As it turns out, the secret to washboard abs is eating 7,000 calories a day.
The evidence? Alexander Skarsgård’s rocking bod in “The Legend of Tarzan.”
The six-foot-four actor went to dieting extremes to get jacked for his jungle-dwelling jaunt as Tarzan in David Yates’ modern adaptation of the classic story about the vine-swinging hero, Skarsgård told Mr. Porter’s Journal.
In the three months leading up to filming, the 39-year-old tripled his food intake — eating upwards of 7,000 calories a day — and then turned to weight lifting to gain 25 pounds of muscle.
His friend and trainer-nutritionist Magnus Lygdbäck helped whip the actor into shape every morning starting at 4:30 a.m.
When Skarsgård began filming in London however, he turned to a strict diet that forbade sugar, gluten, wheat, dairy, and alcohol. He ate six small meals a day which were book-ended by two workouts.
Margot Robbie, who plays Tarzan’s wife Jane, told Entertainment Weekly, her co-star would come in Monday morning and ask her to describe what she had eaten over the weekend.
“I remember the day that he was allowed an apple, and he kissed the apple,” Robbie told EW. “It hit me how deprived your are if you’re that excited to see a piece of fruit.”
When filming wrapped Skarsgård told EW he went on a four-day pasta binge.
“I spent four days just in bed, being fed by Dad,” he said. “He cooked these pastas with rich sauces and bone marrow and fried mozzarella and tons of beer and wine. It was the most incredible weekend of my life.”
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