The Real-Life Diet of Trixie Mattel, Drag Superstar and Self-Proclaimed Skinny Legend

World-famous drag queen Trixie Mattel named her 2018 tour Skinny Legend, and her last few years have indeed been legendary: since winning RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars Season Three, Trixie has become the type of celebrity entrepreneur with more day jobs and business ventures than many people will have in a lifetime. She’s a successful touring musician (her new album, the eight-track Barbara, is out tomorrow); her web series with fellow Drag Race alum Katya, UNHhhh, is entering its fifth hugely popular season; and in 2019, she launched her own makeup line, Trixie Cosmetics.

Of late, she’s also somehow found the time to exercise and eat healthy. She’s on a regimented Hollywood fitness routine, is working with a trainer, begrudgingly swapped alcohol for green juices, and switched to salads rather than takeout options while on the road.

With Barbara, Mattel says she wanted to split the difference between the music fans know her for and the music she grew up listening to: “I had the vision for Trixie to be Annette Funicello-meets-Barbie. And I was like, ‘Well, let's do this B-52s kind of beachy pop. And on the B-side, let's make it the evening at the beach.’”

Shortly before Barbara’s release, Trixie Mattel called up GQ to talk through vegetarian cheat days, eating well on the road, and what it’s like to get recognized at the gym.

GQ: Fans who follow you on social media have noticed your big fitness push lately. What’s your routine right now?

Trixie Mattel: I go see [my trainer] Jason Wimberly once in a while, but nobody really knows because in L.A., if you don't post about it, you're not really fit. Wimberly posts pictures of me working out with him. I never post my own. I think it's so gross. Talking about going to the gym is like posting about brushing your teeth. Like, you won an award for hygiene!

I love seeing a trainer for the extra push, but lately it's been hard for me to go, because every day I wake up and I either have phone calls, or I have to be in drag. I live two blocks from the Gold's in Hollywood, so I just go there probably five days a week. I do 30 minutes of cardio and then I do upper body and squat stuff. That's pretty much it.

Also, I stopped drinking. So between healthy eating and going to the gym and stopping drinking, I've been losing weight rapidly. I wore a pair of leopard print pants yesterday that I haven't worn in months. I hate to say it—I hate it. But when you stop drinking, weight just falls off your body. You can actually eat worse if you stop drinking, that's the gag. You can have a cheat meal and not worry about it, because you're not stacking a cheat meal on five drinks.

Have you had any weird fan encounters at the gym?

Like three weeks ago, somebody came up to me and said, "Me and my boyfriend took acid and watched UNHhhh, and I just want to say thank you." And I was like, "You're welcome." I don't do drugs, but a lot of people tell me that they love to do drugs and watch UNHhhh. I'm really happy people found that experience.

What else are you doing at the gym these days?

I do a lot of planks, a lot of pushups and lunges. I do a lot of things without machines, and I love biking. I'm a crazy bike person. I bike everywhere, and I run everywhere, because I don't drive. My boyfriend's like, "Come over," and I put on my track suit and sprint to his house in the middle of the night. It's about two miles. When you're busy, you've got to get exercise when you can get it!

The problem is, if you're an actor and you're on set, you can probably work out in your down time. When I'm in drag, I can't do anything. Honestly, five days a week, I'm probably in drag for eight hours a day. I'm in drag all the time. And it's so hard to get out of drag and feel like working out because you are completely trashed. Your body is dead from being pinched and pinned and painted and braided. Drag is really hard on your body.

Is sticking to a fitness and diet routine significantly harder on the road?

It is. When I'm on tour, my assistant will pick out whatever salad is on the menu at the venue that night. They've been instructed to not give me the menu. I'm not allowed to look at it. I'm not allowed to know what other people are getting. My food gets brought to my dressing room. I don't eat with anybody else, because everybody gets fun food except for me.

For my drag look, I like to try to stay as slim as I can. I wake up. I get off the tour bus. I have three different gym memberships: Anytime, 24 Hour, and Planet Fitness. I'm in a different gym every day on tour.

Then I go to the venue and eat whatever sad, corporate restaurant salad they serve. You don't want to know how many times I've had a House of Blues salad, or an Applebee's salad. Then I drink a lot of green juice. My assistant knows every day to greet me with a black tea and a green juice. The best thing for my diet is to stay busy. When I have my days off? Oh my god, I could just eat all day.

Since you’re so busy, do you need caffeine to get through the day?

I've never even had coffee. I'm always drinking tea. And I always have a black tea before the gym. I use black tea as a pre-workout. I love a Red Bull here and there, but I don't drink, I don't do drugs or smoke cigarettes. I'm a vegetarian, so that takes a lot of calories out of the equation. I've been a vegetarian since I was nine years old.

Because I travel, it's not really financially viable to keep raw ingredients in my house. I'm always gone. I have to be careful because if I get really hungry, I break my promises to myself. For a while, I was working with Clean LA. They were delivering meals to my house, pre-portioned of vegan food. That was nice, but I was always drinking, so I didn't see results. I went back to just feeding myself, and I went off alcohol. That got me in shape faster.

Other than sad salads, what are your go-to tour snacks?

On my rider, I have fruits and vegetables, usually chips and guacamole, but not always. Always trail mix. Always SmartPop, or unsalted popcorn. I love popcorn. Strategically, it's about making sure the tour bus has healthy things I actually like. I can't control what the band and everybody eats, but if it's all there on the tour business? Oh my god, it's so hard to not eat it, especially after a show when I'm like, "That was a great show. I want an ice cream bar, three glasses of wine, and a frozen pizza."

In terms of your drag look, you named one of your tours Skinny Legend, which is a term of affection your fans call you, too. What, then, is the overlap in terms of your relationship to fitness and drag?

For me, it's about comfort in drag. The bigger I am, the more physically uncomfortable I am in drag. So if I'm not feeling slim in the middle, I have to worry about wearing a corset to fit in my costumes. If I can get my middle as tiny as I can—hopefully through exercise and diet— then I can just wear Shapewear. I don't have to be as uncomfortable. Plus, drag is very physical, and I'm up there singing, playing the guitar. I'm running around doing costume changes.

If I can keep my cardio lifestyle up, I can handle more per show. I can do more for longer. It makes you a better performer. I want to trust my body, and I want to know what it looks like from all angles. And I want to do it in a way that's not death-defyingly uncomfortable. Like, I hate wearing a corset. On the Moving Parts tour, I did 60 American cities. I wore a corset every single night for two hours. This year, with my show Grown Up, the looks are all very ‘60s. They're all very Twiggy: smaller boobs, smaller body.

My vision for Trixie being this sort of fashion doll toy, I want her to look impossibly thin and tall with this giant blonde hair. So as an artist, it's like, "Well, how can I change my body in a way that is advantageous to my vision for my work?"

I dress up like a woman for a living, and I love to look like a man out of drag. I dress like a fucking trucker. When I go out to the bars, I wear cut-off denim vests. I love to show my arms. I love having arm definition. I love feeling sexy out of drag. Because gay guys are very attracted to my look out of drag. I look like someone's fucking dad, you know? Someone's uncle. And I like to lean into that.

When you look back at your fitness journey, are you able to peg its beginnings to a specific point in your career?

When I was my unhappiest, I was working in nightclubs right after Drag Race. I was drinking the most, eating the craziest, sleeping the least. One of those three things will get you out of shape. Doing all three was like, ugh. I was 25. It was the first time I actually had to think, "Oh wow, I'm not naturally skinny like I was when I was 20."

What does a vegetarian cheat meal look like?

My favorite food is nachos. Do you know Brittany Broski? Kombucha Girl?

Of course.

Yesterday Brittany and I went to Dave & Buster's. I definitely have fuck it days. Yesterday, I ate vegan sliders. Oh my god, they were good. That's the problem. My favorite foods are cheeseburgers and nachos. I love my trainer, but one day he told me that when he has bad cheat days, he craves… white chicken breasts.

Excuse me?

I was like, "I'm fucking breaking up with you." Me, I love Veggie Grill in L.A. I love a vegetarian burger, Impossible Burger. French fries. I love nachos—oh my god, nachos. Crispy chips and black beans and jalapeños and melted cheese and tomato… My ideal cheat day would be to sit at home and play PlayStation, close all the windows in my house, order Veggie Grill, and get nachos and a burger.

I was rewatching an episode of UNHhhh on which you said your grandmother used to dip white bread in Kool-Aid.

[Screams.] Yes!

Does your family have any other eating habits that are similarly… unexpected?

Hmm. Alcoholism, but I guess that's expected. The Kool-Aid was bad. My grandpa used to drink blackberry brandy, and he would tell me that if I drank it, it would put lead in my pencil. Growing up, my brother loved imitation crab meat. Isn't that weird? My brother and I also loved sunflower seeds. How country is that? I remember we would go fishing, and just chew on sunflower seeds.

I'm so Wisconsin. I want anything hot cheese. Hot melted cheese. Burned cheese. I remember going to Culver's in Wisconsin and getting cheese curds to dip in broccoli cheese soup. Isn't that shocking? Like, a crispy cheese nugget, dipped in cheese soup? Bitch. It's over.

There are a lot of things I miss about the Midwest. I love Noodles & Company. I fucking love Jimmy John's. There's one in Beverly Hills, next to my proctologist. But let's just say, I'm not always leaving my proctologist with a big appetite.

You have a bunch on your plate right now. How do you decide what to give your attention to at any given moment?

The only time I'm uncomfortable, and the only time that the darkness inside me consumes me, is when I have nothing to do. I'm really at my best when my day can be built around tasks. When I get off the phone with you, I have to get in drag and shoot an ad for a new blush palette that comes out this year. I've been doing photo shoots for products that come out all year before I leave to go on tour. I'm not just the face of these things. I wrote these songs. I'm at the lab, testing these makeup products. My albums, I really write them and pay for them myself. These makeup products, I really come up with them and pay for them myself.

Ultimately, it all lands on your shoulders. I have a calendar. I pick what to prioritize, what has to be done by when, and I just kind of tackle it one thing at a time.

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.

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Originally Appeared on GQ