Matthew McConaughey Discusses His Shocking Weight Loss

Matthew McConaughey recently discussed his shocking weight loss with the folks at HitFix. The actor is portraying an AIDS patient in the forthcoming drama The Dallas Buyers Club.

Since accepting the role in the movie, McConaughey has lost a whopping 38 pounds in order to show the physical toll AIDS takes on the human body. At the time of the interview, the actor revealed that he only weighed 143 pounds.

The Killer Joe star explained that losing so much weight is a lot harder than most people may realize.

“Getting past 170 was really hard, but then once you get 167, the next seven come off easy. Getting past 160, really hard, but then you fly down to 150,” Matthew McConaughey explained.

He added, “Getting past 150 was really hard and then, Bam! Got down to 143 and that’s where I want to be. So, once you get past the plateau, your body seems to understand, ‘OK, this is where we’re leaving now, this is where we are,’ and so the energy rises.”

Once the five week shot has wrapped, the actor said he plans to bid farewell to the diet in a most spectacular way. If he can’t get his mitts on a po boy, McConaughey intends to celebrate by chowing down on a cheeseburger.

Here’s how the actor describes his ideal post-diet meal:

“I will have some 70 percent beef, 30 percent fat ground beef, maybe a half pound cheeseburger with another three types of cheese. I’ll prepare it all and I’ll make sure that it takes three hours just to prepare. I’m going to have buns with butter on both sides, toasted and grilled. I’m going to melt the cheese on the top bun, Hellmann’s Real Mayonnaise. I want kosher dill pickles sliced nice and thin, diced white onions, slightly grilled until they get almost hard, and some thin jalapeno slices.”

The Dallas Buyers Club, which also stars Jennifer Garner and Jared Leto, is expected to arrive in theaters sometime next year.

Of course, the Magic Mike co-star isn’t the only actor who has lost a dramatic amount of weight for a movie role. Christian Bale lost dozens of pounds to portray Trevor Reznik in Brad Anderson’s 2004 thriller The Machinist.

Are you a fan of Matthew McConaughey? What do you think about the actor’s dramatic weight loss?