In Terms Of His Fitness And Health, David Harbour Says Losing Weight For Stranger Things Felt Like A Rebirth
Due to the success of his acting career, David Harbour has developed a new relationship with exercise.
He spoke to People magazine about what it was like to be a chameleon, and how playing a variety of roles helped him to jumpstart his fitness journey.
The actor admits that he was a “really nerdy kid” growing up, never playing sports and resented the athletic boys his age, and resisted athleticism for most of his life, because he felt resentment towards them.
In Terms Of His Fitness And Health, David Harbour Says Losing Weight For Stranger Things Felt Like A Rebirth
In order to maintain his health, he tries to do something physical every day and he has partnered with Brooks Running so that he can encourage others to take steps to get in shape in a way that works for them as well.
According to the actor, “in my 40s, I started to realize that there are things I want to do and my body will not be able to sustain it if I continue on the path I was on,” he told PEOPLE magazine.
As a matter of fact, I just thought I had gone over the hill, and I was on a downward trajectory from that point on.”
It is true that I had a moment when I was crossing the street in New York and there was a car coming, so I thought, “Oh, I just have to sprint a little bit across the street, and I just could not sprint.” And I was like, “Oh, that’s gone.” I guess I will just never be able to run across the street again.
I mean, I was 270 pounds at this point. I guess I never would have a chance to do that again.” “And I just thought that that was just the trajectory of your body.” He continues.
It was not until the actor had to lose 80 pounds in the past few years that he developed a new relationship with his body, because he “developed a new relationship” with it.
This award was given to him for his role as Sheriff Jim Hopper in Netflix’s Stranger Things series.
As a result of his weight loss and his new experience with fitness, he says that the experience has been eye-opening.
“It opened up a whole new world for me, [I’m] more pliable and a lot more teachable than I ever imagined I could be, even in my mid-40s.
I felt like a brand new person again after doing this for so long.” Harbour explains. After months of training, I felt a great sense of excitement and refreshment to know that, after all those months and months of hard work, I can just sprint across the street if a car approaches. It was just simple things like that that really sparked my interest.
Harbour trained for eight months followed an exercise plan and began intermittent fasting in preparation for Stranger Things’ latest season. As a matter of fact, he says “when I’m in my big dad bod mode,” he enjoys the body transformations that he is able to make throughout his career as well as the experiences he has had.
There is nothing I love more than my big body just as much as I love my lean athletic body,” he explains. “I love being an actor because I get to live in many different skins at the same time, and I like being a chameleon in that sense.
I would rather let myself be a chameleon and find out what it feels like to be in different bodies.”
The thing about training for something is that there are a lot of experts surrounding you, trainers and nutritionists, and that’s really helpful, but it can also get quite tiring, says Harbour.
“I’m an artistic, creative individual who, in general, does not like to be told what to do.”. Generally speaking, I prefer to follow my own path rather than follow others.
So, as you can imagine, it does get a little tiring when there are so many people telling you what to do and so you kind of want to just get out there on your own and do what you like.”
Whenever I am not training specifically for something, I find exercise, in general, is much more playful and doesn’t have to be as grindy or as serious as some experts suggest or as right-and-wrong as some people will make you believe,” he adds.
But then of course when I am doing too much of that, I long for that expertise and intensity as well. In this case, it’s a bit of a case of the grass is always greener on the other side.
If Harbour is looking to “do his own thing,” he likes a couple of days of weight training and four or five days of steady, low-intensity running, which he says is more about managing his anxiety than cardio, since it is more about managing his anxiety.
According to him, he maintains a pace of 65-75% of his heart rate, which is a very slow pace for him to run.
For Harbour, running on his own terms is what makes him the perfect partner for Brooks Running’s new “It’s Your Run” campaign, which celebrates all types of runners and encourages people to run in whatever way suits them best, in order to allow him to run according to his own terms.
I started running a lot more during the pandemic because I was so stressed out, especially going back to work after the vacation. I had a lot of anxiety and I went to a PT who told me, ‘Look, all you have to do is run for 45 minutes to an hour, really slowly, and you’ll be able to level out your breathing and your heart rate,'” Harbour explains.
After I did that for a couple of weeks, I started to see a huge improvement in my mental health and in my anxiety levels.
There was a sort of melting away of everything. As a result, for me, it’s more about anxiety than cardio, although there are some cardio benefits as well. As a matter of fact, it is a spiritual and mental gain.”
I really liked that because, you know, a lot of my runs are half walking. “According to them, those are things to celebrate,” Harbour tells PEOPLE.
The idea of having a campaign that really fits me and how I approach running, I just thought that was a very welcoming, nice way to look at fitness.
I felt that in a world filled with so many experts, a world where I am constantly being bombarded by people telling me how to do exercises and what I am doing wrong, I thought that it was a great idea to have an attitude like, it’s a plaything, it’s your run, and you can go out and do it however you want, that’s yours.
For me, it was a very refreshing experience.”
His weight fluctuates wildly over the past few years, with Harbour admitting that he lost about 80 pounds during these past few years.
He is trying to find the right balance between fitness for himself and fitness for work. During the period between his roles in Black Widow and Stranger Things, he gained weight and then regained it for his upcoming role in Violent Night, which he is currently attempting to lose.
While Harbour hasn’t “settled” on where he feels most comfortable on his health and fitness journey, he says, for now, he’s feeling “pretty good” about being able to do something physical every day, while looking back on how far he’s come as an actor.