The Rock Shared His Cheat Meals, And They Have Us Wondering How On Earth He Puts It All Away

It’s fair to say that Johnson has built a career on his epic proportions. From his early days as The Rock to the archetypal action-film hero, the star’s physicality has often taken center stage in his roles. And to keep himself in prime condition, he follows a super-strict fitness and diet regime – most of the time.

While Johnson favors healthy foods like lean meats, fish and vegetables throughout the week, all restraint goes out the window on his cheat days. The mountainous meals he consumes over these treat-yourself periods have gained legendary status online. And while many of the feasts look undeniably delicious, some fans can’t help but wonder just how The Rock manages them.

Johnson is a giant of the big screen — literally. His impressive stature sees him measure in at 6’5” in height and tipping the scales at about 270 pounds. But in order to maintain his mammoth statistics, the wrestler-turned-movie star puts in a great deal of work into his exercise routine and diet.

Given that Johnson first rose to fame as a wrestler, his stature has always been a huge — no pun intended — part of his persona. And even before he joined the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) as The Rock, his sheer size had already played a part in shaping the course of his life.

Johnson was, in fact, born into a wrestling family in Hayward, California, on May 2, 1972. His grandfather trod the canvas under the name Peter “High Chief” Fanene Maivia, while his father was known as Rocky Johnson. The Rock grew up attending his dad’s bouts. But he had no intention of entering the ring himself.

Instead, Johnson pursued college football when he started attending the University of Miami. His athleticism and sheer size made him an exciting prospect out on the field. But his career was dogged by injury and his promise eventually waned. It was then that he decided to refocus his attention on wrestling.

Though Johnson was first signed to WWF under the moniker “Flex Kavana,” but later changed his name to “The Rock” when he joined a band of elite wrestlers known as “The Nation of Domination.” He later joined a group called “The Corporation” and began a long-running and bitter rivalry with Steve Austin.

Johnson’s in-ring persona and his famous feud with Austin helped to make him a wrestling star. He also enjoyed major success in the sport, lifting an impressive 17 WWF/WWE titles over the course of his career. But eventually, Johnson’s fame outgrew the world of wrestling.

Building on the success of his wrestling career, Johnson pursued a career in the movies. His big-screen break came in the form of the 2001 film The Mummy Returns and its sequel The Scorpion King. Later he also turned his hand to comedy with outings in the 2005 film Be Cool and The Game Plan in 2007.

As Johnson’s acting career evolved, his roles diversified into action and even kids’ movies. Some standout big-screen appearances include the title role in the 2014 film Hercules, voicing Maui in the Disney smash Moana and starring in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.

By 2019, Johnson was well and truly on top of his acting game, being cited by Forbes magazine as the highest-paid male actor of the year. He went on to earn the title again the following year, having earned a cool $87.5 million in the 12 months to June 2020.

Over the course of his career though, Johnson had not only grown in terms of fame and wealth but in stature, too. In 2019 it was reported that he weighed in at 270.4 pounds. That’s about 10 pounds heftier than he was in his previous career as a wrestler. So how was that The Rock has been able to build up his bulk while sustaining a successful movie career?

Well, Johnson gave his 228 million Instagram followers an insight into his daily routine in a video posted to the social media site in October 2019. Having risen bright and early, the actor was already in the gym — or as he calls it, his “Iron Paradise” — at 5 a.m. Narrating the clip, he explains, “It’s very early Monday morning before the sun comes up.”

Revealing the reason behind his super-early start, Johnson says, “I like to get into the gym, when I can before the sun comes up. It helps me anchor my day.” He also reveals that he weighs himself every morning, before writing some “Monday motivation” on a chalkboard in the gym. This particular day’s affirmation goes, “I do anything like I do everything, with all I got.”

Still, aside from revealing it’s a “leg day,” Johnson stops short of revealing the full details of his workout. Luckily though, the internet is awash with workouts supposedly favored by The Rock. And what’s more, the star himself has also revealed the specifics of his fitness regime in interviews.

In 2020 Johnson told the website Bodybuilding.com that he started each day with a rigorous run or some other form of cardio, even before he ate breakfast. After that, the star headed into the gym where he claimed to “get busy with a nice session of clangin’ and bangin.’” His workouts, he said, involved “epic pain, epic results.”

Johnson prefers to follow bodybuilding-style regimes which involve a lot of heavy lifting to build muscle. He revealed, “My workout is constantly changing and adapting, but for the most part, I do four sets of 12 reps with a 60-90-second rest. I don’t play around in the gym. I always aim to be the hardest worker, and I make sure I clang and I bang to the best of my ability.”

But Johnson’s commitment to fitness means that other aspects of his life take a back seat. For instance, in December 2020 it was revealed that The Rock fuels his epic workouts on just four hours of sleep. According to British tabloid The Sun, the WWE legend beds down at midnight each night, only to rise before dawn at 4 a.m.

And Johnson mostly takes a restrained approach to what he eats. He told Bodybuilding.com, “Diet-wise, I generally eat five meals a day. I’m very prepared and organized, and everything is planned out in advance. It’s all measured depending on what I’m training to achieve. Usually, I start off my day with some dead cow and oatmeal for breakfast.”

In general, it seemed that Johnson preferred wholesome and nutritious foods to fuel his full-on lifestyle. Elaborating further, The Rock revealed, “The other staples in my diet include chicken, steak fillets, egg whites, oatmeal, broccoli, halibut, rice, asparagus, baked potato, leafy salads, peppers, mushrooms, and onions, and then also some casein protein.”

Judging by that rundown of Johnson’s daily diet, you would be forgiven for thinking that he doesn’t indulge in anything unhealthy. But if you follow The Rock on social media, you may be aware that the hunk is a firm believer in the “cheat day.” Over these 24-hour periods, he takes a break from his strict eating regime and fills up on whatever takes his fancy.

Johnson isn’t the only fan of the cheat day — a planned break in a healthy eating plan. The idea came to prominence around the same time that the “clean-eating” concept came into being. And it involves having a break from your diet for one day of a week, as long as you stick to it for the rest of the time.

Cheat days are particularly popular among bodybuilding fans such as Johnson. And The Rock is among the musclemen who like to detail their indulgent devourings on social media. The action star usually treats himself on a Sunday and likes to post pictures of his massive meals on Instagram.

Johnson has been posting about his cheat days since at least as far back as 2012. But there are still a lot of people who just can’t wrap their heads around how much the man-mountain is able to consume. Because not only are his treat meals decadent, they are absolutely – and sometimes unfeasibly – MASSIVE.

In one of his early food-based posts from 2012 Johnson tweeted to say that his “cheat meal days are legendary.” Giving his audience a flavor of his appetite, he revealed that he had consumed a pile of 12 pancakes before moving on to “FOUR ‘double dough’ pizzas.” We don't even know what they are, but they certainly sound delicious.

Another food that Johnson seems quite partial to on cheat days is sushi. But by that, we mean whole, huge platters containing dozens of pieces. It would appear that the former wrestler is a huge fan of the Japanese dish, which he often enjoys with lashings of “wooosabi” – apparently his preferred spelling for wasabi, not ours.

Other times, Johnson has paired two carb-heavy foodstuffs in one sitting, to make a pretty hefty meal. A particular favorite of the star’s appears to be pasta and bagels. In one sitting in 2020, The Rock revealed he was chowing down on “vodka bolognese over penne” with “two toasted bagels topped with butter and garlic powder” all washed down with a “freshly uncorked bottle” of his own Teremana Reposado tequila.

And while Johnson’s main meals would be enough to finish most appetites off, he sometimes leaves room for dessert. On one occasion in 2019 he confessed to downing not one, but three pints of ice cream, alongside, “pancakes smothered with peanut butter and syrup.” In that post, he joked that he was bringing “new meaning to the word ‘gluttony’ one bite at a time.”

In another instance in 2018 Johnson posed a plate of “15 ginormous” cookies containing “milk chocolate and salted caramel chips with peanut butter in the middle.” However, he confessed, “I can take about five of these cookies to ‘DJ pound town’ and the rest I take to work so the crew can enjoy!”

It would seem that Johnson’s sweet tooth knows no bounds. In 2019 he shared a photograph of a whole buffet of desserts he was about to enjoy. In the accompanying caption, the actor wrote, “Midnight sugar train leaves the station. Brownies, blondies, peanut butter, chocolate chip and double chocolate cookies. With a fat slice of a cheesecake chaser.”

While Johnson appears to do a good job of treating himself on cheat days all year round, it seems that he ups the ante somewhat over the festive season. In December 2016 the actor wrote on Instagram, “So this cheat meal went down at 11:45 p.m. last night. Eight slices of sourdough French toast topped with loads of apple pie.”

Giving his fans further insight into the cheat-day activities, Johnson added that he enjoyed the meal, “Sat on the couch like the big, brown, bald, tattooed glutinous version of Jabba The Hutt and watched The Force Awakens again.” He added, “It was my Christmas gift to myself and I want everyone out there to remember one of our golden rules during the holidays, ‘Don’t cheat yourself, treat yourself.’”

As we’ve covered then, Johnson isn’t shy when it comes to filling up on cheat days. And when the star sat down for an interview on the Food & Wine YouTube channel in 2020 he revealed that his epic portions can contain as many as 5,000 to 6,000 calories. In case you’re not a nutritionist, that’s around three times more than the average person is recommended to consume in 24 hours.

So while Johnson’s pictures of his cheat days may have got you feeling hungry, it’s probably not a good idea to try and replicate his meals. That’s because the fitness fanatic tempers his more indulgent episodes with regular and intense gym sessions, as well as general healthy eating on most days of the week.

That’s not to say, though, that you can’t enjoy a scheduled cheat day yourself, as long as it forms part of a healthy, well-balanced diet and exercise regime. Fans of the concept cite two main benefits to it. Number one: treating yourself could boost your metabolism, and two: it may help you follow your diet the rest of the time.

In an article on the BBC Food website, nutritionist Fiona Hunter addressed the first argument, that regular cheat days help to boost the metabolism so that it burns more calories. But she seemed to play down the idea, stating, “There is no rigorous scientific research to support this.”

But there may be something in the theory that cheat days can help us stick to healthy-eating diets most of the time. As personal trainer Scott Laidler pointed out, “Put simply, it’s something to look forward to.” That being said, he added, “There are two types of people when it comes to dieting, those who need to let off steam in exchange for the discipline, and those who feel a sense of achievement from adhering to a plan.”

Hunter agreed that cheat days may not be for everyone. She explained, “When I’m asked, ‘What’s the best type of diet to help you lose weight?’ my reply is always the same, ‘The one you can stick to’. Cheat days can have a psychological effect, and it can be positive or negative. For some people, it can be easier to stick with a restricted diet if you have a cheat day to look forward.”

So using cheat days as part of a weight-loss journey may or may not work for you. But if your aim is to build muscle, as with The Rock, they may not be as controversial. Hunter conceded, “You could argue cheat days are less likely to have a negative impact for bodybuilders because calories aren’t such an issue. But there is no evidence that they are suited to any type of diet.”