NEWSNo Pain, No Gain! Mark Wahlberg Confesses He Ate 11,000 Calories A Day To Bulk Up For New Boxing Film
The pandemic had many of us eating more than usual, but Mark Wahlberg is on a whole other level. The actor revealed he packed on the pounds to play a boxer turned priest in the upcoming film, Stu, and it wasn't exactly easy.
"Unfortunately, I had to consume, for two weeks, 7,000 calories, and then for another two weeks, 11,000 calories," he revealed on the Thursday, July 15, episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
After the host showed off two photographs of Wahlberg's three-week transformation for the film, the Fighter producer said that the process was "fun for about an hour."
"It's such a hard, physical thing to do," he added. "And this, even when you're full, I would wake up after a meal and have another meal. I was eating every three hours. It was not fun."
While Wahlberg has pushed himself to the limit for roles in the past, the 50-year-old pointed out that gaining and losing weight for a role has only become harder with age.
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"Once the metabolism starts to slow down, it gets really difficult. I was trying to get this movie made for six years, we only had 30 days to shoot it, and so I wanted to really make it happen," he said. "And [I] was also crazy to have financed a lot of it myself. So I knew I was on a ticking clock on my own dime, and you get things done pretty quickly when that's the case."
The Ted star first revealed his plans to gain weight during an April 8 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, where he joked with host Jimmy Kimmel that he would be "eating lots of burgers and lots of buns" to pack on the pounds. He said at the time that he planned for his first big meal to be a "20-piece chicken nugget and 20-piece hot wings from Kentucky Fried Chicken with a six-pack of beer."
"They want me to do it as healthy as possible," Wahlberg shared. "Im like, ‘Dude, I’ve been on such a regimen for so long, I just want to eat everything in sight.' I want to go to bakeries, I want to go to Denny's, I want to get pancakes. I want to get everything that I could possibly get my hands on.
"Why not start with a bang?" the actor joked. "I might need a porta-potty too, but you know what, I'm ready to go."
