‘Game of Thrones’ Strongman Hafthór Björnsson Says He’s Open To Trying Vegan Diet

“I’m always willing to give everything a chance.”

Maxim Staff

Oct 31, 2019

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Hafthór Björnsson, a.k.a. The Mountain from Game of Thrones—and one of the absolute strongest men in the world—recently said he’s open to trying a vegan diet. Does that mean The Mountain is ready to become a molehill? Well, he didn’t exactly commit to the idea 100 percent.

Björnsson can consume up to 17,000 calories in a day when he’s training, and obviously a generous portion of those are made up of animal protein sources—chicken, fish, beef, you name it.

But he wouldn’t be averse, he said in a comment on Instagram, to dropping all that and trying nothing but veggies. This came up after vegan bodybuilder Kai Greene posted a photo of the big man eating a huge slice of steak and captioned it, “you gotta try the plant based diet, @thorbjornsson…Look at gorillas bro they only eat plants!” (That’s not entirely true, but feel free to correct him yourself.)

https://www.instagram.com/p/B4FsnnOnt2Z

Greene continued, “All joke aside tho, a vegan diet is more effective for a strongman than a bodybuilder – so you’ll see better benefits then I would.”

Björnsson, who like a lot of Strongman competitors comes across as a hell of a nice guy away from the weights, responded to the post.

“Definitely an interesting topic!” he wrote, “I might as well give it a try for a week on my offseason. I’m always willing to give everything a chance! Especially when it comes from legends like @schwarzenegger & @kaigreene.”

Yeah, that’s right—Arnold Schwarzenegger has a mostly plant-based diet. He, however, is 72 and has had more than one heart surgery.

There’s nothing wrong with going vegan or vegetarian, of course—and Hafthór Björnsson has physicians and nutritionists he can surely call on to do it right. Still, he has posts like the following on his own Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B4E5C3rgEz5 https://www.instagram.com/p/B2xfZHPA3_z

We take him seriously—but only because he says he’ll just try it “for a week.”