Recently wed Channing….I mean Chan (as he likes to be called) Tatum makes for one of the hottest GQ covers I’ve ever seen! The Alabama native takes lucky GQ Correspondent Lisa DePaulo to his “favorite place on the planet,” his Uncle Bruce’s ranch in Wetumpka.

During the interview he talks about this special diet he was on for an upcoming photoshoot and movie entitled, The Eagle of the Ninth.

“I have a special meal plan that I’m on,” he says. “It’s pretty much just chicken and broccoli and brown rice. Four times a day. And egg whites.”

Fun Fact: Did you guys know Chan worked as a construction worker then at a perfume counter in Tampa, Florida before making it as a model?

One night, out drinking, a buddy told him that Dillard’s was hiring at the perfume counter for $10 an hour. “I was like, $10 to sit in an air-conditioned place and spray cologne on a piece of paper? Yeah, I’m gonna do that.”

He got fired from the perfume counter—”Actually, I quit the day they were going to fire me”—for breaking into dances in the department store. And he went to work in a Tampa club, where he actually got paid to dance. Then he quit that, too, deciding to take his shot in the land of opportunity: South Beach. His first week there, as he wandered around looking for a job, “a creepy old man” stopped him on the street and told him he could be a model. Told him he could make $1,500 a day. Told him that all he had to do was…come back to his apartment.

Chan took off in the other direction. But when he got to his dumpy rental, he thought about what the guy had said. Maybe he could be a model. The next day, he walked into a modeling agency and got hired. Soon he was doing soda commercials (Mountain Dew and Pepsi); then he got picked up as a face (and body) of Abercrombie & Fitch. Then Armani.

Politics popped up during the interview. His relative were none too happy when he confessed who he voted for during the 2008 Presidential Election.

“I voted for Barack Obama,” says Chan.

“Don’t you go saying that around here,” says Sheryl. “You’ll be like everybody else out there.” She means in Hollywood. “Nobody around here wants to hear that you voted for O-ba-ma.”

“But I did,” says Chan.

“Well, then, shush,” says Sheryl. “You gotta have respect for the people who live here.”

“I don’t care. If they don’t like me because I voted for Obama, then fuck them. I like horses and I like Obama. Nothin’ wrong with that.”

You can catch this down-to-earth cowboy turned star in his upcoming film G.I. Joe. It hits theaters on August 7th.