You know an actor or actress is really committed to a movie role when he or she changes the way he or she looks for the role. We’re not just talking about putting on a wig or shaving your head. What’s even more extreme is very quickly gaining or losing weight.

We’ve seen actresses go on intense diet and exercise plans to drop weight for a movie after having a baby, and we’ve seen actors intentionally pack on the pounds to play certain characters. Gaining weight might sound like more fun than losing weight, but according to actor Mark Wahlberg, that’s not true. While you might think that gaining weight for a movie means you get to eat whatever you want and as much of it as you want, Wahlberg did not enjoy packing on 20 pounds in just 4 weeks.

Wahlberg gained the weight for a movie called “Father Stu” where he plays a boxer who becomes a priest. Before gaining the weight, he went on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and explained, “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 can possibly get my hands on.”

Instead of letting himself eat all the sugar and carbs he wanted for 4 weeks, Wahlberg actually stuck to a strict and healthy diet. His personal chef, Lawrence Duran, liked the challenge of helping Wahlberg gain weight, but he was determined to do it in a healthy way. He told USA Today, “This isn’t something that we’re just going into and we’re just eating pizza and pasta and whatnot. We’ve got a whole team that works together, and this is a lot to take on in a short period of time, so we have to make sure that his health is at its best.”

Wahlberg consumed 7,000 calories every day for 2 weeks. Then he upped it to 11,000 calories for the next two weeks. While we fantasize about eating a whole pizza and a box of doughnuts in order to meet those calorie goals, that’s very far from what Wahlberg ate.

Wahlberg ate every 3 hours. He would have a pre-breakfast that consisted of 4 eggs. Then he would exercise. Afterwards, he would have his real breakfast which consisted of “eight eggs, six strips of bacon, a cup of rice, two tablespoons of olive oil and a protein shake.” Duran told E!, “It’s his protein-inspired mass weight-gainer to help build on a little more muscle as well.”

Moving on to lunch, “we do some kind of ground beef or ground turkey, whether it’s been made into a hamburger patty or a meatloaf, with another cup of rice.” His chef added, “I usually do half of a roasted chicken, another cup of rice, I’ll do about a cup of cooked spinach and a cup of cooked beets as well.”

The eating isn’t over yet. Duran explained, “After two, essentially, main courses, Mark ate an eight-ounce veal or pork chop and a four-ounce piece of salmon with rice and beets, before his last big meal consisting of ‘eight ounces of some type of steak, eight ounces of some kind of white fish, like a sea bass or a halibut, and load up on tons of vegetables.”

Wahlberg talked to Kimmel again after the weight gain process. He said, “It’s such a hard, physical thing to do. Losing weight, you just kind of tough it out – you just don’t eat, and exercise. 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.”

You can see Wahlberg’s incredible transformation below in the before and after photos he posted to Instagram.

 

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A post shared by Mark Wahlberg (@markwahlberg)

By the way, it looks like he has already dropped the weight.

What would you eat if you had to gain 20 pounds in 4 weeks? Do you think it’s harder to gain weight or lose weight? Does it surprise you that Wahlberg found it easier to lose weight than to gain it?