Being an actor is no small task. In order to flawlessly bring different characters to life on the screens, actors have to sometimes go through rigorous and straining training and dietary changes. Mark Wahlberg is no stranger to this. His dedication to his role in Pain & Gain could possibly go down in the History books!

Mark Wahlberg
In an interview, he talked about wanting to get as big as he could to play the criminal bodybuilder, Daniel Lugo. Gaining 40 pounds in a matter of seven weeks is no child’s play.

The actor had to put on an average of under six pounds in seven days, each! Talk about dedication, right? Let’s take a look at how he managed to pull that off!

Mark Wahlberg on Achieving his Pain & Gain Physique
Mark Wahlberg in Pain & Gain
Appearing for an interview, Mark Wahlberg revealed that he had to go through a lot to become all bulked up for the 2013 film, Pain & Gain.

Coming fresh from his previous film at 165 pounds, Wahlberg had to immediately get onto a new regime for Pain & Gain, where he had to play a 205-pound bodybuilder. That’s 40 pounds of muscle gained in seven weeks!
“Once I signed onto doing the movie I was like, I was committed to getting as big as possible, lifting as heavy as possible. I’d drink two or three mass gainer shakes a dayand my calorie intake was pretty damn high.”
Wahlberg’s character was absolutely right when he flexed at the mirror and called himself Superman!

This wasn’t the Ted actor’s only rodeo where he had to make incredible changes to his body for a role. For the 2022 movie, Father Stu, Wahlberg had to eat eleven thousand calories per day in order to get in the body of his character which was based on the life of the heavyweight boxer turned priest, Father Stuart Long.

Wahlberg’s transformations are the perfect example of exactly what the human body is capable of!

Mark Wahlberg Impresses Dwayne Johnson
Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson in Pain & Gain
Dwayne Johnson is no stranger to having a ripped physique but even he had to admit that Wahlberg was on a different level for Pain & Gain. “I thought ‘ Wow, he really packed on some muscle’” Johnson stated about his co-star.

Director Michael Bay stated that while Johnson was already near to the physique his role demanded, he had to ask Wahlberg if he could do it. Later on, the Bay called the actor a machine stating that he gave it his all and was fully committed.

Even though for Wahlberg, there was a silver lining to the whole situation where he got to have up to ten meals a day, the task came with cons of its own. He stated that he had to eat so much that he could feel the food in his throat.
“The only part where that’s not fun is when you’ve gone to bed at 10 o’clock after a big meal. And then at 2 o’clock you wake up to eat again and you’re still full from the last meal. You can feel the food right here [throat]. When you burp, pieces of food come up.”
Wahlberg stayed on the same diet for twelve weeks! It certainly is not a piece of cake to stick to such an intense routine but the actor isn’t one to give up.