“I stopped eating gluten”: Matt Damon details the intense diet and training that helped him drop 30 pounds for “The Odyssey”
Matt Damon, star of the upcoming Christopher Nolan adaptation of The Odyssey, recently revealed how he dropped all that weight. Photos from the set published last year showed the actor with bulging arms and visible abs in one of the more extreme examples of body transformation for a role.
Please, don't try this at home.
Damon's "Odyssey" weight loss
After landing the role of Odysseus in Nolan's The Odyssey, Damon knew he had some work to do to portray the king of Ithaca from Homer's epic. The leader of the Greek forces against the Trojans was probably pretty jacked, and the famous ordeals he endured trying to get home from the war would have left him without much body fat.
On Wednesday's episode of Jason and Travis Kelce’s podcast "New Heights," the Bourne franchise star offered some insights into how he grew those muscles and dropped around 30 pounds for his new role.
"I lost a lot of weight," he explained. "[Nolan] said he wanted me, like, lean but strong."
"I haven’t been that light since high school. It was a lot of training and a really strict diet,” he added. “You get really routinized about it and kind of build your day around all that stuff. That's kind of the physical side of getting ready."
He revealed that he normally weighs between 185 and 200 pounds, but dropped to 167 to play Odysseus. In addition to exercise with a dedicated trainer, he ditched the gluten.
"I'm gluten-free everything," he said. "I found a gluten-free beer. It's been so long since I've had gluten, I can't tell if it's good or not. So that's a good sign."
Some, however, didn't believe that this was the whole story.
On X, @jcrew_eth warned that "all these actors take a cocktail of drugs to get into the shape they are in, dont let them fool you and dont think stopping eating gluten will get you the same results."
"Crazy how 'lost a ton of weight' for actors still means being absolutely shredded," wrote @caitlin_walt. "This is not the same struggle regular people have."
The risks of dropping weight fast
Actors changing their weight for a role isn't unusual, and sometimes directors can demand extreme transformations in a short period of time. While someone with Matt Damon money can probably handle it, experts warn against losing too much weight too fast.
According to a 2023 study, only 15 percent of people can maintain "non-surgical, non-pharmacological, weight loss" greater than 10 percent of their starting weight long term. Those who attempt severe calorie restrictions are more likely to rebound to a higher weight than when they started, and the related health risks can be serious.
These can include:
- Nutritional deficiencies
- Hormone imbalances
- Extreme fatigue
- Muscle mass and bone density loss
- Gallstones
- Depression and anxiety
Always consult a doctor before attempting any significant weight loss plan.
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