John Bradley’s weight loss has been a topic of conversation over the years. Bradley, known for his role as Samwell Tarly on HBO’s "Game of Thrones," joined the series in 2011. Throughout the course of the show, Samwell Tarly has been the lovable, loyal friend that almost everyone wishes they had. While his character endeared him to audiences worldwide, Bradley's personal journey with weight has also garnered attention, marked by both public scrutiny and personal growth.
The Fan Encounter
A few years back, Bradley was approached by a fan who wondered why he hadn’t lost any weight. “He says, ‘No, I’ve just been wondering … why are you still so fat?’ I said, ‘Well … what?’ He said, ‘No, no, no, I just don’t believe it. You’re right up north, you’re not eatin’ anything, you’re trekking across landscapes and running from things all the time. You should be losing weight.’ and I said, ‘OK, look. This is a fantasy show.
Maintaining a Consistent Shape
Bradley has noticeably slimmed down since he took on the role of Samwell Tarly in 2011. “You can’t go on diets, right? You’re not allowed to do various things to adjust your body weight. You sort of have to maintain a shape. “Yeah, exactly. “Of course he would. Season 8 of Game of Thrones premieres on April 14 on HBO.
Coping with Weight Issues Through "Game of Thrones"
'Game of Thrones' star John Bradley says show helped him cope with weight issuesSpeaking on "Conan," the actor, who plays Samwell Tarly, got candid about being overweight and how the HBO series helped him get past his insecurities.April 9, 2019, 9:32 AM EDT / Source: TODAY"Game of Thrones" star John Bradley got emotional while talking about his weight on Monday’s episode of "Conan." Bradley, who plays Samwell Tarly on the Emmy-winning HBO series, recalled giving a speech at one of the show’s wrap parties in which he opened up about being heavy.
"The gist of it was that as somebody who grew up overweight and kind of unhappy because of it, and thinking that life was going to pass you by because of it," Bradley, 30, said. "And all the time you go to bed and you think, 'I'd give anything to wake up and not have this weight.'" Bradley said the opportunity to be on the show came at the perfect period in his life.
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John Bradley as Samwell Tarly on "Game of Thrones." HBO"Then suddenly all the time you're thinking that, especially when I was 19, 20, to think while I was feeling that about myself, David (Benioff) and Dan (Weiss), our producers, and everybody else connected with the show, they were looking for me - they were looking for exactly me," he said. Bradley realized he was an asset to the series, regardless of what he weighed.
"And it's not just a case of they're going to accept what I consider to be faults about myself, but they're going to see them as virtues, and they're going to be my key into this amazing experience and meeting all these amazing people," he said. "If I'd have known they were looking for me and what kind of effect that was going to have on the rest of my life, then I'd just wouldn’t been able to believe it," he added.
Bradley's Emotional Speech at the Wrap Party
As Game of Thrones prepares to air its final season on HBO, its stars have been making the rounds on late night, discussing how they cried over the show’s ending and arguing over who was plagued with the most difficult costumes and filming locations. On Monday night, John Bradley, who plays Samwell Tarly, joined the fray with an appearance on Conan, where he and Conan O’Brien discussed a stirring speech Bradley delivered at the show’s wrap party in Belfast.
O’Brien noted that he had attended the party himself, and told Bradley how impactful he’d found the actor’s speech. “It was purely an emotional thing,” Bradley replied. “I didn’t really think about saying it before I went out there.” Bradley went on to summarize a portion of the speech; since it was a bit impromptu, he noted he couldn’t remember all of it.
In his remarks, Bradley described himself as “somebody who grew up overweight and kind of unhappy because of it,” noting that he often felt like life was going to pass him by: “All the time when you go to bed and you think, ‘I’d give anything to wake up and not have this weight’ . . . especially when you get to 19, 20, to think, while I was feeling that about myself, David [Benioff] and Dan[iel Brett Weiss], our producers . . . they were looking for me,” Bradley said.
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“They were looking for exactly me. And it’s not just a case of, they’re going to accept all of what I consider to be faults about myself. But they’re going to see them as virtues, and they’re going to be my key into this amazing experience and meeting all these amazing people.” “If I’d have known that they were looking for me, and what kind of effect that was going to have on the rest of my life, then I’d have . . . I just wouldn’t have been able to believe it,” Bradley concluded.
Lessons from Diet Experimentation
Not all that long ago, the Paleo diet seemed like little more than a beefed-up fad diet-South Beach for the mountain time zone. Then CrossFit happened. South Beach dieters started doing deadlifts, and Paleo was the most-Googled diet in all of 2013. I am not a fan. Almost six years ago, I wrote a story for Outside about a year I spent experimenting with different diets-two months each on six different plans, with regular blood tests and body-composition analysis throughout. Paleo was among the diets I tried, and it left me feeling like crap.
Here’s the thing, though: My conclusion at the end of the story might be the smartest bit of advice I’ve ever written. Much has changed since then. I left Outside, went to work at Wired, got divorced, got remarried, and moved from Santa Fe to Boulder to San Francisco back to Boulder. Through all of that, I’ve never weighed less than 154 or more than 160. My diet looks pretty much like the Mediterranean diet filtered through the experiments I lay out at the end of the story: Kale-and-berry smoothies for breakfast (occasionally swapped out for a spinach omelet with bread dipped in olive oil); veggie-and-turkey wrap sandwiches or salads for most lunches; pastas, salads, fish for dinner; no dairy; few nightshades; very little red meat (and only grass-fed and/or game meat when I do); a lot of almonds and almond butter; liberal use of olive oil.
“But you're so thin.” I got some version of that every time I told someone I was going to spend a full year subjecting myself to half a dozen diets. They were right. It was August 2008, the end of an intense season of bike racing, and at five foot eleven and 149 pounds, I'd crossed over into scrawny. If you're thin, the thinking goes, your diet is fine. Of course, thin doesn't necessarily equal healthy. Not even when, for guys like me, it's the result of an athletic lifestyle. The reality is, many of us use our fast 10K times to excuse horrible food choices.
I once saw an interviewer ask Robin Williams what he ate to keep his weight down, to which the famously bike-obsessed comic replied, “I can eat pretty much anything. I ride bikes.” That's a popular attitude; sometimes the main appeal of a long ride is the beer-and-burger mayhem that follows. At 38, with a family history of heart disease and a personal history of late-night pizza and uneven energy levels, I needed a better way. I wanted a strategy that would generate healthier eating habits without mandating strict adherence to an austere, dogmatic program.
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So I decided on a radical experiment. I would spend eight weeks each on six different plans representing the various options for would-be dieters, from popular fads to clinical studies: the Abs Diet, the Paleo Diet for Athletes, the Mediterranean Prescription, the Okinawa Program, the advice of a personal nutritionist, and the USDA's nutritional pyramid. I'd record every meal, snack, caloric drink, and workout, along with notes on how I was feeling, and make bimonthly visits to my doctor and the blood lab for weigh-ins, cholesterol checks, and body-composition analysis. I'd grant myself only two breaks: 19 days for my honeymoon, after the Abs Diet, and 11 days around Christmas and New Year's, after the Paleo Diet for Athletes. Huge pain in the ass.
My hypothesis: By applying the same discipline to nutrition that I apply to cycling, I'd be able to measure these diets against the claims of their authors. Each one would have something to teach me; each would also fail me. As our ancestors diverged around the globe, nutritionist Laurent Bannock says, their systems developed to thrive on the foods at hand.
The Abs Diet
The Diet: Lots of protein and good fats, no refined carbs. No. Zinczenko is the editor-in-chief of Men's Health and the guy behind the bestselling Eat This, Not That! books. Where some diet authors wrap serious packaging around bubble-gum advice, Zinczenko has found success putting bubble-gum packaging around smart service. His strategy here is whole foods and a schedule of three small meals and three robust snacks per day. Follow the guide, Zinczenko says, and you'll lose weight without losing your mind.
I had a basic shopping list: peanut butter, chicken breasts, whole-grain bread, tomato sauce, spinach, milk, eggs, and recipes that rarely required more than 20 minutes. Plus, most breakfasts were smoothies and most lunch and dinner recipes provided extra servings I could freeze or refrigerate. One big takeaway: snacks are best used to prevent hunger, rather than to address it. A handful of nuts, a slice of melon, or peanut-butter toast a couple of hours after each meal kept my energy levels even throughout the day.
The Paleo Diet for Athletes
No. I understand now why Atkins adherents are so passionate about their meat-heavy lifestyles. I lost six pounds on this plan, and my body-fat percentage went from six to five. What I did eat was delicious: elk, buffalo, salmon. But the recipes require a fairly knowledgeable hand in the kitchen and a stomach for organ meat. (I skipped the heart, tongue, and testicles.) And unless I was exercising, I wasn't allowed much in the way of carbs. I grew so tired of the approach that boredom or upset stomachs would end meals before I had eaten enough.
Co-author Joe Friel admits to feeling weak during his first two weeks on the diet but says he started coming around by week three. It took me three times as long to feel somewhat normal. Still, my ratio of good cholesterol to bad cholesterol-possibly more important than your total number- was close to the best I recorded all year. There's definitely something to this approach.
The Mediterranean Prescription
No. This one will be a fallback for the rest of my life. The soul of the plan is the fish-and-produce-rich diet of Sicily and neighboring Mediterranean culture swordfish with capers, pasta fagioli, poached pears in Chianti. Even as a lazy and inexperienced cook, I found the recipes easy. This all makes sense. A recent study by Australian researchers comparing the moods of low-carb dieters to low-fat dieters found that the latter reported much better emotional states after a year of dieting than their low-carb counterparts.
The Mediterranean Prescription was a pleasant and forceful reminder that the evils refined carbs have done to Americans' health are no reason to jettison carbs altogether. By all means, get white bread out of your life, but don't feel bad about reaching for a piece of whole-grain goodness. And dip it in some olive oil. I also love the fact that, in a book that's ostensibly about weight loss, Acquista's only real discussion about calories is to say that counting them will ultimately derail attempts to lead a healthier lifestyle. The core message: Eat as many vegetables as you can, plus healthier versions of most of the foods you already like, and find activities you enjoy. But don't forget that sometimes health and happiness depend on big, festive meals and afternoon naps. If your pants get tight, eat less and exercise more. Acquista's only real discussion of calories is to say that counting them will derail attempts to lead a healthier lifestyle.
The Okinawa Program
Creators: Bradley J. Willcox, D. The Diet: Largely plant-based, but with chicken, fish, and unrefined carbohydrates. No. The authors of this book are scientists and clinicians who conducted years of research on the Okinawans and their eating habits, a slightly altered version of the familiar Japanese diet. I lived in Japan between the ages of 25 and 31 and left enamored of the food. What I came away with was proof that you can follow a diet that almost everyone believes to be beneficial and still be one teriyaki chicken breast away from a heart attack.
I felt healthy, had energy, and enjoyed every meal, but my total cholesterol shot up 43 points, my HDL (good) cholesterol dropped, and my body fat increased. So what happened? The soy? Maybe. There is a growing body of research, summarized in the book The Whole Soy Story, suggesting that consuming excessive amounts of soy products can pose health risks, including disrupted hormone levels. I'll point out again that I conducted a one-person, self-guided study ripe for sophistic misinterpretation. No.
Advice of a Personal Nutritionist
No. 1 Lesson Learned: Each of us can find a diet that works. You can't beat having a nutritionist prescribe foods that your genes have equipped you for. If my own experience is telling, your blood profiles will improve, your body will get leaner, you'll sleep more soundly, and you'll enjoy consistently high energy levels throughout the day. Bannock has spent years refining diet strategies based on ethnicity. As our ancestors diverged around the globe, he says, their systems developed to thrive on the foods at hand. Bannock makes specific adjustments for individual circumstances: weight, allergies, activity level, etc. But for the most part, if you're of East Asian descent, your diet will look a lot like the Okinawa Program. The biggest drawback: eating out. With such a long list of banned foods, it's almost impossible to find anything in a restaurant.
The USDA's Nutritional Pyramid
No. I wanted to finish with something more self-guided, and the Department of Agriculture's MyPyramid.gov site exceeded my expectations with three interactive tools that, used together, come close to being a free nutritionist. The tools use age, weight, height, and activity levels to create a daily caloric target, then tell you how much you should eat from each of the five main food groups (grains, vegetables, fruits, dairy, and meat and beans).
Problem is, I don't trust all of the targets. The USDA has to please a lot of people: medical associations, government panels, even farm lobbies. The calorie numbers seemed about right, but other food recommendations were suspect. I can't see how anyone who didn't have to answer to dairy farmers would recommend three or more cups of milk per day. The site does one important thing very well, however: It forces you to pay attention to everything you eat. You realize quickly how hard it is to get in sufficient produce and how quickly calories, fats, sodium, and cholesterol add up. This site would no doubt be an improvement for some.
Conclusion of Diet Experimentation
I can't tell you how you'll react to any single diet. I can't tell you how you'll react to any single diet. What did I learn in the end? Lean protein, good fats, healthy carbs. More specifically: modestly sized meals consisting of lots of produce, a bit of lean meat now and then, and grains that haven't been bleached and pulverized into submission. In broad strokes, that approach works for almost anybody. But broad strokes don't cut it.
I also discovered that wheat doesn't cause me problems, that dairy does, and that I should avoid tomatoes. You might be totally different. The Okinawa Program may save your life. The Paleo Diet for Athletes could make you faster. What I can provide, though, after 12 months alone in the diet-industry wilderness, is a strategy for finding what does work for you- my own take on what is commonly referred to as an elimination diet.
The first two weeks will be the hardest. Eliminate prepared foods, coffee, dairy, nightshades, wheat, soy, alcohol, corn, eggs, processed grains, processed anything else, added sugar, and all but the most organic, free-range, grass-fed of meats. Relax-this leaves you with a lot of options. You'll find most of them in the produce section. Mix in the occasional serving of fish, turkey, or buffalo, drink herbal tea, discover spelt bread, and learn to cook quinoa. After that, start methodically experimenting, one at a time, with foods you eliminated and see what happens over the next 72 hours. Did that omelet make you feel nauseated? Any skin issues after tomatoes? Did meat make you feel better? You see where this is going. After two months, you'll have a functioning idea of foods that work for you and ones that work against you. A last bit of advice: Once you've settled on a nutritional approach, cheat. Every now and then, eat whatever you want and wash it down with what's on tap. That's it. It may not be completely scientific, but I bet it's closer than anything you've tried. How certain foods make you feel and what's actually happening to your body don't always match up.