Matchbox Twenty‘s out on their summer tour and frontman Rob Thomas, 51, is looking and sounding great. But in speaking to GQ about his diet and exercise routine, he says back in the ’90s he was “all bloated and fat” because all he did was drink, eat and do drugs.
“We were not encouraged, I think, to be good to ourselves. When I met my wife, I was I think 30 pounds heavier than I am now, and it was all bloat,” Rob says. In fact, he says he’s surprised that his wife married him, because he was “all bloated and fat.”
“I was someone who did cocaine so I could stay awake and drink and eat more,” he reveals. “I was the only person in the world that did cocaine and just got fatter, and fatter, and fatter.”
“I’m not proud of those times, it’s just a matter of fact. I’m so glad to be on the other side of that now,” Rob continues. “I’m so glad to be just more conscious of these things. At the time, it just wasn’t what you did.”
Rob says he now works out almost every day, eats healthy and goes to sleep after shows, rather than partying all night. He’s also been going to therapy for 10 years.
“I think at the end of the day, the thing that matters most is mental health, because you’re not going to care enough about your physical health if you don’t have that thing in place,” he says.
“I love that my son’s growing up in a time where it’s okay for him to say ‘I’m not okay,’” Rob adds. “I think a lot of damage that’s still in me comes from growing up in that time where I couldn’t do that.”
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