Zac Efron comes clean about the extreme dietary measures he took for ‘Baywatch’ body

Remember in 2017 when the Baywatch remake came out? No, well, that’s because it flopped, but there was one thing about the movie that was a little harder to ignore: the Greek God-like body of its star, Zac Efron. The man looked like he was sculpted from hardened clay. He looked like he got a new abdominal muscle every time he took a breath.

In a feature for Men’s Health magazine, Efron revealed what it took to get that incredible body for that movie, and honestly, it sounds terrible. It’s not just diet – it takes a whole lot more to get into that kind of shape. Even the actor himself admitted, “I don’t know if that’s really attainable.”

“There’s just too little water in the skin. Like, it’s fake; it looks CGI’d. And that required Lasix, powerful diuretics, to achieve. So I don’t need to do that. I much prefer to have an extra, you know, 2 to 3 percent body fat.”

If only Lasix and diuretics were all he had to do. The star also shared that he had to train more than is healthy and eat the same thing every day, three times a die. He also wasn’t getting enough sleep, he said. For example, if shooting lasted until midnight, he still had to get up at the crack of dawn to exercise.

What should’ve been a fun and easy experience turned into a nightmare, he explained, because the recovery from the work really did a number on him. He said he wants people to understand there are consequences for trying to look like that that goes way beyond the normal scope of recovery.

“I started to develop insomnia and I fell into a pretty bad depression, for a long time. Something about that experience burned me out. I had a really hard time recentering. Ultimately they chalked it up to taking way too many diuretics for way too long, and it messed something up.” 

He said it took him half a year to recover from the experience, and then after that, he felt like he had to take a break – from working out so much that it made him sick. However, that also didn’t help. He was used to working out a certain amount since he was a kid, and falling out of the habit just didn’t feel right.

“At one point, that was a dream of mine—what it would be like to not have to be in shape all the time. What if I just say, ‘Fuck it’ and let myself go? So I tried it, and I was successful. And for all the reasons I thought it would be incredible, I was just miserable. My body would not feel healthy; I just didn’t feel alive. I felt bogged down and slow.”

Looks like he’s finally found a comfortable middle.