After Chris Martin recently revealed the things he does to cheer himself up, our writer decided to give them a try. Photo / Getty Images
Could the Coldplay frontman’s clean lifestyle of meditation, minimal eating and journalling help a middle-aged man like me too?
Chris Martin should be the happiest man in show business.
His band, Coldplay, are currently packing stadiums on a world tour that has grossed around a whopping £1 billion ($2.3b). But Martin admitted earlier this year that he is still prone to melancholy.
Posting on Instagram, he told fans: “I’ve noticed that some people are struggling a bit with depression lately, including myself.” He then proceeded to list the things that he does to cheer himself up.
Prioritising wellness (let’s not forget the “conscious uncoupling” from his former wife Gwyneth Paltrow), is something that he’s clearly very much on top of. He is also a fan of the OMAD (One Meal A Day) diet, following in Bruce Springsteen’s steps, he reportedly eats just one meal a day to keep his 48-year-old body trim.
As someone who enjoys revelling in gloom, and who preferred Coldplay when they were depressing, I thought I’d take Martin’s advice and see if I could switch the blues to yellow. Could his clean lifestyle of meditation, minimal eating and journaling help a middle-aged man like me too?
Here’s what happened when I lived as healthily as Chris Martin for the day.
Martin reportedly does yoga, surfing, and strength and circuit training to stay lean and energetic for performing. This is home territory for me, apart from yoga and surfing.
I visit the gym daily where I follow a resistance training programme and also do HIIT classes. Many studies have reported that resistance training can have psychological benefits, in addition to the physical benefits.
As a 55-year-old man, training has allowed me to maintain a 30in waist since my early 40s and remain competitive in classes against men half my age.
This element of the Martin regime gets a big thumb’s up.
Next on Martin’s list of pick-me-ups is free writing, which is the practice of writing down whatever is in your mind for 12 minutes a day. Once Martin has committed his thoughts to paper, he burns the page they are written on.
I sit at my desk and try to clear my mind of work-related chatter, to let the emotions come to the fore. After five minutes I’m still there, trying to squeeze out a feeling while not looking at phone notifications and fretting about a busy workday. I’m emotionally constipated.
Instead, I find myself jotting down a to-do list, and then in desperation scribble “I don’t enjoy being short or bald”. I burn the paper more from embarrassment than for the cleansing ritualism that the practice suggests. And then panic because I’ve destroyed my to-do list.
The practice, however, is not as woo woo as it sounds. One 2014 study, found that people with depression showed significant decreases in depression scores after “expressive” writing.
Adriana Kober, clinical psychologist at Priory Hospital Barnt Green, Birmingham explains: “Writing can get thoughts and feelings out of your system. It can allow you to process emotions.”
Martin recommends transcendental meditation (TM), which is meditation with chanting. Numerous studies have shown that it has psychological benefits. One 2022 randomised clinical trial of 80 healthcare workers showed that TM practice over three months reduced psychological distress scores.
For my TM, I plop myself in the garden during a mid-morning break, close my eyes and hum self-consciously to myself. It’s not easy to achieve transcendence with scaffolders next door, but 15 minutes in I feel a slight shift in consciousness and for a moment, when the background noise stops, everything feels peaceful. All I can hear is my own humming.
Another of Martin’s calming practices is breathing exercises taken from the book The Oxygen Advantage by Patrick McKeown. Apparently learning to breathe more efficiently benefits health and focus, which is news to me, given that breathing is something I’ve done all my life.
I find a YouTube tutorial which gives instructions on one exercise designed to help with stress and anxiety. Basically, it involves breathing, then holding your breath. I try it and feel calm, but have no idea whether that’s because I’ve been mindful of my breath or because I’ve altered the levels of oxygen and CO2 in my bloodstream.
Speaking on a podcast in 2023 Martin mentioned that he follows a diet called OMAD, which stands for one meal a day. This involves cramming all nutritional needs into one sitting. Some of the claimed benefits of this extreme way of eating are weight loss, cellular renewal, decreased blood sugar level, better insulin resistance and improvements in cholesterol levels and blood pressure.
On the downside, eating one meal a day can make it harder for the body to get the nutrients it needs and can lead to dehydration, irritability, stress, dizziness, headaches and poor circulation. It is not for the faint-hearted. I usually have a healthy breakfast of Greek yoghurt or kefir, oats, chai seeds, fruit and bran. This sees me through to lunch.
Without this, and having done a gym session earlier in the morning, by midday I am hangry and starving. In the spirit of the meal plan, I opt for a virtually zero-calorie salad as OMAD does allow for light snacking during the day. The salad barely touches the sides. For the rest of the day I am preoccupied by thoughts of dinnertime and the 2000 calories worth of pad Thai noodles with vegetables and tofu (and a prawn green curry) I plan to devour.
Martin talks about something called The Costello Method. This is a way of calming your mind using simple movements. Specific drills include marching in place while bringing your right elbow to your left knee, then switching sides, and slowly rolling on the floor from side-to-side.
“Movement generally allows us to feel our body. When we feel our body, and are in tune with it and the signals that it sends the brain, we become more self-aware and our self-esteem grows,” adds Adriana Kober.
My favoured option is the rocking in my chair, which I often find myself doing anyway. I try this on my Chris Martin Day, but it doesn’t make me feel any better about the demanding work emails, so I try rolling on the floor, which just makes me feel like a toddler having a tantrum.
As the day progresses, I become acutely aware of the impending deadlines I have, and my anxiety rises. Hunger does not help. I am fixated by thoughts of food and it takes all the willpower I have not to reach for the custard creams in the biscuit tin. In an effort to gain some focus I turn to Martins’ favourite therapeutic soundtrack, Music for Psychedelic Therapy by Jon Hopkins, which is one hour of ambient noise, akin to a synthesiser having a breakdown.
The first track, Welcome, sounds like every Tesla in the world reversing at the same time. After that however, something strange happens. I forget it’s playing and crack on with my work, uninterrupted and focused. Kober tells me this may be because of the vibrations. “Music sends different vibrations, and our bodies react to those,” she says.
After a welcome meal and an arduous day of self-care and wellness I head to the sofa for arguably the most normal and enjoyable part of the Martin routine. He says he watches feel-good movies to cheer himself up. A favourite is Sing Sing, an uplifting film about prisoners on a rehabilitation through the arts programme in America.
I opt for Rob and Rylan’s Passage to India on the BBC. Kober says: “Things like comedies and feel-good movies promote the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that drives motivation, reward, and pleasure. It causes us to feel good.”
She’s right, the upbeat travelogue lifts my spirits and I go to bed on a high, thankful that I’m not Chris Martin so I don’t have to repeat the process tomorrow.
Martin is undoubtedly a talented musician and a creative genius. He’s also in incredible shape for a 48-year-old man. But is he qualified to be a wellness guru? For a normal bloke from the Home Counties with a deadline-filled job, it all becomes a bit inconvenient. I haven’t got access to nutritionists and personal trainers. And while his mental health advice stacks up with the experts, recent research by the University of Bath argues that well-intentioned tips may leave people feeling more overwhelmed than helped.
Barry from the Department of Psychology at the university says: “I think it’s more important that influencers like him are mindful that it’s difficult for most people to pick up all these additional practices on top of their already busy lives. Life is hard enough without making people feel like they might have been breathing wrong for their entire lives.”
For me the Martin method is a mixed bag. I’m not a fan of journalling, or flopping around the floor like a beached porpoise. And the OMAD diet is a complete no-no. But I have a feeling next time I need some focus I’ll be turning to Music for Psychedelic Therapy rather than A Rush of Blood to the Head.