Matt Damon Dropped Serious Weight to Become Odysseus — Here’s How Much

Matt Damon went all-in for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, trimming down to a number he has not seen since high school to play Odysseus. He broke it all down on Jason and Travis Kelce's New Heights podcast, and the details are very Nolan: disciplined, deliberate, and a little extreme.

How Damon ended up Odysseus-lean

While the Kelces were asking about his upcoming film The Rip, the conversation veered to those recent set photos of Damon looking, as Jason put it, impressively bulked and dialed in. Damon said he even rocked a Kelce-level beard for about a year while gearing up, but the key directive came from Nolan: lean but strong. Damon called that balance a strange target, but he hit it anyway.

• His usual walking-around weight: 185 to 200 pounds
• His weight during The Odyssey shoot: 167 pounds
• He had not been that light since high school
• Diet-wise, he cut out gluten entirely and stuck with it
• He trained with a coach he says could handle anything, built a plan around a clear goal, and just executed

Training like a season

Asked whether he already had a trainer in mind or needed a new one, Damon said he worked with someone who could do pretty much whatever the job demanded. The way he described the process will sound familiar to anyone who has watched the Kelces prep for an NFL year: he treats it like a season. When he is in that mode, whether it is The Odyssey or a Jason Bourne movie, the workouts and the food become the schedule. You routinize it, build your whole day around it, and let the repetition do the work. That is the physical side of getting ready.

It has been so long since I have had gluten, I cannot tell if it is good or not. So that is a good sign.

So yes, the Odysseus body came from a lot of sweat and a truly rigid plan, but the bigger surprise might be that the gluten is gone for good. At least for now, he is not looking back.