Have you got any insider tips in terms of exercise and diets, so that people can avoid using protein supplements?

The number one thing that I would say is to simply stop eating refined carbohydrates. It’s really simple to say, but is extremely hard to do once people realise what exactly refined carbohydrates are, and how prevalent they are.

If people can do that simple thing, within a week they would loose a couple of pounds. They’ll feel better, sleep better, and their work-outs will be better.

Alongside that, I would advise people to eat real food; if it doesn’t grow, or doesn’t have eyes, then don’t eat it! Also, if it has anything in it that you can’t pronounce, don’t eat it.

You also worked on the film 300, and the actors have a much bigger frame than Jason Statham does on Death Race. How do exercise regimes differ to achieve these different looks?

Jason was lean because his diet was so disciplined and he was training on a regular basis for an extended period of time. To achieve the buff look, you would have to focus a lot more on weight lifting than the interval and circuit work, and you’d certainly have to eat more.

Jason was on a calorie-restricted diet; he was on 2100 calories a day at one point, which is a little amount of food. If you’re trying to put on a lot of muscle, you’d need to eat a lot more, but that isn’t really the healthiest thing to do. It’s a body-building thing, and I have a lot of respect for the art of body-building, but I don’t necessarily think that the training is healthy for an average person.

Is it possible for the same person to progress from one look to another?

Is it possible, but the changes don’t happen quickly, and you need to really focus on changing the diet and method of training, and stick to that for quite some time. Typically, the physical changes happen a lot more slowly than people are willing to tolerate, so they don’t stick with it.

What’s the best way to encourage people to stick to their exercise regimes and diets then?

It’s different for every person, but actors and actresses are paid to look a certain a way, and that’s their motivation.

Personally, I like to encourage people to think about performance goals rather than cosmetic goals. So instead of thinking ‘I want a lot of muscle’, people should think ‘I want to be able to lift more weights’. It should be an objective goal rather than a subjective perception. And when people get to the point where they can lift more weights, the chances are that they’ll have more muscle too.

So after a good work-out, what’s the best recovery food?

I’m a firm believer in a recovery drink called Recover Right, which is 160 calories. 75% of that is carbohydrates, and 25% is protein, so it has a specific ratio and there’s no sugar in it. And then within an hour of people finishing their work-out, they should have a good, healthy meal containing carbohydrates, fats and proteins.

Finally, as metabolic rate slows down with age, are there any ways to keep it fired up all day long?

Having high intensity work-outs usually helps metabolic rate, but with every year that you get older, you need to pay attention to how your diet is affecting your body. At thirty, you can’t eat the same things that you ate when you were twenty, so a re-evaluation of habits is important. If you’ve had the same habits for twenty years, it’s not going to work out very well for you.

Death Race is released on DVD on 2 February

By Kay Taylor