A bloke took on the brutal diet Christian Bale followed to drastically drop weight for his role in The Machinist. You can see his talk about the experience here:
Bale is well-known for going above and beyond for a role and we’ve never seen that more evident than when he starred as insomnia tradesperson Trevor Reznik in 2004 psychological thriller, The Machinist.
The actor lost over four stone while transforming himself into Trevor and reportedly followed a ridiculously restricted daily diet of one black coffee, a single apple, a tin of tuna and water.
Advert
While most of us would recoil in horror at the prospect of such a bleak diet - TikTok user Paulie or @pauliespaninis decided to give it a go for a week and he managed to lose more than a stone in just seven days.
In the clip uploaded to TikTok, he explained: “I tried the Christian Bale diet for one week which is a bottle of water, one apple, one tin of tuna and one black coffee.
“Done that for seven days.”
Breaking down how he handled the challenge, he went on: “I work 9am to 8pm, I would eat at 2pm, in the morning black espresso.
Advert
"Sips of water during day, I usually have about one litre of water, and eat apple and tuna at 2pm.
“First couple days were toughest, exhausted, hungry and no energy.
“After that was okay but I started drinking more water - one litre instead of 500ml.”
Despite finding the diet ‘rough’, Paulie has said he wouldn’t rule out doing it again as he was impressed with his results.
“It was rough at first but I lost over a stone,” he said. “I was 13 stone, I’m now at 11 stone 12 so happy days and on that side, I might give it another go.
Advert
“But for just now I’m going to get a McDonald’s and chill out.”
However, alongside the weight loss, Bale has previously said the diet left him unable to sleep - much like the character he played - and that all he ‘wanted to do was read’.
He told GQ: "The main point was that somehow losing all the physical weight put all the energy into my brain and so I only slept two hours a night and all I wanted to do was read. And so I would just sit and read endlessly and I found that I could read without stopping or moving or needing a distraction. I could just sit and read for 10 hours straight without moving a muscle."
I’m sure I don’t need to tell a bunch of sensible folks such as yourself, but just in case: please don’t try this at home.
Topics: Christian Bale, Food And Drink, TV and Film
Claire Reid