Rapper Fat Joe reveals he's now lost an incredible 200lbs and conquered his depression: 'The minute I feel unhappy, I go toward happy'
Fat Joe has revealed he has now lost an incredible 200lbs after once weighing in at 470lbs and now has a much healthier outlook on fitness and mental health.
The weight loss has helped the Lean Back rapper get his diabetes under control and has given him a whole new outlook on life.
He started his journey to a healthier weight and mindset more than 20 years ago when his friend and fellow rapper Big Pun died of a heart attack in 2000 at age 29, but only really started making big progress with his weight loss journey recently.
'I went to his funeral and I felt like Ebenezer Scrooge. 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,'' the Another Round rapper told Men's Health.
The outlet asked him if he planned on changing his name now that the adjective fat no longer applies to him.
Transformed: Fat Joe has revealed he has now lost an incredible 200lbs (pictured left in Jul 2023) after once weighing in at 470lbs and now has a much healthier outlook on fitness and mental health (seen R in 2006)
He said he briefly considered changing his stage name to Slim Joe or something similar but in the end opted not to.
'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.
The What's Luv singer also spoke to the outlet about the depression he's battled for his entire life, calling his mind, 'The most complex Rubik's Cube you could ever, ever, ever, ever try to figure out. And so you battling that every day.'
He continued: 'When you're fighting yourself, there isn't a wall high enough that you can build. There isn't an island you can go to. There isn't a place you can go to where you get away from it, because you're fighting your mind.
You wake up, and then the minute you think about it, your brain sends you a message to say, 'We're not supposed to be happy.' And then you fall right back into depression,' he explained.
And one he figured out how his body processed different types of food, revealing that his parents still cooked with lard and drank whole milk, he also unlocked the key to fighting his depression.
'Your body's just a computer. It reads stuff 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 figured out that, 'Once you snap out of it, you should know what brings you there and to run the other way. The minute I feel unhappy, I go toward happy.'
He explained how a conversation with one of his drivers left him feeling like 'Slim Joe' was a disappointment to his bigger fans.
'Steve is a big boy. And he said, "Man, you always fly, Joe. All the big boys, you gave us confidence and made us think that big was fly. You Fat Joe. Then out of nowhere, you start losing weight."
Before: The weight loss has helped the Lean Back rapper get his diabetes under control and has given him a whole new outlook on life (pictured 2002)
Slimmer: He started his journey to a healthier weight and mindset more than 20 years ago when his friend and fellow rapper Big Pun died in of a heart attack in 2000 at age 29, but only recently made real progress (pictured last month)
'I said, "Man, I thought you guys would be happy for me! Because I'm getting healthier."
'And he said, "Nah, man, we feel like you left us. For years, you've been telling us being a fat guy is cool. We got upset with you, the big boys,"' he recalled.
And that didn't sit well with him at all.
'Here I was, giving confidence to oversized people, and they felt like I flat left them. They didn't realize I was just thinking about, yo, I really wanna be here for a long time. I really want to work out. I really want to be healthy. I wanna be here,' he explained.
