Real-Life Diet is a series in which GQ talks to athletes, celebrities, and everyone in-between about their diets and exercise routines: what's worked, what hasn't, and where they're still improving. Keep in mind, what works for them might not necessarily be healthy for you.

SPOILER ALERT: The second-to-last question of this interview contains a major spoiler from the new season of the show.

Despite what Versace would have you believe, most relics of the mid-aughts have not aged well. One exception to that rule: Veronica Mars, the cult-y gumshoe-mystery-meets-teen-soap-opera that ran from 2004 to 2007. The show is near-universally agreed to have been leaps ahead of its time, which is probably why its surprising return for a fourth season—nearly 15 years later—has been embraced rather than ridiculed.

The return of one of the show's main characters, Logan (played by Jason Dohring), has also been wholly welcomed, in part because Dohring—like the series he stars in—has aged... gracefully. Vulture, in fact, recently ran a piece entitled "Just an Appreciation of Swole Logan on 'Veronica Mars."'

Logan's journey from psychotic jackass to sensitive military man won the hearts of most of the show’s fans—not to mention Veronica herself—back in the day. At the onset of the new season, he's living with Veronica in between active-duty tours, touting the benefits of therapy, and serving as a source of stability for his oft-cynical girlfriend. Somewhere along the line, it would appear that he also decided to lift weights and developed a jaw line that could cut glass.

But the real-life Dohring wasn't all that pressed about getting in military-grade shape for the show. After all, he'd already been training for 12 years with a guy who studies the physical proportions of comic book superheroes. (More on that in a minute.) In an interview with GQ, Dohring described the origins of his workout routine, how he's developed a hyper-precise, 45-minutes-a-day approach to the gym, and also revealed his beloved honey bee farm to the world.

GQ: So let's start with the obvious: Logan got pretty ripped this season. Did the show's writers ask you to look a certain way, or was that more of a personal goal?

Jason Dohring: [Rob Thomas, the show's creator] leaves it to me to do what I'd like to do. And I met a trainer named Eric Fleishman 12 years ago. He was very skinny in high school, and he used to read comic books. And at one point in his life, he was like, "Fuck this, I'm gonna look different." He basically trains you to look like a comic book character: super wide on the top with a high, flat, platelike chest, cannonball shoulders, a wide back, and a small waist. So he has certain exercises he does that create that look, which is pretty cool and unusual, because you look like you're 195 pounds from the chest up and 165 from the chest down. I also had a buddy that I grew up with, Mike Matthews, and he wrote a fitness book called Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. He was kind enough to talk to me about dieting too. So it was his information coupled with the art aspect that Eric provides, where fitness is about beauty.

Can you take me through what kind of exercises you're doing when you work out?

It's never, like, Monday is chest day, Wednesday is legs day. My trainer will assess me and go, "Boom. This is what we need." Which is great. That's how it should be! If you're going for this ideal situation, then you're just comparing yourself every day against that, and just getting yourself closer and closer to that. So we'd always look, like, "What are you missing?" And then fill that in. Your body can be representative of your art if you aim for a certain aesthetic. I don't train for marathons or anything. There's fitness and then there's exercise with an aesthetic intention, and I fall more into that latter category.