Yahoo Finance Mario Lopez’s Secret to Staying Fit and Energised at 48
Mario Lopez has been on our TV screens for three decades, and is still one of the most booked-and-busy men working in entertainment, having hosted Access Hollywood and its daytime spinoff Access Daily since 2019, as well as his own radio show On With Mario Lopez. More recently he has leveraged his '90s heartthrob credentials into a leading role in a Christmas romcom, Holiday in Santa Fe, and reprised arguably his best-known acting role, A.C. Slater, in the recent revival of the '90s high school sitcom Saved By the Bell.
Amid all of that, Lopez finds time to maintain the kind of physique that a man 20 years his junior might envy. But he swears he works out for "sanity, not vanity," and that training every day helps him keep up the energy required for his many, many commitments.
"I don't feel like I've even really woken up until I've broken a sweat," he tells Men's Health over the phone. "I think your health should be a top priority, because if you don't have that, what does anything else matter? I want to just be healthy and be around as long as I can, to be able to be there for my family. It's a lifestyle, really: it's allowed me to handle this insane schedule at my age, and to have a lot of energy, like right now I'm going from the gym to Access Daily. And that's a talk show, viewers want to see people who are happy and excited, and at the moment we have a lot of guests, so I can't be low energy."
When it comes to diet, however, Lopez is not about to deny himself, instead taking an "everything in moderation" kind of approach. "I'm not a necessarily a calorie counter," he says. "I try to not eat a lot of crap during the week, and practice portion control and have a sensible looking plate with protein, fat and carbs, and try not to get too crazy. But then on the weekends I do get a little crazy, because I'm just an excessive guy. So I eat everything, I'll drink and smoke everything,then come Monday it's back to it. You've got to balance."
Even on the weekends, though, you're more likely to find Lopez in a gym than propping up a bar. In particular, his affinity with boxing and martial arts—he holds a blue belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu—goes far beyond the physical benefits.
"Jiu jitsu is like physical chess," he says. "You're constantly learning and expanding your mind. I just love it. I love the community and everything that it's about and that I get to do it with my kids. It instills such a great work ethic and confidence and physical toughness, as well as emotional, psychological toughness, and a lot of confidence. So I love all those things and all those attributes and it's taught. It will compliment my day, especially when I'm rushing from my radio show to Access."
Fitness is very much a family affair for Lopez: in addition to doing martial arts with his kids, who are also hugely into gymnastics and dance, he will go to yoga and spin classes with his wife, Courtney Mazza. He also has some famous gym buddies, and will frequently spar with fellow boxing lover Frank Grillo, or do an F45 workout with Mark Wahlberg.
"Mark's a great guy," he says. "We have so much in common and are very much alike, both with our family, with our faith, with our fitness, everything. We both love martial arts, we're around the same age, and we just refuse to let age dictate how we train, and we really push each other."
You might not think age would be on Lopez's mind; after all, he looks uncannily similar to his original Saved By the Bell self. But he did turn 48 this year, and while he is adamant that he will carry on working out every day as long as his body will allow it, he admits he has had to adjust his regime and make some concessions.
"I've forced myself to slow it down," he says. "As you get older, you can't necessarily match the same intensity, you have to work out a lot smarter, especially in the very physical sports that I do. I was getting injured. I tore my rotator cuff, then the next year I tore my Achilles, then the next year I tore my biceps. Maybe with someone else, that would have been a sign to transition and start playing golf, but that's not me. It just set me back a little bit. You have to be extremely limber, and I'm incorporating a lot more stretching and trying to dedicate more time to that in my routine. But I'm going to keep doing it until literally can't, and I'm broken down and decrepit!"
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