This is what happens when you really devote time and commitment to exercise and fitness. In most of the roles during actor Ethan Suplee‘s career, he was known as either obese or quite chubby. He played an obese bully Frankie Stechino on Boy Meets World from 1994-1998, and still had his heavy body playing a neo-Nazi Seth Ryan the 1998 film American History X. But over the years he’s whittled down the excess weight and now has muscles any bodybuilder would kill for.
Ethan has dropped over 200 pounds since he was at his heaviest point. He was pleasantly chubby when he starred on the NBC comedy My Name is Earl from 2005 to 2009, but after the show ended he slimmed down big time. “After My Name Is Earl, I started obsessively riding bicycles,” he told Entertainment Weekly in 2017. “I actually did get properly thin at one point — I was nine percent body fat. But I was also riding a bicycle six to eight hours a day, six days. After two years of that, my wife said, ‘Hey, idiot, you can’t retire and ride bicycles. You have to go get a job.'”
That actually proved hard to do with his new slim figure. Casting agents no longer recognized him, and he had trouble booking gigs. He eventually put on some more weight, but began bulking up by weightlifting at the same time. Getting a semblance of his old look back helped him land the role of Officer Billy on Ashton Kutcher‘s Netflix’s sitcom The Ranch from 2016-2019, and he played Tommy on the 2019 season of Netflix’s Drew Barrymore horror-comedy The Santa Clarita Diet.
Here’s Ethan in an Instagram gym pic on Jan. 1, 2020 showing off his muscular body:
Ethan discusses his weight journey ‘from obese to svelte’ to now super muscular on his podcast American Glutton. On his Instagram page, fans can’t believe that the bearded, muscular gym rat is the same overweight actor they’ve watched for two decades. Use benavidez_andrew wrote next to one of his bulked up photos, “Dude, seriously the coolest transformation. You’re a comedy genius and you brighten every movie/show you’re in. Thanks for being you.” Fan joeydangero_sly, told Ethan, “I know you had lost weight from back in the day, but didn’t know that you went and got swole,” about how bulked up and ripped he is now.
User benjamin.boyd1203 asked, “Correct me if I’m wrong but aren’t you that guy from My Name Is Earl?” because he looks so different now. bwduke215 praised him, telling Ethan “Frankie EFFING Dtechino! with the glow up. BADASS,” about how he was so heavy on Boy Meets World and is a muscular beast now. Fan angelic.upstart agreed, adding “The best ‘glow up’ in Hollywood history I think we can all agree,” about Ethan’s body makeover.