton a fitness and nutrition expert worth paying attention to. He has a PhD in nutritional science, so he’s not operating purely on vibes, as many fitness influencers tend to do. Then there are the lifts: last year, at 41 years old, Norton placed second in the North American Regional Powerlifting Championships, hitting insane numbers in the squat, bench, and deadlift.

Though Norton has an impressive powerlifting career and is a founder of several businesses—nutrition coaching business BioLayne, supplement company Outwork Nutrition, and Carbon, a diet coaching app—you might be more familiar with his work on on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter), where he goes through pains to dissect the junk science that eternally flows through the world of wellness. A recurring theme is that you can always find research to support any thesis. Even if that thesis is “eat poop to lose fat,” as Norton once argued, to show how science-y terms, misrepresented studies, and a bold claim can make anything sound compelling.

In his personal life, in a time of “stacks” and “protocols,” Norton is disciplined about his training and his caloric intake in a way that feels realistic. He hits his macros and calorie goal, packs in a ton of fiber, and that's pretty much that. Which is not to say it won't change at some point: An admirable thing about Norton, particularly when it comes to fitness and nutrition advice, is that he updates his perspective as new information becomes available. (Which is harder to do if you, say, build an entire identity and belief system based on the carnivore diet.)

GQ caught up with Norton for more.

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

GQ: First, I wanted to ask you what your feeding schedule looks like on a typical day. And if you call it a feeding schedule.

Layne Norton: No, I wouldn't call it a feeding schedule. I eat four to five times a day, just depending on how my schedule shakes out. I'll usually have my first meal a half-hour to 45 minutes after I get up, get a shower, and get going. My last meal will usually be about an hour before I head to bed. If I only have four meals, they'll be a little bit bigger. If I have five, they’ll be a little bit smaller. And then I usually make sure I eat an hour or two before I go train. And I make sure I eat an hour or two after I'm finished training.

I usually train in the afternoon, so usually I'll have breakfast, then lunch, go train, have dinner, because my training sessions are two to three hours. And then I'll have another meal before bed. Sometimes I'll wake up earlier. So I end up having a meal somewhere in between, so I bridge the gap. So if I'm hungry, or if I'm going six or seven hours without eating, I'll have something small. But yeah, that's kind of it. There's nothing like, "At 10 a.m., I'm having this." Nothing nearly that regimented. My guidelines are: I eat when I wake up, I eat before I go to bed and then have a couple in-between that are bracketing my workouts. That's about it.

How'd you arrive at four to five meals a day?

I think people are going to be really disappointed with my answer. Because it's nothing magic. Originally, I ate in that frequency because I thought it would help optimize muscle protein synthesis. And now we have quite a bit of data out to suggest that anywhere between three and five meals is probably optimal for anabolism. So now I just do it out of habit from doing it so long. I don't think it's necessarily that much better.

What are those meals, typically?

I honestly don't really have set meals. I tend to eat similar things by default. I have protein, carbs, and fats, and I just hit those numbers. I eat about 3400 calories a day. I train pretty hard for several hours a day.

In the morning, I might have Greek yogurt with strawberries, a little bit of sugar-free chocolate syrup, some Splenda, and a little bit of chocolate chips or something for flavor. For lunch, I'll typically have a potato, rice, or some sort of starchy carbohydrate plus some fruit like apple, pineapple, strawberries, and I'll have a chicken breast. Sometimes I'll have some gummy bears or something just for some quick glucose, and then I'll go train. Usually, I tailor my dinner around my kids’ dinner. When I'm having dinner with the kids, I'm trying to eat something similar to whatever they're eating, which isn't always easy. I’ll make spaghetti and meatballs, but it'll be with lean ground turkey or lean ground beef—that sort of thing. And then I'll have cauliflower or broccoli or some sort of vegetable on the side.

Sometimes—sometimes not—I'll have a beer or a glass of wine or something with dinner. Before bed, I’ll usually watch a TV show, have some low-fat popcorn. I love me my low-fat popcorn. It actually has a surprising amount of fiber that most people aren't familiar with. It's one of my best sources of fiber. I'll have some more fruit, apple, pineapple, strawberries, those tend to be my go-tos, sometimes blueberries as well. And we'll also have a bowl of ice cream. I love me some ice cream. That's my one thing I like to indulge in.

What's your preference for ice cream?

Cookies and cream. So I'll do that.

Then I'll do another protein source, it may be a protein shake, it may be a chicken breast. Sometimes, if I have fats left over, I'll actually just have a large piece of cheese. I love cheese. I might have a leaner protein source and combine it with a block of cheese. So it kind of ends up being a haphazard thing, depending on what I have leftover to fit whatever calories I was trying to eat. That's the structure of how I eat: I fit four or five servings of fruits and vegetables in there. I focus on getting my calories, my protein, and making sure I'm getting enough fiber. Usually, per day, I'll get 40 to 50 grams of fiber. Some days, I'll get closer to 60. Protein, carb and fat-wise, I end up eating about 230 grams of protein a day, about 350 grams of carbohydrate and about 100 and some grams of fat.

When you said you had fats leftover, how are you keeping track of that?

Yeah, so I use my app, Carbon Diet Coach. It has a tracker in it. It’ll adjust your nutrition based on how you're responding. So right now, my goal is to maintain my body weight. Every once in a while, my bodyweight creeps up—maybe I wasn't tracking as regimented or whatever. So then when that happens, the app will lower my calories to get me back in range, and then it'll take them back up. Because on the fat-loss program, if I'm losing fat at an appropriate rate, it's not going to adjust me, but then if I start to lag behind, it will adjust my calories, so on and so forth. So it's an adaptive, algorithm-based coaching app that I helped write the algorithm for. That's what I use to track everything in here.

Talk me through your typical lifting routine, and how that changes as you approach competitions.

So I compete in powerlifting, which is the three main lifts: squat, bench press, and deadlift. If I'm further out from the meet, I'll still hit some decently heavy singles on my main lifts, but I'll do more reps. I'll also do a lot more accessory work and just maintain on the main lifts. That gives my body a chance to recover while still building up my capacity to improve strength and build some lean mass.

As the competition approaches, what tends to happen is we reduce the volume of the accessory work. When I say accessory, I mean dumbbell presses for chest, belt squats and leg extensions for legs, rowing movements, those sorts of things. But as I get closer to the competition—I'm seven weeks out right now—those are getting pulled back, and we're adding a lot more volume on the main lifts. And those reps are typically dropping.

Right now, the highest amount of reps I do for squat bench press, and deadlift is four reps. I don't do higher than that right now. When you're doing a one rep max, you not only have to be strong enough, but you have to practice the skill of strength. And so as that competition is approaching, you're doing a lot of heavy lifts for low reps to practice that skill. reason we don't do that year round, is it just a little bit higher risk in terms of injury and also touching on some pain things. Usually, it shifts, as that meet’s approaching now. Basically, I built my base level of strength, now I'm trying to practice to reveal it, essentially.

So it's more about the brain-body connection of the movement and not necessarily the strength.

You're doing a little bit more training of the neuromuscular system. Obviously, you're lifting heavy weights, you're still using the muscular system. But at this point, it's more about just refining that technique, and just getting used to having really heavy weight on your back or in your hands or whatever it is.

What do you usually listen to when you're lifting?

My mix would be metal: Disturbed, Sevendust, Nothing More, I Prevail, but then also mixed in with epic movie trailer music: Hans Zimmer, Man of Steel soundtrack, Batman Begins. Actually, my favorite go-to PR song is from a video game. It's the suicide mission theme from Mass Effect 2. I'm dating myself now because that's like 13 years ago. I keep a 30 Seconds to Mars song on there that’s got some heaviness to it. And then I'll have a few rap songs on there. Eminem, 'Til I Collapse', that sort of stuff. I like to feel like I'm saving the universe while I lift.

I find it fascinating because I have information FOMO sometimes, so I'll be listening to audiobooks when I'm running or lifting. But I've noticed this—especially with running—I go faster if I'm listening to music versus listening to information.

There's actually a lot of research that shows music, yelling, and having people—especially the opposite sex—present actually improves performance. We're all dumb primates, so all those internal motivations still exist.

And is there anything in particular that you look forward to eating post-competition?

I mean, I never deny myself. I have my regular eating schedule and the foods I tend to eat. But if I go out with friends or whatever, I'm able to eat enough calories and maintain my weight that I don't really feel like I'm limited by anything. So if I want something, I'll usually just have it and not really worry about it. My friends ordered pizza the other day and I had a few slices, because I can fit it in and I don't really care. So I don't usually feel the need to splurge afterwards. If we're celebrating, I'll go out, we'll have a few drinks.

I competed in bodybuilding years ago. Then there was a lot more going out and eating to eat, because I was so deprived. But with powerlifting I don't really feel that deprived.

Switching gears: for people who are inundated and trying to make sense of exercise and nutrition research, do you have any general principles that you can provide to make sense of new information?

How to pick through all the fire hose of information coming at them?

Yeah. What's legit and what is maybe just a hyped-up mouse study?

First off, don't just read the headlines, read what it actually says. And then if you can, go to the actual study. A lot of times they'll link the actual study. You can see, “Oh, well, this was in mice to have this gene knocked out. And they saw this.” Well, I don't really know what that means for an actual human who doesn't have a gene knocked out. In general, the more exclamation points there are in an article, the less veracity there is to it. The more sensationalized it is, the more fear-based it is, typically the less veracity it is to it.

If they interviewed the scientists, it is incumbent on the scientists to really try to firmly put out the limitations of their own research so it doesn't get misinterpreted. I'll give you a great example. Years ago, probably 10 years ago, this article came out, like, “smell your partner's farts if you want to live longer.” Or reduce your risk of cancer. [A 2014 article from NBC reads “No, Farts Don't Prevent Cancer: Claims Don't Pass the Smell Test”]

They did a mouse study, where they looked at the production of a specific volatile fatty acid by the gut microbiome. And then they supplemented that fatty acid in a high dose and saw that that could reduce tumor growth. That is a far cry from “smell your partner's farts.”

A lot of these studies are done based off of what's called risk. And so if you see things like "link to," "associated with," "increases risk," I'm not saying it's bullshit. I'm not saying it doesn't have validity. I'm just saying if you look hard enough, you can link anything to anything else. There are very tight correlations that make absolutely no sense. Just Google “spurious correlations.”

Yeah, I've been to that website.

We're talking about small associations, like sales of margarine correlate with divorce rates 99%. That is a much more likely positive association. But how can it be? [laughs] What's the mechanism that would cause that? And so I think we've gotta be really careful. I'm not saying that all epidemiology and correlation stuff is BS. But what I am saying is, you have to look at the totality of evidence.

Let's take artificial sweeteners and cancer. A lot of people think that this is just proven that these things cause cancer. Actually, if you do a meta summary of the studies, 70 to 80% of the studies say it's not associated with cancer, but the ones that get published are the ones that show an association, because it gets more headlines.

Now, you look at something like fiber. Almost every single epidemiology study we have on fiber says fiber reduces the risk of heart disease all cause mortality and in cancer. So is it possible it's a passive association? Sure, it's possible. But I feel much more confident than that, because it consistently shows up in the literature. It's really about the consensus of the literature. And that's why people get upset about science moving slow. It's like the American political system. No, it should move slow. It is designed to move slow for safety reasons. And by the same token, if we made sweeping changes every time a new study came out, we'd be ping ponging back and forth all the time.

You can always find a study to support whatever narrative you want to put out there. And a great example of this is, I looked at a meta analysis of the risk of smoking on the risk of adenocarcinoma. Now, there were about 50 studies, including this meta-analysis, and the outcome of it was that smoking increased the risk of adenocarcinoma, like 400%. But if you look at it, there were two studies that showed no risk of increased carcinoma, and actually, a little bit of a protective effect. It wasn't statistically significant. But if I want to be a shyster and argue that smoking isn't bad for you, I can just go pick out those two studies and be like, “See! Science shows that smoking doesn't increase your risk for dental carcinoma!” The 48 other studies that show that it does. Just be really careful about the fact that you can always find some study—even if it's not direct—you can always find a way to ratchet it around so that it fits your narrative.

I appreciate that you update your perspective based on the information that's available, and you don't really hang your hat on anything. Are there are some things that you've changed your perspective on, in terms of exercise and nutrition?

I'll give you a few quick ones. Now, I wouldn't say that none of these I hung my hat on. But I did advocate, for example, supplementation with branched chain amino acids for probably about 10 years. And over time, I just saw enough data come out to where I went, “Okay, I can't justify this anymore.” My old supplement company had a BCAA product, and my new supplement company that opened a couple of years ago, doesn’t. Because we're evidence-based and we said, okay, we can't justify this. Even though people were asking for me it.

Even now, we have an ingredient in our pre-workout that we felt good about but the data just didn't pan out on it. And so we're actually going to change the formulation. I still like that ingredient personally. But looking at the data, I just can't justify keeping it in. So we're reformulating that product now.

And then LDL cholesterol: I used to be saying to people, Hey, I don't think LDL cholesterol really matters that much. I think it's more about the ratio of HDL to LDL. And then a bunch of Mendelian randomization studies came out. Mendelian randomization studies basically use the fact that you have people who naturally secrete more or less LDL based on different gene polymorphisms. And you can look at their lifetime exposure. When you do that, you can pretty much draw a straight line through the risk of heart disease and your levels of LDL over the course of your lifetime. And so I said, “Okay, well, I changed my mind about that now.” I have a bunch of others.

The other big thing would be intermittent fasting. I used to think it was going to be hard to build muscle while fasting. Maybe that's true with the more extreme forms of fasting, where you're doing alternate-day fasting, or only eating one meal a day. But your 16-8 traditional intermittent fasting, the research has shown that [it’s fine.] If you inject me with truth serum, I probably will still say it's not the absolute best thing you can do. But in the research studies, they don't see any differences between 16-8 intermittent fasting versus normal continuous meal feeding and building lean mass of people who are resistance training. I tell people iIf you're a bodybuilder, and your goal is to build as much muscle as possible, I would still say over the course of maybe years or decades, you might see a difference. But for most people who are just looking to put on a little bit of muscle, it doesn't seem to make a difference.

Lastly, I was curious: what are those little booties that you use when you're deadlifting?

[Laughs] Those are called deadlift slippers. They're grippy on the underside. But they’re literally a slipper. And so on a deadlift, your best leverage is getting yourself as close to the bar as you can in the lowest position as you can. If you're even if you're dealing with a sole that's quarter-inch, you're still pulling yourself a quarter inch away from the bar. I'm basically using whatever gets me as close to the bar as possible.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Originally Appeared on GQ