It took a few months before I finally realized that my new normal really wasn’t so normal. For much of the summer I woke up with two numb fingers—middle and ring—sure signs of carpal tunnel that I’d forget about after coffee. And morning coffee was nonnegotiable: Interrupted sleep was the norm for me, and stress from work deadlines, buried texts, missed birthdays, and unpaid bills began to compound. It manifested as an itchy rash that hydrocortisone wasn’t curing. Constantly short on time, Costco samples and potato chips became sorry meal replacements. This was all exacerbated by hormonal rebellion—the estrogen spikes of my prepubescent daughter aligned with the fluctuations of my own perimenopausal nightmare. Yet whenever people asked, “How are you?” I always responded, “No complaints!”
In November, I decided I needed a break. I flew to Hawai‘i Island thinking an encounter with Pele could somehow reset my operating system. To shake things up, placing myself in the path of primordial forces that propagate earth seemed like a good idea. I spent a night in Volcano and a night in Kona, where, as luck would have it, wellness guru Harley Pasternak was doing his residency at the Four Seasons Resort Hualālai. A personal trainer, nutritionist, gym designer, and New York Times bestselling author, Pasternak is also an adjunct professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. After 34 years of working with A-list clients (among them Ariana Grande, Halle Berry, Bono, Jason Sudeikis), he brings both academic rigor and applied experience to teach people how to eat, how to move, and how to rest and recover. If anyone could help me filter the signals from the noise, surely Harley Pasternak could, so I jumped at the opportunity to talk story with him.
Surprisingly, the short getaway was enough to break me out of my routine. I marveled at the fiery glow coming out of Halema‘uma‘u Crater and the bright constellations overhead. After that, the leisurely drive to Kona allowed me to shuffle through new music and to think my thoughts dry. Once at the Four Seasons Resort Hualālai, I went snorkeling at nearby Kūki‘o Bay, where I caught sight of a few leaping dolphins. Later, after enduring Pasternak’s killer leg workout (50 minutes of lunges, anyone?), I enjoyed a golden west-side sunset and some exceptional sushi, too, artfully prepared by chef Nuri Piccio at Noio. My body and soul thanked me for the attention and rewarded me with the most restful night’s sleep I can remember.
Photo: Courtesy of Four Seasons Resort Hualālai
My wellness, I was reminded, requires that I prioritize nutritious food, exercise and restful sleep, and that I take time to appreciate nature. As Thanksgiving rolled around, I made an early resolution to block out an empty hour each day in 2026 to fill in at will. I also gave thanks for Pasternak’s insights into better living.
Here he elaborates on some of those insights. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity and is aimed at helping us all restore balance in the new year.
Thank you for the opportunity to work out in your award-winning, signature gym space here at Hualālai. Beyond designing gorgeous gyms for their properties around the world, I heard your relationship with Four Seasons actually began because of their fully customizable sleep experience and commitment to a good night’s sleep. How important is sleep?
To someone who’s not sleeping well? It’s everything. We sleep one-third of our life. You want to sleep better? So much of it is common sense. Go to bed earlier. Make sure the room is black on purpose.
How does going to bed earlier help?
The closer you go to bed with the sun and the closer you wake up with the sun, the better for you. If you’re sleeping from 2 a.m. to noon, those 10 hours are not as healthy for you as if you slept from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. Our body clock is tied very much to circadian rhythm. If you go to bed earlier and wake up earlier, the quality of sleep is better than going to bed late and waking up late.
You mentioned people are sleeping worse than ever. Why is that?
Mainly because of technology. We’re overstimulated. We bring work home. There was a time that when you left the office, you were done for the day. If you worked on an assembly line, that was it. Today we’re working longer hours, and we have no boundaries. We’re over caffeinated, drinking a lot of alcohol.
Can you elaborate on the impacts of caffeine and alcohol on health?
Alcohol is terrible for everybody all the time. As long as you know that, if you want to drink, that’s fine. There are no benefits at all. Caffeine actually can be helpful to an athlete. My master’s thesis [looked at] the effect of caffeine on muscular endurance and muscular strength for athletes. Caffeine’s a stimulant. It increases free fatty acid mobilization. Tour de France cyclists take caffeine suppositories.
OK, let’s talk about the nuts and bolts of wellness—the moving, the resting, the eating. Would you characterize them as dials that have to be at certain levels? If you don’t get enough of one, can you compensate with another?
It’s like a plant. You need light, you need air and you need water. If you don’t get one of those three, no amount of the other two is going to make up for missing the third. If you don’t exercise, but you sleep and eat well, they don’t make up for the not exercising. They all are essential components.
Your latest book, The Carb Reset, provides a framework for portion control that includes a palm of carbs , all the vegetables you want, a thumb of fat, and a hand of protein. What about getting these portions at a restaurant? Is it still better to cook at home versus going out?
Always. When you get food from a restaurant, they’re cooking to make money. They do things to make it more profitable. They do things to make it happen quicker. And they do things to increase the palatability—they add lots of sugars and oils and salts. They cut corners, and they might not use the best ingredients.
What about carbs? In Hawai‘i we really like our mochi, malasadas, manapua and musubi.
Love carbs. The healthiest populations in the world—the countries with people who live the longest and have the lowest incidences of morbidity, mortality, diabetes, heart disease and cancer—consume the most carbohydrates. I spend a lot of time in Okinawa, Japan. These people are living two decades longer. They don’t have obesity or Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, and they eat rice at every meal. They eat soba, they eat udon, they eat ramen.
In Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland, they’re eating grains all the time. They have these fibrous breads they eat at every meal, but they’re so healthy, they live so long, and they don’t have obesity. The Mediterranean countries, they’re also having grains all the time.
As a young kid , I was a bodybuilder, and I would say bodybuilders are the superlative of low body fat. But they eat carbs up until the day they compete. Why do we need to cut our carbs? It’s just a ploy to drop the number on the scale quickly by cutting water—because carbs act as a sponge for water. If you cut carbs today, tomorrow you’ll be lighter. So, then you are like, wow, I lost 4 pounds. It’s all about losing water weight. You haven’t lost any body fat. That’s one part of it.
The other is for some people who overconsume hyperprocessed foods, like, ‘I cut out potato chips, I cut out french fries, I cut out doughnuts.’ Well, that’s not cutting out carbs, that’s cutting out fat. All of those are fat—they receive two-thirds of their calories from fat. It’s not the potato that’s bad. It’s the way it’s prepared. No one is unhealthy for eating a baked potato. You’re unhealthy for having mashed potatoes or french fries, or a baked potato stuffed with sour cream, bacon bits, and cheese.
How about supplements? Yay or nay?
Nobody needs supplements unless you have some kind of food aversion allergy that precludes you from certain food groups and it’s hard to get that nutrient. It’s whatever your lifestyle dictates. If you live in Ireland in the winter, maybe vitamin D is not a bad idea. Or for convenience, I use a whey protein powder because I don’t want to put chicken in my smoothies. I use Metamucil because when I’m traveling, I tend not to eat as many fruits and vegetables. I want to get fiber. It’s convenient.
In the book you talk about chocolate chip cookies. Tell me about that.
I’ve been everywhere in the world. I can tell you who does the best chocolate chip cookie on earth. It’s the Trading Post at Hualālai. By me having a quarter of this cookie every day, I never feel like I’m missing anything. I never feel like, ‘Oh, I’m always dieting.’ Every day of my life, I do everything right. I do everything right, but every day I eat something that brings me joy. You have to.
Photo: Courtesy of Four Seasons Resort Hualālai
Would you say food is one of the greatest sources of joy?
Joy and also misery if you’re on one of these restrictive diets—a carnivore diet, Atkins, Keto, a fasting diet. We feel, for some reason, in order to succeed we need to suffer. There doesn’t have to be suffering.
On the flip side of that is people who feel like they should indulge in whatever they want to because they shouldn’t suffer. Why can’t I eat three of those cookies a day?
I think there’s a lot of space between gluttony and suffering. I think gluttony is another form of suffering. It’s U-shaped. It’s parabolic. Suffering and gluttony are both at the top.
What do you think the role of our relationship to food should be? Should we grow our own food?
You can’t do everything. How am I going to have time to do my 10,000 steps a day and do my strength training workouts, make meals, be a parent, get good sleep, and be a farmer?
I was really bad with time management and my mother, against my will, signed me up for a time management course. It was on a weekend. This guy had a big aquarium on a desk, and it was full of rocks. The rocks were the size of your hand. And he says, “Everyone, does it look like it’s full?” It was to the top, so we’re like, “Yeah.” He said, “Hold on.” Then he poured in these smaller rocks that filled in the crevices. He goes, “How about now?” We said, “Yeah.” Then he poured in gravel. Then he poured in sand. And then he poured in water. He said, “Now, it’s full. The point of this exercise is I couldn’t have done this in any other order. If I started with water, anything I put in the water would go over the top. If I started with sand, I couldn’t put anything else in it other than water.”
You have to decide in your life what are your rocks—your small rocks, your gravel, your sand, and your water. For me, my health is my big rocks because if I’m not healthy, I’m not a good dad, I’m not a good husband, I’m not a good friend. Now if you’ve got lots of time and you want to grow your own produce, that’s an amazing hobby. I’d rather golf, or maybe I’d garden. Those are my water.
How do you maintain good health when you travel?
My workouts are really short, 15 or 20 minutes. Strength training is my anchor. I find ways to get my steps in. I don’t drink alcohol. I’m not against it. I just never have. Anything that messes with my sleep, I stay away from, and I don’t drink caffeine after noon.
Is that enough for cardio? Just getting your 12,000 steps in?
It depends. If you’re training for the Olympics, no. If you’re training for a sport, you should train in that sport. But if you want to look good, feel good, live a long time? People in Okinawa aren’t doing wind sprints.
What’s your message to people in the new year?
Don’t change too much too quickly. That which burns hot and bright burns out quickly. I would, every week, add one more thing.
