This Is Us star Milo Ventimiglia was on The Ellen DeGeneres Show this week, with Miley Cyrus sitting in Ellen’s place. At the end of his set, they played a game where Ventimiglia had to sit in a dunk tank while Cyrus tried to dunk him. A dunk was worth $10K that would be donated from the company Ulta to breast cancer research. When he stripped to his shorts, it was apparent that the former Gilmore Girls star makes fitness a priority.
At 5-foot-9 and 137 pounds, Milo Ventimiglia, of Heroes fame, says he used to be very skinny. The 39-year-old actor, who still brings his parents to set, had a plan for getting buff and more muscular. He jokes that he didn’t have a lot of “man” weight on him even though he’s always lead a healthy lifestyle and played sports growing up.
In fact, he’s been a vegetarian his entire life, though he eats dairy products and cheese; so he is technically a lacto-vegetarian. A vegetarian diet has been shown to reduce the chance of developing heart attack, stroke, and high blood pressure. In 2009, Ventimiglia was awarded the PETA Sexiest Vegetarian Alive award.
The down-to-earth star avoids alcohol, as well. Just because he was a vegetarian doesn’t mean he ate well, and he confesses he would eat a lot of pizza. When he started working out, he realized that being healthy also meant watching what you put in your mouth; so he stopped smoking and made better food decisions.
Milo Ventimiglia’s Exercise Routine
Growing up, the actor was active and loved to skateboard, snowboard, and even says he did some surfing. Now he does cardio workouts to keep in shape, including running and jumping rope. Cardio exercises are effective at burning many calories and are essential to any weight loss plan. Anywhere from 300 to 500 calories can be burned per workout. Ventimiglia doesn’t work with a trainer.
Once he started working out and bulking up, he says that people started to ask him if he’d grown up and got taller. For him, it has all paid off, and the extra bulk has made doing stunts so much easier. He typically spends four days a week minimum working out doing weight lifting, cardio exercises, and rope jumping. According to the actor, these three exercises alone have earned him 20 pounds of muscle. He currently weighs about 155 pounds.
Working on a regular hit show means it can be challenging to have a regular workout schedule; so, the actor either wakes up early in the morning or goes in late after work to get his routine in. He is so dedicated that he also brings dumbbells to his trailer to see if he can get some reps in there.
And when he considers blowing off a workout session, he thinks of the example a famous mentor set for him when working on Rocky. He recalls the discipline that Sylvester Stallone had and the rigorous amount of work that actor had to put himself through to get into shape.
Sources:
Hines, R., “Milo Ventimiglia goes shirtless on ‘Ellen’ — for a good cause,” Today web site, October 3, 2016; http://www.today.com/popculture/milo-ventimiglia-goes-shirtless-ellen-good-cause-t103498, last accessed October 4, 2016.
