Skinny Gerard Butler jokes about new weight loss

Gerard Butler is just fine, everyone.

Although he recently turned heads with his newly svelte physique, the actor says it's all for art's sake and he's not as skinny as photos seem to depict.

"If I wear a long shirt, everyone says 'Oh my God, he lost so much weight!'" the Scottish star told me backstage at the Diesel show today. "But this is how I look. I just used to be a lot bigger. But now I'm surfing. I'm doing a surf movie so I have to slim down. I don't know ... maybe I'm sick or something!"

How exactly did he drop the weight?

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"I ate my last meal in October and I run about 40 miles a day," he deadpanned. Sounds appropriate for Fashion Week, right?

"I'm joking," he continued. "It's just doing a lot of cardio and extremely watching what I eat. I stopped lifting big weights and I'm doing yoga. It's not hard to be in shape ... it's hard to be in really good shape. I generally train for a role and give everything to that, and then you stop and then you do it again."

The jet-setting actor, who just flew from Toronto for the Diesel show and Tuesday-night screening of his movie "Machine Gun Preacher," was happy for an excuse to visit the Big Apple.

"I spend as much as time as I can in New York," he told me. "I come to this city and I'm like 'Yes.' It's got everything...from the theater, to the fashion, to the energy on the streets, to the restaurants, to the weirdness, to the sexiness. It fills you up in a way that most cities don't."

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"To the women?" one reporter interjected.

"And there's women here," Gerry admitted with a grin.

Despite recent rumors linking him to Brandi Glanville, the Scot told me he's single. Line up, ladies!