Now that’s dedication! Taylor Kitsch reveals that he recently dropped 30 pounds for a new role.

The actor, who plays cult leader David Koresh in the upcoming miniseries Waco, tells Us Weekly about the physical transformation he underwent to look the part: “Eating, it’s all diet. I had four months to do it so it’s not that much per month if you break it down. It sucks doing it, I’ll tell you that! When you don’t have a lot to lose that’s when it sucks doing it.”

The former personal trainer, 36, also opened about the weight loss during his Monday, October 16, appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show: “I had four months, which is a healthier way of doing it. So it’s like six pounds, seven pounds a month which helps.”

He dished on how he managed to shed the weight telling the 59-year-old talk show host, “I’d get 500 calories at breakfast and then it would go from like veggies in the mid-afternoon to chicken broth after 4 o’clock.”

“And then you go run, which is awesome,” he added sarcastically.

But when it comes to putting the pounds back on he says: “I’m literally eating anything and everything in sight — it’s great!”

The Friday Night Lights actor told People that other preparations for the role included: “Listening to hundreds of hours of phone calls of the tapes with [FBI negotiator] Gary Noesner and the FBI and the ATF to Child Protective Services, to reading David Thibodeau’s book a few times.”

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The miniseries is set to air in January 2018 in six parts on the Paramount Network. It will follow the 51-day standoff between the radical leader, his followers the Branch Davidians, and the FBI and ATF. The standoff ended tragically with the death of 75 Branch Davidians, including Koresh and 25 children, on April 19, 1993.

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