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When Ethan Suplee revealed earlier this monththat he had lost hundreds of poundsover the last few years, he never expected the following reaction.
“It’s wild,” he tells PEOPLE. “I became a meme.”
He started acting around age 16 and typically ended up in “roles for fat kids.” But Suplee would search for — and find — acting jobs that didn’t make his size the focus.
Ethan Suplee inRemember the Titans.Disney
“I never wanted to do something where I was the fat guy who was the butt of a fat guy joke,” he says. “I told my agents to look for roles outside the box that could work for me. There were instances where somebody would want to add a line about me being fat, and I would say, ‘Hey, no, we’re not doing that.'”
But Suplee wasn’t comfortable at his weight. He was dating his now-wife, Brandy Lewis, and they knewthey wanted to have kidsand do things like taking trips to Paris or going on hikes, which were tough for him then.
“I knew that if I didn’t change, I wouldn’t have that future,” he says. “That was the motivation that kept me at it.”
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His weight gain was partially for a role onChancewith Hugh Laurie —producers thought he was too skinny for the job, so Suplee added pounds. But once that ended, he decided he was done with letting acting jobs dictate his health.
Suplee started doing keto and quickly dropped weight, but he wasn’t retaining muscle.
“I was getting smaller, but I wasn’t starting to show muscle definition the way I wanted to,” he says. Instead, the research-driven Suplee read up on fat cells and muscle retention and decided he wanted to get down to the point where he has just 10 percent body fat.
“It’s completely arbitrary. I want to see a six-pack,” he says. “But I think those goals are important because it’s something you’re working towards.”
Now, Suplee follows a lean, high-protein diet with little fat, similar to what bodybuilders eat.
“I work to make my diet unenjoyable,” he says. “I’m trying partially because I’m a little bit of a masochist, but also because I want food not to be a crutch emotionally. I want it to be a source of fuel.”
It’s worked — Suplee is very close to his 10 percent goal and has visible abs, plus he’s been able to shift his mindset to where he doesn’t feel like he’s dieting.
“I am eating more food than I have in years,” he says. “We went on vacation for Thanksgiving, and I was terrified that I might gain a bunch of weight. But I didn’t lose weight because I ate the way I should. It doesn’t feel fragile.”
And Suplee says he’s going to stay at this fitness level, regardless of what acting roles come his way.
“This is how I want to look,” he says. “If somebody said, ‘We’re going to remakeAmerican History XandCold Mountainand some of your favorite movies that you were in when you were fat, and if you want to be in a movie, you got to gain weight.’ I’d pass. I don’t need to do it.”
source: people.com
