Channing Tatum’s Chef Shares Diet Secrets Behind His 30-Lb. Weight Loss

When it comes to keeping Channing Tatum in fighting shape for his roles, chef Aline Fiuza knows all the tricks.

The actor and his personal chef initially began working together before the pandemic hit. “At the time it was really funny because he wanted to be vegan, but he doesn’t [like to] eat any vegetables,” Fiuza tells PEOPLE. “So I was just hiding vegetables inside of the foods, and I still do it. To this day I still play a game in my head, like, ‘How many vegetables can I hide in this?’”

For the last four years, Fiuza has been consistently working with Tatum to develop specific menus based on whether he needs to gain or lose weight and/or put on muscle. He also uses a scale that measures body fat and muscle mass, and Fiuza factors in his changing body composition to tailor each day’s meals. “From there, we keep tweaking the plan,” she says. “But every production is slightly different.”

Their plan has clearly been working. In March, Tatum posted a carousel of selfies, including one of his current ripped physique at 205 lbs. The actor also showed his body at 235 lbs. for his role in the upcoming movie, Josephine, along with a much thinner frame at 172 lbs. for the movie Roofman, in which he plays plays real-life thief Jeffrey Manchester.

“I’m so grateful for my genetics. Grateful for my chef/nutritionist/witch,” he wrote of Fiuza. “Grateful for my trainer. I couldn’t make these big swings in my weight without you guys. But I won’t be doing anymore fat roles haha. It’s to [sic] hard on the body and to hard to take off now. But damn when i look at these pics it’s just wild what the human body and will can do.”

Tatum’s current body is the result of a diet consisting of “vegetables and animal protein and nuts and seeds,” Fiuza says. “He eats a lot of cauliflower rice, mostly because it’s the easiest to hide vegetable from him,” she explains. “I can do cauliflower rice risotto or fried rice and I can put a lot of vegetables like mushrooms and peas inside because it has a good texture.”

Despite her best efforts, Fiuza says she isn’t always successful sneaking veggies by Tatum. “Sometimes he finds it, and then he won’t eat it,” she says, laughing. “One time I roasted a sweet potato, because he loves those and I found yellow beets and cut them very small and cooked them at the same time. I added feta cheese and some chopped arugula and made it into a warm salad side dish.”

But Tatum was quick to catch on. ‘Oh, he could taste it,” she adds. “He picked around but he didn’t eat the whole thing. He’s like a kid.”

When starting a diet, Fiuza says Tatum will usually fast for 24 hours with only water and bone broth and then begin the food regimen. “We have a kickstart, then do a couple days of intermittent fasting with his eating window between 1 p.m. and 6 or 7 p.m., and then we move on to three meals a day,” she explains.

So does the actor have any weaknesses when it comes to food cravings? “Chocolate cake,” she says. “But I am very good at making the worst thing the best way possible. I can make low-carb bread and pizza. I’m very good at making his cheat meal but not necessarily [breaking] his diet. I think that’s why he loves me so much.”

Raised in Brazil, Fiuza suffered from stomach ulcers starting in her teen years. “That’s how my food journey began,” she says. “I used to go back to the doctor, and every single year they put me on medication. And then I never really got better for like 10 years.”

After attending culinary school in Australia, she started studying Ayurvedic medicine and learned the healing properties from every plant base, from flowers and herbs to spices and vegetables. “That’s when I was able to heal myself,” she says.

It also allowed her to find a way to help Tatum embrace a healthy diet including vegetables—even if he doesn’t know it. “He eats every single one of them now. And I’m really proud of how far he has come, from eating rice and chicken to eating everything now,” she says. “He might not like eating them but he does.”