The Real-Life Diet of Jrue Holiday, Who Doesn’t Eat Pregame Chicken Fingers Anymore

Jrue Holiday is quietly building a Hall of Fame resume. The wily veteran has always had a reputation as one of the NBA’s best defenders, but in recent years, major accolades have started rolling in. He made his first All-Defense team in 2017-18, his ninth season in the league. Another one followed in 2018-19, which was also when he first averaged 20 points per game. From there, the hardware started to pile up. His first year with the Milwaukee Bucks, in 2020-21, ended with his first championship. A few summers later, as part of the blockbuster Damian Lillard trade, Holiday was sent to Boston. Just like he did with the Bucks, Holiday won another chip in his first year with the Celtics.

Now in his 16th orbit around the NBA, Holiday has the two rings, six All-Defense teams, and last year logged a career-high percentage from the three-point line. There’s also the pair of gold medals—from the Olympic Games in Tokyo and Paris—that bolster his case as one of the most accomplished players of his era. Holiday credits part of that to his tireless dedication to maintaining his body. He’s a big believer in Thorne’s line of supplements, which keep him sharp on and off the court, as he’s also raising two young children with his wife, Lauren, herself a gold medal and Women’s World Cup winner.

Holiday and the Celts are prime candidates to repeat this year. In order to get there, Holiday knows he’ll have to be on top of his sleep and hydration routines, and stay away from the bone-crunching screens that baptized him as a 19-year-old rookie a decade and a half ago.

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.

Jrue Holiday: Something that I learned is not to take on too much. Being able to recover—kind of step away and hang out with my family and be with my people, or be by myself—is super important. During the season, you’re being pulled every which way, especially during the playoffs and the Finals. It’s super intense mentally. The same thing is true of the Olympics. Mentally, you’re having to prepare like it’s us against the world, especially that last game against France.

That’s where Thorne comes in with all the supplements that I take. Whether it’s sleep, hydration, gut health, it’s all keeping my body feeling healthy and strong. I twisted my ankle during the Olympics. I’m not sure anybody knew! I do think it’s because I do preventative stuff and take these supplements to help me recover a lot faster and take care of my body. Recovery is the biggest part—mental recovery, physical recovery—to seamlessly go back into the season like I never even stopped.

I started after I got injured in New Orleans in 2014 and ended up having surgery. That was my first one. You can only do so much when you’re hurt. The recovery time until I could actually start doing stuff physically was about four or five months. My trainer and I were thinking about ways to optimize my recovery and my performance. That’s when we started talking to Thorne and taking their supplements. The multivitamins, the fish oil, something for gut health, they have things to help you sleep (go to sleep quicker or stay asleep longer), amino acids for hydration and performance, protein powder for after you workout, or as a meal replacement.

We did our research. My trainer, his name is Mike G, did research on a lot of different companies. But you know, with the NBA, they all have to be clean and NSF certified. Thorne has always seemed so solid, and once I started taking them, I felt really good. When I ended up getting traded, I saw that other teams used Thorne as well, and I was already with them. So it was like, I picked the right supplement company if NBA teams are using them!

For me, that’s how it started. I was young and I was hurt. I didn’t really know what to do with myself, and I was nervous about how I’d bounce back from the injury. I tried to do the best I could to take care of my body so that I could come out on top. Since then, I’ve had four or five other surgeries, and I feel like people wouldn’t even notice, because of how well I take care of my body. When you’re young, you can just go with it, and bounce back whenever. But I was starting to get older—I think I was 23—so I was thinking about what I could do. Taking these supplements has definitely helped!

Very true, but I came in the league at 19. I’m old now. I just turned 34, and everybody looks at me like I’m a granddad, but I can still run circles around a lot of people. But yeah, in basketball or the athletic world, [aging] is very different.

I’m not sure it did! Again, I was young. At 19, 20, 21, you can do whatever, and you’re probably not going to listen to people in the first place. But we’d go out to practice and start stretching, and I’d be lying around cracking jokes. I was literally ready to go. If you throw out a ball at 19, I could go.

My teammate Elton Brand was the first person who told me I need to take this seriously. I think he had just came off an Achilles tear. He was the first person to tell me about bikram yoga. He was the first person to tell me to stretch and ice every day. I don’t think I ever told him that I was listening, but I wasn’t listening. I wasn’t doing any of that stuff until after my injury. It took me four or five years to really lock in to that.

I learned a lot. All those guys played for a long time. I still talk to Andre, still talk to Lou. Andre is one of the best players ever. Going from being All-Star status and being in the Olympics to having four rings with Golden State, and being one of the best defenders ever. He used to always yell at me about how I play defense, because I reach and gamble a lot. Ooh, he’d be on me!

Lou Will was the starting point guard. I would play against him at practice, and he was so good at scoring that I had to find ways to stop him. That was a challenge for me. Figuring out the way he played—how he likes to move, left or right—I figured those things out by going up against Lou Will. And then AI coming back [to Philadelphia] was just insane. It was one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen. I’ve never seen a city go so crazy for somebody. It was cool to be a part of.

I don’t think so. If we did, I’m sorry. I don’t remember a nutritionist.

Yeah! I used to have chicken fingers before games. When you’re young, you’re the first person to the arena. You’re there like four hours before the game. I’d grab something to eat, and it’d be like chicken fingers, fries, and ranch. I remember going into MSG and that was one of my pregames. MSG chicken fingers.

It’s completely different now. You couldn’t find chicken fingers anywhere. Bananas, fruit, PB&J—or some teams will have chefs that cook before the game. Some rice with chicken, or pesto pasta, it’s definitely changed.

I love breakfast. I don’t really need to eat the same thing. I’m not regimented in that way, where I have to eat the same breakfast or the same lunch. I love all types of breakfast foods. Oatmeal, chocolate chip pancakes, French toast, omelet, doesn’t matter. Could be bacon, egg, and cheese or sausage, egg, and cheese on a bagel. I love food. That’s probably another reason why I work out so much.

Sixteen.

I think it’s a little bit of luck, a lot of faith, and a lot of health. Again, I take my body seriously. I’ve had injuries, but they’ve never been ligaments or anything like that. It’s mostly been bone, and that’s usually easier to heal. That’s actually how I found Thorne, they had a good calcium pill and I had a crack in my shin. I have a rod in my leg. Kind of like with Paul George or Julius Randle, how their leg snapped, that could have happened to me. But I found [the crack] before my leg snapped. I needed calcium pills to promote bone healing, and that was one of the first things I took from Thorne.

But yeah, just taking my body seriously. When I say my body, I mean everything. Recovery, mental, hydration. Yeah, you can do a couple of those things. But when you look at the bigger picture and take everything seriously, it just has your body working well. One of the biggest things in the NBA is to be available. I’ve been available for a while now.

Kevin Garnett. He hit me, and he just kept hitting me on screens. My shoulders are messed up, I’m falling on the ground, and they let him do whatever on those screens. From there, I kind of dedicated myself to not getting hit by screens anymore.