The Real-Life Diet of Paul Scheer, Who Gets in Shape to Get in Character

“No one told me to do this, by the way,” says Paul Scheer says with a laugh, halfway through discussing the physical transformation he underwent for his role on the Showtime show Black Monday. But he plays a hard partying, roller skating, short-shorts-wearing Wall Street trader, and he figured that, to do him justice, he had to get fit. That meant intermittent fasting, yoga, some quality time on the Peloton, and cutting out booze.

Scheer is a sketch comedy mainstay best known for FX's The League, though you might recognize his trademark gap-toothed grin from anywhere from 30 Rock to Fresh Off the Boat to Yo Gabba Gabba! And he might not be the first person that comes to mind when you think about wellness and fitness. But getting in shape to do justice to TV and movie roles means he's spent a lot of time thinking about what works for him and how to make it kind of enjoyable. GQ caught up with Scheer for the details.

For Real-Life Diet, GQ talks to athletes, celebrities, and everyone in between 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: Recently I saw that you had lost a lot of weight for your role in Black Monday. What was that process like?

Paul Scheer: Well, I will say that there is no greater motivator to lose weight than knowing that you are going to be mostly naked on television. I think that that's often a struggle that women must go through. Guys can usually get away with looking like whatever. But my character in the show wrestled with being in the closet for the first season, and I wanted, for the character, to make sure that when he came out he was gonna look his best.

No one told me to do this by the way. I was talking to the show creators and they were like you don't have to, but the character was very passionate about it.

How did you go about doing that?

I did the thing that everybody basically says to do, but no one ultimately wants to hear. I exercised and ate better. At the end of the day, it was actually easy to do, right? You need to just commit to it.

One thing I did on top of that—and that I'm still doing—is intermittent fasting. I looked at a Wikipedia page and went oh, this makes sense. I have two kids: I'm up at six making their waffles and then I'm eating some of their waffles. I'm making the peanut butter and jelly sandwich and cutting off the crust and eating a little bit. I'm becoming a little garbage man. So I was like: Maybe I should just take control of my garbage monster instinct till like 11:00 in the morning. I basically created this schedule for myself. 8:00 to 11:00, I would have nothing—maybe black coffee, if necessary. But basically, I would just have water until 11, and I've actually found it to be kind of fun and rewarding.

Kind of like a bit of a challenge to yourself.

Yeah, I think so. The other thing I did was not drinking for a handful of months. Then I had to figure out how to make my exercise a little bit more fun. I tried to do a bunch of different things. I was like I've never done yoga before, let's give this a fair shot—and now I do yoga twice a week. I was also learning how to roller skate and rollerblade for the show, so I just started trying everything. I've done all of the fitness apps, trust me. Recently I got a Peloton bike and I've been using it a ton. Basically, for five days out of the week, I was doing different things and it made me look forward to something different each day.

How does it work when you get approached for a role and you might have to transform your body for it? You see some actors going into something like Marvel movies and they know that they're going to have to get ripped.

I would give anything to be on that Marvel plan. But to your question—not to be too actor-y or whatever—but I always look at a role and go what can I bring to this?

I just did a movie with Joe Manganiello that's coming out December 11 called Archenemy. For that movie, I had to be in basically just red bikini bottoms the entire time. I had just started drinking beer again, but I got this role and knew that I needed to get good again because I knew what I wanted this character to be.

I had a conversation with the director about creating my character, and my character is insane. You can see a snippet of it in the trailer, but I have a crown of thorns tattooed on my forehead, and a pancake on my fucking cheek. It's always a really fun process to create that: Getting in shape for me that only really comes after talking about the characters.

Have you been able to keep up with all these new things after you wrap?

After getting ready for Black Monday, and all the time and effort it took, I was like, why would I ever let go of this? It's not like I only eat a flaxseed ball at 12:30 and one quarter of boiled chicken or something. I was actually living a life where I felt good.

Has it been easy to keep that up during the quarantine?

I could easily gain like 170 pounds, right? Because you're now working from home, you're never leaving home, you're depressed, anxiety-filled. All I want to do is eat and drink and not be healthy, right? But I also knew that exercising would give me two things; a desperately needed breaks for my family—which my wife and I both need. Also, I think it made me happier.

Before the pandemic, I was definitely using exercise to bring some structure to my life. Just to be like all right, I'm gonna literally just take some time and like, work on myself and do something that's good for me. That's hard though because we really live in a world that doesn't value your own time. I meditate off and on, and a big challenge is just finding the way to make that time. None of these things are easy to make time for, but also we waste so much time. I'll talk about it more than actually doing it.

My real trick during quarantine has that I get up out of bed and I put on my gym clothes. Now at any point, I could just go to the gym, and it's my reward when I can get out of those clothes.

Meditation is actually something I've had trouble getting into as well.

I think there's a lot of obstacles put up in front of meditation, but I think that means can approach that many different ways. Whether that's getting the guided meditation app that LeBron James talks about [Calm], or just sitting crisscross applesauce and listening, or doing a mantra. I've come to believe that meditation can be anything—if you just put on music that you like and just do nothing for 20 minutes, you're meditating on some level. David Lynch wrote a great book about it called Catching The Big Fish. The idea is if you allow yourself to think and just be, you'll allow your state of consciousness to grow and expand. Do I do it every day? Absolutely not. Do I want to do it every day? Sure!

This interview has been edited and condensed.

It’s Big Board season.

Originally Appeared on GQ