Alan Ritchson Eats An Ungodly Amount Of Calories Every Day To Stay Jacked For ‘Reacher’

Yes, Reacher‘s second season recently ended to put an exclamation point on that helicopter motif, but there is no rest for Jack Reacher. Alan Ritchson is already filming the third season, which will be based upon Lee Child’s Persuader novel and take place in Maine. An important “detail” for production, of course, is that Reacher must stay jacked, and Ritchson recently appeared on Michael Rosenbaum’s Inside Of You podcast and chatted about maintenance.

Granted, Ritchson has talked about honing his bod quite a bit already. People want to know these things, after all. Along the way, he admitted to squeezing in Popeyes and cookies, and although he cannot technically make his hands as large as dinner plates, he can pile on the muscle. Much of that is diet, and here’s how he manages to weigh between 200-245 for filming, but this calorie count is so nuts that workouts are a necessity:

“If I stop working out for a little bit, and I’m still on that, I’ve trained my body to eat 4,000 calories a day, it would take me about three weeks to blow up. So it does take a lot of consistency. I work out about five days a week. It’s got to be a lifestyle.”

In other words, being jacked ain’t easy IRL, unlike with the Reacher character, who is genetically jacked and basically shovels any junk food possible into his face. Ritchson on the other hand, previously told Kelly Clarkson that he has to scarf down “a conveyor belt of smoothies and protein.” Additionally, Ritchson has been open about taking testosterone at a therapeutic dose to help maintain his size without totally wrecking his bod.

You can watch a clip from Ritchson’s Inside Of You podcast appearance below.