2023-09-09 06:07:25
Simu Liu ensures that he does not work too much on his body. Your workouts? “Relatively undisciplined.” ¿Diet? “A little more lackadaisical.”
But if you keep talking to him, you get the feeling that he’s just discovered this whole fitness. He is not a gym lover, but he has made sport with your friends a fundamental part of his life, and he has learned to chase the feeling of being “regarding to pass out” following a training when you need it. He loves food—fries, Korean BBQ, sushi—but he uses intermittent fasting to eat what you want.
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Liu He works hard: he has released music and even written a book that pays tribute to his family’s origin story. He says that he spent the first part of his life striving to achieve goals that his parents had imposed on him. That said, he not only understands her struggle, but he hopes to honor her by continually pushing boundaries in her career.
And all that effort has gone hand in hand with prioritizing your mental and physical healthand recently caught up with GQ to share more regarding what you have learned regarding the mental and physical well-being.
GQ: Let’s start with your workout routine, since you’ve definitely been gaining muscle over the past few years. How do you keep fit?
Simu has found the perfect formula to achieve your best version.
Simu Liu: I think my training regimen It’s very different when I’m filming a movie than when I’m not. When I have people around me who can get fit and forcing myself to be disciplined, which, to be honest, has never been my favorite place. I don’t live for the gym. I don’t live for lift weight and get bigger, can I explain?
But when I do, I definitely I bet on HIIThe high intensity interval training. It’s regarding reaching that feeling where you feel like you’re regarding to faint even though that’s still far away. I’ve worked with some really phenomenal trainers throughout my career to make sure I’m in the best shape possible or just feeling good in front of the camera.
I grew up as an athlete, I was on my university volleyball, basketball and rugby teams. When I’m not in a movie, I actually prefer sports much more than being in a gym lifting weights. I set up a home gym in my garage, which I use relatively little, but I have a basketball hoop in my driveway that I shoot shots at every day.
So that shows what my focus is on. exercise regimen: My friends and I are always in a group chat regarding where we can find a good place to run and we’re always looking for a place on Saturday mornings to play basketball. Growing up in the world of sport It’s a lot more fun to do it as a team and in a competitive environment than it is to do reps in a gym, so philosophically, that’s what I care regarding. To me, that is much more important than lifting a certain amount of weight or doing certain exercises. Is regarding range of motionsweat and spend time with friends.
How long do you train each day?
A quick training session It would only be 15 minutes, I just do exercises and some shots at the basket. But sometimes if I have a friend come over and we play one on one, it can literally last for hours.
I know a lot of people would be surprised at how relatively undisciplined I am, but I need to stay active, so I always find a way to do it.
Are you picky regarding what you eat if you’re not training for something specific?
I’m sorry to say I’m not. I am blessed with a fairly fast metabolism and the general rule that has worked for me over the years is to always make sure to do sport and sweat, and that allows me to be a little more carefree with diet.
I would say that if there is something that I am really active in, it is definitely the fast. I try to limit my eating to an 8 hour window and really keep midnight snacking to a minimum. I usually just have coffee in the morning and then my first meal will be lunch, but it will be substantial. That usually marks the beginning of my eating interval. That’s probably the most disciplined I am with the diet.
Simu Liu
When shooting a movie, Simu Liu has made it clear that he has no problem looking in top shape.
How long have you been doing intermittent fasting?
I was really introduced to it through a movie I made three years ago, but there was a coach who started to get me used to the idea of intermittent fasting. They really sold me on the idea on the premise that you eat whatever you want, you just eat less frequently during the day. And that was fine with me, I’m not a big fan of snacks. If I don’t see it in front of me, I won’t feel the need to eat it. It’s regarding making the most of your meals and still eating what I like, because I love food, I just don’t eat too late at night.
What are your favorite foods? What do you eat and what do you have for dinner?
I love all Asian food, which means lots of carbs. I love steamed rice and I love stir-fried meat. I love the dumplings and the noodles. I love Korean BBQ. It’s really a rotation between different Asian cuisines, I love sushi. I’m not saying I don’t like the rest, but I can’t go long without a bowl of steamed white rice, I think it’s the way I was raised. That’s what keeps me balanced. If I’m not around the rice, I really start to panic.
Just plain rice?
I am a rice purist. But I’m a big believer in rice absorbing the flavor of whatever you’re eating, the tastier the stir-fry the better.
I have to say something: I love fried chicken. I would eat fried chicken every day if it were physically possible not to die doing it. There’s something regarding the crunchy juiciness of fried chicken that’s just something special. I love KFC.
I saw you mentioned that KFC played a role in your parents’ love story when you were talking to Chelsea Handler
Oh yeah! The first KFC to open in China was the one my dad took my mom to the night I was conceived, which might be too detailed information to tell anyone in a TV interview. GQ regarding diet and exercisebut I feel like the world needs to know that much of my story is intertwined with the history of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
I’m a big fan of diving, and when you come out of the sea, the hunger you feel following being underwater, because you’re really burning calories just being down there, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. One of the only ways to quench that hunger is with fried chicken, salsa and all that. The hunger following diving is stronger than anything else I have ever experienced.
How long have you been diving?
I was training for a movie earlier this year and I really got into it. Often people dive here and there, or get PADI certified in a country where they vacation and then don’t touch it for months, but I logged like 60 dives in regarding eight weeks. So I became very familiar with the feeling of being underwater and felt like I was a water baby my whole life.
I grew up in Canada on the east coast, and in the summer we spent a lot of time in cabins. We take our summers very seriously because we know how rare and special it is, so I was a big water skier, cliff jumper… the water has always been a natural place for me. I feel like I just went along with it. I really fell in love with the sea and the whole new world that is being underwater.
Have you had scary moments or dangerous situations while diving?
I think the only real safety issues that arise are man-made. I think marine life, for the most part, is very peaceful with people as long as you’re not going to disturb habitats and screw things up, basically. It really comes down to equipment failure. Being able to breathe underwater at depth with pressure is a very unnatural state and things tend to go wrong between 10 and 30 meters deep. You just have to be prepared for it.
Part of the essence of diving is learning to exist in that environment and learning not to panic and keep breathing through anything, and if you can’t breathe, there’s always the alternative air source of a buddy. I don’t know if there are any philosophical parallels to that, but I feel like there is. It is an allegory of life. Keep breathing and if you run out of air, have a good partner with you.
Do you have any other mental health practices that you do regularly?
I think the most important thing is go to therapy. The mental health It’s—I’m talking specifically regarding the Asian American and Asian Canadian communities—something that’s not talked regarding a lot. Many conversations regarding mental health are becoming normalized, things like depression and the ADHD…are words that simply weren’t in our vocabulary.
For people from immigrant communities who don’t necessarily have the vocabulary to deal with what their mind might be struggling with, it’s important, first of all, to have someone to talk to and a lot of times it’s a professional. And secondly, have a support net solid group of friends and family with whom you can be vulnerable. I give so much importance to the people around me, I think they keep me sane. Then the last thing is to keep that healthy life style. For me, basing it on sports and something social has been really incredible. It is so beneficial for Physical Health as mental.
It was through conversations with my therapist that I found out I had ADHD, For example. That has been a great advance for us. I’m starting to learn to deal with it. At first, it was like, “Oh, I’m an extremely forgetful person and sometimes I’m really lazy, but sometimes I’m hyper motivated and I’m not sure how to make sense of everything.” It was my therapist who asked me if he had considered that he might have grown up with ADHD. Once we had a name for it and delved into the research, it was like a lightbulb went off in my head. So many things regarding me and my brain and the way I lived my life became so clear.
It gave me an answer where before there was only a lot of doubt, self-hatred, and shame. Now there is treatment, there are ways to cope and build systems around you that counteract and make you a functional human being despite all those other things. There is also pride. There is a lot of pride in the way my brain works sometimes, in all its strange, impulsive, but also creative and wonderful ways.
You’ve said that pride was an important factor in your childhood, that you always wanted your parents to be proud of you. What did that mean to you at the time?
At the time, it was regarding adhering to whatever my parents’ idea of success was. For my parents, who were not fully integrated into society, the things that made them successful was academia. So they transmitted many of those values to me. I feel like from an early age, I generally tried to maintain that line pretty well.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized how much pressure and expectations parents put on their children to succeed. Many families sacrifice a lot to come here in search of the “American dream,” and that is what they really felt. Even though, I grew up in Canada, I still think the precedent is fair. My parents wanted me to have every opportunity possible, but they wanted me to be worthy of their sacrifice. It’s the most stereotypical thing in the world: getting good grades in school and being a talented kid.
Article originally published in GQ US.
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