'Halo' star Pablo Schreiber breaks down his daily diet for staying in peak shape—which includes at least 5,000 calories —all in the name of gains. Plus, he reveals the tip that The Rock gave him and the role that inspired him to start building muscle.
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00:00 What's up everybody, Pablo Schreiber.
00:01 I play the Master Chief on the Halo TV show
00:03 for Paramount+.
00:04 Talk to you today a little bit about my diet
00:06 and eating for training and staying in shape.
00:09 [upbeat music]
00:11 The overall philosophy is calories,
00:20 lots and lots and lots and lots of calories.
00:22 When I'm not working, I go around 5,000 calories a day
00:25 in order to gain weight.
00:26 But when I'm working, we're up to 7,000 calories a day.
00:29 And so the challenge there is just getting enough food
00:32 in the body.
00:32 You know, we're up to I think six or seven meals a day
00:35 to make it somewhat comfortable
00:37 because to get that amount of food in your body
00:39 with less meals than that,
00:40 you just have to eat for like an hour.
00:42 I was lucky enough when I was in Budapest
00:44 that production was helping me out
00:46 by sending me meals every day
00:47 so I wouldn't have to worry so much about food
00:49 'cause eating is such a big thing
00:51 that for me to meal plan
00:52 or make every meal would be impossible.
00:54 So they hired a wonderful place in Budapest
00:56 called The Cool Kitchen,
00:57 started by Katinka Hoshu,
00:59 who's the Iron Lady of swimming,
01:00 the Michael Phelps of swimming.
01:02 She's one of the most gold medals
01:03 for women in swimming history.
01:05 And they made amazing, really healthy food,
01:07 really delicious.
01:08 But we split it up a bit and I'm just all,
01:10 I'm actually just eating all day.
01:12 So anytime I'm out of the suit
01:13 or I have a chance to take the helmet off,
01:15 I'm just chowing.
01:16 So we'd start with breakfast.
01:17 I like to get a lot of carbs at breakfast
01:19 because especially if we're bulking,
01:22 it's hard to get the amount of carbs that I need in a day
01:24 without like going crazy at night
01:26 and just feeling like really bogged down and heavy.
01:28 So I try to get as much carbs in at breakfast as well.
01:30 So big thing of healthy pancakes.
01:33 She would do these like apple cinnamon muffins
01:35 with healthy flowers and stuff,
01:36 but just big on the carbs,
01:38 lots and lots of carbs.
01:39 Then you would have four meals after that
01:43 that would all be pretty similar
01:44 and she would switch the menu every day.
01:46 So for second meal of the day,
01:47 I might have something like a chicken breast,
01:50 about 50 grams of chicken breast
01:52 with some brown rice
01:54 and a whole bunch of veg,
01:56 broccoli or green beans.
01:58 Third meal of the day,
01:59 we're gonna go with fish,
02:01 usually a white fish like tilapia,
02:03 sometimes salmon,
02:04 and we'll have a quinoa with that
02:06 and another veg.
02:07 Somewhere after that,
02:08 I would get my workout in
02:10 and they would make me a big smoothie.
02:12 I love mango,
02:13 I love banana,
02:15 I love berry.
02:16 So it's usually mango banana or berry banana.
02:18 And I'll throw some protein powder in there
02:20 just to get another extra 50 grams of protein in there.
02:23 And then for the last meal of the day,
02:24 for sixth meal of the day,
02:26 they're really good about giving me desserts
02:28 that are healthy.
02:29 So my favorite was chia seed pudding,
02:32 nice, just lightly sweetened
02:33 and they would make so much of it
02:35 that I would just be like gluttonous
02:38 right before bed eating all this delicious dessert.
02:41 Again, when you're training with this frequency
02:44 and working at the same time
02:45 and burning as many calories as I was burning,
02:47 it's just a challenge to keep the calories in
02:51 and keep them on.
02:52 So I got to eat a lot of carbs,
02:53 which was a fantastic treat.
02:55 The most important goal for the job of Halo in general
02:59 is just size.
03:00 We're just trying to gain size.
03:02 It's just gaining size everywhere is kind of the goal.
03:05 We went up to about 240, 245,
03:08 almost 250 at one point in bulking phase.
03:11 And then when we would lean out
03:14 for some of the shirtless
03:15 or whatever less clothed scenes,
03:18 we were leaning out to around 230, 230 pounds.
03:22 It's pretty uncomfortable to be honest with you.
03:24 Like as soon as you get to the place
03:25 where you start to lean out,
03:27 the first three, four, five days
03:30 of all protein and veg with no carb feels like heaven.
03:34 It's fantastic 'cause you're not having to stuff carbs
03:36 into your body.
03:37 So yeah, the first few days of that are amazing.
03:39 And then by like day six, seven,
03:40 you're like, please just give me some rice.
03:42 Just give me some sugar, please.
03:46 Just try to keep as much energy and focus as possible.
03:49 Sleep, I would say is probably like
03:52 the biggest thing of all, right?
03:53 Do whatever you want with your diet.
03:55 You can train as much as you want,
03:56 but if you don't get enough rest,
03:57 your body's not gonna recover.
03:58 Your muscles are not gonna grow.
03:59 It's just impossible.
04:00 So yeah, focusing on getting at least six
04:04 or seven hours of sleep a night.
04:05 I prefer eight, but it's pretty much impossible
04:08 when you're on a production schedule.
04:09 So yes, rest, mobility obviously,
04:13 and stretching are huge as parts of our training regimen.
04:17 So we do a pretty basic like bodybuilding,
04:20 Olympic weightlifting kind of workouts.
04:22 So that is pretty standard,
04:24 but then in order to keep the explosiveness
04:27 and the mobility that you wanna have
04:29 for all these kind of stunt scenes
04:30 where you're moving fast, we really have to,
04:32 and at my age, I'm 46, you know,
04:34 we really have to work pretty hard on the mobility
04:36 and stretching and being flexible enough
04:38 to get through everything and not hurt myself.
04:42 I would say the, I don't know what's harder,
04:45 probably the training.
04:46 I mean, it's just for the amount of time
04:48 that I have to put in.
04:49 And when I'm working, especially on a show like "Halo"
04:51 where I'm the lead, I'm in almost every scene,
04:53 shooting 10 to 15 hours a day.
04:55 Finding where you put your training in
04:57 in relation to that is probably the hardest part.
04:59 So when we're in Budapest and we're shooting,
05:01 I'm waking up at 4 a.m. to go to the gym and do weights,
05:05 working for 10, 15 hours a day,
05:07 either doing some band mobility stuff
05:10 while we shoot during the day
05:11 or doing another session at the end of the day
05:13 around, whatever, eight, nine, 10 o'clock.
05:16 So it's a full-on schedule,
05:18 and just finding time to get everything in
05:19 is probably the hardest part.
05:20 The diet is kind of, it's just numbers, it's just science.
05:23 So it's like, and I have pretty good discipline,
05:25 so just making myself eat this, not eat that
05:28 is kind of the simple part.
05:29 I mean, the truth is I didn't really start training
05:32 for my body or to be bigger as an actor
05:36 until I got the role "13 Hours,"
05:38 Michael Bay movie about Benghazi.
05:40 And I was playing a former Army Ranger stuck in Benghazi.
05:44 And all of us decided that for the look of the thing,
05:47 we're all playing these kind of beefy,
05:48 bearded ex-military guys
05:50 that we all wanted to put on as much weight as possible
05:53 and gain as much muscle as possible.
05:54 So that was the first time.
05:55 At that time, I was probably around 195, 200 pounds,
05:59 and that movie, I went up to about 230,
06:02 and that was the first of my sort of big muscle gains.
06:04 Ever since then, it's been a bit of a staple in my work,
06:07 whether I'm dropping weight a little bit for a role
06:10 or gaining, it's always stayed somewhat in shot.
06:13 So after that, it was "Den of Thieves,"
06:15 which was another tough one,
06:16 put on a bunch of muscle for that as well.
06:18 And now, of course, playing Master Chief in "Halo"
06:20 was the next and final and hopefully largest step for me.
06:24 Yes, because I worked with The Rock.
06:30 And when you work with The Rock,
06:32 you take every tip you can get.
06:33 My favorite tip from The Rock when we were working together
06:35 was that you should always eat cookies for cheat day
06:38 and as many as possible.
06:39 He said that cookies were good for the biceps.
06:41 Mm, probably The Rock, sorry.
06:45 Sorry to call you out twice there, buddy, but yeah.
06:47 Of all the actors I know,
06:49 I think he's probably the only actor
06:50 that eats more than I do on a regular basis.
06:53 Merriman from "Den of Thieves."
06:57 Ice cream, coffee.
07:00 [laughs]
07:03 The secret to a good protein shake is your protein.
07:06 You gotta have a clean, clean, good whey protein.
07:09 My favorite non-powdered protein is probably salmon.
07:13 It's also high fat, so you have to use it in the right place.
07:16 Last meal I cooked for someone else
07:18 was scallops and filet steak on the terrace
07:23 watching the sunset.
07:24 Ooh, well, there's an amazing taco place
07:27 in San Jose del Cabo where I go frequently,
07:30 and it's called La Lupita.
07:31 And they do the most creative, delicious tacos ever.
07:34 And they have a scallop taco, Baja scallop taco.
07:38 So it's like the Baja fish taco,
07:39 but with deep fried scallops, and it's amazing.
07:42 So that's it.
07:43 Thanks for sticking with me,
07:44 learning about my diet a little bit.
07:45 Please check out "Halo" season two.
07:47 It's on the air already on Paramount+.
07:50 Depending on when you see this,
07:51 I don't know what episode you're gonna get,
07:52 but watch it 'cause it's dope.
07:54 And keep working out, keep eating healthy,
07:57 and keep taking care of yourself.
07:58 (upbeat music)
08:01 [BLANK_AUDIO]