A fitness influencer was exposed for lying to millions of his followers, claiming he was following a very specific, bizarre diet and lifting a crazy amount of weight in the gym.
Brian Johnson is known for his barbarian-like ways: a caveman diet – which he claimed consisted of animal liver, testicles and fertilised chicken eggs, and outrageous workout routines — which would include bench-pressing hundreds of weights underwater.
Johnson’s extreme ways allowed him to create a name for himself online, “Liver King” with millions of people — known as his ‘Primals’ — obsessed with his every move.
He claimed he earned his Greek God-like physique by following this insane diet and an intense exercise regimen, with just a few supplemental pills.
Johnson also claimed that his two sons were in poor health before they switched to an organ-based diet, which “cured them.” This claim led people to regularly purchase his liver supplements, according to Time.
liverking/Instagram
It turns out the father of two allegedly misled the public — and in fact, it came out in 2022, thanks to leaked emails, that he was actually spending $11,000 a month on steroids to achieve his physique.
As reported by The Sun, Johnson supposedly created a $300 million empire for himself, which led him to deny any steroid use.
Yet, the truth finally caught up to him and he had no choice but to admit that he was using “pharmacy-grade human growth hormones.”
While one would assume this would’ve been the end of Johnson — Netflix just released a documentary on the 48-year-old titled “Untold: The Liver King.”
“I think he’s a marketing genius, I really do,” director Joe Pearlman told Time. “The guy just knows what an audience wants and how to sell stuff to an audience in every sense.”
“I never expected this exposure in the public eye, and it’s been tricky as f-ck to navigate,” Johnson said to cameras in the documentary.
“How do I repent? I don’t know what comes next. I don’t have the answer to that yet,” the 48-year-old continued.
Johnson is not the first — and certainly won’t be the last — fitness influencer to lie to gain a massive following.
UK online fitness coach Hannah Barry revealed some of the truths behind public fitness personas.
“I used to be a really toxic fitness influencer,” she said in a viral TikTok video.
“Now I’m just not so toxic and I want to tell you some bulls–t that goes on within the fitness industry that you probably don’t know about.”
“I never really did any of the ab workouts I actually did,” she said. “They just got millions of views. I know that’s so sh—y to say but it’s also so true.”
She also revealed that when people sign up for coaching with well-known online figures — they’re usually just working out with “shadow coaches” who pretend to be the person who was hired.
