You want to see what shredded looks like? Then take a trip down memory lane and re-watch Rocky III. Although first premiering 35 years ago today, Rocky’s iconic physique is one that will stick with us forever.
But while Stallone looked like a ripped, fearsome machine on the outside, he admitted in a recent Instagram post that the ways he achieved it were dangerously unhealthy.
Stallone wrote that while filming the movie, his meals consisted of “very small portions of oatmeal cookies made with brown rice and up to 25 cups of coffee a day with honey and a couple of scoops of tuna fish.”
Yes, you read correctly – 25 cups. Is he for real? Never mind winning a fictional boxing match, the guy’s lucky he didn’t have a heart attack on set!
Apart from the insane amount of caffeine he was consuming daily (just imagining 25 cups is making us twitch), there’s are a few more things about his diet that leaves a lot to be desired: the lack of food in general, as well as the fact he wasn’t eating any fruits or vegetables.
Stallone even admitted that at times during filming he would get so lightheaded and exhausted that he’d need to go to a corner and literally do a handstand just to get blood flowing to his head again.
You can get an idea about just how crazy this food regimen was by Stallone’s body fat: at his most shredded, it dipped to a minuscule 2.9 per cent, the same as a professional bodybuilder’s. This is dangerous in it’s own right, as research now suggests that low body fat can decrease your heart rate as well as your testosterone levels.
Although Stallone admits the extreme diet probably wasn’t the smartest idea ever, he doesn’t regret it.
“I may have looked pretty good on the outside but inside it was a very dangerous thing to do,” Stallone wrote. “But I wanted the movie to be about change. How people have to adapt to different challenges because if they don’t they will be conquered. I will always believe that adaptation is the key to survival and that’s what this story was all about.”
