‘My Body Flipped Me Off’: Charlize Theron on struggling to lose 50 pounds after turning 40

Charlize Theron bagged Academy Awards in 2004 for Best Actress, for her performance in Monster. She played the character of serial killer Aileen Wuornos which demanded a dramatic weight gain of 30lbs.The South African-American born star had gone through another drastic transformation for Tully, where she transformed herself again and gained almost 50lbs.But the actress was candid about the hard work and less-than glamorous aspects of gaining and losing weight as she told People in 2018.Previously she had spoken about how it was relatively easier to get back to her weight after the 2003 crime drama. But, with age, shedding excess weight gained for roles became nearly unfeasible.“My body flipped me off quite a bit. It’s just way different when you’re older,” she admits. “Also this time around I dealt with depression for the first time in my life. I just didn’t eat very healthy and a lot of the processed sugars and things just really put me into a terrible depression, and I’d never dealt with anything like that in my life. It totally took me off guard.”She unravels that losing weight at 42 was much more difficult than when she had to do it at 27.For her role in Tully, Theron revealed that in order to gain weight, she used to eat as much as she could, because some sense of responsibility spawned from her character which made her do that.She was playing the role of a mother with three children who had just given birth. In her appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Charlize revealed what she ate to gain 50 pounds for her role.Her main source of fat gain was “potato chips”, her “drugs of choice”.“I ate them everywhere. I had a bag in my car, a bag in the bathroom, a bag in the kitchen, a bag on the counter, a bag in my trailer. Everywhere I went there was just a bag.”I did this, yes, but mothers do this every single day. They get pregnant, they gain all that weight, and it takes them a year and a half to lose it, and if they don’t, they get judged”, she said to Ellen.While speaking about her weight gain journey, she reflected on the dark side of it. She said, “The hardest thing for me was I wasn’t prepared for how that amount of processed food will affect your mood. I dealt with depression for the first time. What they say about ‘what you eat is who you are’ is so true… I was lethargic and tired all the time.”Theron tried her best to return to her original form, reclaiming her previous healthy lifestyle by sticking to a healthy diet and daily exercise.“I called my doctor and said, ‘I think I’m dying because I cannot lose this weight.’ And he was like, ‘You’re over 40. Calm down. Your metabolism is not what it was.’ Nobody wants to hear that,” Theron said.During the time of Monster, when she was 27, she lost 30 pounds only by skipping her meals. “I missed 3 meals, and I was back to my normal weight.”Chalize’s workout choice included pilates which helped her achieve toned, strong body shape. She believes pilates has worked as a form of movement, reported by Hello. She is always very calculative about her activities.“I’m always calculating my activity. If I haven’t been moving a lot, I can’t eat a lot. Or maybe it’s a cheat day. But I’m honest with myself”, Charlize told Harper Bazar Australia.Pilates helped her to transform her figure into a sculpted one, but she also revealed to have incorporated power yoga to her routine and does two 90 minute classes weekly.When she wants to sweat, Charlize goes spinning up to four times per week and if she has time, she likes to play tennis, after being introduced to it by her mum. She said: "If you do exercise you enjoy, you’re keeping yourself fit without even realising it.”Charlize avoids alcohol intentionally and her meal looks green as she incorporates juice and kale green salads everyday.Her weight loss journey almost took a year and half which she considers to be a very long journey.