Inside Elvis' bizarre weight loss methods... from injecting himself with protein from URINE to an induced coma

Daily Mail​

3 days ago

It's been 52 years since Elvis Presley's unceremonious death, with the singer's lethal deep-fried diet almost as famous as his everlasting hits.
When the King of Rock 'n Roll died at only 42, he was battling with intense drug, alcohol, and food addictions, which is believed to have contributed to his untimely death.
While he was the heartthrob of the '60s, Elvis gained a whopping 176 pounds in a decade, which became a focal point of his later life.
The singer was known to have a love of junk food, consuming around 10,000-12,000 calories and weighing 350 pounds at his heaviest.
His favorite foods included sandwiches fried in butter and bacon wrapped meatballs.
At some points in his career, with the press ridiculing his weight gain and calling him 'Fat Elvis,' the King became determined to drop weight, and he opted for some experimental diets to lose the pounds.
In the midst of one diet, the singer was eating only 500 calories a day in an effort to lose weight, and injecting a protein from pregnant women's urine to burn fat.
Below, FEMAIL looks at the strange foods and crash diets the Heartbreak Hotel singer tried over the years.
Feasting like a king: Elvis would eat sandwiches fried in butter and bacon wrapped meatballs
The Hound Dog singer was a huge fan of Southern cooking and fried food, having grown up around it but too poor to indulge in it as a child.
Elvis also certainly took the belief that breakfast is the most important meal of the day very seriously, often consuming thousands of calories in his first meal.
He was famous for his breakfast sandwich - a butter-covered monstrosity which featured peanut butter, banana, and bacon all set between two slices of bread.
As per Serious Eats, the sandwich has over 1,000 calories per serving, which is almost half of the recommended caloric daily intake for men.
It's recommended males consume around 2,500 calories per day to keep in a healthy weight range.
Another favorite of the King's was called the Fool's Gold Loaf, which consisted of hollowing out an out loaf of sourdough bread, stuffing it with an entire jar of peanut butter, an entire jar of grape jam, and a pound of bacon.
The singer and friends reportedly once took a private jet to retrieve this treat at the Colorado Mine Company in Denver, where they bought 30 sandwiches before heading home.
His love for deep fried food was noted in James Gregory's 1960 biography, The Elvis Presley Story.
'Note for his future wife: Elvis loves enormous breakfasts complete with sausage, bacon, eggs, fried potatoes, home-baked rolls, and coffee,' he wrote.
'He has a tremendous appetite at breakfast. His wife should never develop elegant or expensive tastes.'
His private chef, Mary Jenkins Langston, who cooked for Elvis for 14 years, also shared more insight into his rich breakfasts.
'For breakfast, he'd have homemade biscuits [the American version, which are more like savory British scones] fried in butter, sausage patties, four scrambled eggs and sometimes fried bacon,' Mary told the BBC.
Elvis also enjoyed eating what he called Elvis' party meatballs, which were meatballs wrapped in bacon.
Yo-yo weight loss and experimental methods: He injected himself with a protein taken from the urine of pregnant women
In early 1973, Elvis was in the 'worst' shape of his life, and was determined to lose weight
The superstar lost eight to 10 pounds while preparing for his Aloha from Hawaii concert appearance and TV special, as per his girlfriend of four years, Linda Thompson.
In her book, A Little Thing Called Life, she recalled the singing superstar going on a crash diet in a bid to lose 25 pounds.
Linda, who eventually broke up with Elvis due to infidelity, told CNN as he gained weight the criticism surrounding it started to bother him, adding that he was a very sensitive person and the comments 'hurt his feelings.'
Elvis' crash diet involved him only eating 500 calories a day, while he was also injected daily with a protein taken from the urine of a pregnant woman to burn up the fat in his system.
Linda, who dated the singer for four-and-a-half-years, admitted she was 'amazed' Elvis had the stamina to put on such a demanding show at the time, given how few calories he was consuming.
Health experts have previously said an extremely low-calorie diet can be dangerous and should only be done under medical supervision.
Low calorie intake can lead to major vitamin and mineral deficiencies, as well as a slower metabolism.
However, the weight loss was short lived, with Linda noting he put it all back on in six weeks.
Elvis also had a fondness for soda, and reportedly tried to use his love of it in his diet, attempting at one point to eat nothing but jelly made of his favorite soda, black cherry, for weeks.
He also once tried the 'sleeping beauty diet, which involves putting himself in a coma in a bid to lose weight - and is considered highly dangerous by many professionals.
Elvis tried the diet in the 1970s with a Las Vegas doctor who put him in a medically induced coma for a few days to stop himself eating.
However, he reportedly fell out of his hospital bed and woke himself up, rendering the diet ineffective.
Sadly, Elvis was found dead on August 16, 1977, in his Graceland mansion. His official cause of death was listed as a heart attack, with many speculating that his indulgent lifestyle choices, including his diet and prescription drug use, was to blame.
He was hospitalized in 1973 for pethidine addiction and overdosed twice on barbiturates in the same year.
Through his toxicology reports, medical examiners found that Elvis had traces of 14 drugs in his system, 10 of which were present in significant quantities.