celebrity weight loss and gain transformation
Lifestyle

8 Celebrities Dish On Their Weight Loss (and Gain) Transformations

It’s not rocket science, just hard work.

There’s no magic pill to transform your body. While celebs post impressive transformations on Instagram all the time, no words do true justice to the work that really goes into it.

But maintaining it takes a whole other level of diligence—we’re talking the long game of healthy lifestyle habits.

Tom Arnold’s transformation came after suffering a stroke, Jonah Hill focused on his diet—with plenty of Japanese food—to overcome issues with his body, and Chris Pratt wanted to prove he could be a leading Marvel man.

Here’s how they, and five others, took charge of their health with the impressive transformations to show for it.

Chris Pratt

Watch The Office or Parks and Recreation and the Chris Pratt of then is nowhere close to who the Marvel star is now. One noticeable difference? His 60-pound weight loss transformation.

“When Guardians of the Galaxy was pitched to me, I said, ‘I don’t think so.’ I just didn’t picture myself getting the role,” Pratt told Esquire. “I didn’t want to go and embarrass myself like I did when I auditioned for G.I. Joe a couple of years previously. I went in there, and halfway through I saw the director’s eyes just glaze over. It made sense—I was a little heavy and out of shape.”

But Marvel couldn’t care less. Pratt partnered with personal trainer Duffy Gaver and nutritionist Phil Goglia, increasing his daily calories to 4,000 and incorporating workouts like P90X, running, swimming, boxing, and kickboxing, according to Men’s Journal.

“I actually lost weight by eating more food, but eating the right food, eating healthy foods and so when I was done with the movie my body hadn’t been in starvation mode,” Pratt told People. “It wasn’t like I was triggered to just gorge myself and get really fat again.”

With healthy eating habits under his belt, Pratt told People maintaining shouldn’t be a problem even with fewer weekly workouts.

“It’s something that I think I can maintain because now I don’t spend four hours in the gym each day. I do maybe one hour in the gym maybe four days a week, and that’s it,” he says.

John Krasinski

John Krasinski on stage speaking

When Krasinski landed his debut action role in 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, the lovable, lanky Jim Halpert turned into a rock-hard hero.

It was brutal at times,” Krasinski told Men’s Health. “We did tons of metabolic work, dragging sleds and all this stuff I’ve seen NFL players do.”

Krasinski told Jimmy Kimmel on Jimmy Kimmel Live that he was, “basically eating salads and chicken and water,” with two workouts a day five to six days a week. He went from 25 percent body fat down to nine percent.

“I liked to look at our training and make sure that what was onscreen matched what would be born out of his routine and his job,” Krasinki’s trainer Simon Waterson told Men’s Journal. Waterson also paired active recovery, like yoga and physiotherapy, with the grueling workouts.

Now, Krasinski’s approach to staying lean isn’t to pump away in the gym every day.

“I did it for the role, and then I definitely got addicted to it,” he told Men’s Health. “I take periods off.” His goal is to “be able to shift back and forth.”

Krasinski didn’t shy away from throwing some friendly shade at another fellow action star. “I think that’s better than saying, ‘Stay ripped your whole life.’ Because that’s really annoying, and the people who do it really easily annoy me. Yes, I’m talking to you, Chris Hemsworth.”

Kumail Nanjiani

Nanjiani sent social media into a tailspin when he posted his shredded shirtless transformation for Marvel’s The Eternals—a transformation that took an entire year of everything he had with help from celebrity trainer Grant Roberts.

“Kumail was a pretty blank slate when I met him,” Roberts told Muscle and Fitness. “He was about 150 pounds and doughy, to be polite.”

Nanjiani and Roberts set “realistic goals” of “increasing muscular size, dropping excess body fat, and creating total body symmetry,” Roberts told Insider.

It wasn’t long before five workouts a week—focusing on one or two body parts at a time—along with a high protein, low carb diet yielded results, Roberts told Muscle and Fitness. Nanjiani had a “huge lean mass gain”, packing on 25 pounds and dropping 10 percent body fat.

To stay lean, Nanjiani follows an 18/6 intermittent fasting cycle. “I won’t eat for eighteen hours, and then I’ll compress everything into six hours of the day. If I’m doing that, then I don’t eat breakfast,” he told Men’s Health.

Working out at least four days a week, Nanjiani sleeps better, is less anxious, and has more energy. “The motivation is just health—I just feel healthier than I have in twenty years.”

Celeb Health Habits

David Harbour

Harbour’s incredible 75-pound weight loss transformation in just eight months was a “daily battle,” he said in an Instagram live post.

“It’s like building a house. If you knew how hard it was from the start on day one you might not do it,” Harbour says, “But when you do it brick by brick, it’s fun and you come to enjoy it.”

With help from celebrity trainer David Higgins, Harbour’s fitness routine focused on calorie burn and toning with kettlebell training, Pilates, and steady-state running, the former he quickly fell in love with.

“I began doing an hour of steady state running every day,” says Harbour, “Around that time I was feeling the stress of the pandemic, and running helped to regulate my breathing, and calm my anxiety.”

Harbour loved the 18-hour intermittent fasting cycle because his, “body responds really well to it.” He also tried 24- and 48-hour fasting cycles which were challenging with “rolling phases of tremendous hunger.”

To stay fit, Harbour runs regularly and recently partnered with Brooks Running for their “It’s Your Run” campaign. While his transformation was a “rebirth,” Harbour told People that he isn’t fully settled on his most comfortable weight, but feels “pretty good” about his journey.

Jonah Hill

Jonah Hill posing for oscars

It’s not easy for this oscar-nominated actor to open up about his struggle with weight. But the 34-year-old got candid with Ellen Degeneres on The Ellen Show saying, “I spent most of my young adult life listening to people say I was fat, gross, and unattractive,” and only recently did he realize, “how much that hurt and got into my head.”

In an effort to slim down, Hill focused mostly on his diet.

“I wish there was some crazy thing that I did, like a pill or a genie or something, but it was, unfortunately, I went to see a nutritionist, and he told me what to eat to change my habits and stuff,” Hill told ABC News. “I found that Japanese food was very helpful to me.”

Hill also told Kidd Kraddick in the Morning that he “started physically running instead of emotionally running” and that he also does 100 push-ups every day.

Shaquille O’Neal

After a hard year in 2020—where Shaq lost his sister and close friend Kobe Bryant—he knew he needed to get his health in check.

“I started to eat better and to make better decisions,” O’Neal told Men’s Journal. “So I just decided to switch it up. No more bread, no more late-night lemon Oreos, no more Entenmann’s cakes, none of that. I’ve been doing this for six months and just eating fruit, protein shakes, salads, fish, chicken, and asparagus or other vegetables.”

Along with smaller portions, Shaq has dropped nearly 30 pounds and, “started to see stuff that I haven’t seen in 20 to 30 years—like a six pack.”

Shaq doesn’t do anything fancy for fitness either. I just go into the gym like everybody else does,” he told Men’s Journal. “I do 20 minutes of cardio, I’ll do some chest, bis, tris, sit-ups, back, and then I’m gone. 30 to 45 minutes a day, plus cardio–so about an hour a day.”

What motivates Shaq to keep his routine on point? He told Logan Paul on the Impaulsive podcast that he doesn’t want fellow NBA on TNT co-host Charles Barkley’s body. Oh, and he “wants to be a sex symbol,” too.

More Celebs

Tom Arnold

The Roseanne star lacked “any structure” before his 100-pound weight loss transformation.

“Some days I would graze all day, on days I would have to film I might eat 6,000 calories at 9 p.m. after a long day of eating nothing,” Arnold told People.

But that all changed after Arnold suffered a stroke. With help from coach Charles D’Angelio, Arnold changed his mindset and got to work.

“First thing out of bed each day, no matter where I am, I’m on the elliptical for 30-60 minutes,” he said. “I don’t run to food to escape my feelings or stress anymore, I have a plan and I follow it, that’s it.”

He eats six times a day and doesn’t shy away from a sweet treat. “I have ice cream, and it’s delicious when you don’t eat it all the time,” Arnold told TODAY.

The 63-year old actor feels better about his body and realized exercise was good for his mental health. “It’s good for my head—I don’t have enough energy to fight all the battles in my head,” Arnold said. “It takes the edge off.”

Tyler Perry

When Perry got the call that he would star on Alex Cross—and that he would be replacing the OG Cross, Morgan Freeman—the 53-year old actor got to work.

His workout routine consisted of hour-long morning circuits including everything from cardio, bodyweight exercises, and free weights, according to Men’s Health. As for his afternoons? Well, Perry practiced Krav Maga, an Israeli martial art.

He also swapped those fun foods he grew up with, including pancakes and jambalaya, for egg whites, grilled chicken breasts, and green shakes.

The result: a 30-pound weight loss transformation.

“I walk into a room with a lot more confidence,” Perry told Men’s Health. “I feel like it’s okay to be thought of as sexy.”

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