It’s not uncommon for Hollywood starlets to change their bodies drastically for a movie role. With studios providing personal trainers and dieticians to make sure they get the job done, the transformation is often amazing. The actress loses weight, the movie makes a few million dollars and everybody goes home happy, right? Well, not exactly. As Mila Kunis recently admitted in a Harper’s Bazaar interview, when the weight comes back, it’s not always where you’d like it to be.
Last year, Mila Kunis twirled and grand jete’d her way across the screen as Natalie Portman’s ballet rival in Black Swan. Though she was already thin, Mila lost 20 pounds in just a few short months to play the fame-obsessed ballerina. About her Black Swan body, Mila reveals, “I was muscles, like a little brick house, but skin and bones. When I gained it back, it went to completely different areas.”
Health experts say redistributed weight is a common problem associated with rapid weight loss. As fat is lost, unfortunately so is muscle tissue. When the weight comes back on, it comes back as fat. Where it lands depends on your genetic predisposition, not your opinion of where you’d like it to go. Though Mila would’ve preferred to put some meat back on her chest and derriere, instead she says, “All the weight that left my chest, went to my side hip and my stomach.”
Rapid weight loss can have a devastating effect on your metabolism too, making those extra pounds harder to deal with. According to the Mayo Clinic, when you drastically restrict calories, your body compensates by slowing down to conserve what it needs for survival. Once you start eating normally again, the dial on your metabolism is still on low, so you gain weight easier.
The golden rule about weight loss still applies. Losing only 1 to 2 pounds per week is recommended for any diet. This allows your body to adjust and adapt to the change, minimizing the loss of muscle tissue.
Interestingly, though Mila is working through her body changes with a personal trainer and clearly is lamenting the process, she says she wouldn’t turn down a similar role, adding, “I’m not going to say I’d look forward to it but if an offer came along, I’d do it.”
Mila Kunis’ interview can be found in the April 2024 issue of Harper’s Bazaar, on stands now.