The Real-Life Diet of Skip Bayless, Who Eats the Exact Same Meal Ten Times a Week

Skip Bayless swears that all of the following things are true, and frankly, he doesn’t care if you believe him or not: He does cardio seven days a week, and has only missed a single session in the last three decades; at 67 years old, his weightlifting routine and diet—which consists of him eating the same meal for lunch and dinner Monday through Friday—are enough to keep his body fat at five percent; and that, for any amount of money, he could beat LeBron James in an eight-mile race.

Fitness is, in his own words, “a subject even more dear to my heart than my beloved Cowboys, Spurs or Sooners.” His only downtime is date night, where he’ll throw on some ice packs while he and his wife watch Jeopardy! and Ray Donovan. We recently asked Fox Sports `1's most zealous early-morning yeller about his famously monotonous lunch-and-dinner routine, his unconventional method of West Coast timekeeping, and his thoughts about "taking a rest day." (Bayless, as you might expect, is uninterested in the concept of giving it a rest.)

GQ: As I understand it, you worked at a barbecue place your parents owned called the Hickory House, and you weren’t big on the duties involved.

Skip Bayless: I have a brother you might be aware of, who is two years younger. [Ed. note: That's chef Rick Bayless, of Mexico: One Plate at a Time fame.] Fatefully for him, he took right to the Hickory House. I despised it. We were both forced to work there from age three or four on. All I could do was mop, sweep, and clean out what was called the bullpen, which was where all the trash was. It was utterly nauseating, disgusting, and deplorable. I still have bad dreams about the bullpen.

But did you at least eat lots of barbecue? Or were you around it so much that you were turned off by it?

I did. I didn’t really have any choice. I would always eat lunch there—chopped beef sandwiches, and then they had their famous twice-baked potatoes where you would scoop all the potato out and put cheese in it and put it back into the shell. You could either get sweet or sour coleslaw, and then fried pies that came in packages. Those were great, but I would never think about eating them today. I knew nothing about nutrition until 1982. I had a big turnaround that year and never looked back.

What happened in 1982?

I covered Wimbledon and the British Open golf for the late, great Dallas Times Herald. At Wimbledon, the very first day I was there, I ran in to another reporter I knew, and he said, “Hey, five of us are going to go for a run in Hyde Park.” I tried to join, and I lasted a half-mile, maybe. All through Wimbledon, I went every day and got a little better.

The woman I was dating at the time was with me, and we rented a car and drove to Scotland for the British Open. I kept getting up every morning to run by myself, and I found I was running a little farther. We were seven hours ahead of Dallas, so I had seven extra hours to file stories. Routinely, I was staying at the golf course until 2:00 A.M. One night, I was just starving, and room service had closed, so my girlfriend suggested that we go walk around. All we could find was a Chinese takeout place that had its food displayed, and the only thing left was sweet and sour pork, just swimming in grease.

We took it back to the room, and I was sitting on the bed eating it, and she took a picture of me. When I looked at the picture, I just had this eureka moment. I thought, I’m never going to do that again. I cut out red meat, cheese, fried food, dairy, and sugar. My body immediately started changing with the running and the very disciplined nutrition. I was 31 years old, and started to realize that this is how you have to live from this point forward. It’s not a diet—it’s a lifestyle.

But for a while, I obsessed with the running. That became an internal battle, because I wasn’t sure if I was eating to run or running to eat. I was flirting with exercise bulimia.

Yeah, you've talked a little about that before.

I suffered from it. I didn’t get counseled, and I didn’t seek therapy over it, but I knew I was trapped in it. I was running 100-mile weeks, and if you do the math on that, it would be, like, 12 miles a day. On Sunday, it would be 20-something miles. The problem with that is you just get ravenous at night. The next morning, you get up and say, Oh man, I’ve got to run farther to get rid of this.

Then I discovered weightlifting, and it’s just easier on me. I still fight with it a little bit—you’ve got to stay trim, and I keep my body weight at five percent. But I can look forward to weightlifting as a way to burn some calories, and I don’t have to feel like I’m going to defeat what I eat. It saved me from myself.

What’s your running routine now?

I still have a run I do early Sunday morning—an eight-mile course right around the Fox lot in West L.A., where we do the show every day. I compete with myself, and always run the eighth mile faster than the previous seven. That’s my little bit of running competition. I do three days on the exercise bike, three on the treadmill, and then the one day outside. So I do a lot of cardio, probably more than most people, but I don’t do the the psycho distance running.

When did your legendary five-helpings-per-week-of-chicken-and-broccoli-without-sauce routine begin?

That was by necessity. For 10 years while I was at ESPN, I lived at the Residence Inn in Southington, Connecticut, near Bristol. I did that because my wife had a great job in New York City, and we had a place in New York City, at 54th and 8th. On Friday, I would come back, and then on Sunday evening I would go back to the Residence Inn. I kept my room at the Residence, and I would just call the Chinese restaurant because they knew me and knew what I liked. I would get steamed chicken and broccoli, and I’m a white rice guy. I know brown is better for you, but I don’t like the taste of it. It’s too dry for me.

Neither my wife or I cook, so here in L.A., we just order from a meal service. Once a day, they bring me two meals of baked chicken, steamed broccoli, and white rice. Occasionally, she will pour just a bit of Healthy Valley soup—low sodium, no fat—over it and microwave it. That gives it a little bit more taste, but the Chinese place actually had more taste. I don’t know how or why, but it did. Anyway, I still do that meal every lunch, every dinner, Monday through Friday.

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What does your day-to-do schedule look like?

Before my show in the morning, I get up at 2:00 A.M., I read the overnight stories, I stretch, and at 2:30 I either get on the treadmill or the exercise bike. I finish at 3:30, I jump in the shower, and my first meeting starts at 4:00. We’re done at 4:30, and when I drink a protein shake. That’s my “breakfast,” because I’m excited and nervous for the show, so I don’t feel like eating much beforehand. Three days a week—Monday, Wednesday, Friday—I lift hard. I come home, eat, and then sleep for an hour and a half.

I don’t think I could take the psychological pounding of getting up at 2:00 A.M., so I keep all the clocks in the house on East Coast time. That way, I’m only doing what I always did at ESPN, which is get up at 5:00. My wife doesn’t love it.

Do you drink any coffee or caffeine?

I do, I have one vice—Diet Mountain Dew. I’m not saying I’m proud of it, but I do drink one in the morning. I like the taste of it, and I like the pop from it. I just drink it with a straw so it doesn’t eat my teeth.

For the Bayless-is-exaggerating crowd, how do you defend yourself from the not-implausible charge that someone would get extremely sick of eating the same thing for lunch and dinner every night?

I don’t read the Internet, so I don’t know what they’re saying. But I do look forward to our one cheat, which is a single slice of pizza. In New York, it was Ray’s Pizza. Here, it's from Eataly. We live right by the Century City Mall, and my wife walks over every Friday and gets me a slice. If I think it has too much cheese on it, I’ll pick some of it off.

On Saturday, because my wife was born and raised in New York and misses the deli food, we go to Nate and Al’s Deli. I always get an egg white omelette with turkey and broccoli cooked with Pam spray, so that I don’t get too much oil on it. I also have half of a bagel, with no cream cheese or butter.

For my meal replacements, I eat way too many Quest bars. I think you should eat every three hours. I usually wake up once a night, and if I do wake up, I always eat a Quest bar to feed my machine.

I will tell you another thing that a lot of people probably scoff at, but it’s God’s truth: I think I’ve missed one day of cardio since my last marathon in ‘91. That’s the God’s truth. [Ed. note: In a 2015 Wall Street Journal interview, he claimed to have missed two days of cardio since 1998. Close enough.] Take it or leave it, believe it or not, I just don’t miss.

It’s my escape. It’s my release. It’s the way I wake up in the morning. When I’m in the gym, I see people talking about these routines, and they're always asking, “When are the days off?” You should never take a day off. If you do, your lazy self will embrace it.

By the way, in that period of not missing cardio, I’ve had four surgeries. That includes three knee scopes for medial meniscus tears. I was fortunate to find a surgeon who recommended to me that, if I could bear it, the quickest way to recover is to go straight home and get on the exercise bike and pedal with no resistance. It helps you bounce back quicker. I was back running on concrete within one week the first time, and maybe two weeks the second time. The last one took about a month. I never looked back and I’m still fine.

Do you really truly believe, in your heart of hearts, you could outrun any professional athlete who challenged you to a distance race?

What are we talking about with distance? Can we do my eight miles?

Yeah, sure.

I always think of LeBron, since he’s the guy we talk about the most. Or Tom Brady. I’m going to the top of the food chain with both of them. I definitely could outrun those two for eight miles. I would do it for any amount of money. I still run pretty well. I’m pretty fast. My eighth mile is usually around 6:30. The other miles will be more like 7:30 or 8:00. Let’s take LeBron: At 6-foot-nine and 260 pounds, it’s just physics—it’s too many pounds to carry over a distance. I’d do it tomorrow.

The converse of this is I still play a good bit of basketball. I only play one-on-one, and I’m always amazed at how winded I get. Then again, when people think they can beat me in one-on-one, if we go to 12 baskets, and we go best two of three, they just can’t run with me because I get the rebound and run to the three-point line and shoot it. That’s where my wind starts to help. But when I’m playing defense, I find that’s a whole different wind and fitness level. Your limbs get tired. I don’t have that kind of fitness.

But because I lift weights so hard and run so much, yeah. I believe I can outrun most everyone.

This interview has been edited and condensed.