Being an actor means you might have to go through drastic physical transformations, to what your role demands. Mark Wahlberg is no stranger to this fact. Anyone who knows the actor knows how much time he spends at the gym. With the work he puts into his physique, you couldn’t look at him and say he is in his fifties!
However, if Mark Wahlberg knows how to maintain a perfect physique, he also knows how to let it go for the sake of a role. In order to play the lead role in the 2022 film, Father Stu, Mark Wahlberg had to put on a total of thirty pounds of fat to look the part. While getting to eat anything and everything throughout the day might seem like a dream, Mark Wahlberg would beg to differ.
How Weight Gain Took a Toll on Mark Wahlberg
Father Stu is based on the story of a boxer turned priest, whose life was flipped upside down thanks to a motorcycle accident. In order to play the character of Father Stuart, Mark Wahlberg had to gain thirty pounds by eating 11,000 calories per day! That’s not everyone’s cup of tea, is it? The actor stated that as the shoot was finishing its course, he was going to turn fifty years old. Wahlberg added that the weight gain took a heavy toll on him. He tells Entertainment Weekly,
“I put on 30 pounds and went from being a guy who was in fighting shape to a guy who was wheelchair-bound, suffering from a rare muscular degenerative disease. I was just turning 50 by the time we finished the movie, and I was eating 11,000 calories a day. That drastic weight gain really took a toll on me over the course of the last seven, eight months.”
Wahlberg also appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon where he once again addressed the drastic transformation. The Ted actor stated that while it was fun for just an hour, things went downhill pretty quickly. He stated,
“Unfortunately I had to consume for 2 weeks 7,000 calories and then for another 2 weeks, 11,000 calories. And it was fun for about an hour and then, you know, it’s just such a physical, a hard, physical thing to do. I mean, 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 3 hours. It was not fun.”
It looks like Wahlberg had immense dedication toward Father Stu. While prosthetics and make-up were always an option, Wahlberg sure prides himself on his ability to control his physique to his liking!
What Exactly Did Mark Wahlberg Eat?
While Wahlberg could have achieved the 30-pound gain by eating whatever his heart desired, he decided to take a more healthy approach to it. Well, kind of. He told E! that he started his diet by eating high proteins for the first two weeks and then starch and sodium for the remaining two weeks.
“I tried to do it in a healthy way. It was a dozen eggs and a dozen pieces of bacon, two baked potatoes, a Porterhouse steak, two bowls of white rice, and a glass of olive oil. The first two weeks were high proteins. The second two weeks were a lot of carbs. The last two weeks starches and then sodium, just to kind of get as bloated as possible.”
The glass of olive oil does not sound appetizing at all! However, Wahlberg’s resilience has to be commended. He wanted to make the film a reality, no matter what it took from him, and he was successful in his quest! All’s well that ends well as, after the film, Wahlberg was once again back on the grind to losing all that weight.
Father Stu is available to stream on Netflix.
Source: Entertainment Weekly
