Kumail Nanjiani Has Shared His Intense Diet That Helped Him Get Buff For ‘The Eternals’

By now, you’ve probably seen the shirtless photos of Kumail Nanjiani, the ones where he looks ridiculously jacked (technical term) and got him a free 10-year subscription to PornHub. And if you somehow haven’t, you will soon enough, once Marvel starts promoting the heck out of The Eternals. Nanjiani got buff to play Kingo Sunen in the Chloé Zhao-directed film, and in a profile with Men’s Health, he shared the intense diet he went on to, as Mac from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia might put it, cultivate mass.

While The Eternals was filming, Nanjiani was delivered five meals a day. “They were like, ‘If you’re going to have a can of Coke today, let us know in the morning so we can adjust and account for it,’” he said. Nanjiani usually ate the same breakfast every day — “steak and eggs, or eggs and chicken” — but would change things up for lunch and dinner. “While he was encouraged to eat what he wanted on weekends, he had so successfully cut out such hazards as added sugar and gluten that when he went crazy one night with some sticky toffee pudding, he felt it the next day,” Men’s Health writes. Eating the pudding or, god forbid, a cupcake would lead to “12 hours of physical pain,” he said.

That’s on top of his frequent workouts (electric shocks were involved), which led to Nanjiani having to “change my relationship to pain,” as he put it. “You’re so designed to avoid it, but in that situation you really have to be okay with it. You have to want it.” You what I want Pizza. All this reading about diets and “getting in shape” is hard work.

The Eternals, which also stars Richard Madden, Gemma Chan, Brian Tyree Henry, Salma Hayek, Barry Keoghan, Angelina Jolie, and Kit Harington, opens on November 6.

Our April 2020 Cover story starring Kumail Nanjiani: https://t.co/9GNEWUAMgo

— Men's Health Mag (@MensHealthMag) March 10, 2020