Actor Chris Pratt got some good news and some bad news in 2013. The good news was, the Parks & Recreation star had been chosen to play the coveted role of Peter Quill, a.k.a. Star-Lord, in the Marvel movie Guardians of the Galaxy.

The bad news was, he had to lose 60 pounds to play him. “I’ve been fat for the last eight years,” the 39-year-old funnyman confessed at the time. “I loved eating food, drinking beer, and having fun with my life. But I got depressed.”

It’s well-known that overeating can cause depression — and vice versa. But there is a cure. For that, the actor turned to Dr. Philip Goglia, the founder of Performance Fitness Concepts, who helped turn him into a rocket-powered hero. “He started to see what that kind of body would do to him over the next 15 years,” Dr. Goglia recalled of their first meeting. “He went into warrior mode.”

To fuel Chris’ five-day-a-week workout routine, Dr. Goglia kicked up his metabolism using the Paleo diet, which includes only foods our early ancestors ate, such as meat, fish, fruits and veggies, and no dairy, grains, or processed foods. Also, the actor lamented, “no beer for six months!”

For six months, he consumed 4,000 healthy calories a day — usually including his baseline meal of chicken, broccoli and brown rice — and tons of water. “I actually lost weight by eating more food,” Chris revealed. And he didn’t take a single supplement to lose weight or bulk up.

“The supplement industry is about 90 percent industry and 10 percent fitness,” Chris said. Instead of downing a supplement, he explained, “you could just have a piece of chicken that would give you the protein.” For those of us still struggling to reach our max potential, he shared some Marvel-ous words of wisdom: “If you feel compelled to try to do something about it, just do it.”