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By Steve Jansen Steve Nash’s biggest fans may be disappointed to learn that his healthy-eating habits, like his performance on the basketball court, don’t involve anything superhuman. When Nash craves a chocolate-chip cookie, he doesn’t stand on his head to resist the urge. He eats one.  The Phoenix Suns’ star keeps it simple. When he’s dining at an out-of-town restaurant, he’ll order chicken or fish, sans the fatty toppings, and a side of vegetables. He stays away from processed stuff and instead snacks on fruits and raw nuts. And, on that rare occasion that Nash eats something with sugar—which he rarely does—he makes sure that it’s not packed with synthetic sweetener.
In a profession that rewards physical specimens in their early-to-mid 20s, the 36-year old Nash continues to do things on the court that a man his age shouldn’t be able to do. In order to get through the grind that is the National Basketball Association’s 82-game regular season, the two-time Most Valuable Player swears by a strictly regimented diet that he admits is difficult yet accessible.
The fifteen-year NBA veteran became hip to conscious dieting as a student athlete at California’s Santa Clara University during his “junior or senior year,” according to Nash. “But,” he adds, “my idea of healthy eating has pretty much changed constantly since then. I’m at the point where I eat totally differently now than I did two years ago.”
 For example, Nash explains that pasta—an entrée that’s preached to athletes from high school on as the dish of champions—is no longer a part of his pre-game menu. “The carb-load of a big plate of pasta before a game used to make sense to me, but it doesn’t make sense to me anymore,” he says. “I would have never known that unless I read and learned and listened and discovered that there’s a lot of sugar, starch, and other stuff in there that’s unnecessary for me.
“I really just try to keep my diet to things that are all-natural and served in the condition they came in,” Nash says. “I’ve cut out a lot of synthetics, whether they be white flour or the additives they put in bread or processed pasta, and I really limit my synthetic sugar intake. And it’s really hard to completely avoid [sugar], because you never know what people put in soup or sauces or whatever it may be.”
This sort of careful eating is feasible when we’re privy to the supermarket and dining scenes in our hometowns, but what to do when we’re on the road or spending time in unfamiliar towns? According to Nash, who constantly travels for his profession, there are ways around mystery ingredients.
 “What I try to do—and it probably drives some people crazy—is if I don’t find anything on the menu, I just ask for a piece of clean, grilled chicken with vegetables, or fish and vegetables, and a fruit plate,” he says. “Or I’ll find some all-natural organic health bars to take with me or raw nuts or fruit or whatever. I just try to stay stocked up on healthy snacks, so that when I’m hungry and there’s nothing available that sounds great, I have something to go with instead of a bag of M&M’s from the mini-mart.”
Along with his demanding dietary habits, Nash is just as keen on boasting mental fitness when he’s off the court. It’s plain, when speaking with Nash, that he’s a man at peace, thanks to the high priority he places on sleep.
“Obviously, mental clarity and confidence in your physical condition and ability comes from sleep,” says Nash, who became the first NBA player to carry the torch in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada. “Ironically, the other side of that is relaxation, so it’s important to find time to relax and do something that rejuvenates me, like watching a movie. It’s also important to get away, to disappear, and to come back refreshed instead of constantly thinking about my sport.”
 During his downtime—which there isn’t a whole lot of for a man who was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2006—Nash is actively educating himself in health trends and issues, whether it’s speaking with homeopathic doctors or reading literature on the subject. He’s also pimping a line of supplements called OneBode-, which take whole-food sources and make them into all-natural vitamins. Because cooked food loses a lot of digestive enzymes, Nash says, he’s found that dietary aids have helped his system work better. In other words, you can eat all of the healthiest foods out there, but you need a steady dose of vitamins, too.
 Though Nash feels that his diet is intense, he also believes that the rewards can’t be beat. “I think the way I eat is fairly accessible, but I also think it’s very difficult. But I think it’s not that hard for everyone to eat clean, whole foods. What is hard is changing from this habit of eating all of this crap that’s pushed on us in restaurants or supermarkets.”
Nash thinks that if people could realize the health benefits of healthy eating, like fighting chronic illness and disease and a better long-term quality of life, they’d make the commitment to change their diets more readily. “But when you don’t necessarily wake up tomorrow feeling better,” Nash says, “it’s hard for people to say, ‘Hey, I’m going to make this huge commitment.’ Which is too bad, because it’s well worthwhile.”
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