Zac Efron Says He Suffered A "Pretty Bad Depression" Because Of His "Baywatch" Body

    "I don’t need to do that. I much prefer to have an extra, you know, 2 to 3% body fat.”

    Hey, remember when Zac Efron was in the Baywatch movie?

    Zac on a jet ski in a scene from Baywatch

    Maybe you do, maybe you don't. The movie wasn't exactly a huge success, but one thing about the 2017 movie: Zac was jacked.

    Zac and Dwayne Johnson in a boat in a scene from the film

    Zac was so jacked that, if you saw the movie — or, hell, even just looked at these pictures — you probably thought, "What was it like to get to the point where you look like that?"

    Zac looking through a pair of binoculars as Dwayne looks at him

    Well, according to Zac, it was pretty miserable.

    In a new interview with Men's Health, Zac admitted that the lengths he had to go to in order to achieve his Baywatch body were unnecessarily extreme — and they did some damage in the long run.

    Zac expressed doubt that his "look" in the film is "really attainable," and noted that he had to use a powerful diuretic to achieve it.

    "There’s just too little water in the skin. Like, it’s fake," he said, later adding, "I don’t need to do that. I much prefer to have an extra, you know, 2 to 3% body fat.”

    Because of those powerful diuretics, Zac ended up experiencing some mental health issues as well.

    Zac on a motorcycle

    "I started to develop insomnia and I fell into a pretty bad depression for a long time," he said. "Something about that experience burned me out."

    "I had a really hard time re-centering. Ultimately, they chalked it up to taking way too many diuretics for way too long, and it messed something up.”

    Zac's experience serves as a great reminder that, when it comes to your own personal goals, just being yourself and embracing who you are is more important than anything else.

    Read the entire interview with Zac here.