Stories can easily get lost in the digital world. After all, 2018 is all about content, and lots of it, right? Take this interview from back in 2012. To a time when Instagram was just starting out, Twitter was still confined to 140 characters and Ricky Gervais was thin. Many of you probably don’t remember such a time, but it existed. They were the glory years.
Win, lose, or draw. Finishing something, doing it. It’s invigorating
Here, Gervais tells Men’s Health about his fitness journey, proving that you can get healthy at any age and at any moment in your life. What’s more, one of the world’s most successful comedians also shows just how easy it can be. Although, he’d probably admit that he hasn’t kept up the fitness regime as much as he should have done over the last few years. Still, life’s for living, right?
He thinks it was the eleventh sausage that did it. Staring down at the greasy, empty plate, Ricky Gervais knew he had to seriously reassess his lifestyle.
“Eleven sausages,” he repeats with a smile. “I couldn’t stop eating them. I felt really ill, really bad. I had to lay there for a couple of hours, like a snake, just to digest them.”
The comedian’s pork nadir occurred just over three years ago, during Christmas 2009 at his home in Hampstead, north London. As he chewed and swallowed that final sausage, he says, something simply clicked inside him.
“I just thought, this is getting fucking ridiculous,” he says. “I had hit 14 stone.”
Know your goal
The sausage meltdown was a high-water (and weight) mark for the controversial writer, actor and Golden Globes host. From January 2010, he committed himself to a healthier lifestyle, and a routine that has subsequently seen him slim down to a svelte 12 stone. For 50-year-old Gervais – who talks of “turning my life around at the last minute” – it is something he takes extremely seriously. It’s a belated wake-up call, but one that fits a clear pattern in his ever unorthodox life.
“I didn’t have a proper job until I was 28,” he says. “I didn’t get into comedy until I was 38 – and I didn’t start exercising until I was 48.”
The message is so clear that even the hopelessly self-delusional David Brent couldn’t fail to spot it: “It’s never too late,” says Gervais. “Never, ever too late.”
Strike a balance
Gervais’ routine is basic, but effective: he’s spoken frequently of how his 55-minute cardio sessions have been key to his impressive weight loss. “It’s a psychological thing,” he explains. “If it’s under an hour, you don’t feel like it’s taking up a huge amount of your day, and you can do other stuff. So it fits into my life.”
Indeed, it’s the “other stuff” that drives him on: the carrots that help him stick to his fitness goals. The ultimate aim, he says, is to “stay alive” – but in terms of mid-session motivation, he is also fired up by knowing he can “eat more cheese and drink more wine”.
“I read sometimes that I’m doing this so I can play a Hollywood leading man,” he says. “Yeah, right. I play fat putzes. If anything, this could ruin my career!”
Fundamentally, the secret of his stellar weight loss mirrors that of his career. “I dug in,” he shrugs.
Bin the excuses
“Since The Office I’ve realised that the hard work is the reward; just that in itself. Win, lose, or draw. Finishing something, doing it. It’s invigorating.”
Over the last two years, Gervais has experienced that same sense of invigoration from running.
He’s regularly spotted pounding the streets of north London and enthuses about running in New York too – where he has a second home. His favourite route is to circumnavigate the reservoir, pretending he’s Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man.
“It’s so easy,” he says. “Get out there, do it and enjoy the results. Why does it always take me so long to work these things out?”
Gervais describes his routine as “a classic ’50s high-school gym workout”.
