How chef Ethan Stowell lost 50+ pounds and kept it off

It’s not every day that a magazine food editor butts her nose into the topic of a prominent chef’s body weight.

But, we also couldn’t ignore the obvious shift in Ethan Stowell’s physical appearance. In the past year, Stowell, owner of 13 Seattle restaurants (and counting), has lost nearly 60 pounds. Frankly, he looks fantastic. And, I guess it inspired us.

We all know how hard it can be. Fitness and healthy eating is a commitment. So how do you lose the weight, and, keep it off, when you run a restaurant empire and still cook in your kitchens several nights a week? After 15 years in this business, I’ve met so many young-to-middle-aged chefs with stories about early hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease related to being overweight. It’s a tough lifestyle with terrible hours and little time for sleep and exercise.

Turns out Stowell’s health was also in decline. He had high cholesterol. His body mass index was rising. Then he had a health scare that sent him to the emergency room and he knew it was time to do something, he told us in a recent phone interview.

Sheepishly, we asked him how he did it and he graciously answered. For starters, he did it for his wife, Angela, and their two boys, Adrian, 3, and Frank, 1-and-a-half.

“I waited until later in life to have kids, so it was on me to make sure I do what it takes to spend as much time with them as I can,” says Stowell, who is 41. “I wanted them to be proud of me. Carrying around the weight made me feel bad about myself.”

Yes, it took both diet and exercise…and laying off little Frank’s Goldfish crackers.

What you may not know about Stowell is that in his early 20s, before he started cooking, he was quite the hard body.

“I used to work out all the time,” he says. “I was a weightlifter, runner, I did aerobics classes. I was kind of a buff dude.”

In January of 2015, he channeled that dude. He started by hiring a trainer…and it totally sucked, he says.

“I am awful at trying new things and sucking at them,” he admits. (Um, who isn’t?) “I was lifting a third of what I lifted back then (in my 20s).”

It took until November, but Stowell dropped 10 pounds. Then, “something clicked.”

“I started having a few good workouts and actually started enjoying it and feeling strong,” he says.

But, he adds, the weight really began dropping when he changed his diet. What did he eat?

He kindly told us: Vegetables and lean proteins for breakfast and lunch — think kale, mushrooms and egg whites; roasted pork loin or boneless skinless chicken with salad — and he drank 40 ounces of water a day. His afternoon snack became a Power Crunch Protein Bar he found at Trader Joe’s.

“For dinner, I ate whatever I wanted,” he says, between bites of the protein bar. “Still do. I drink at night, too. I like the dining experience and I like drinking f**king bourbon so I was super hardcore about morning and afternoon but left dinner for me to choose.”

He exercises on his own now, and tries to do it for an hour to an hour-and-a-half, seven days a week — a combination of running, cycling, weight-lifting and core work. He has gone from 236 to 185 pounds and says he feels more confident…and more flirtatious with his wife.

Chef Ethan Stowell before; photo by Geoffrey Smith

“Angela’s not sure what to make of it still,” he says of his wife and Ethan Stowell Restaurants CFO, adding that she has always been a fitness and health advocate. “But I think she’s excited for me.”

Stowell’s transformation has inspired a few employees to get fit. And, there’s a good amount of friendly jabbing in the kitchen when Stowell starts talking about diet and fitness.

“They’re like, yeah, we get it, you rode a bike today,” he says, joking.

When I asked Stowell about the health crisis among American chefs (if you can call it a crisis), he pointed out a potential cultural culprit. It is the hours, yes, but it is also what the industry — and Food Network devotees — celebrate.

“There are all these stupid cliches out there,” he says. “After I posted a photo on Facebook of me and Angela and the kids at Sayulita in our bathing suits, someone wrote, ‘Never trust a skinny chef.’ It’s a blue-collar industry and you expect to see a certain type of guy eating and drinking. It could do our industry a whole lot of good if there was some shift in values.”

Ethan Stowell’s newest restaurant, Marine Hardware, is now open in the former Chippy’s space in Ballard. Check it out at www.ethanstowellrestaurants.com.