Even Sylvia’s famous soul food can lead Reverend Al Sharpton to break his strict one-meal-a-day diet of “kale salad with boiled eggs, tomatoes, cucumbers.”
The pastor was spotted at the iconic Harlem eatery last weekend, and he told us he brought his own kale salad, “because I know they don’t have kale there,” he said.
Sharpton told us he started eating one meal a day “about four years ago.”
“I eat around noon every day, and that’s all. I’ll have the salad and in the evening I might have a slice of whole wheat toast because my doctor said I needed some kind of protein,” he said.
Sharpton was at Sylvia’s party with his daughter Dominique, who was recently eliminated from the celebrity reality show, “Claim to Fame,” in which contestants guess about celebrity connections or descendants.
“[Watching her on TV] was surreal… they had no idea who she was,” he gushed. “I never wanted my children to be Al Sharpton’s daughter alone. I wanted her to be alone, and she does,” he said.
Sharpton and Dominique were finishing a meeting in Harlem for his National Action Network organization when Rev. Jessie Jackson surprised them and suggested, “We’ll take Dominique outside,” Sharpton said.
He then called the restaurant and asked if he could bring his kale salad. Sharpton joked, “they broke soul food etiquette,” by letting him in with the dish.
“But we went to Sylvia’s, and they ordered all the soul food they wanted and I ate my kale salad,” he said.
By exercising and eating kale, Sharpton stayed slim.
“At my height — maybe 15 years ago — I weighed 305 pounds. Today I’m 132 pounds. I just made up my mind, and I just did it. Cold turkey,” he said.