The Intense Regimen Behind Ethan Suplee’s Life-Changing Transformation

If you’ve seen "Remember the Titans," you’ll remember actor Ethan Suplee as offensive lineman Louie Lastik. While offensive linemen typically have the size to protect their quarterbacks, Suplee is the heaviest he’s ever been. In fact, he had to be weighed on a shipping scale at a shipping center because the scale at his rehab center couldn’t accommodate his size. At 24, he weighed 536 and suffered from congestive heart failure.

It was a reunion with his teenage crush in 2001 that inspired him to rethink his relationship with health and his body. After dating her for a year, his weight loss journey began.

“For the first time in my life, I was interested in the future and experiencing it with her,” Suplee said. people. “It’s like spending the day walking around a museum or going on a trip or hiking, but I just don’t have the physical strength to do it.”

Fast forward to nearly 20 years later, and he’s married to his inspiration, Brandy Lewis, with whom he has four children. Suplee also lost 250 pounds. His successful weight loss journey didn’t involve fad diets, liposuction or ozone therapy, but relied on exercise and a healthy diet.

After starring in "My Name is Earl," Suplee took up cycling. Not just a one-hour spin class, but a hardcore cycling class. he told entertainment weekly He rides his bike six to eight hours a day, six days a week. Cycling lowered his body fat to 9%, and he weighed 220 pounds.

Cycling at an easy to moderate pace can burn 300 calories per hour, and you can burn more if you’re on hilly terrain or riding at a faster pace. Even if Suplee rode easily for 6 hours a day at an easy pace, he would burn at least 1,800 calories. Riding a bike for that long likely helped him gain some muscle, which could help fire up his metabolism.

It turns out that riding a bike is too much. His casting director rejected him because he was too thin, and his wife convinced him to tone down his obsession with bicycles. "Hey, idiot, you can’t retire and ride a bike," she said. "You have to get a job." Suplee landed a role on Hulu’s Chance, where he would relax some of his dietary restrictions and take up martial arts and weightlifting.

Although Suplee lost a lot of weight while cycling, he said in the podcast, american gluttonhe showed no sign of a six-pack. He turned to strength training (a benefit of strength training that might surprise you). Suplee’s Instagram evolved in 2019 from promoting his acting work to Fitspo. By 2020, he was seriously deceived.

Suplee isn’t concerned with maximizing his lifts. Instead, he focuses on building muscle, which means adding more weight, reps, or sets so that his body is constantly challenged. You don’t need a ton of time, but it does require dedication. Suplee lifts weights for an hour and does about 20 minutes of cardio six days a week. he and men’s health His push day workout consists primarily of chest exercises.

After a brief warm-up, Suplee will perform three sets of 10 dumbbell flyes on the incline, followed by low bench presses of 10 reps on the machine. If you have access to a cable machine, try three sets of 10 cable scoops, starting low and scooping your arms forward to shoulder height. Add dumbbell pullovers and skull-crushing moves to work your triceps.

Suplee had a tense relationship with food growing up, eating food in secret when his grandparents tried to restrict his eating habits. He would secretly gorge on table food from movies and TV shows. "I had this idea that food was something people didn’t want me to have, so if I wanted more of it, I needed to do it in private," he said on the first episode of his podcast, American Glutton.

He got stuck in a weight-loss cycle (the toll yo-yo dieting takes on the body) while trying multiple diet trends. Suplee had been following the ketogenic diet until he saw Mike Israeltel’s TED Talk, which focused on the amount of food you eat and the quality of your diet. Rather than being obsessed with carbs, Israel promotes a more balanced diet. "I started tracking what I was putting into my body and reintroducing carbs into my diet," Suplee told me today. "I started eating what I wanted, but in portions that were right for my body."

This approach allows Supree to reduce overeating and view food as fuel for the body. He allowed himself one cup of rice, potatoes or pasta per day, but the diet was lower in fat and higher in protein. Later, his physical transformation became less about the number on the scale and more about achieving goals like visible abs. By January 2021, he had achieved his goal of having visible abs and posted his first shirtless photo on Instagram as part of a Men’s Health photo shoot.

Suplee’s 500-pound body stretched his skin visibly, and his dramatic weight loss left a lot of sagging in his skin. he told men’s health Paparazzi would use his photos as a bad example of drastic weight loss. According to one person, losing more than 100 pounds requires surgery to remove excess skin and tissue. 2010 Articles Medicine in Missouri. Excess skin folds can lead to bacterial or fungal infections, and heavy skin flaps can cause severe pain. Some people may have a skin apron that hangs down to their knees.

Suprei required two surgeries to remove the excess skin. "Skin is inherently elastic, but it can also become very elastic," he Say on Instagram. "Once it gets bigger, not just stretched, there’s no way to shrink it. The body can’t catabolize skin."

Despite the surgery, he showed on Instagram that he still has some loose skin on his body. You can even see some scars from his surgery.

Suplee said one of the problems he encountered was finding a way out of "diet mode" and finding ways to maintain the weight. On his American Overeater podcast, he spoke with obesity expert Dr. Spencer Nadolsky, who outlined the issues with weight loss plateaus and the need to stop dieting when trying to lose weight. Suplee said he would worry about adding more calories to his diet for fear of gaining weight back.

(Learn what happens to your body when you lose weight too fast.)

Suplee also struggled with changing to a low-fat diet. He said he had a hard time quitting keto because he gained eight pounds in a matter of days. However, a week later, he noticed he had lost eight pounds, then several more. Although the weight loss was slower, he noticed mostly fat loss.

Once he reached his weight and body goals, he found it challenging not to measure pounds, inches or body fat. "I’m now trying to learn how to live in maintenance and be happy with it," he told me men’s health. He enjoys eating out with his family and savoring every bite without guilt or purpose.

Suplee’s maintenance method also makes my wife very happy. "Brandi was with me through a very, very painful diet where I was eating 400 calories a day and I was not a pleasant person," he told me. today. "I have the energy to do things now. Life is so much better."