Call him Slim Joe.
Rapper Fat Joe, 52, showed off his impressive 200-pound weight loss in Men’s Health, revealing to a reporter what motivated him to shed the weight.
The South Bronx native, born Joseph Antonio Cartagena, explained that he fell into a deep depression after his best friend and mentee Big Pun, who struggled with a heart condition, unexpectedly passed in 2000.
“I went to his funeral and I felt like Ebenezer Scrooge,” the “What’s Luv” artist told the outlet about Pun’s funeral.
“Like, I seen me. And I’m looking at his little daughter. She was the same age as my daughter. I said, ‘You gotta lose weight; otherwise you outta here.’ “
But Joe turned to excessive amounts of alcohol and ended up gaining even more weight.
At his heaviest, he reached 470 pounds.
His depression kept him down until 2002 when he made his first attempt to get fit.
He tried everything outside of surgery, he claimed, from running on treadmills in a plastic suit to unsuccessful changes in his diet.
But the “Lean Back” rapper, who was diagnosed with diabetes at 12, started to notice changes once he learned more about the science of food.
“Your body’s just a computer. It reads stuff you eat in different ways,” Joe said.
“My parents, thank God they’re still here, it’s the biggest blessing, but they still cook in lard. They still drink the milk with the red cap,” he added, presumably referring to whole milk.
Joe was able to get to a point in his weight-loss journey where he no longer needed to inject insulin.
According to his friend and collaborator Remy Ma, this also meant that Joe didn’t have to buy two or three of his beloved Gucci outfits and have them tailored together anymore.
“Now to see him be super fly like he’s always been and get his size out the store, that says a lot,” Remy told the outlet.
After achieving his notable physical transformation, the “All The Way Up” artist said he briefly considered changing his moniker to something like Slim Joe, but that quickly went away.
“Although I’ve gotten health conscious on another level, it wouldn’t make sense to change it. Now it’s my brand. It’s what I built,” he said.
