 "The celebrity trainer")
If there's a celebrity body you admire (Rihanna? Halle Berry? Ryan Gosling?), there's a good chance it's the trainer and nutritionist Harley Pasternak's work, and it is equally likely that he has appeared in a magazine (from People to Seventeen to Men's Health) or on television to describe how he does it.
Pasternak, a 38-year-old Canadian, has undergone a makeover himself. Though he was once a body builder in the model of his hero, Arnold Schwarzenegger, "going on the Today show a lot, I thought it would be better to have an aesthetic that was more aspirational," he says. So over the last few years, he has shrunk his 5-foot-10-ish frame from 240 pounds to 210.
The key to his success: Pasternak's Five Factor plans: five-minute recipes with five main ingredients and five weekly 25-minute workouts organised in, yes, five-minute increments.
With two degrees in nutrition and kinesiology (rare for a celebrity trainer) along with a stint researching caffeine and performance-enhancing supplements for the Canadian military, he says he sees it as his mission to stop what "you've been doing from the DVD you bought on TV" (his own, available on QVC, apparently excepted) "to the ridiculous blood typing" and caveman diet.
If his latest offering, a 1,200 calories a day (most of which come from smoothies) sounds equally crazy to you, Pasternak points to a study, that he says showed people who lost the most weight at the start of a weight-loss programme are exponentially more successful long term.
The diet is partly Pasternak's attempt to convert the quick-fix crowd. "The average American wants a book on: 'How do I lose 10 pounds this week?'" he says, insisting the latest studies gave him "permission" to depart from his previous, mostly moderate options.
Jordana Brewster, an actress on Dallas whose cheats include martinis and Tootsie Rolls, began working with Pasternak about six years ago. "I went to all these trainers and nutritionists who would tell me, 'If it tastes good, get it out of your mouth,'" says Brewster, 32. "I would live on protein bars and shakes, lose a bunch of weight, and then gain it all back when I wasn't working. Harley is nice and mellow and smart, and what he tells you to do is sustainable."
Pasternak is mostly quiet about which clients follow all or part of the new programme. This could be because he practically needs a law degree to figure out which clients he can speak about on which topic (his client Jessica Simpson once followed his diet, but now she is a Weight Watchers spokeswoman) and which products he needs to appear with, and when.
Pasternak, who grew up playing hockey in Toronto, has been courting celebrities almost as long as he has been hitting the gym. At 13, his mother bought him three sessions with a personal trainer because she would see him "grunting and dropping weights," he says, and was afraid he would hurt himself. At 18, he started taking on clients, the summer after his first year at the University of Western Ontario.
Soon, he sought out Marvin Waxman, who for more than 30 years has done the insurance-company-required medical assessments for most Toronto films. Waxman began recommending him: "He had some good degrees that made him different than a lot of trainers. And he seemed like a good personable guy." His first client was actor Jim Caviezel, for a 2001 movie called Angel Eyes, featuring Jennifer Lopez. Next came Stephen Dorff, whose transformation from, as Pasternak puts it, "party boy who didn't work out to really ripped" remains one of his favourites.
Pasternak says he was approached to train Berry for the film Gothika, but the producer Don Carmody, who had a small budget for a trainer, but not for housing and travel for one, remembered that Pasternak asked him about the job. At the time, Berry was fresh off her Oscar win for Monster's Ball - and her now infamous appearance in an orange bikini in the James Bond film Die Another Day. "I can get anybody to lose weight," Pasternak says. "But how do you take the woman who had the best body in Hollywood and make it better?" After Gothika, he trained her for Catwoman, which required him to move to Los Angeles, where he has stayed. Simpson, 32, whose ex-boyfriend John Mayer, the singer, was Pasternak's client first, says, "In a lot of ways, I respect him so much that I end up working harder because I want him to be proud of me."
Pasternak no longer tours with U2 or Kanye West or cooks frittatas for Berry. He designs programmes, but deploys his staff to carry them out. "I don't have to be the Vanna White of counting reps, like 1, 2, 3, now onto the next one," he says. After all, he has companies to speak to ("interesting partners to create new solutions," he calls them) and 10,000 steps to go before he sleeps.
©2013 The New York Times
Pasternak, a 38-year-old Canadian, has undergone a makeover himself. Though he was once a body builder in the model of his hero, Arnold Schwarzenegger, "going on the Today show a lot, I thought it would be better to have an aesthetic that was more aspirational," he says. So over the last few years, he has shrunk his 5-foot-10-ish frame from 240 pounds to 210.
The key to his success: Pasternak's Five Factor plans: five-minute recipes with five main ingredients and five weekly 25-minute workouts organised in, yes, five-minute increments.
With two degrees in nutrition and kinesiology (rare for a celebrity trainer) along with a stint researching caffeine and performance-enhancing supplements for the Canadian military, he says he sees it as his mission to stop what "you've been doing from the DVD you bought on TV" (his own, available on QVC, apparently excepted) "to the ridiculous blood typing" and caveman diet.
If his latest offering, a 1,200 calories a day (most of which come from smoothies) sounds equally crazy to you, Pasternak points to a study, that he says showed people who lost the most weight at the start of a weight-loss programme are exponentially more successful long term.
The diet is partly Pasternak's attempt to convert the quick-fix crowd. "The average American wants a book on: 'How do I lose 10 pounds this week?'" he says, insisting the latest studies gave him "permission" to depart from his previous, mostly moderate options.
Jordana Brewster, an actress on Dallas whose cheats include martinis and Tootsie Rolls, began working with Pasternak about six years ago. "I went to all these trainers and nutritionists who would tell me, 'If it tastes good, get it out of your mouth,'" says Brewster, 32. "I would live on protein bars and shakes, lose a bunch of weight, and then gain it all back when I wasn't working. Harley is nice and mellow and smart, and what he tells you to do is sustainable."
Pasternak is mostly quiet about which clients follow all or part of the new programme. This could be because he practically needs a law degree to figure out which clients he can speak about on which topic (his client Jessica Simpson once followed his diet, but now she is a Weight Watchers spokeswoman) and which products he needs to appear with, and when.
Pasternak, who grew up playing hockey in Toronto, has been courting celebrities almost as long as he has been hitting the gym. At 13, his mother bought him three sessions with a personal trainer because she would see him "grunting and dropping weights," he says, and was afraid he would hurt himself. At 18, he started taking on clients, the summer after his first year at the University of Western Ontario.
Soon, he sought out Marvin Waxman, who for more than 30 years has done the insurance-company-required medical assessments for most Toronto films. Waxman began recommending him: "He had some good degrees that made him different than a lot of trainers. And he seemed like a good personable guy." His first client was actor Jim Caviezel, for a 2001 movie called Angel Eyes, featuring Jennifer Lopez. Next came Stephen Dorff, whose transformation from, as Pasternak puts it, "party boy who didn't work out to really ripped" remains one of his favourites.
Pasternak says he was approached to train Berry for the film Gothika, but the producer Don Carmody, who had a small budget for a trainer, but not for housing and travel for one, remembered that Pasternak asked him about the job. At the time, Berry was fresh off her Oscar win for Monster's Ball - and her now infamous appearance in an orange bikini in the James Bond film Die Another Day. "I can get anybody to lose weight," Pasternak says. "But how do you take the woman who had the best body in Hollywood and make it better?" After Gothika, he trained her for Catwoman, which required him to move to Los Angeles, where he has stayed. Simpson, 32, whose ex-boyfriend John Mayer, the singer, was Pasternak's client first, says, "In a lot of ways, I respect him so much that I end up working harder because I want him to be proud of me."
Pasternak no longer tours with U2 or Kanye West or cooks frittatas for Berry. He designs programmes, but deploys his staff to carry them out. "I don't have to be the Vanna White of counting reps, like 1, 2, 3, now onto the next one," he says. After all, he has companies to speak to ("interesting partners to create new solutions," he calls them) and 10,000 steps to go before he sleeps.
©2013 The New York Times