The Real-Life Diet of Adam Schefter, Who’s Eaten the Same Breakfast Every Day for Five Years

Adam Schefter joins our Zoom call from the back of a car and immediately tells me, “You're going to be shocked at my simplicity, plainness and routine.” The 58-year-old NFL insider is leaving an ESPN studio and heading home, but that doesn’t mean work is over. Schefter is essentially always on the clock, ready and waiting for the next bit of football news that will break the internet. Perhaps that’s why—at least when it comes to diet, fitness, and wellness habits—he keeps things extremely simple. There’s enough chaos in the other aspects of his life.

But between late-night phone calls with NFL general managers and constant appearances on ESPN talking-head shows, Schefter also has a life. He’s got a wife, kids, dogs, and an attic full of workout equipment he’s trying to keep from collecting too much dust. There’s only so many hours in the day, after all. One thing that he is passionate about, having seen his wife manage her Type 1 diabetes, is encouraging people to get screened for the disease. He partnered with Sanofi to raise awareness about the importance of diabetes screening, because for a guy who’s made his bones in the news business, being informed is always key.

“Information is sort of my currency, professionally,” Schefter says, noting that screenfortypeone.com provides valuable resources. “I want everyone to know that early knowledge is critical when it comes to your health. Type 1 diabetes can't be prevented, but it can be detected early. Talk to your doctor about T1D and tell them you want to be screened. I want everybody to go get screened.”

Days before leaving for Super Bowl week in New Orleans—another whirlwind stretch in the Schefter calendar—the intrepid reporter spoke to GQ about his breakfast of choice, his difficulties with staying off his phone, and the mighty green liquid that keeps him going.

Schefter: I like to tell people I sleep in spurts. What time do I get out of bed in the morning? 6:30, 6:45. Sometimes a little earlier. Today I'm in New York City to do Get Up. I got out of bed this morning at 4:45. It just depends on the day. 4:45 on a Sunday morning in-season. The truth of the matter is on a Saturday night into Sunday, I don't sleep very much anyway, because I'm getting injury updates. I'm on the phone, calls are coming in, news is happening. Sleep is—unfortunately there's not a great routine there. Offseason? We could sleep a little bit more, hopefully.

I think there are just certain periods where you just don't sleep as much. Like, at the end of the season when coaches are being fired and hired and there are playoff games and pregame shows on Saturday and Sunday and Monday, you're not sleeping as much. When you go to the combine in Indianapolis, which is really the unofficial start of the NFL offseason into free agency, you're not sleeping as much. But let's be honest. I'm not any different than anybody else. I think everybody in the working world has irregular sleeping hours.

I would say I've always kind of been up and at 'em, literally. I never slept great. My mind is always going in the middle of the night. I've written books before, and when I was in the midst of writing some of those, I'd wake up at 2:30, 3:00 in the morning with an idea about how to form a chapter and I'd start writing down notes. It's very weird how I'll be laying in bed and I'll wake up at 3:30 like, “Oh, I got to call those three people.” It's weird the way my mind works when I'm sleeping. That has happened throughout my entire life.

Okay, so since the start of the pandemic, I've had the very same breakfast every single day that I've been at home. Now, there are times when I'm on the road, I can't. But if I'm home—I don't know, 325 days a year—there have been 325 times I've had this breakfast. Low-fat or no-fat, vanilla yogurt with blueberries and a little bit of granola every single day. In fact, I'm on my way home from doing Get Up, and the first thing I’ll do when I get in the door is sit down with my yogurt, blueberries, and granola. My wife looks at me and she's like, “Don't you ever get sick of that?" I'm like, no, because it's different ratios of yogurt, blueberries, and granola. It's always a challenge to get the exact right proportions. But that has been my breakfast basically five years running.

Now, lunch and dinner, we wind up having the same few dinners over and over. Sushi one night, Italian food one night. I like when my wife makes chicken meatballs. We have that, broccoli, salad, and a little bit of pasta.

I love carbs. I know I'm always going to eat them, but I try to limit them. Having met with a nutritionist a couple of times, I know I should be eating more vegetables and fiber and drinking more water. I know all these things. I live a relatively clean lifestyle. I really don't drink. I don't smoke. I live the most boring, plain lifestyle. But that's me! And it works for me.

Well, until I met my wife, I never had Starbucks. Again, I lock in on a drink of choice. For years I was having a soy latte, and then someone said to me, “Soy milk's not great for you.” Okay. So, I got away from that, then I got into chai lattes. Now I'm into green matcha lattes with oat milk.

I usually wind up drinking two to three cups a day, and my kids will tell you, after dinner I'll have some kind of dessert. Last night, I had a Chipwich. Sometimes my wife has cookies sitting around. I often eat dark chocolate almonds, or popcorn covered with dark chocolate. My wife has this place that she gets it. Some kind of dark chocolate with a chai latte.

I got to be honest with you. I'm a little embarrassed to admit this. I don't think I ever pull back. I think when you do these jobs—and I don't think this is a good thing, I'm aware of it and I acknowledge it—but I think they rewire your brain.

I just think it may be a function of the day and age that we're living in. I don't have the attention span to sit down and read a book. I haven't read a book in a while. I used to love to go to the movies. Now, life is different. We just don't go to the movies very much anymore. When I do, it has to be really good to hold my attention for the full two hours without checking my phone.

I just think that the world we're living in has rewired so many of our brains. I'm part of that group. I'm not exclusive to that, [it’s] people in a lot of industries. People have to live their jobs to do it the right way. This isn't a job that you just kind of do. You have to live it.

We really don’t. It's something I regret, because I know when my daughter's off from school, some of her friends go away for Christmas break. I really can't do that. There's coaches that are going to be fired and hired. I got pregame shows, Monday Night [Football], news, NFL Live, and Get Up. We still have four dogs at home. We don't like to leave the dogs at all, so that's a great excuse to stay home and be with them. My wife would never board them or leave them like that, so we'd have to have somebody come to our house to stay with them. Who's going to stay at your house for a week? It's complicated.

We really don't go away very often. We went to California at the end of June last year for about three or four nights. That was really nice. But I think our work trips really suffice as trips. My wife, daughter, and son are coming to New Orleans. This is a trip for everybody. It's a work trip, so it is a little bit different than many families. When you say trips or getaways, in many cases it's through work.

Yeah, I do. I always have a Peloton in my house. I love that. I used to go to a gym, and again during Covid, that changed. I haven't been back to the gym since then. I've got the Peloton in my attic basically, so I try to do workouts at home. They're never as good as they should be. It's probably a function of my phone ringing.

For instance, I have a rowing machine in the attic. It was Monday or Tuesday this week and I'm like, okay, you know what? I haven't rowed in a while, and I really want to go get a 20-minute row in. I got about 10 minutes in and I was a little winded. Then the phone rang and it was a front office guy, and we wound up talking for half an hour, so I missed the final 10 minutes of that ride that I really would've liked to have gotten in. More and more, I’ve found that I’ll be in the middle of a Peloton class, in the middle of a rowing session, in the middle of jogging, and the phone rings and that's it. Workout aborted.

Well, they have a Starbucks counter, and the people there are really nice and do a great job. They make me my green matcha latte. Then, honestly, again, I'm a creature of habit. On Sundays in-season, I'll go up there, I'll get a couple of scrambled eggs and wheat toast every Sunday morning. Then we watch the games in the war room. For lunch, I get two turkey burgers, no buns, and a plain pancake. No syrup, no butter, no nothing.

Then for dinner, I'll sometimes have a veggie burger wrap. I'll say this, the people that work in and around the ESPN cafe, I've got so much respect for them. They do such a great job and there's so many people to take care of. They're the unsung heroes at ESPN, so a game ball to all those people.

I’d be open to trying it all! I haven't done hyperbaric, I haven't done the red light. I haven't done much. But I try to go for massages every couple of weeks. I got a woman, Amanda, who does an amazing job. She helps release some tension and stress. But the other stuff, no, I don't do as much as I should. I'm sure there's ways that I could be taking better care of myself and probably should, but don't. And so there's a lot of things like that mentally, physically, that I should be doing that I'm not. You can't do everything, unfortunately.

You try to do the best job you can. Sometimes it's enough and other times it's not. Inevitably, there are going to be elements of your life that suffer. I mean, it's hard to be a husband, a father, a dog dad, a reporter, an avid fantasy football and fantasy basketball player and be built like The Rock, or Mark Wahlberg, or Kevin Hart, some of these guys that are all ripped up. Good for them. I'm jealous.

Of course, the Chiefs are trying to do something that no NFL team ever has done—win three straight Super Bowls. You're talking about history and legacy, so that in and of itself is incredible. Then you have an Eagles team that they've already beaten once in the Super Bowl, but I think this Eagles team is better than the one that they beat two years ago, because of the presence of Saquon Barkley. Can Saquon Barkley make the difference and give Philadelphia another Super Bowl title, or do the Chiefs make history?

The great part of every Super Bowl is the plays that are made and the heroes that are created in ways that you never would've imagined. That's the drama of a game like this on a stage like this. Things happen that from a football sense, you don't ever forget. Somebody's going to make a play and be forever remembered. Malcolm Butler, the New England cornerback, would we be mentioning his name were it not for the play that he made in the Super Bowl? David Tyree, would we mention his name ordinarily if he hadn't made maybe the greatest catch in NFL history in the Super Bowl? Would we remember Mike Jones? Making that tackle on Kevin Dyson, the Titans wide receiver, to save a Super Bowl title for the Rams. There's always somebody that makes a play.

I've been to every one since the one in, I believe it was 1994 or ‘95, where the 49ers beat the Chargers. I think this will be my 30th or 31st.

There are two that stand out. I think the one where David Tyree caught that pass to end the Patriots’ season, I was on the sideline when he caught it. I remember that very, very well. It's vivid. Of course, I covered the Denver Broncos for almost 16 years, and I was there in San Diego when they won their first Super Bowl title against the Green Bay Packers in a game [in which] they were heavy underdogs. That one always stands out, being around the team that you covered.

The Broncos' owner always used to tease me, and I [once] said, “Hey, if you ever win the Super Bowl, I'm telling you right now, I'm inviting myself on the team plane home with you.” Because I never flew on the team plane, never. He goes, “Deal.” Well, they won the Super Bowl and I flew home first class with Pat Bowlen and the Vince Lombardi trophy, so that was pretty cool.

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