Do you know that guy? No? And what about now? Hard to believe it is one and the same person!
We mostly remember Ethan Suplee as a big guy from American History X, Remember the Titans
and My Name Is Earl. In 2002, at his heaviest, Suplee weighed 530 pounds and it took him
almost two decades to lose nearly half of this weight.
But in reality, this journey started in his early childhood and was quite traumatic for
the actor.
Subscribe to Rumour Juice channel before we tell you the real weight loss story of Ethan
Suplee and how along with his weight he started losing acting jobs.
In general, the actor says he's lost and gained at least 1,000 pounds over the course of his
life and that sounds pretty much crazy and rather dangerous.
The 43-year-old who opened up about his struggles on his own podcast, believes his unhealthy
relationships with food started when at the age of 5, when he went to visit his grandparents.
"...they were kind of shocked at the state of me. Now back then - this was like late
'70s, early '80s - the fat version of me at 5-years-old was probably close to what the
average is today, but back then it was startling. You know, there weren't a lot of fat kids
back then, certainly not as many as there are now."
He was made to take off all his clothes and get on a scale. When they weighed the boy,
they were literally shocked. Even though little Ethan was not told the exact numbers, from
that point they started limiting his food. It was the first diet in Suplee's life and
the starting point of his trauma, that would result in discomfort to be eating in front
of other people for the rest of his life.
"I learned really quickly that when I wanted a second plate of lasagna I had to do it really
quickly without them seeing."
That secrecy and shame associated with food led to Ethan binge eating multiple meals in
private.
At the age of 10 the boy weighed over 200 pounds and his father decided to put him on
a liquid diet comprised of protein shakes and diet soda. But his mom was on the other
side of the barricade and she pulled him off of the diet.
"Then, I had a big upsurge of weight gain and I kind of didn't think about weight loss
again until I was like 20."
Ethan started acting around age 16 and asked his agents to look for the roles that would
not focus on his weight.
"I never wanted to do something where I was the fat guy who was the butt of a fat guy
joke"
In his twenties, however, Suplee would indulge voluntarily in numerous diets, with mixed
success. It was also in his twenties when Suplee landed several memorable roles, one
of them - on the sitcom My Name Is Earl that aired in 2005.
Between 2002 and 2005, Suplee went from 530 pounds to around 290, but he confesses that
after landing the role on My Name Is Earl he got (quote) "lazy and relaxed."
Around that time, the actor also had a big change in his private life as he started dating
Brandy Lewis who would later become his wife.
Even though Lewis never said a word about her husband's weight, Suplee realized that
he had to change in order to have the future that they both want, which is kids and all
kinds of activities like travelling, going on hikes and others. It became his main motivation
back then.
He started gradually losing weight, the result was apparent. When asked in 2011 how he lost
so much weight, Suplee told TMZ: 'I ride bikes. I ride road bikes.'
He really seemed to become quite obsessed with cycling.
After My Name Is Earl was canceled, Ethan admits that the acting roles dried up for
him and he knew he had to do something about his weight. He told EW in 2017:
"After My Name Is Earl, I started obsessively riding bicycles. I actually did get properly
thin at one point - I was nine per cent body fat. But I was also riding a bicycle six to
eight hours a day, six days."
Interestingly, no one wanted the Suplee who lost weight in their movies. Having previously
lost quite a bit of weight, he then started piling it on again. He revealed how it worked:
"At some point I was like, 'I'm just gonna get fat again because maybe it'll be better
for work,'" he revealed. "And honestly, it was."
His weight gain was partially for a role on Chance, with Hugh Laurie - producers thought
he was too skinny for the job so Suplee added pounds. But when the series ended, he decided
he would not allow the industry to dictate its rules. And that's exactly when Ethan's
journey towards his today's shape started.
He began hitting the gym 6 days per week, gradually losing fat and gaining muscles,
he took care of his eating habits and started carefully controlling calorie intake. All
the hard work paid off and Suplee has no plans to get back to his overweight state.
"This is how I want to look. If somebody said, 'We're going to remake American History X
and Cold Mountain and some of your favorite movies that you were in when you were fat,
and if you want to be in a movie, you got to gain weight.' I'd pass. I don't need to
do it."
Ethan has his own podcast called American Glutton, where he talks to various experts
(and not only) about dieting and sports. He continues acting and has just appeared in
Motherless Brooklyn along with Edward Norton.
So it looks like Suplee is doing pretty well. Even though his journey took decades and was
far from easy, he has reached his desired destination.