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Terry Crews says the secret to looking better at 48 than he did at 22 comes down to a 16-hour fast every single day.
In a Business Insider video interview filmed around late February 2017, the “Ultimate Beastmaster” host and former NFL defensive end broke down the exact eating window that keeps him camera-ready, muscle-bound, and — in his words — sharper than he was as a 22-year-old lineman. Crews didn’t stumble into intermittent fasting on his own; he credits a co-star for putting him onto it five years earlier, and he’s stuck with the same routine ever since.
- Crews has practiced intermittent fasting for five years, first introduced to it by Randy Couture while filming “The Expendables.”
- His schedule is a strict 16:8 split — fasting 16 hours and eating only between 2:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.
- He trains fasted every morning, then breaks his fast at 2:00 p.m. with protein-heavy food before loading carbs into his final meal around 10:00 p.m.
The Schedule Randy Couture Started
Crews told Business Insider he picked up intermittent fasting on the set of “The Expendables” after watching Couture, the UFC Hall of Famer, follow the same eating pattern between takes. That was five years before this interview, and Crews never went back to a normal three-meals-a-day routine. The version he settled on is the 16:8 protocol: 16 hours with no food, followed by an eight-hour window to get everything in.
For Crews, that window runs from 2:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. every day. No breakfast, no mid-morning snack — just green tea, water, and amino acid drinks like Aminolast until the clock hits two. It’s a rigid structure, and he’s built his entire training schedule around it rather than the other way around.
Training on an Empty Stomach
The most demanding part of Crews’ regimen is that he lifts and trains hard early in the morning while still fasted — no food in his system for well over 12 hours by the time he’s under the bar. He breaks the fast at 2:00 p.m. with something protein-forward: an omelet, a salad, bacon, or a similar high-protein plate designed to refuel muscle without loading up on carbs too early.
He saves the bulk of his carbohydrates, including bread, for his last meal of the day around 10:00 p.m. — the idea being that carbs eaten right before sleep get used to fuel the next morning’s fasted workout rather than sitting around during the day. Readers building their own routine around this kind of structure can compare it with other approaches broken down in Different Ways Of Fasting.
Autophagy and the Case for Going Without Food
Crews’ explanation for why the fast itself matters centers on autophagy, the cellular cleanup process that kicks in when the digestive system gets a long stretch of rest. According to Crews, giving the body that break allows cells to repair and rebuild rather than constantly processing incoming food. It’s the same biological mechanism that has driven interest in extended fasting protocols covered elsewhere, including Why One Meal A Day Is Good For You.
Crews backs the science up with his own before-and-after: at 48 years old, he says his body looks and performs better than it did at 22, back when he was still playing in the NFL. That’s the pitch he’s making — not just weight management, but a physique that’s improved with age rather than declined.
Prioritizing Nutritional Value in Meals
The tradeoff to only eating for eight hours a day, Crews says, is that there’s zero room for a wasted meal. When you’ve gone 16 hours without food, a mediocre plate feels like a real loss.
“The problem with intermittent fasting is that you never want to have a bad meal, because you’re like, I waited all day, 16 hours for this?”
That mindset is why Crews structures his two main meals so deliberately — protein early to rebuild after a fasted workout, carbs late to set up the next morning’s session. It’s less a diet than a daily contract he’s kept with himself for five straight years, and by his own account, it’s the reason he’s still built like he is heading into his late 40s.
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