Fat Joe shows 200-pound weight loss, says he pushed ‘forward’ after depression
He’s Fat Joe.
Rapper Fat Joe detailed his impressive 200-pound weight loss, saying he pushed “forward” after a battle with depression.
The “All The Way Up” hitmaker, 52, told Men’s Health that he decided to overhaul his lifestyle when he weighed his heaviest at 470 pounds.
The rapper said he had to have a pep talk with himself to get back on track when he became depressed 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.’”
The rapper, whose real name is Joseph Antonio Cartagena, said he began to learn the ins and outs of good habits.
“Your body’s just a computer,” he said. “It reads stuff you eat in different ways.”
Fat Joe said he now regularly checks his blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar levels to make sure he’s at his healthiest.
The rapper said his mind is “the most complex Rubik’s Cube you could ever, ever, ever, ever try to figure out” which proved true during his bout with depression.
He compared his mental health at the time to a scene in “The Matrix Resurrections” when Keanu Reeves’ character Neo sits in a bathtub with a rubber duck on his head.
“That’s what depression was like to me,” he said. “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 added.
Despite his slimmed-down frame, the rapper previously revealed to Page Six that he will not be changing his stage name.
“As a business I spent so many millions and millions of dollars marketing Fat Joe that it wouldn’t be smart to change my name now,” he told us in October 2022.