#52: Sami Reiss

"This stuff is so cyclical, it’s best to be out of time."

and

Apr 20, 2025

Welcome back to Health Gossip

Today’s guest is Sami Reiss (@samireiss), who writes about health and wellness for places like GQ, Highsnobiety, and SSENSE (read his piece on Happier Grocery here). He also runs the cult-favorite design and furniture newsletter, SNAKE, and its nutrition-oriented companion, SNAKE SUPER HEALTH. He is our fourth male guest.

Health Gossip with Sami Reiss
Responses logged April 13, 2025

HG: What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

SR: Being healthy is non-negotiable for me because of a surgery I went through years ago. I gotta be pretty on the ball about it.

I’d define health ideally as including strength and resiliency, energy… mobility… function… more than that. Explosiveness? Good biomarkers… basically a vibrant definition based slightly on strength but not entirely and which creates, well, health down the line. To be sure, that’s my definition and I wouldn’t foist it on anyone else.

I think when you keep up with the health industry — doctors, gyms, food, whatever — it skews you into some sort of unreality or extreme, but to me it’s just something normal and accessible that can be reached and is a birthright for everyone (nothing wrong with doing more, though).

HG: How would you describe your current lifestyle?

SR: Pretty normal. I live in Brooklyn and work at a desk a few days a week, which is a 20 minute walk... I work out hard a couple days a week, I work out normal a couple days a week, I move around a lot, swim now and then, prepare most of what I eat, I don’t drink but I stay up late. Some vices, some good habits, some work constraints… pretty normal. I see this lifestyle lasting but I am sure there will be changes.

HG: How do you start and end your days?

SR: I wake up, stay off my phone the best I can, eat a carrot, have some salt water, walk a bit on the grass in my building courtyard, do some dead hangs and move a bit, pray then meditate, have a couple eggs and a coffee and go work out, or work.

Nights: if I’m home alone, I have the red light on on my phone, no work after like 10 PM (it’ll keep me up), maybe tea, but usually a book in bed. I find if I don’t move/walk a lot and if I work or eat late that’s what jacks up my sleep… otherwise I try to keep it very low maintenance.

HG: Was there a specific moment when your relationship to your health changed?

SR: Maybe in high school. I was very into hardcore music and wanted to look like my favorite bands (like Youth of Today and the Cro-Mags), I wanted to be strong and in shape. I read some bodybuilding books, but was vegan then and trying to put on muscle was a challenge.

I don’t think I’ve ever taken more than six months off from the gym since; since my surgery, health has been completely number one — I was in really rough shape for a while — but now as my diet has become more sustainable, health is just a high priority that goes on in the background. It’s definitely non-negotiable now but it’s quiet. It probably took me a good two decades of lifting and eating to have my health be this invisible. Who knows.

HG: What's your relationship to self-healing?

SR: To be frank, my approach is less about curing a symptom than a very thorough approach to prevention — diet, lifestyle, habits that sort of raise the body’s immune capabilities, vitality, and so on. (The scientific explanation is, speaking generally, the right food will give your body more zinc and fat-soluble vitamins which translates into a stronger immune system and so on.) There’s a big book of methodical (if anecdotal) knowledge about ways to stave off sickness… Eastern medicine, Slav shit… it’s not enough to solve every problem in every case, but an apple a day is more right than not.

HG: Where do you look to for information or advice?

SR: For health I try and read everything, lots of old stuff — books from 100 years ago, like Alan Calvert’s Super Strength, or the Weston A. Price books — whatever research is coming out, whatever is in the news. I like the sort of hidden discussion pathways lifters have, too — bullshitting on Twitter/X and podcasts, where not really rigorous discussions get spitballed out… It’s less advice there for me than a suggestion: maybe I’ll try something, maybe I’ll tweak the self experiments these folks are doing for something that might work better for me.

For true information I like stories about the Baba Sali and so on — very grounding. Health is such a massive topic with so many byways and little scenes in opposition to each other (hundreds of different lifting philosophies, yogic people, animal-based, plant-based, science-based and non-…) that I try to read widely and outside the zone of things I do. I’ve been into this stuff long enough to see that what seems like a leakproof health movement often just ends up a three-year flash in the pan. This stuff is so cyclical, it’s best to be out of time.

HG: What practices do you rely on when feeling ungrounded, unsettled, or ‘unhealthy,’ per your definition above?

SR: If I feel like I’m in a funk, then I kinda just check the basics. Unless there’s something external/wild going on in my life, the symptoms you describe tend to show up only if I’m:

static or not moving for hours
looking at a screen for too long, without human interaction or fresh air/sun
eating really poorly

etc.

If so, I’ll eat, walk, make a coffee, do some jumping jacks. Sometimes it’s from soreness or fascia funkiness from working out, so I’ll do some myofascial release (laying on a lacrosse ball can really help with mood), or if it’s been months since I hit the beach or a banya, I’ll do that. Other things that help: hanging out with friends, watching a movie, talking to my parents, playing music, walking, working out.

Everything works.

HG: Are there any principles or mantras that you live by?

SR: Big things matter most; [do the] hardest shit first, don’t fuck off about time, it’s a marathon. I mean, I will probably work until I die, and I don’t do anything else. Everything is going to work out. I just really try to have a positive attitude about life. You do that and you’re halfway there. I’m sure there are more mantras too that I’ve forgotten but I like thinking this way. Life is great.

HG: Do you have a favorite meal?

SR: Definitely, a couple. That I make: Ground beef, rice, and Jerusalem salad. I probably eat it most nights. I vary the recipes but lately it’s with hawaij, reduced in some tomato paste/water and with garlic and tomatoes. A nice peasant meal, now and then with some beef heart in there. Otherwise, my mom’s cooking. Especially kubbeh soup, which are these semolina dumplings so to speak, prepared in different ways — with leeks, or with beets. That’s number one above everything else.

HG: What advice would you give to your younger self?

SR: Lighten up, take big chances, don’t be shy, give people the benefit of the doubt, be positive, think about your future, give yourself some credit, bust your ass… Everything gets easier, challenges get bigger.

HG: To the person reading this?

SR: Mostly the same advice, that is if you feel like you want to take my advice. I think one of the biggest things is, if you don’t take risks then that itself is a big risk. I could get all deep here but since this is a health newsletter I’ll just say: health is perfectible. The answers are out there. Like, they are. It’s crazy.

Granular advice? I don’t know, get some sun, read a book, do some push-ups, invest in some exercise bands.

HG: What would you like to see or create more of in the world?

SR: The world isn’t a fair place but I would like to see it not be hell on earth for so many people. It’s hard to know where to start. What’s that Malcolm X line? ”As long as you think that we should get Mississippi straightened out before we worry about the Congo, you'll never get Mississippi straightened out.” Pretty much.

As for myself, I’d love to create a body of work of normal cogent writing about health being a real attainable thing that can be understood by people who have lives and jobs… and can be attained by anyone. The edge of health, the middle — all of it. I’d also like to create other lasting work.

I would love it if there was a good movie where someone gets killed in it every three months. Hollywood used to do this and they don’t anymore. What happened?

What Sami’s reading: “Rereading Hammett's Red Harvest (masterpiece), the Graydon Carter book (I really like the Ottawa stuff) and this book, Going Once, a memoir by a Sotheby's auctioneer, that a friend sent to me and is great. And a Maigret for the train.”

What Sami’s listening to: “A lot of everything but lately Black Grape, the Burn 7”, Talal Madah, Yas Khidr, Bolt Thrower (usually Mercenary), new Kodak Black, Morrissey, My Dying Bride, Solitude Aeturnus, The Professionals (best band ever) and since it’s spring, Respighi.”