Sydney Sweeney underwent a major body transformation when she gained 30lbs to play boxing legend Christy Martin in the biopic, Christy. The Euphoria star looked almost unrecognizable after she packed on muscle after three-and-a-half months of grueling weight training and a change to her diet. However, after filming wrapped, the actress had just seven weeks to return to her pre-Christy weight ahead of filming The Housemaid and the third season of Euphoria, which was not only physically challenging but mentally challenging too. "I had to be really strict with myself," the 28-year-old told People about how she lost the weight she gained for Christy.
"When I was training, it was really hard to put on all the weight. I was eating so much food. Like, everything you could possibly imagine," she continued. "And then I was downing protein shake after protein shake and taking a lot of creatine, which just makes you bloat." Sydney revealed the first step she took to lose weight was to stop "all of that."
"When you stop working out and taking all your protein shakes, you lose muscle super fast," she explained. "It's the first thing to go before fat. So, that, I dropped within two weeks." Sydney also embarked on a "super clean" diet and "a lot of cardio" to help her shift the weight, but confessed that her "metabolism works really well."
"I don't want to say this is super easy," she stressed regarding the weight loss. "But I've been a very active person my entire life. Like, I was a super active kid, and I've always kind of just stayed active and always had a good metabolism. I can gain weight, but I can lose it too."
Speaking to The Guardian about returning to her previous figure in such a short space of time, Sydney said: "It was definitely a mental challenge and almost a physical withdrawal from being able to work out so much, which was kind of like a weird serotonin drop. I had to stop everything and drop all the weight."
While she "loved" the challenge of gaining weight to play the boxing legend, who survived a near-fatal attack by her then-husband, James 'Jim' Martin, who stabbed her four times before shooting her in the chest, Sydney previously admitted that the changes to her body were "crazy."
She told W magazine: "I came onboard to play Christy, and I had about three and a half months of training. I started eating. I weight-trained in the morning for an hour, kickboxed midday for about two hours, and then weight-trained again at night for an hour."
Sydney added: "I didn't fit in any of my clothes. I'm usually a size 23 in jeans, and I was wearing a size 27. My boobs got bigger. And my butt got huge. It was crazy! But it was amazing: I was so strong, like crazy strong."
Last October, Sydney gave fans a peek at her transformation into Christy, and the changes to her body were clear to see. Wearing a sleeveless tank top and sweatpants, Sydney looked so different, displaying her incredibly muscular arms as she proudly flexed her bicep.