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Daniel Craig Workout Routine and Diet Plan

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Height
Weight
Profession
Actor
Accolades

Who does not know about Daniel Craig has definitely been living under a rock. He most certainly is Hollywood's biggest star and is most popular for his roles in the James Bond series. He has also been part of some bigger blockbusters like Casino Royale, Skyfall, and Bond 25 in his career and continues to infuse a certain distinction in his character. To be honest, he is also accredited as the fittest Bond in the franchise. He deserved it all, doesn't he? Looking at all the injuries he had to go through while shooting for the scenes and the challenges he had to face during his workouts.

But the real question is that how does he do it? His diet routine and workout schedule have been all over the internet since his days in Skyfall and Bond 25. We too have researched what his latest diet plan and activity schedule look like in this article. What to expect? Well, you can expect a complete processed food cut-out and a total carb elimination. Here's all you need to know.

Daniel Craig Body Stats:

  • Height: 5’10
  • Weight: (approximate) 175 lbs.
  • Age: 48 yrs. old
  • Chest: 47 inches
  • Waist: 31 inches
  • Biceps: 16 inches

Daniel Craig's Diet Plan and Nutrition

Before delving into the workout schedule, let's talk a bit about the diet plan. The diet will account for more than half of your success with fitness. For Daniel Craig too, he needs to fuel his body with the right kind of nutrients so that he could remain energetic throughout the day.https://www.instagram.com/p/B-OtRYMjlYR/The part step to a healthy routine for Daniel Craig was to give up smoking. He did not compromise with this one. He limited his drink intake too. He drank only on the weekends, that, Fridays and Saturdays. Drinking alcohol is known to dehydrate you and a dehydrated body does not work well in using up protein. So it is important to hydrate yourself throughout the day.Daniel Craig also cut off all the processed food from his diet. He also made sure to eat small portions of food throughout the day. He cut out all the carbs from his diet after his lunch. He ate a lot of fruits and vegetables instead. He also consumed high-quality protein like fish, chicken, eggs with every meal. Protein shakes were a staple. It is not the most fun diet, but giving up on the foods you love comes with a price. It is boring but it pays off especially if you have to look a certain way for a role.It is also true that Daniel Craig would cut out carbs completely right before his shoots to seem a little less bloated. Although he completely avoids junk food, alcohol is his necessary evil.Here is a sample diet plan of what Daniel Craig follows in his working schedule.The portion of each of his meals was about:

  • 50% of proteins
  • 30% of healthy fats
  • 20% of carbohydrates

Breakfast

Eggs and Toast – Daniel Craig likes his eggs poached and not fried, obviously to reduce the calories. He likes to have two of them with two slices of toast for his breakfast. He avoids white bread and goes in for whole wheat bread.

Snack #1

  • Protein Shake – Daniel Craig drinks a very basic protein shake for his snack. He sometimes adds fruits to it for a boost of vitamins and minerals but he also drinks it plain with just water.
  • Fruits and Nuts – Sometimes he swaps his protein shakes for fruits and a bit of nut-like almonds and walnuts which are full of essential fats and nutrients.

Lunch

  • Meat – Daniel Craig eats a lot of quality meat for his protein. He likes to have chicken breast, fish, eggs, and other protein-rich meat options.
  • Fish – Fish is a great source for omega 3. He loves his salmon, mackerel, herring, trout, sardines, and tuna. He is definitely big on seafood and loves grilled fish now and then.
  • Brown Rice – He ditches white rice for brown rice. It helps him to lower the cholesterol and prevents the clotting of blood. It also helps in proper digestion.
  • Baked Potato – As a source of carbs, he also likes to have baked potatoes occasionally. Sometimes he completely cuts out carbs and has baked potato with the skin on.

Snack #2

  • Protein Shake – His snacks need to have protein in his diet and that means another protein shake for him.
  • Yogurt with Nuts –He loves having some gut-healthy yogurt that serves as a probiotic. He also likes to throw in some nuts along with it so that it is quite a filling snack.

Dinner

  • Meat –Daniel likes to have meat two times a diet so that it could help him smash those protein goals. He either has a grilled chicken or grilled fish for dinner.
  • Fish – Fish is also another alternative for meat.
  • Leafy Green Vegetables – Green leafy vegetables like spinach and broccoli are low in calories and high in essential nutrients. It makes up for a great filler during his dinner.

Daniel Craig's goal is to build muscle mass and lose fat from his body for his famous roles in Skyfall or James Bond. Therefore, it is quite essential for him to up his protein intake. That explains drinking protein shakes twice a day and filling up on chicken and eggs.

Daniel Craig

Here are some tricks that helped him reach his muscle goals:Point 1: He Doubled His Calorie and Carb IntakeDaniel Craig had to lose a lot of weight during his roles n Cowboys and Aliens. His body had accustomed to gain muscles and weight as soon as he started eating normally after a long period of deprivation. Clearly, his anabolic hormones and receptors seemed to have charged up as soon as he left his restrictive diet plan for the roles.However, Craig still had to be cautious about what to eat and whatnot. He aimed at striving for a balance when it came to consuming calories.Scientifically, to build muscles, you need to target 16 calories per pound of your body weight. Then comes the other factors like your activity levels throughout the day where you will have to lower or increase your calorie intake. For Daniel Craig, this target was 2880 calories every day concerning his body weight, that is, 180 pounds.He increased his calories by increasing his carb intake. It helped him to restore his glycogen levels which also helped him to strengthen the anabolic growth. In addition to all this, the increase in carbs also helped him to produce more energy for his workouts which in turn lead him to sleep deeply too.Point 2: He Made Sure That He is Getting Sufficient ProteinFor Daniel Craig to build some quality muscle, he increased his protein intake too. It is a very vital part of increasing muscle mass. He made sure that his diet has sufficient protein to help in muscle growth. It also helped him to cut fat because proteins give a very satiating feeling. It is a filling macronutrient and generally, meals without protein are not that filling and one might tend to overeat.Consuming a lot of protein in the form of meat and protein shakes helped Daniel Craig to build muscles and get the look that he desired without gaining fat.The total protein intake depends on a certain calculation, that is, hitting up 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight. For Daniel Craig, the goal was to reach 144 grams for his weight, 180 pounds.Here's something Daniel Craig advises for his fans who are following his lead when it comes to building muscles:

  • Be as dedicated as you can!: Daniel says," I gave up smoking and exercised 5 times a week. At weekends I ate and drank what I liked.” Even Daniel had to sacrifice some of his favorites while aiming for a certain body type. However, he did not lose his dedication. It s important to give the bad habits a rest otherwise it will hamper your goals.
  • Eat carbs, but not too much: Daniel Craig eats a low-carb diet but does not eliminate it. It helps to fuel him for his workouts and provides him with surplus energy. Although the source of the carbs is important. So make sure you are getting them from whole wheat, raw vegetables, fruits, pulses, etc. Avoid baked goods, pasta, and white bread.
  • High Protein Diet: For any diet, having a good amount and quality of protein is necessary. Daniel Craig says, “I was on a high protein diet.” Protein is important when it comes to building muscles. Daniel's diet includes a lot of protein shakes, poached eggs which he has in the morning, grilled chicken, and grilled fish.
  • Importance of supplements and a good night's sleep: Daniel also included some essential supplements to achieve his look. He takes creatine, glucosamine, whey protein isolate, glutamine in addition to his protein-rich diet. These supplements are essential but one must contact their physician before using them. Another factor is the sleep that helps the body to go into repair mode and builds muscles quickly. Daniel himself slept for at least 7 to 8 hours every night and asks his fans to do the same.

Daniel Craig's Workout Routine

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-y7dzXjBMr/Daniel Craig scheduled his workouts under the guidance of a personal trainer. He has serious body goals and doing that without any professional guidance could be a dangerous feat.The basic principle that Daniel follows is a mix of weight training and cardio. He did strength training with heavyweight from Monday to Friday. Saturdays and Sundays were for stretching and cardio.His trainer, Simon Watson, tells in an interview about his workout schedule. He says,

"The workouts were a blend of power lifting, with a lot of compound exercises thrown in. This allows you to work out extremely hard with heavy weights, and because it’s so intense the heart rate is elevated. Therefore, you are working not only on the development of nice lean muscle tissue, but you’re also getting a bit of cardio as well, and keeping your body fat down."
Daniel-Craig-

Simon Watson continued in the same interview, saying that:

"No stone was left unturned in terms of developing speed, strength, stamina and a sharp, focused mind. I’m a stickler when it comes to attention to detail, so posture, definition, movement and confidence were at the top of the list. I also wanted functioning muscle – there’s no point in having great muscles if they can’t be used in a beneficial way like speeding across the ground, climbing, jumping and fighting."

While some actors like to follow a routine that focuses on one muscle group per day, Daniel Craig took the other way. His workout routine included full-body workouts which helped him work his entire body from Monday to Friday. He also made sure he is not taking too much rest between his sets that helped him elevate his heart rate. That also helped him include cardio in his weight training program. He wanted to build muscles so he couldn't do much cardio. Here are two reasons for that:

  • Daniel Craig's goal was to look muscular and not leaner so he wouldn't indulge in many cardio exercises. If he would have, he would lose all the muscles that he has worked so hard to build.
  • To lose fat, you need to have more lean muscles for it to burn more calories throughout the day. Cardio will not help with that. The right way to build lean muscle is by including a lot of weight training and resistance training in our routine. It will not only help you build lean muscles but speed up the metabolism and let you burn more fat. That's exactly what Daniel Craig did too.

Daniel Craig's workout was not split into one body part each day tradition, but rather into circuit training that focuses on full-body development. The movements included compound movements that help to work the whole body.Daniel's trainer, Simon Watson said,

It is functional, dynamic, and not aesthetic. It is all about using as much natural body movement as possible. It’s all about adapting exercises to be more efficient, so the body moves through all its natural functions and you are not inhibiting it. I try to keep away from kinds of exercises that are isolating.”

Circuit Training offers a series of exercises that are meant to be performed in circuits. The exercises are done in a sequence without any rest between each exercise. The rest is allowed after the completion of each circuit. Daniel Craig, performed 10-15 repetitions of each exercise. He limited his circuits to 3 per workout session.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9JUthfm_LI

Designing a Daily Routine and Mixing It Up:

Setting a plan is very important for Daniel and his trainer. He sets up a plan for Craig from Monday to Sunday which includes different types of activities and variations in it. Different kinds of workouts help to enhance stamina and endurance.

Cardio for Lean Body:

Daniel also included a bit of cardio in his workout, especially on the weekends. He did light cardio so as not to drop his muscles. He also tried to include cardio during his weight training session by making the movements fast and taking less rest n between each exercise. He avoided spending a long time on the treadmill to lose weight.The minimum rest approach helped him to keep his heart rate alleviated during the entire duration. This allowed him to build muscles as well as work on his endurance and burn more fat during the whole process.Sometimes Daniel also did HIIT (High-intensity interval training) and Low-Intensity Cardio workouts to keep up with the fat loss.

Active Rest:

Daniel limited his workouts to five days a week which gave him sufficient time to rest and recover too. The weekends were for light exercises and stretching which helped his body to recover from the intense workout otherwise.He included a lot of light cardio like yoga and a bit of swimming to keep up with mobility and endurance. This allowed him to recover before he could start the week feeling refreshed.

Warm-Ups:

Daniel believes in a proper warm-up session and a cool-down session before and after his main workout. He does things like jogging or rowing for his warm-ups. He rows for about 300m in the first set and then completes the second set of 300m again. It helps the energy in him to flow during his final workout.

Daniel Craig Workout Day One: Chest and Triceps

Warm-Up:A 10-minute jogPower Circuit:3 Rounds and 10 Reps of EachIncline Bench PressSkull CrushersIncline Push-UpsDipsWorkout:Flat Bench Press5×10Overhead Tricep Extension3×10Close Grip Bench Press3×10Chest Flys3×10

Daniel Craig Workout Day Two: Shoulders and Traps

Warm-Up:10 minutes cardio of choicePower Circuit:3 Rounds and 10 Reps of EachClean and PressChin UpsDumbbell ShrugsPush-UpsWorkout:Military Press5×10Barbell Shrugs3×15Shoulder Front Raise3×10Arnold Press3×10

Daniel Craig Workout Day Three: Legs and Calves

Warm-Up:A 10-minute jogPower Circuit:3 Rounds and 10 Reps of EachJump SquatsCalf Raises on Raised SurfaceBox JumpsJumping LungesWorkout:Back Squat5×10Calf Raises (Weighted)3×20Weighted Step Ups3×12Hamstring Curls3×10

Daniel Craig Workout Day Four: Back and Biceps

Warm-Up:A 10 minutes cardio of choicePower Circuit:Wide Grip Pull-UpsHammer CurlsPush-UpsBent over rowsWorkout:Deadlift5×10Preacher Curls3×10Lat Pulldowns3×10Cable Rows3×10

Saturday – Stretching and Light Cardio

Weekends are about light cardio for the body to recover. Daniel did not lift any kind of weights during the weekends. He did a lot of stretching exercises and light cardio like bicycling, jogging, or going on long walks. He just made sure to keep his blood flowing.

Sunday – Stretching and Light Cardio

Daniel Craig has his "cheat meal" on Saturday but makes sure that he is doing a stretching and cardio session on Sunday. It helps him to retain focus and consistency and improves metabolism. A cardio session after a cheat day also helps him to burn off the extra calories.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSkDhHpY2B0If there is one thing that Daniel's personal trainer has to say about his dedication during the workout, it is, “Luckily Dan was not shirking when it came to hard work, so I devised a program that had diversity and would suit the role of Bond, pushing him to his limits and beyond”. It needs a lot of commitment for someone to do a high-intensity workout without thinking to give up.Besides, Daniel kept all his workouts short but never compromised on the intensity. He took fewer rests and increased his reps. Following such techniques prove to be beneficial in the long run.

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