Ethan Suplee's HUGE Weightloss Journey

I’m Ethan Suplee, I’m 43 years old. I’m an actor, today I weighed 263 the heaviest I ever weighed on a scale was 536 on a uh, big, um, shipping scale because doctors didn’t have scales then they might know that could weigh me.

When I was five. I went to visit my grandparents in Vermont and they weighed me on a scale and that was the first time I had ever even thought, Oh there’s something with my weight. I remember being in elementary school and the little kids that in preschool, every time I’d walk by them would, would be like in awe at my size and talk openly cause they’re like unfiltered little kids.

I remember in school and I left school at 14 but I remember the feeling of not having a girlfriend or not being able to get a girlfriend that weighed on me and then I started acting and the weight was actually kind of a benefit because I was like, I had kind of encapsulated that role. If there was a young fat guy character I was close to the top of the list for for a time. I mean you get fed so much on a movie set, it’s insane. I think the only people that it actually works for calorically are like the grips who are constantly carrying heavy equipment from place to place and burning a shitload of calories. But for an actor, if I just have to stand there and say something and I’m otherwise sitting it, it doesn’t work out. Calorically so I would eat at work, but I’d normally get food and eat it alone. In my trailer. I wasn’t eating in front of people. I felt guilty about eating. Like I guess some part of me knew that my weight was due to me eating either the wrong foods or too much foods or not eating right. And so I would eat kind of privately.

Uh, uh,

and I had met this girl who was just a normal down to earth girl. I really cared about her and I started to see that the things she wanted in her life were not going to be, I wasn’t going to be able to accomplish them in the way she wanted to. She likes to go on hikes and she likes to go to the beach and these were things that I was not super comfortable doing and if we had to go uphill at all, and I mean like one or 2%, that’s kind of like out for me. Or it was in thinking about, um, how I could improve that relationship and, and make sure that it was really long term. The biggest thing was getting healthy.

I have done

too fast, which I don’t know if it exists anymore. Maybe it’s slim fast, something like that. I’ve done Atkins, I’ve done zone, I’ve done South beach, I’ve done fifth of life. I’m body for life. I’ve done the Beverly Hills diet, the Hollywood diet, the cayenne pepper diet, some other fantastic, I’ve done the blood type diet. I’ve done paleo, I’ve done Quito. I was of the school of thought that it was food’s fault. There was some aspect in food that was doing it. If I blame food or some aspect of food, then it’s a more confronted will thing.

I found Dr mikes Israel tells Ted talk, the scientific landscape of healthy eating and I watched it. I think I watched it four times in a row and I was like, he is saying stuff that is contradictory to the past 18 years of my dieting for 18 years of dieting. It has always been something about the food that has been the problem and what he’s saying is it is not the food that is a problem and I was like, what the fuck is this? And I decided I’m going to try this thing. I’m going to fucking sit down. I’m going to figure out how many calories my body size would burn. Normally I’m going to figure out what a slight deficit is and then I’m going to program it for what he’s talking about. And then it was a steady progression down. Now it hasn’t just gone down.

It fluctuates a little bit, which I’ve had to get cool with because I only want to see it go down. Um, and I have to like kind of mantra my way through that with science and people who’ve done a ton of diets. I would, I would stop looking to blame food if that’s what you’re doing in these, um, 40, 55 pounds. I’ve done two maintenance periods and this way that I’m doing it, having maintenance periods to like adjust is super key. Like in the middle of the program because you’re setting yourself up for some end period where you’re like, I’ve already done that four or five times. I know what that is versus fucking white knuckled diet to a point. And like now what do you do? I haven’t done this and now this is just for the rest of my life. I think the way it’s worked in there, you really get a sense of what maintenance is, how beneficial it is. And I have, and it’s been great.

I go to the gym and lift weights with this one goal of retaining all the muscle I have and I enjoy having that goal and I have a fat loss goal and I enjoy having that goal. I, I enjoy seeing it get closer and closer. I actually believe that I need goals and if, if I have no goal, then I’m not producing to my highest of the highest that I’m capable of producing. The goal now is fat loss and I’ve already got a goal ready for when I hit that goal, which will be muscle building.