Liam Hemsworth always has fans gushing over him, but even more when he graced the cover of Men’s Health Magazine. While the stunningly handsome Australian native considered himself healthy, he’s now confessing that his vegan diet led to some complications, even surgery. While the actor was training for his role on the new television show The Most Dangerous Game, his workout and diet didn’t seem to be working well together.
“I spent most of the project running and getting beaten up. It was just brutal. I leaned out a lot,” he explained. “Running is so jarring. Your knees, your ankles, your lower back.” His high-intensity workouts consisted of sled pulls, sled pushes, free weights and calisthenics. In the meantime, Hemsworth maintained his vegan diet, something he’s done for a few years now, but turns out, it was causing more harm than good in an isolated way.
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“I was vegan for almost four years, and then February of last year I was feeling lethargic,” he recalled. “Then I got a kidney stone. It was one of them most painful weeks of my life. I was doing press for Isn’t It Romantic. But I had to go to the hospital and get surgery.” He added, “My particular kidney stone was a calcium-oxalate kidney stone. It forms from having too much oxalate in your diet. Oxalates are really high in a lot of vegetables, specifically spinach, almonds, beetroot, potatoes. Every morning, I was having five handfuls of spinach and then almond milk, almond butter, and also some vegan protein in a smoothie. And that was what I considered super healthy. So I had to completely rethink what I was putting in my body.”
The reason for that is because the risk of getting a second kidney stone is as high as 50 percent if an individual maintains their diet. Thankfully, the 30-year-old said he’s “all good now” but has switched things up with his day-to-day eating habits. What made him turn to a vegan diet in the first place was for health reasons. He said it was “right before I started shooting Independence Day: Resurgence” when he flipped the switch, but gives some advice for fans who are maybe thinking of changing their eating regiment. “What I say to everyone is, ‘Look, you can read whatever you want to read. But you have to experience it for yourself. You have to figure out what works best for your body.’”
