Mark Wahlberg, one of Hollywood’s most famous fitness fanatics, is drawing laughs and disbelief with a confession about his early career weight-loss methods, which involved no gyms, no nutritionists, and no discipline anyone would recognize today.
“My idea to lose weight was smoking cigarettes, just drinking Bud Light, and eating minestrone soup,” Wahlberg says in the viral clip. “That’s all I did, that’s how I got down to 138.”
The 138-Pound Clue: This Was the Boogie Nights Era
The number gives away the timeline. Wahlberg has repeatedly cited 138 pounds as his weight for his 1997 breakout in Boogie Nights, the lightest he had been in a movie until he deliberately beat it nearly two decades later.
In other words, the cigarettes-and-Bud-Light regimen belongs to 1990s Wahlberg, the former Marky Mark reinventing himself as a serious actor for Paul Thomas Anderson, decades before he became the 4 a.m. workout evangelist of F45 gyms and performance-brand fame.
How Different Was The Gambler Diet? Very
Wahlberg’s later transformations were far more clinical, if not much healthier. For 2014’s The Gambler, he dropped from 197 to 137 pounds, telling MTV: “In Boogie Nights, I was 138 pounds, so I have to beat that.”
That time, the method was a medically supervised liquid diet of eight ounces of almond milk three times a day for six weeks, plus two to three hours of daily jump rope, a regimen so extreme his lips turned blue on camera from malnutrition, drawing studio complaints. “I became a miserable prick,” he admitted, describing sitting outside cafes just to smell food while his wife looked on baffled.
The aftermath was cinematic too: director Michael Bay saw the emaciated star before Transformers reshoots and “thought I was dying,” while Wahlberg’s first solid meal was a colossal breakfast, complete with sending back an insufficiently golden English muffin.
From Bud Light Diets to a Fitness Empire
The irony fueling the clip’s virality is the gulf between then and now. Today’s Wahlberg is synonymous with punishing 4 a.m. gym sessions, intermittent fasting protocols and his own performance-nutrition ventures, the polar opposite of a man treating lager as a meal plan.
His body-transformation résumé has become legend: 40 pounds gained for Pain & Gain on twelve meals a day, dramatic drops for Stu, and the yo-yo between Transformers muscle and Gambler gauntness, which he says freaked out his wife and children. “Hard work pays off,” he tells them.
A Method Doctors Would Not Sign Off On
It should go without saying, and Wahlberg’s own tone makes clear, that the cigarettes-and-beer approach is a cautionary tale, not a template. Health experts uniformly warn against smoking or extreme calorie restriction for weight control, and Wahlberg’s later blue-lipped liquid diet showed even supervised extremes carry real costs.
The confession lands instead as a self-deprecating time capsule: a reminder that before the fitness empire, the underwear billboards, and the tequila brand, a young Boston actor was winging it, one bowl of minestrone at a time.
Mark Wahlberg reveals he would Lose Weight by Drinking Beer and Smoking Cigarettes
“My idea to lose weight was smoking cigarettes, just drinking Bud Light, and eating minestrone soup.”
“That’s all I did, that’s how I got down to 138.” pic.twitter.com/H7kO8nCMc8
— Rexha 🐸 (@RexhaRexhaRexha) July 10, 2026
FAQ
How did Mark Wahlberg lose weight early in his career?
By his own admission: “smoking cigarettes, just drinking Bud Light, and eating minestrone soup,” which got him down to 138 pounds.
What movie was he in at 138 pounds for?
Boogie Nights (1997), his breakout dramatic role, the lightest he’d been on film until The Gambler.
How did he lose weight for The Gambler?
A medically supervised liquid diet of eight ounces of almond milk three times daily for six weeks, dropping from 197 to 137 pounds, so extreme his lips turned blue.
Is Wahlberg still doing extreme diets?
He’s now known for structured fitness: early-morning workouts, intermittent fasting and his own health-and-wellness businesses.
Should anyone copy his old method?
No. Smoking and severe restriction are dangerous; even Wahlberg frames the story as absurd rather than advice.
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