UrbanUpdate

Nick Jonas spends a lot of time on the move. He's spent the greater part of the year on an arena tour with the Jonas Brothers, the band he formed with his siblings Kevin and Joe in 2005. Each night brings a new city, stage, and crowd—it’s a family road trip on steroids. Of course, this is nothing new for the 31-year-old singer—most fans met him as a teen heartthrob on the Disney Channel, where he and his brothers appeared in heavy rotation: music videos, television shows, movies (who could forget Camp Rock?). In the 2010s, the trio decided to take a hiatus, during which Nick’s stardom catapulted as a solo act. The band has been back together for five years now, but a lot has changed since 2007. Jonas is a father and husband now, taking care of his two-year-old daughter with wife and actress Priyanka Chopra.

Over the span of his career, he’s also been a well-known face of type 1 diabetes. We caught him in New York while shooting an ad for glucose monitoring company Dexcom, for whom he’s been a spokesperson since 2015. After so many years in the limelight, Jonas has learned a lot about being mindful of what his body needs and taking care of himself physically. He spoke with GQ about working out with his brothers, preparing for his upcoming Broadway show, and how he makes exercising fun.

For Real-Life Diet, GQ talks to athletes, celebrities, and other high performers about their diet, exercise routines, and pursuit of wellness. Keep in mind that what works for them might not necessarily be healthy for you.

You're preparing for the European leg of your tour, which has already been going for ten months. What does fitness look like for you right now?

Our show is pretty lengthy because we're doing the five albums and it's a lot of time on our feet. So to conserve for that each night, I don’t do as much weight training, but more mobility and yoga.

Because my workout really was being on stage every night and burning thousands of calories, I think it was nicer to do something that felt more like an activity, like golf or yoga, than a proper workout. I like to lift and do all that but I've been in a season of focusing more on that mobility and, again, just improving my golf game, as well as performing on stage each night as a workout.

You've got the Dexcom G7 to monitor your glucose levels, but I'm wondering—do you have someone backstage monitoring them for you while you're on stage? If they were too high or low, what happens there?

Yeah, so one of the really cool features about Dexcom is the share feature, so you can share it with your friends, family, and in my case, my security guy who's prepared to jump in and handle situations should there be one. Thankfully there never has been.

On stage, knowing that someone backstage has got access to see where I'm at in real time is super helpful and reassuring. But also, now that I've been living with the disease for so long, I can just tell based on my body and how I'm feeling and certain signs that maybe someone who's newly diagnosed wouldn't quite know yet—but that's part of being a veteran in this thing.

How do you build that sense for knowing what your body needs and what your body's going through?

I think knowing how terrible you can feel if your glucose isn't within range or close to it is enough to convince you to be conscious of these things. And yeah, I'm just really hyper-focused on that and avoiding those moments where you can feel like shit, to be honest.

I know you're also preparing for a Broadway musical, The Last Five Years. That must require a different mindset than touring. What does that entail for you while you're rehearsing? How do you prepare for the stage?

For that one, it's vocal stability. It's a monster of a show, a lot of singing, and it's just me and Adrienne [Warren], the cast, so it's pretty intense in that regard. That will require living a bit more…being in bed earlier, if I can. I don't know that it's the kind of show where I can drink while I'm doing it because it's so intense, a lot of singing. During that stretch of the time I'm doing the show I'll have to be pretty responsible. And so yeah, I think it's going to be all about just locking in. It's less a physical thing, more like mental and just challenging yourself to really stay in the zone during that three and a half, four minute stretch.

A lot of singers have vocal warmups or just certain things that they eat or do before they go on stage before they sing. What's that for you, whether you're rehearsing for the musical or going on tour?

I don't really have a warmup routine. I basically wake up in the morning and I'll get in the shower and I sing in the shower because the steam feels good on the voice, and I can tell within seconds if it's there or not. And if it's not there in the morning, then I spend the day just singing to warm it up. I've never really had a rigid routine. I think it's better for me to just jump in and feel how the voice feels in the morning and then go from there.

As far as foods go, not much really affects me. There are the obvious things, like things that are really acidic, or certain things that can make you gassy that you don't want to have before you sing. It's just common sense. But some people don't eat dairy, I'm fine with whatever and just get out there and do it.

Do you have a consistent diet that you follow every day?

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I don't, because I think the insanity of my life and traveling as much as I do and jumping time zones makes it tough to stick to a certain meal plan. Basically when I wake up in the morning, I try to crush a bottle of water or two, hydrate, and then I get an Americano, either hot or iced, depending on the weather.

My breakfast is pretty much the same every day. Some version of scrambled eggs, maybe a little Turkey shredded in there, whole wheat toast, avocado, and another Americano. And, depending on how my glucose is, I'll sometimes have an orange juice.

For lunch, I like to stick to something a bit leaner, get some greens in there as well. So usually a salad of some kind, or when I'm traveling and I don't have a ton of options, you can always pretty much rely on getting a grilled salmon or grilled chicken somewhere, some rice—you got to fuel up and make sure that you're sustained for the day with some good carbs, starch, and all the rest.

And then for dinner, just depending on where I am and what I want to eat or if I'm home, there's probably six places that we cycle out. One's a great Italian spot. We obviously eat a lot of Indian food in our house, given my wife is Indian. We love spice, so Thai, Ethiopian, there's a whole list, Japanese food. And for me, as long as there's always a really solid protein, getting some good greens in there. The occasional leisurely indulgent thing is always fun too. So we obviously love our pasta and pizza and things like that, but we try to limit that, and that's my daily diet.

What's that favorite Italian spot for you?

It's called Osteria La Buca. It's in The Valley. It's really delicious and I try to eat there every time I'm back home in LA.

Do you have a favorite dish?

Yeah, they have a carbonara bucatini and it's delicious. It's got an egg in there as well that you can break up and it adds a lot of texture and flavor to the pasta. And then their chicken parm is exceptional. And they have, weirdly, this salad that I'm obsessed with, and it's just a really good Dijon dressing, really simple but it's amazing.

What else is in the salad?

It’s literally nothing, it's called Farm Lettuces and it's just really well-dressed lettuce.

I've never heard of a salad that’s just lettuce and dressing. It must be really good dressing.

It's phenomenal.

And really good lettuce?

The best.

What are the snacks you're into right now? You've got a whole spread here.

We got Rob's Backstage Popcorn. We got some fruit snacks, which I have because I eat them when I'm low—my glucose is low. Dark chocolate as a little snack. And then my favorite snack, which we have on our rider everywhere we go, is ants on a log. It's like a kid's treat.

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By the way, it's a really good thing for diabetics because it's got a little bit of carbs in the raisins, you have a long-lasting protein/carb in the peanut butter, and then just celery tastes great when it's paired with those. So we've had that on our rider since we began for that reason. And then just a bunch of different drinks and things and keep it simple.

How has the technology that you use now improved your life since you started using it? I know you've been using Dexcom for a while, the older generations, but I guess what's new about the G7?

I think the jump to the phone was a big jump in the grand scheme of diabetes management related technology, so that was huge. And then also jump to Apple Watch, all these steps are massive. And this is getting in the weeds, but it's helpful information, the G6 to G7, the biggest thing was the warm up period when you first put on the Dexcom, used to take a couple of hours, but this one takes about 20 minutes, 25 minutes, which is so nice that time has just gotten cut down because my life moves at such a rapid pace and I don't really have the time to not have that information. And the site itself is much smaller. I remember when we did the commercial for the Super Bowl a couple of years back, it was really exciting to be a part of that announcement and showing just how far this tech had come and that it was that small. And to bring diabetes to a global stage, that was really special.

You've been a public face of type 1 diabetes for such a long time. What was it like to take on that role when you were younger? [Jonas first spoke publicly about his diagnosis in 2007, when he was 14 years old.]

I think that I was already living in the public eye, or just beginning to see that happening, and it would be really difficult to conceal this or keep it a secret. I just felt that it would be better to be open about it and see if I could be the representation of this disease that I didn't have when I was first diagnosed.

When I went to the hospital, there was nobody that was really in the public eye who was speaking about it, was an advocate for type 1, and it was a really isolating feeling. And I'm just thinking, if I could be that for the 13-year-old sitting in the hospital bed right now whose life has just gotten turned upside down, that would be a really nice thing.

I think my advocacy has taken different shape over the years and now, because I'm known in this community as a person who's been living with this for so long, I'm getting to meet people in real time who come up and have questions and I don't claim to know the answers to how to live with type 1. I know what works for me, but getting to meet people and just talk about it is a really nice feeling because it's the advocacy coming back around to me and I'm feeling encouraged by people and it's great how this community works in that way and unfortunate that anyone has to live with it, but it is a nice thing that we get to all collectively be there for each other.

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How has your journey changed since becoming a father? It's like, you spent so much time focusing on yourself and knowing yourself and your health and how to make sure that you're the best person you can be, what's that like now thinking about a whole other human being that you're raising?

I think all parents are obviously programmed to be paranoid about their kid and worried all the time. Weirdly, I think in my life, living with type 1, albeit manageable, if it wasn't managed it would be a life-threatening disease, which a lot of people overlook, and because of the access to medicines and technologies that can help manage the disease. But I think that awareness of living with this made me more chill about stuff. And so I think as a parent I tend to have that voice of reason like it's going to be okay. But it also makes me wholly and utterly paranoid and focused on or thinking about the worst-case scenario. So it is always like you procrastinate and also you find balance. She's wonderful and the light of our life, and it's been a great journey.

How do you think your approach to working out has changed over the course of your life, being in public and on camera so often?

I think I am less stressed about it now than I used to be. I am very busy with fatherhood and my occupation. If I miss days or I don't get physical activity of some kind some days because I'm busy with other things, that's okay. Just do it where you can and try to be the best you can and know that life's moving a million miles a minute.

When you're working out, do you have any goals in mind or is it just ‘I want to be, in general, fit’?

No, I think that there are very clear goals. So when I was doing Kingdom, which is probably the heaviest working out period of my life, the goal was to basically put on about 20, 25 pounds of muscle, which I accomplished over a couple of months—six months-ish. And then it was about leaning back down a little bit after that, keeping some of the mass, but also being a bit leaner. And then now for me it's about maintaining, making sure that I feel good and that where and when it makes sense, I'm pushing myself. But the goals right now are just about maintaining and protecting the body so I can go out and do my thing on stage.

How do you balance recreational activities and traditional gym workouts? How do you also find fun in more goal-focused lifting exercises?

I think it's always good to gamify lifting and when me and the brothers work out together. There are games you can play, circuit training games where it's about reps or it's about [the amount of] weight lifted. I tend to think that just trying to put up as much weight as possible is not the best path to success and building sustainable and healthy mass. I worked with some really great trainers early in my fitness journey who just showed me some things that I think are better for the body overall. And so I do a lot of band work, mobility stuff, but also balance and core. My circuits look pretty simple on the surface, but can be really challenging and fun if you gamify them and work against a partner or work with a partner. But that's the kind of stuff I do.

It's usually a full body circuit of some kind, incorporating both body weight and weights themselves. But one of them is basically 12 pushups, six RDLs, and then straight into hammer curls, to shoulder press, and then weighted squats, and then abs of your choice. And it's just basically a fun simple thing, you can either do weighted or without weights, and doing the hotel room or at the gym, but it's a nice simple circuit.

When you and your brothers are working out together, does it get competitive?

It can. That's why I think that just trying to lift as much weight as possible is not the best way to go. It can get kind of dicey when I'm obviously putting up more weight than them.

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