The Real-Life Diet of Ferg, Who Once Did a 25-Day Juice Cleanse

The Harlem rapper’s newfound love of cycling has become so impactful that it’s the basis for his new single.Courtesy of S’yiel Custodio; Getty ImagesBefore I attended my first cycling training at the grueling New York City-based group workout class AARMY, I found a video of former A$AP Mob rapper Ferg doing the same exact session. He was putting pedal to the metal, drenched in sweat, doing upper body dancing while keeping his legs in constant motion. I was terrified of what I'd signed myself up for. After the class, I was equally as sweaty but I walked away with the same euphoric high that Ferg displayed in the clip.Ferg’s passion for cycling is as apparent as his love of making music. His newest single, “Cycle,” released today is all about his love of strapping into that stationary bike. “Come meet me at cycle class,” he sings over an upbeat and funky ‘80s-style pop drum beat that also happens to be an excellent song to pedal to. For someone who’s been so taken by this form of exercise, it’s shocking to learn when I sat down with Ferg this week that he’s only been spinning for about two to three months.The Harlem-raised rapper has been working out for almost all his life, a habit he dedicated himself to after the death of his father. The importance of exercising, and his newfound love of cycling, is what influenced his upcoming album, which he says will be called Uptown Baby. He calls it a “workout album,” that draws roots from the rollerskating culture he witnessed while growing up in Harlem.Below, Ferg shares why it’s important for him to always get a workout in the morning, the one time he did a nearly month-long juice cleanse, and the reason you’ll never see him acting sloppy out there.What got you into cycling?So I go to AARMY, and I was doing bootcamp at first. For those who don’t know what bootcamp is, it’s these mat workouts where you have weights and you do burpees and jump squats and the worst shit ever. But it’s really good for you. So I started doing that and I would just go home and I would run for cardio. Then one day they’re like “Yo, why don’t you just stop and do cycle?” And I’m like, “I’m not about to do cycle.” I looked in the class and I looked at these people and I’m like, “They’re maniacs.” The choreography was nuts and I’m like, “I can never keep up.” They just kept hounding me. And then I think it was the week of the Level Up challenge. That’s when you do the most classes, and you try to beat everybody. You got some people doing three, four classes a day for a prize. I just turned into one of them. They just pulled me in, and I found out that worked smooth for me. I’ll do the bootcamp and then I’ll go right into cycle and that’s my workout for the day and I’m good.When I had booked my first cycle at AARMY, I saw your video of you doing it.Get out of here. I started off not knowing any of the choreography and I had to realize some of these people have been coming here for years. You see older women there killing everybody. They’ve been going there for years, cycling, even before AARMY. So it’s just rewiring my brain to just be a better athlete. You got to keep showing up for yourself. You got to keep pushing yourself. You got to turn it up whenever you feel like you couldn’t do more. Whenever it gets easy to you, that’s when you turn it up even more. You just keep going.You have to push yourself outside of the comfort zone, otherwise you’re stagnant, idling.Yeah. The first couple times I went there, I was just chilling and then you’ll get hounded by the coach. They’ll be like, “No, right, right, right, right, right, right, right. Left, left.” And then they start pushing your leg to go and do it. Once they got the light on you, you gotta show up. I’m coming all the way from my crib to work out. It’s like you could either do your best or you could do really bad. And it takes the same amount of effort to do both because mentally, if you’re just chilling, you’re beating yourself up mentally about like, “Damn, I just came here wasting my time. I’m just chilling.” But then it’s like, why not use the same energy to do that? Beat yourself up in a great way and turn the heat up.How many years have you been cycling?Years? How about months? I’ve only been cycling for, I want to say about two, three months. So that mentality about pushing yourself because like you said, you got to go really far and it’s like, don’t waste your time if you’re not going to give it 200%.Is that the philosophy you also apply to other aspects of your life?Oh yeah, 100%. That’s what’s amazing about working out—just being consistent with it. You show up for yourself in a workout, then you show up for yourself. How you do one thing is how you do everything. The way you make up your bed in the morning is the way it sets your day up because now you gotta clean up things around you and all of that. What your plate looks like, what your room looks like. What are you doing when people are not looking? That is how I live my life and I have to be pleased with how I live my life. So yeah, 100% it helps me when it comes down to music. It helps me with my energy. I’m so energetic. I could do so much shit.When did you start working out? Because you look strong, dude.Thank you. Thank you. I mean, I’ve always been stocky since I was a kid. I think my workout journey started when my father passed away from kidney failure when I was 17. I kind of went down a rabbit hole just trying to figure out how most people die and just wanting to know the metaphysical aspect of our existence and what our anatomy is built out of and how this machine works. Because when you think about it, we are in our bodies for years and don’t even know the name of everything on our body or how it actually works or what type of fuel you actually need to run your machine. I got kind of locked into that.And then once you become successful and you can afford everything in life, there’s only one thing left really to do and it’s to really focus on your health. Because if you can afford all of the clothes and all of the other stuff and you got all of the riches, you can’t enjoy it unless you’re healthy. The main thing was me watching my friends die from health issues. My father passed away, my grandmother passed away from health issues, Yams passed away. So it was just first mentally making sure that you’re well and then secondly, physicality follows after that.Was BMXing part of your workout or was that a hobby?I never really realized I was working out BMX bike riding. It was more so fun. It was recreational fun, doing a lot of tricks, trying to nail blocks on a willy. I’m doing like five blocks, arms are burning, getting tired, I’m getting callous on my hands. We would just try to outdo each other in the hood when it came down to BMX bike riding—bunny hops, tricks. I almost died so many times.I’m glad you didn’t.Leg getting caught in chains, all types of shit.Do you still BMX?I still do. I don’t have a lot of time to do it as much as I would love to, but definitely it’s still in my heart to do it all the time. I think that’s where me and Nigel Sylvester really bonded as a BMX bike rider. I used to watch a lot of his YouTube videos, like jumping down a hundred stairs, doing the crazy shit on bikes, no breaks. And I came up on that time watching Dave Mira on X Games and it’s always had a place in my heart. So I’m a BMX bike rider ‘til I die.I know you’ve said Dave is a big inspiration for you. What is it about him that you want to emulate?I just like his attitude. I like Dave Mira’s attitude and rest in peace. He was a jiggy bike rider. He was doing the craziest tricks and landed them shits with finesse. He was a cool dude.What can you tell me about the new album?It’s basically done. I would say it’s probably like 95% done because I always leave a little 5% just for the extra little season, and we’re coming early next year. So “Cycle” is going to be the first single off that album.Are these all going to be songs really good to cycle to?Yeah. It’s a workout album. It’s really a skate album. That’s why I did the skate party. Nobody knew I was doing a skate album. This is a skate album, inspired from Harlem. There was a skating rink called The Rooftop that Slick Rig, Dougie Fresh, Biz Markie, all of the dope rappers, the biggest rappers, and drug dealers, and fashion and fly girls used to go to. And the sound that came from that party, I think is what really made new jack swing and then created a genre called hip hop and R&B. You never heard that before a rooftop party. Brucie Bused to DJ these parties and he used to do these blends that you never heard before. So yeah, it’s going to be a really good album. I think that I’ve been working my whole career to get to this point of an album.Musically, do you think you’re trying to seek out the same thing now as you were when you were making [Ferg’s debut studio album] Trap Lord?No, I’m not. That baby is walking, it’s running, it’s doing things in the world. It’s affecting people. [Uptown Baby] a newborn. It’s like when you have kids, you can’t tell them what to do. You gotta just wait and see what it does and how it affects the world.How does working out affect your mental health?I don’t even think about mental health when I’m working out. Working out for me is just a part of my routine and I feel so high from it. I feel so good. My energy is clear, clean, crisp. It ain’t nothing like a shower and a fresh fit after the workout to start the day. It’s like a picker-upper for the day.This is your caffeine.It’s my caffeine. Literally, this is my caffeine. It literally boosts my high for the day. It sets me up. I just performed at Marquee last night, and made it home at 3 o’clock in the morning. You got to go to bed, shut everything off. Don’t be on your phone. I lost my other phone that has Instagram on it, so I wasn’t on the ‘Gram. So I went to sleep, and I knew that I had to wake up and work out. I didn’t make it to cycle today because I was just like, I’m going to just run a 5K. I had to make it here.Are you on any supplements like protein, creatine?No, I’m not on any supplements. Sometimes I’ll get a protein shake and have them add a vegan plant-based protein in it. Right now with food, it’s weird. I’m in a weird space because I fast a lot .Like intermittent fasting?Yeah, intermittent fast or I’ll do a couple days of fasting. I did a 25-day juice detox before.What do you think your regular diet looks like?I’m trying to figure it out now. I got to get the blood work done actually to see what my body needs and then I’ll be able to accurately execute the food part. But I just eat clean. Sometimes there will be times where I just go a whole month and just do plant-based stuff, like no flesh, no animal flesh. And I just do straight plants. I’ll do chickpeas or seitan or tofu or whatever the case may be.You mostly cook for yourself?Yeah, I cook a lot.What’s your favorite thing to make?I do a crazy broiled salmon. I’m crazy on the grill. I could do beef ribs. I could do everything, man. I do a good garlic rice. I season my rice. I put a little garlic in there.What’s your relationship with alcohol? Are you a drinker?I drank last night. I had some tequila, but it’s like I don’t drink all the time though. It hits me hard because I don’t drink. So whenever I drink, it’s like: Oh shit. All right.Also if you drink too much, it’s hard to get into the workout groove,Right? I’m never drinking too much though, because I’m always on point. You got to remember, I’m a rapper, so the places I’m going, you gotta be on point. You can’t be out here sloppy and drunk and stupid. So I’m out here. I’m being professional, one. And two, I’m there to provide the party. I’m working. I’m performing. I’m giving out the champagne. Y’all do your thing. I’ll have a glass or something like that, but I’m never doing too much.What else are you excited about these days?I’m excited about life. I’m excited about breathing. I’m excited about getting my vision off, doing these cool parties and activations and getting back to the people. I feel like we’ve been stuck in an age where we’ve been so locked into social media and all of that, and it’s definitely a tool to reach the masses in the world, but we can’t forget about our community, the immediate community and can’t forget the physical aspect of things. I was giving out flyers to my party. I remember receiving a flyer and being like, “Oh yeah, I’m pulling up to this.” We think that when you don’t get that on social media, you can delete something. A flyer, you could frame that shit and save it.Not a subscriber? Join GQ to receive full access to GQ.com.Tyler Chin is GQ's associate wellness & grooming editor. He'll occasionally dabble in the menswear space, but otherwise you'll usually catch him trying out new headphones, lifting in fresh workout gear, or testing out the latest and greatest in skin care. Before he ended up at GQ, he worked at ... 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