*Rapper Fat Joe is speaking out about his weight loss journey and battle with depression.
Speaking to Men’s Health, the 52-year-old artist detailed his 200-pound weight loss, saying his heaviest at 470 pounds. Fat Joe admitted to falling into a deep dark depression following the death of his best friend Big Pun in 2000.
“I went to his funeral and I felt like Ebenezer Scrooge. Like, I seen me,” he shared. “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.’”
He added, “Your body’s just a computer. It reads stuff you eat in different ways.”
Months after the death of Big Pun, Fat Joe’s grandfather passed away and his sister died while giving birth, Complex reports.
The rapper has been speaking about his “unconditional love” for Joey, who lives with a disability. https://t.co/1Slo8XcF2k
— Men’s Health Mag (@MensHealthMag) July 8, 2023
“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,” Joe shared. “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.”
It was Big Pun’s death that forced Joe to confront his health issues.
“Imagine me and Big Pun all over TV. We’re together. We’re best friends. Making hit records together. He dies, and everybody in the world keeps coming up to me: ‘Sorry for your loss,’ not knowing that they’re triggering the depression every single time,” Joe explained. “There was no way to go in the world. And so when I see pictures of my sister, I try to breeze through them. I lost a lot of people, and unfortunately, I can’t sit there and dwell, because I know that’s something that takes me down that path. So I gotta push forward.”
It took Joe years to lose weight through lifestyle changes before he confronted his depression.
“Once you snap out of it, you should know what brings you there and to run the other way,” he said. “The minute I feel unhappy, I go toward happy.”
He said the human brain is “the most complex Rubik’s Cube you could ever, ever, ever, ever try to figure out.”
“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.
READ MORE: Fat Joe Blasts ‘Major Label System’ for Being a ‘Ponzi Scheme’ | Video
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