The Real-Life Diet of Charles Vandervaart, Who Takes Sips of Maple Syrup Before Working Out

On the beloved Starz series Outlander, Charles Vandervaart, 24, plays a Revolutionary War soldier who rides horses, brandishes a sword, and runs in slow motion toward the camera. Fitness, then, is of the utmost importance to the actor. Growing up in Ontario, Canada, he was a rambunctious kid with a bent toward sports and exercise. As he got older, he became an avid rock climber and developed strong opinions about which type of milk offers the best protein.

Getting in the right shape (and headspace) to play someone in the 1770s presented its own challenges, but Vandervaart says one of the things that’s stuck with him most since starting on Outlander is how brutally simple the battlefield once was. “It's crazy to think that war was just people standing in line shooting each other,” he says with a chuckle. “There were some times when I was filming when I'd have this out-of-body moment where I wouldn't see the cameras and I'd just see the soldiers and people marching and a war starting, and it felt like I was really there.”

The finale of part two of Outlander’s seventh season dropped Friday on Starz. Shortly before that, Vandervaart called in from Toronto to weigh in on everything from cold plunges to Canadian candy.

GQ: Let’s start with rock climbing. How did you get into it?

Charles Vandervaart: Oh my goodness. I think it was a little bit of boredom. Coming out of high school, I did a lot of sports. When you graduate, all of a sudden there's nothing. I was really looking for a sport that I wanted to do. I remember as a kid, I'd always be climbing on the fridge. My mom and dad used to put a helmet on me. I was always born to climb. So, I went to my local climbing gym in Toronto for the first time [around] 2018. I just became obsessed with it and I went every day, with the exception of maybe five days, over the course of six months. And as you do when you don't give yourself breaks, I got horrible tendonitis in my forearms and ended up pulling a bunch of pulley tendons in my fingers. I had to take six months off immediately after that. I remember after that injury I could barely hold on to cups and things like that. That was a very good lesson about recovery and making sure that you give your body recovery time.

What sort of health and fitness benefits have you gotten from climbing? I'm sure you have muscles you didn't even know existed before you started doing it.

Yeah. A lot of forearm strength, which is always good to have. I just think being able to carry your own body weight and just have a general level of fitness is great. There's so much in the world that I want to do, so many hiking trips and all that, and if I can make sure that I'm physically capable of all of it, then I'm a happy person.

The other thing about rock climbing is it's a mental challenge also, like problems that require a solution. A lot of the time you'll watch a climber do a climb and maybe they're a lot shorter than you are or a lot taller than you. It's called a beta, the way in which you climb the route. Their beta might be completely different than yours. It's like a puzzle in order to get up. Also the simplicity of a goal being, “I want to get from here to there.”

Photo courtesy of Oscar Warburton

Your IMDB also says that you are trained in combat skills. Is that true? What exactly does that mean?

It’s partially true! I’m not sure who writes that IMDB stuff. I’m sure it says I’m proficient in 40 instruments or something. But yeah, I did have to do knife training. I did a show back in the day where I had to play a trained assassin. It was super fun. I went to this jiu-jitsu place to learn basic combat skills and then knife training, specifically, so it looked like I knew what I was doing. Then training with guns, which is really interesting, because at that point, I'd never held one in my entire life. Honestly, it's quite scary. I never shot a real bullet. It was always just blanks. But just having that in your hands was quite an experience.

I remember they brought me into this vault and I got to shoot a blank. Just the noise, the echoing that was in that vault—because it was just a little concrete cube—was crazy. For Outlander, I did a lot more combat training with swords and even sword fighting on horseback, which is very interesting. We didn't use a whole lot of that for the actual show, but I think just to get me comfortable on the horse, they try to do as much as they can in that regard.

I really want to start trying muay thai or jiu-jitsu. Being that in tune with your body and having a spatial awareness of yourself, it would be great. Also, I'm the least flexible person on earth, so I think those things would probably be beneficial for me. I just gotta work on touching my toes. That's the one thing I'm like, I can do it, but not for very long. I remember in high school I did the fitness test. One of them is you just have to touch your toes for five seconds. I could not do it, so I wasn't technically fit.

Has fitness and exercise always been a big part of your life?

I grew up always being very, very skinny. Fitness was a big part of my life, but I was mostly an endurance sports athlete when I was younger. I did a lot of triathlons, a lot of long distance running, a lot of swimming. I never used to be a gym person, never used to work on any big lifts or anything like that. It was always just endurance. I remember during COVID, I thought to myself, "Okay. Well, I don't normally go to the gym," but the gym in my apartment building was the only thing I had access to.

I thought, Okay, for the first two weeks during lockdown—because I only thought it was going to be two weeks at the time—let me just go down there and work out at the gym. I told myself I would continue doing it for as long as the lockdowns lasted. Fast forward two years, the lockdowns were still happening on and off in Canada. I just kept going to the gym and I really fell in love with strength training. That was a whole new thing for me. I was rock climbing at the time, but just normal strength training ended up being super, super great. It's enabled me to do a lot more stuff with my body.

Do you have a fitness routine now that you stick to religiously? Are you someone who's like, "I have to work out in the morning or my whole day is shot"?

I try to. It used to be really rigid. I was very intense about it. It's relaxed a little bit. I make sure I get my 180-200 grams of protein a day. I don't really track any of my food that I eat, but I make sure I'm eating enough. In terms of the gym, I try to go four or five times a week. If I miss a day, I miss a day. It's not the biggest deal in the world.

But yeah, I try and hit the gym one or two days for legs, one or two days for upper body, and then obviously climb in the middle of that. Leave some room for recovery, of course. Going back to that injury, I make sure I take omega-three in the morning as well as some vitamin C, so usually orange juice or something. Supplementing a little bit is definitely part of my routine, just to make sure that I stay healthy and can continue doing what I love doing.

Well, let's get into the proteins a little bit. What are your main protein sources?

Oh, man. I used to be a vegetarian for about eight years of my life, and I was still training. At the time, it was a lot of milk. They have this ultra-skimmed protein milk up here [in Canada]. It's 18 grams of protein for a cup, which is ideal because you have two cups of milk and it's 40 grams. It's basically a meal. I gotta stop relying on that so much, though.

But now that I eat meat, I've been eating a lot of chicken recently. I really like salmon for a good meal. I used to track everything that I ate and I was really particular about that stuff, but I'm such a lover of food I can't really live with myself. If I go to Montreal, I want to be able to have a massive poutine. I want to be able to eat well. I don't really limit myself, but I do make sure that in order to maintain muscle mass and all that, that I get about 0.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight. I love eggnog. I can't stop drinking eggnog in the wintertime. Is eggnog a big deal in the States?

During Christmas for sure, yeah.

Okay. Right. Yeah. I've become a connoisseur. I know all the different brands up here. If you ever come up to Canada during the wintertime, the black carton World's Best Eggnog is amazing. Not only is it amazing, it's seven grams of protein for half a cup, which is not normal! If you have two cups, you get 28 grams of protein. So, it's like dessert, and it's like crack for me. I freaking love it. It's 20% of my will to live, eggnog. And you know what? If it gives me my proteins and makes me hit my macros, then great.

Do you have a specific morning routine? Is there anything you feel like you have to do right when you wake up?

I'm not much of a morning person. I have a coffee. I'm fully addicted to coffee. I need that in my morning routine. That's about it, though. The thing about acting is that the day changes and sometimes you're working at four o'clock in the morning and sometimes you're not working until four in the afternoon, so you have to be reactive. I don't have a super well-planned morning routine. It changes from day to day.

What is your relationship with alcohol?

I don’t really drink. I would say though, now that I'm doing Outlander, I've been doing a lot of whiskey tastings and things like that. It totally tasted like gasoline for the majority of them. But now I'm starting to understand that it's an acquired taste. I'm starting to taste the good aromas and all that stuff, but I don't know if it'll be my thing.

Are you afraid of sugar?

No, I have way too much.

What are the things you get every single time you’re at the grocery store?

Ooh. Protein milk, eggnog during the winter time, probably some kind of chicken. What else? I love mac and cheese. You have to do it a certain way though. Do the Kraft from the box, add a little bit of protein milk to thicken it up, and then put multiple pieces of normal cheese on top of the cheese powder so it gets really nice and thick. I love it. It's so good.

Have you ever had a role that required you to either lose a bunch of weight or bulk up in a very short amount of time?

Outlander was the only one where I felt I had to maybe put on a little bit of mass. I was never asked to, but I was playing [fictional character played by Sam Heughan] Jamie Fraser's son. People call [Jamie] the king of men. The guy's a pretty buff dude, so I wanted to look like I could be his son. Coincidentally, I got hired during COVID times, and that was maybe a year or a year and a half after I started really taking the gym seriously. At that point, I was maybe 30 pounds heavier than I was two years before that. But I didn't really gain weight specifically for the role. I just kept working out a lot. I wanted to get stronger, and that meant weight gain. I didn't think about it consciously for the role, but I had strength pulls at the time that just so happened to make me a slightly bigger person. It worked out well.

I really like bench [press]. I've always liked deadlifting. Squatting is good as long as I have squat shoes, just because my ankle mobility is bad. I love a pull-up. It’s good for climbing. Calf raises, because I have small calves, so I need to do those twice as much as anyone else.

We're always hearing about stuff that actors do to stay young and beautiful. Do you do red light therapy or any of that stuff?

No, not really. I did have a decent stint of acne growing up, and I'm still quite susceptible to that stuff. I have a skin cream and that's pretty much it. I just use a retinoid, which is essentially vitamin A. I think it increases your cell turnover rate, but that's about it. Nothing too fancy.

Cold plunges: yay or nay?

Oh, I hate them. As a Canadian, I should love them. My sister does them and so many people I know do them. But it's not for me.

Do you scroll on your phone when you’re in bed?

It's something I shouldn't do, but it is something I still do. I’m too weak to not do that. I remember I was having a lot of problems when I was in Scotland filming Outlander because there'd be so much change between one day and another in terms of when I was supposed to wake up. I realized as long as I don't look at my phone for about two hours before I want to go to bed, my body will naturally get tired.

That was such a trip for me, because I was struggling so much, and I realized it’s just the light coming from my phone. It's so much easier to fall asleep naturally if you just don't look at your phone for about two hours. I'm not quite there yet.

For Outlander, were you ever like, "Oh, they didn't use phones back then, so I'm going to try to not be on my phone"? You know what I mean? Try to put yourself in a similar headspace?

That’s a great point. No. [laughing]

I think I'm less of a method actor than most. I definitely remain in the scene even in between takes and things like that. But I love my phone sometimes. And you know what? It's even the opposite. Sometimes I need a good piece of music to get me in that mental frame. William, he's quite an angry character sometimes. Obviously, Drake wasn't an artist back in the 1770s. But if I need something to get me in a headspace, then I'll use my phone and listen to some music. It's not period accurate, unfortunately.

What are some of your favorite Canadian foods or drinks that you can't find in other places? When I went to Toronto I fell in love with Maynard's Fuzzy Peaches, which you can't really get in the States.

Can you not get them in the States? Funny thing about Maynard's Fuzzy Peaches, my sister—at least when we were kids—it was my sister's favorite candy. On the way home from school, sometimes we'd go to Bulk Barn and I'd get chocolate-covered raisins because they were my favorite, and she'd get Fuzzy Peaches. We'd sit in front of the TV and eat them. I didn't realize you can't get them in other places. Wow. Damn. You guys are missing out.

Poutine, obviously, is one of the big ones. Maple syrup, obviously. I think this is actually more common than I think, but in order to carb load a little bit and get some quick, fast-acting carbohydrates into your body, I've just been taking sips of maple syrup before I go to the gym. Then I found out that a bunch of my friends also do that, and it feels like the most Canadian thing of all time! Maple syrup pre-workout.

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.