How Mark Wahlberg beefed up his biceps for ‘Pain and Gain,’ rep responds to steroid rumors

Pain and Gain topped the box office this weekend with it’s masculine muscle power. Everyone knows Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (40) is literally solid rock, but Mark Wahlberg (41) beefed up his guns for the part, gaining 40 pounds.

He told Muscle and Fitness magazine that he ate ten meals a day to compete with The Rock’s muscle mass. “It took a lot of getting up at 2 in the morning to eat another meal and I was still full from the meal at 10 o’clock,” he says.

He told Men’s Fitness that he packed on the weight in just two months, and set goals for himself that exceeded his lifting goals when he was younger. “I had two months to get into shape for the role, I was pounding heavy weight, and I packed on about 40 pounds for it,” he says. “I wanted to surpass the goals I had when I was younger – right now I’m benching 335.”

There have been some rumors that Wahlberg used steroid to get so big so fast, especially since that’s exactly what his character in the movie did, but his rep told US Weekly that he’s never used steroids in his life. An unnamed source also corroborated “Mark Wahlberg definitely is not using any kind of enhancements to pump up. Even though the film is about steroid abusing gym rats, he took it as a personal challenge to get to the size he is at now and has been training non-stop.”

The actor also had to get in shape for The Fighter, but he didn’t get anywhere as big as he did for Pain & Gain.

The storyline of the Michael Bay flick is based on a true story about the Sun Gym gang, Miami bodybuilders who attempted a kidnapping and extortion plot in the 1990s. It took over the box office this weekend, but was the lowest budget Michael Bay film since his first movie Bad Boys. Wahlberg reportedly took a pretty big pay cut to participate, but since it’s doing so well in theaters he’ll probably see something on the back-end.