Sylvester Stallone reveals surprising health struggle behind his famously ripped physique
Sylvester Stallone is sharing some health obstacles he has faced while playing physically demanding roles over the decades.
The Academy Award-nominated actor, 80, revealed during an interview with The New York Times that he has suffered from an eating disorder.
While prepping for his role in the 1982 movie "Rambo," Stallone — who has authored a new memoir, titled "The Steps" — said he took pains to appear more "animalistic," drawing inspiration from jaguars and cats.
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"Then it became an obsession. Really bad. It got to the point where I became bulimic," he said during the interview.
Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder marked by episodes of binge eating — consuming a large amount of food while feeling a loss of control — followed by purging behaviors such as vomiting, excessive use of laxatives or diuretics, fasting or excessive exercise, according to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
"I couldn’t hold anything down. Or I didn’t want to keep it down because I became so obsessed with staying at that point of fitness, literally an obsessive body-worship kind of thing," Stallone shared.
The actor said that while filming "Rocky III," he reached his lowest body fat of 2.6%. The National Academy of Sports Medicine classifies body fat as "dangerously low" if it falls below 8% for men ages 20–69 and below 14% for women ages 20–69.
Stallone also admitted that he took steroids during some time periods. "You have to," he said. "But you do it in a sensitive way — six weeks on, six weeks off … that also took a terrible toll."
Years of injuries sustained while doing his own stunts — something he described as "very masochistic" — have also taken a toll on Stallone’s body, he said, leading to multiple surgeries on his back, shoulder and neck.
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"I’ve abused my body," he said. "Everything is held together with baling wire, but I still want to stay in good shape."
Stallone also revealed that he has dealt with anxiety over the decades, recounting the first incident while watching footage from one of his films when he was 36 years old.
"All of a sudden, I stood up and the hair on my neck went up and I started getting hot and I go, ‘I’m dying, this is it, I’m on my way out,’" he said in the interview.
The actor said the panic attacks happened "again and again and again," often resurfacing before high-profile television appearances. As he aged, Stallone continued to experience anxiety and sometimes felt compelled to leave crowded rooms.
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Brian Pollack, a licensed clinical social worker and certified eating disorders specialist in Summit, New Jersey, said it was "incredibly admirable" for Stallone to share his experience.
"There are so many examples of what can take place in Sylvester Stallone's life that have led him to moments of objectivity and body awareness," Pollack, who has not treated Stallone, told Fox News Digital.
The expert suggested that a desire to maintain his success may have fueled Stallone’s rigid routines, steroid use, intense performance expectations, fear of failure, and the pressures associated with the entertainment industry.
"The idea that a man enhances his appearance to remain consistent with his own public image and internal comfort goes back decades — [Stallone] isn’t the first, and he isn’t the last," Pollack said.
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"He has to almost keep himself in this homeostatic state where people expect Sylvestor Stallone to be Rocky, which is his quintessential role," he went on.
"And through his career, one could surmise the need to be able to put all of that together and keep it consistent as he goes through the development and life cycles of maturation, not only in his brain, but also in his body."
Giulia Suro, a licensed clinical psychologist and certified eating disorder expert at Monte Nido in Washington, D.C., added that the Sylvester Stallone revelation was a "game-changer."
"Eating disorders continue to be misconstrued as primarily female illnesses," she told Fox News Digital.