Matthew McConaughey lost 38 pounds for The Dallas Buyer’s Club, and just wants a cheeseburger

Fit 43-year-old Matthew McConaughey lost 38 pounds this year, mostly buffed-up muscle from playing a stripper in Magic Mike to play an AID patient in The Dallas Buyer’s Club. He went from 181 to 143 in a very short period of time, and of course the process was difficult.

How did he do it?

He told HitFix:

“I’m doing cardio but I’ll tell you what, the more I’ve learned is—and I think it comes with age too—is it’s 90 percent diet. It’s 90 percent amount and then what you’re eating because right now I’m not losing any more weight if I burn 1,500 calories, two hours of cardio in an afternoon, or if I don’t. It doesn’t matter. It’s a matter of how much I eat or how little I eat.”

Anne Hathaway recently dished about how she ate nothing but two cakes of dried oatmeal to drop the last 10 pounds for her roll as a sick girl in Les Mis.

How has he felt throughout the process?

“Overall, [I’ve] probably got 35 percent less energy, but there’s been plateaus. Getting past 170 was really hard, but then once you get [to] 167 the next seven come off easy. Getting past 160, really hard. But then you fly down to 150. Getting past 150 was really hard and then, bam! Got down to 143 and that’s where I want to be. So, once you get past the plateau, your body seems to understand, ‘OK, this is where we’re leaving now, this is where we are’ and so the energy rises.”

As he shoots The Dallas Buyers Club in New Orleans, he’s just dreaming of the day when he can have a nice, juicy cheeseburger. But not just ANY cheeseburger, he’s got a vividly specific one in mind:

“I will have some 70 percent beef, 30 percent fat ground beef, maybe a half-pound cheeseburger with another three types of cheese. I’ll prepare it all and I’ll make sure that it takes three hours just to prepare. I’m going to have buns with butter on both sides, toasted and grilled. I’m going to melt the cheese on the top bun, Hellman’s Real Mayonnaise. I want kosher dill pickles sliced nice and thin, diced white onions, slightly grilled until they get almost hard, and some thin jalapeno slices. And then I’m just going to sit back and let the [expletive] just drop on the ground.”

Not only does Matthew not get a cheeseburger today, but he’s probably not going crazy on turkey, potatoes, and pie like the rest of us. Maybe when he gets done he can call Anne Hathaway, and they can have pig-out party.