Mark Wahlberg's 'Gambler' Diet Involved Lots of Pain and No Gain

Mark Wahlberg in 'The Gambler'. Photo: Paramount Pictures

In order to play a lean, desperate card shark in The Gambler (in theatres March 5), Wahlberg decided to shed 60 pounds (that's 27 kilos!) from his jacked-up Transformers body.

According to a New York Times profile, the actor accomplished this by going on a “medically supervised liquid diet” consisting of eight ounces of almond milk, three times a day.

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If you’re thinking that 24 ounces of almond milk (equivalent to a Venti cup at Starbucks) isn’t enough to live on, you are correct: The actor has said that his lips literally turned blue from malnutrition while he was filming The Gambler, about a college professor whose secret gambling obsession sends him into a tailspin.

Mark Wahlberg in 'Transformers' (L) and 'The Gambler' (R). Credit: Paramount Pictures

He reportedly kept up the liquid diet for six weeks before re-introducing himself to solid food. As he told Yahoo Movies earlier this year, the weight-loss plan made him "miserable."

"I’m a huge foodie," he said at the time. "I’d have a dinner meeting with a group, and just watch them eat. I had a major, major craving for anything and everything. I would go to places and look at the menu. My wife would be like, ‘Why are you torturing yourself?’"

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The Gambler regimen is a far cry from Wahlberg’s last extreme movie diet, when he ate up to twelve meals a day to gain weight for 2013’s action drama Pain and Gain.

“I’d wake up at 4:30 every morning, have a nice big breakfast — a pre-workout igniter — and then I’d hit the heavy weights, depending on the day and the routine for the day… And then a protein shake right after the workout,” he told Men’s Health.

“And then chicken, steak, fish, a little bit of pasta here and there. Just really overloading, meal after meal after meal…Food really did stop having any real taste for me.”

Not only did Wahlberg modify his body in preparation for The Gambler, but he went to great lengths to understand his character’s gambling addiction.

Mark Wahlberg and Brie Larson in 'The Gambler'. Photo: Paramount Pictures

While filming Transformers: Age of Extinction in Hong Kong, the actor turned his hotel room into a gambling parlor, where he would play poker and bet on sports with his trainer, his body double, and the other friends from the set. He also borrowed money from friends in Hong Kong in order to experience the thrill of gambling it all away.

“I put everything on black and lost everything,” said Wahlberg, whose investors weren’t thrilled when their money disappeared at the Hong Kong casinos.

“They were going: ‘What are you doing? You just lost all of our cash.’ I go: ‘Don’t worry. You’ll understand when you see the movie.’”

Gwynne Watkins writes for Yahoo Movies.