Chris Gayomali has long been a fashion guy, but in the last few years, he’s become a health guy, too.
When he was younger, he drank, smoked, and partied. Then, a blood test in 2018 showed his biomarkers were out of whack. He spent days worrying he was dying, until the doctor called to say they’d made a mistake.
But it was too late. “I was thinking about all my choices and my mortality and I was like, ‘Oh, I got to take my health a little bit more seriously,'” Gayomali, dressed head-to-toe in camo and smiling widely, recalls on a video call from New York City.
Bar his rambunctious 4-year-old’s unruly sleep schedule that makes it near impossible to get eight hours of shuteye, now 41, the editor of the luxury shopping platform SSENSE has the basics down and tries to keep things simple.
“It’s mostly just eating right 80% of the time, trying to get enough sleep, and hitting the gym and working out when you can,” he says.
But then there’s the more experimental stuff he does, like hyperbaric oxygen therapy, much of which is motivated by his desire to get really good at Muay Thai. Gayomali trains five times a week. “It’s the only physical thing I’ve ever felt addicted to in a healthy way,” he says.
A fresh air monitor in Gayomali’s home.
Clark Hodgin for BI
The countertop in Gayomali’s kitchen.
Clark Hodgin for BI
As a journalist exploring “the body and the weird things it can do,” Gayomali has taken a front-row seat to the most extreme, buzzy health and wellness practices. He has interviewed the evangelized neuroscientist and podcaster, Andrew Huberman and, most recently, embedded himself in the Enhanced Games, the subject of his new podcast.
He chronicles his wellness experiments, like taking nicotine pouches at the gym, for the 7,000 followers of his Substack HEAVIES (named after heavy barbells). He views this world with a critical eye, but it has rubbed off on him.
“It’s fun, but I think of it more like the cherry on top,” Gayomali says.
For years at Business Insider, I’ve been reporting on our growing obsession with health optimization, the latest iteration of wellness culture, which is expected to be worth $1.87 trillion by 2034, according to Global Insight Services. People like Gayomali interest me because they are, to some extent, relatable. He has a family and a 9-to-5, but spends 12 hours a week on exercise and recovery, $350 a month on gym memberships, and swears by the occasional NAD+ booster.
He’s not trying to cheat death, but is happy to try something a bit wacky if it doesn’t carry large risks and might help him feel more awake and perform better at the gym.
Here’s Gayomali’s routine.
6:30 a.m: Wake up and take supplements
Gayomali wakes up between 6:30 and 7 a.m., helps his kid get ready for school, then takes his supplement stack, which includes a multivitamin, fish oil, zinc, vitamin D, creatine, and tongkat ali, a shrub linked to testosterone production, although more research is needed. “I like the energy and mood benefits,” he says of the plant.
On his 35-minute commute from Brooklyn to Manhattan, Gayomali takes “a meandering route to get a little bit loose, get my blood flowing.”
Noon: Muay Thai followed by a slop bowl
Around lunchtime, Gayomali slips out of his office in SoHo and heads to his Muay Thai gym around the corner, where he stretches, fights, and strength trains for about 90 minutes. Since he joined in 2019, the gym has become more than just a place to exercise.
“I’ll do that hour on the weekdays, then often I’ll go on Saturday mornings and spend three hours there beating up all my friends and getting beat up myself,” he says.
The gym’s lending library, filled with books about topics like nutrition, stretching, and kettlebells, is where he gets a lot of his health information. “I’m pretty skeptical of a lot of stuff that you see online,” he says, adding the only health influencer he trusts is Rhonda Patrick, a biomedical scientist with a preventive approach to disease.
After his workout, Gayomali typically grabs a slop bowl from Sweetgreen, usually steak or lamb. Or he has pho, which he calls “the ultimate superfood” because “it’s basically just collagen, protein, and vegetables.” Gayomali has an idea of the macros and calories he wants his meals to contain, but doesn’t stress about the numbers.
5 p.m: Recovery
If his afternoon is fairly meeting-free, Gayomali sneaks in a massage in one of his favorite spots in Chinatown.
Most recently, he tried a Japanese massage technique called Seitai bodywork that involves gentle, rhythmic movements. He also likes cupping, foot reflexology, acupressure, and deep tissue massage. Generally, he’s willing “to be a bit of a guinea pig” and will look up studies on PubMed and first-person accounts online before trying a new treatment.
Gayomali is not a biohacker, but of all his health habits, his recovery routine comes closest. Once a month, he visits MOCEAN, a physical therapy and longevity clinic in Midtown, where he gets pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, which is FDA-approved for treating broken bones, but the evidence that it boosts recovery in healthy people, like Gayomali, is mixed.
As the client lies on a metal plate, low-frequency electromagnetic pulses target chosen body parts. “It feels like just the deepest possible massage. It goes well below the surface and feels amazing, honestly,” Gayomali says. “If I can prime my body to perform better and be in shape to go back to the gym again the next day, that’s where a lot of my interests lie.”
Next, he enters a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, where the oxygen levels in the air near 100%. Research suggests the therapy helps the tissues in the body heal and withstand infections, but the evidence that it could speed up post-workout recovery for healthy younger people is limited.
“I get it because this fighter named Illia Topuria swears by it for recovery and I like how it makes me feel,” Gayomali says. “You basically lie in a tube and breathe. It simulates high-altitude oxygen training and speeds up healing in your body, and you basically doze off.”
6:30 p.m: A simple dinner
Once he’s home from work at around 5:30 p.m., Gayomali cooks dinner. “We usually just do rice, and a simple protein, like chicken, steak, or beef,” he says.
By around 8 p.m. it’s time to put his son to bed. “Trying to get him to sleep is so hard. So often I’ll sit in his room with him until he falls asleep and then kind of doze off myself,” he says.
Gayomali aspires to have a bedtime routine, but that just isn’t feasible right now: “My sleep hygiene is not good.”
This is the first time he has been in “great shape,” and seeing his abs is “pretty cool.” But being strong is mostly beneficial for taking care of his kid, which is “very physically demanding thing,” particularly when his son gets tired and wants to be carried.
“I hope to keep it up for the rest of my life,” Gayomali says.
Gayomali uses red light therapy.
Clark Hodgin for BI
When he’s been sleeping particularly badly, he injects an NAD+ supplement, which, despite the lack of clinical trials, is popular in the longevity-verse as an energy booster.
“It actually helps a lot for the perpetual brain fog that I feel these days,” Gayomali says.
The day we speak, Gayomali is awaiting the arrival of a peptide called sermorelin, from a website that claims it aids deep sleep, recovery from workouts, and building muscle. (Research to back its use in healthy adults is lacking). He ordered it partly to research a story he’s working on, and partly because he wanted to try it.
Gayomali’s attitude toward the peptide craze reflects his wider approach to health optimization. He’s excited by it, but isn’t holding his breath for the fountain of youth to be discovered in a lab.
“I try not to stress too much about the stuff that I can’t control,” he says.
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