Fat Joe revealed that he has now lost an incredible 200 pounds after weighing 470 pounds and now has a much healthier outlook on fitness and mental health.
Losing weight has helped the Lean Back rapper keep his diabetes under control and given him a whole new outlook on life.
She began her journey to a healthier weight and mindset more than 20 years ago when her friend and fellow rapper Big Pun died of a heart attack in 2000 at the age of 29, but only really started to make big strides in her weight loss journey.
‘I went to his funeral and I felt like Ebenezer Scrooge. Like, I saw me. And I’m looking at his little girl. She was my daughter’s age. I said, ‘You need to lose weight; Otherwise you’re outta here,” the other Round rapper told Men’s Health.
The outlet asked him if he plans to change his name now that the adjective no longer applies to him.
Transformed: Fat Joe reveals he has now lost an incredible 200lbs (pictured left in July 2023) after once weighing 470lbs and now has a much healthier outlook on fitness and mental health (R seen in 2006)
He said he briefly considered changing his stage name to Slim Joe or something similar but ultimately chose not to.
‘Even though I’ve become health conscious on another level, it wouldn’t make sense to change. Now it’s my brand. I made it,’ he said.
The What’s Love singer also spoke to the outlet about the depression she’s battled throughout her life, calling her mind, ‘the most complicated Rubik’s Cube you could ever, ever, ever, ever try to figure out. And so you fight that every day.’
He continued: ‘When you’re fighting yourself, there’s no wall you can build. There is no island you can go to. There is no place you can go where you can get away from it, because you are fighting with your mind.
You wake up, and then the moment you think about it, your brain sends you a message that says, ‘We’re not supposed to be happy.’ And then you go back into depression,’ he explained.
And as she figured out how her body processes different types of food, revealing that her parents still cook with lard and drink whole milk, she also unlocked the key to fighting her depression.
‘Your body is just a computer. It reads what you eat in different ways,’ he said.
And once he got his weight under control, he no longer had to inject insulin as he had been doing since he was diagnosed with diabetes at age 12.
After a period of pretty bad depression, he realized that, ‘once you get out of it, you should know what got you there and run the other way. The moment I feel unhappy, I turn to happiness.’
He explained how a conversation with one of his drives left him feeling like ‘Slim Joe’, a disappointment to his big fans.
‘Steve is a big boy. And he said, “Man, you always fly, Joe. All the big boys, you give us confidence and make us feel like big flies. You fat Joe. Then out of nowhere, you start losing weight.”
Earlier: Weight loss helped the Lean Back rapper keep his diabetes under control and gave him a whole new outlook on life (pic 2002)
Slimmer: He began his journey to a healthier weight and mindset more than 20 years ago when his friend and fellow rapper Big Poon died of a heart attack in 2000 aged 29, but only recently has real progress been made (pictured last month)
‘I said, “Man, I thought you’d be happy for me! Because I’m on the mend.”
‘And he said, “Nah, man, we feel like you’ve left us. For years, you’ve been telling us it’s cool to be fat. We’re fed up with you, big boys,”‘ he recalled.
And that didn’t go down well with him at all.
‘I was here, giving big people confidence, and they felt I had left them. They didn’t understand that I was just thinking, Yo, I really want to be here for a long time. I really want to work. I really want to be healthy. I want to stay here,’ he explained.