Last week, Tom Brady announced the release of the TB12 Nutrition Manual, a $200 natural-wood-bound book featuring "core TB12 nutritional philosophies" and 89 recipes that "support your TB12-aligned nutrition plan." (Talk about branding!) Much of these nuggets appear to be a direct extension of the nutritional and strength philosophies of Brady and his longtime "body coach," Alex Guerrero. (The book is currently only available for pre-order, and sold out at that.)

But let's get this straight: There's a book out there, written by Tom freakin’ Brady, that supposedly shares the unconventional secrets of one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. For about a million reasons, our interest is piqued. To get to the bottom of it, we met up with Brady at the New York St. Regis on behalf of BeautyRest, the mattress company he's recently signed on with (and filmed a rather thought-provoking commercial for).

GQ: Tell me a little more about the evolution of TB12. Last I heard, it was an athletic-performance center near the Patriots stadium, and then out comes this cookbook.

Tom Brady: It’s not a cookbook! [laughs]

It’s not a cookbook, I know. I know.

It’s a nutrition manual.

So tell me a little bit more about that and how it came around.

Well, the concept started really generically. Five or six years ago, one of the guys I work with helped start TB12. I learned so many different things from him because I was kind of—and still am—an aspiring athlete in a lot of ways. I still want to reach my maximum potential, I still love doing what I do, and I want to do it as well as I can for as long as I can. And I learned a lot of different things over the years that I would say are probably nonconventional or different from the way things have always been done.

I always said to Alex [Guerrero], “Alex, when I get done playing, we have to teach people what we’re doing,” because so many athletes would love to have the information I’ve had about how to recover from injuries, how to take care of your body so you don’t get injured, the right types of foods to eat, what real hydration really means, what type of exercise you should be doing in the strength-training room so you don’t hurt yourself on the field. These are the conversations that he and I always had, things that we talked about. When I was laying on the table getting treated by him, he’d be saying, “Well, don’t do this” or “Make sure you’re eating this” or “This would be the right supplement to take for that.”

And so when you acquire this information, and you look around and things are still being done the way they were when I was 18—and I know those things don’t work—you feel like such a disservice if you’re not teaching your teammates about that. Now I’m going to be 39 years old, and now I’m all about spreading the message, so all my teammates know, “Don’t do that exercise. If you do that exercise, you’re going to hurt your groin.” Or, “If you eat this food, this is not going to be conducive to what your goals are. You better be getting this type of treatment if you’re going to do that type of exercise.”

It just makes common sense. People come in with plantar fasciitis or shin splints or knee pain that they’ve had for a long time. I had this friend come in, he’s like, “Oh, my God, my knee’s been hurting for a year.” And I’m like, “Well, just come back! You know the place.” And he came back last week, and after two days he’s like, “Oh, my God, it’s changed my life.”