Over the past two years, Bryson DeChambeau became the poster child for big drives and a major proponent of adding weight and muscle to gain yards. But Big Bryson is no more, with the 29-year-old recently dropping his bulk-up scheme in favor of the exact opposite: losing huge amounts of weight to improve his health and prevent injuries.
Back in 2020, the story in the world at large was Covid 19, but the story in the pro golf world was an ever-growing DeChambeau. Beginning in late 2019 and continuing through the three-month Covid layoff, DeChambeau gained as much as 50 pounds with a combination of specialty weight training and a hardcore eating regimen.
‘I’m going to become massive’: Why a bulked-up Bryson DeChambeau wants to get much, much bigger
In the process, DeChambeau, who is 6-foot-1, transformed from a lanky kid to someone built more like an NFL linebacker. He also became the longest driver on Tour by far, topping the average driving distance for two straight PGA Tour seasons and undressing historic Winged Foot to capture the 2020 U.S. Open.
But ever since that highlight, DeChambeau has struggled both with his game and his body, suffering a litany of injuries that often kept him off the course until he jumped to LIV Golf last summer.
Now, the Big Bulk Up has officially come to an end, and DeChambeau is expressing regrets for what his radical weight gain did to his body.
In a recent appearance on the Five Clubs podcast, DeChambeau revealed to host Emma Carpenter that he reversed his conditioning plan, and over one month lost 20 pounds, thanks to a radical Whole 30 diet.
According to DeChambeau, it was a litany of health problems that led him to make the dramatic change in conditioning strategy.
“I ate things that were not great for my system that I was very sensitive to,” he said on the podcast, “and ultimately it got to the point where it was a little too much. And that’s why I started to back off of that.”
How’d he do that? Inside Bryson DeChambeau’s quest to get ‘massive’
While he was adding muscle and appeared healthy, DeChambeau claimed the way he was eating was causing lots of health problems.
“I ate improperly for almost a year and a half and I was starting to feel weird,” DeChambeau said. “My gut was all messed up, and so I went completely healthy, went on a Whole 30 diet, got a nutritionist, did blood work, measured stuff in my gut biome. I was super-inflamed.
“And then just recently since I’ve been using this new chef, I lost 20 pounds in a month.”
While losing so much weight so quickly resulted in “huge mood swings,” DeChambeau said, it also had a lot of benefits.
“The inflammation has just left my system, and I feel a lot more at ease. I mean, I’m a lot leaner now, I feel better, my face has thinned out finally,” DeChambeau said. “I look like I’m 20 again, not 35.”
Interestingly, DeChambeau’s early success after bulking up led many other golfers, Rory McIlroy included, to try and gain speed to match DeChambeau’s distance gains off the tee. But now DeChambeau regrets his strategy, at least in terms of gaining weight, and does not recommend it for other golfers.
“No. I mean, get stronger in a healthy way. Go get a blood sensitivity test and figure out what works best for your body to gain size and strength,” he told Carpenter.
You can listen to Bryson’s full interview on the Five Clubs podcast below.
