Share a meditation mentor. with Oprah Winfrey and Lady Gagahe loves books with titles like “Becoming Supernatural” and “You’re the Placebo” and has tried to combat the toxic aspects of social media by leading a twitter campaign to fight “negativity in this space”.
He is a vegan cookbook author and self-identified Virgo who is familiar with astrologyalthough it is not dedicated to practice.
And as a firestorm has broken out in the New York City media over whether his diet is as strictly plant-based as he has professed: It’s not, I’d admit later — Mayor Eric Adams sat down in his exercise room at City Hall last week to demonstrate how deep breathing exercises can help beat adversity.
“We all breathe incorrectly because we were never taught to breathe,” said Mr. Adams, sitting on an exercise bench wearing socks, a white T-shirt and yellow-and-brown striped drawstring pants. There was a stationary bike to the right of him and 25- and 30-pound dumbbells strewn around him as he offered instruction on alternate nostril breathing.
“My health routine helped me for this moment,” he said of his laden with crisis first weeks in the office. “It’s a balance of my physical and emotional stability.”
Mr. Adams is best known nationally as a tough-talking former police captain whose centrist views on fighting crime helped catapult him to the mayor’s office. But he has also become something of an unconventional wellness influencer: a fitness and nutrition enthusiast with hints of New Age trends that may not have been seen in a major political leader since Gov. Jerry Brown of California was known to some as Governor Moonbeam.
That reputation took a slight hit last week when Mr Adams acknowledged that he occasionally ate fish, despite previous denials. The episode was humorously dubbed “Fishgate”; however, he also pointed to the mayor’s sometimes casual relationship with transparency and truth, following more serious controversies over home Y tax questions.
But when Mr. Adams adopted self-help language in his mea culpa: “I’m perfectly imperfect” — also again demonstrated how his leadership style differs from that of his predecessors.
New York City is now run by a man who immediately sternly warns against “disorder in my city” and invokes his life coach, delights in cooking demonstrations and cites the “healing powers” of spices.
If aspects of your diet are in question, Mr. Adams’ diet arc health trip it remains central to their identity. He frequently talks about his transformation from burly police officer (“It’s not a myth: Cops like donuts”) to a healthy lifestyle evangelist. Type 2 diabetes affected his vision and threatened his health before adopting a plant-based diet in 2016 that he says reversed the disease.
“He credits his adoption of a plant-based diet with saving his life,” said City Councilman Justin Brannan. “He is holistic in the way he sees the world.”
Mr. Adams’ beliefs about health serve as a dominant lens through which he views many of the city’s challenges, from education to government inefficiency.
“You go agency by agency and you see how this undernourished approach to running our city is destroying our cities.” he said in “The Ezra Klein Show.” He added: “If we stop treating the symptoms and treat the underlying causes, we can change our city.”
The guiding implications of that perspective were apparent from his first weeks in office, as he practiced meditation with schoolchildren and frequented fast-casual salad places.
Last Thursday, the mayor signed two executive orders related to how the city and city agencies approach healthy food. Days earlier, he unveiled an expansion of lifestyle medicine services in New York, which he said was his top wellness priority.
And after pushing for Meatless Mondays in schools, hospitals Y prisons As Brooklyn Borough President, Mr. Adams recently announced the start of Vegan Fridays in Schools, though some parents have criticized the effort for not being well thought out and appearing nutritionally insubstantial.
For personal fuel, Mr. Adams keeps a NutriBullet blender in his small town hall kitchen. Last Monday he concocted a purplish-brown concoction; typical recipes involve “either kale, spinach, blueberries and some powdered superfoods,” he said, adding that the search for a plant-based Gracie Mansion chef continues.
According to the mayor, he completes “at least” half an hour, mostly office training. Spend 20 minutes every morning and evening practicing meditation, with the help of beaded bracelets to facilitate concentration. (He also sports a bracelet that says “hustle”). And has he called himself a “zen mayor” who will “bring calm” to the city.
“Don’t see yourself in the crisis,” he said, describing how his routine shapes his thinking. “See yourself out of the crisis and through the crisis.”
Mr. Adams, the second black mayor of New York City, is very focused on combating racial health disparities, part of his promise to fight inequality. In a book published before he ran for mayor, “Healthy at Last,” he also urged black Americans to rethink soul food, portraying it as an unhealthy relic of slavery.
Other aspects of the book mark marked departures from a typical political memoir.
He offered tips like substituting jackfruit for pulled pork. She struggled with gastrointestinal issues. (“Unfortunately, people have normalized the idea of constipation.”) She advised not to brag “when you start to look so good.”
Mr. Adams, who is a Christian, also spoke about how health influenced his spirituality.
“Too often, we don’t equate the best of ourselves with what we eat or consider our bodies a gift from the Creator,” he wrote.
Several politicians who have known Mr. Adams for years went out of their way to name topics he is more passionate about than personal health and diet, although he certainly focuses on the pandemic and public safety.
An elected official described a conversation from 2017 that they hoped would focus on politics. Instead, Mr. Adams spent nearly the entirety of an hour-long meeting discussing plant-based diets, recalled the official, who was granted anonymity to characterize a private conversation. Mr. Adams said that didn’t sound like something he would do.
New administration of the mayor of New York, Eric Adams
Others have detailed similar exchanges, expressing admiration for Mr. Adams’s commitment to health and hoping he will bring the same fervor to New York’s many other pressing issues.
“I bring passion to every topic I’m on,” he replied.
That obvious devotion to plant-based eating, and Mr. Adams’s repeated insistence that he doesn’t eat animal products, turned his dietary deviations into a full-fledged controversy, after several media outlets reported that Mr. Adams had been seen ordering fish.
In one such account, the mayor was joined by John Catsimatidis, the Republican supermarket magnate, at Rao’s, the exclusive Harlem restaurant.
“He eats all the vegetables,” Catsimatidis said in a follow-up interview. “Occasionally, he will eat a little fish.”
Mr. Adams tried to deflect and even deny having eaten fish, suggesting last Monday morning that fish was often for fellow eaters whom he encouraged to be healthier.
On Monday night, the mayor acknowledged in a public statement that he had “eaten fish from time to time.”
“I want to put cream in my tea, I don’t beat myself up,” Adams said in the interview, before releasing the statement. “I don’t sit back and say, you know, ‘Oh my God, I committed a cardinal sin.'”
Some officials and experts concerned with wellness say Mr. Adams generally sets a healthy example at the highest level of city government and is receptive to expert opinion.
“He was very willing to listen,” said Herminia Palacio, who as a former deputy mayor for health and human services worked with Mr. Adams on a plant-based lifestyle medicine initiative at Bellevue Hospital. “He has very strong personal beliefs, but I didn’t find them imposing or dogmatic.”
Just don’t consume olive oil, which he said to avoid due to its fat content, even though respected major studies show it’s associated with significant positive health benefits. (“The olive oil companies wrote that,” she incorrectly stated.)
If Mr. Adams is best known for his nutrition advocacy, he also embraces the promise of meditation and hopes the practice will be more accessible through school programming.
Stressed after leaving the police force, he eventually learned to meditate with the help of Bob Roth, who is known as much for his star-studded clientele (he’s worked with Mrs. Winfrey, Lady Gaga, the Seinfeld family, and Katy Perry, among others) ). ) and for his work helping at-risk groups cope with trauma.
“There was a sense that he really hoped this was going to help because he had serious health problems,” said Mr. Roth. “He’s not afraid to be who he is.”
As for astrology, Mr. Adams admitted that he did not regularly consult his horoscope. Nonetheless, he was still a “big believer that if you’re born at a certain time when the sun and stars align, that might have some impact on your personality.”
The mayor waxed philosophical when asked which public figure (stern ex-cop, happy-go-lucky “zen mayor”) best reflects the real Eric Adams.
“I’m constantly evolving,” he said, preparing his smoothie. “Who I am today is not who I will be tomorrow.”
