Mark Wahlberg has been associated with a buff physique for pretty much his entire career, ever since those early Calvin Klein days—but after undergoing a dramatic body transformation, he’s now looking more swole than ever.
Last year the actor gained 30 pounds for a film role, a feat he accomplished over the course of a single month by consuming 11,000 calories per day and sticking to a special diet of KFC and Denny’s. “It’s such a hard, physical thing to do,” he said at the time. “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 three hours. It was not fun.”
After filming wrapped on Father Stu, he got immediately to work losing the weight, and has since got into perhaps the best shape of his career, as demonstrated by a series of post-workout photos he posted to Instagram this week in which he can be seen flexing shirtless and showing off his pump.
The post prompted a number of very impressed remarks in the comments, including from athlete and author Mikael Lindnord, whom Wahlberg will soon be playing in an upcoming movie. Lindlord called him “Benjamin Button,” referring to the F. Scott Fitzgerald character who ages in reverse, an oblique nod to the fact that yep, Marky Mark is in pretty amazing physical condition for a man of 51. Actor Paul Walter Hauser simply commented “Good Lord wtf?!” in response to his shredded frame, while Access host and Saved by the Bell star Mario Lopez, a friend and gym buddy of Wahlberg’s, wrote: “Killin it homie!”
“Mark’s a great guy,” Lopez told Men’s Health last year. “We have so much in common and are very much alike, both with our family, with our faith, with our fitness, everything. We both love martial arts, we’re around the same age, and we just refuse to let age dictate how we train, and we really push each other.”
Philip Ellis is a freelance writer and journalist from the United Kingdom covering pop culture, relationships and LGBTQ+ issues. His work has appeared in GQ, Teen Vogue, Man Repeller and MTV.
Comments are closed.