Billy Gardell is opening up about his healthy journey and the current struggles he has with eating.
The 54-year-old Bob Hearts Abishola actor lost over 150 pounds in the last few years with the help of bariatric surgery.
In a previous interview, Billy revealed that he weighed 370 pounds about a decade ago and he was down to about 205 to 210 pounds in April 2023. That means he lost between 160 and 165 pounds!
“I went from a young Jackie Gleason to an old Paul Newman,” Billy said on Live with Kelly and Mark this week.
Keep reading to find out more…
“The last three years, I had to make some changes because when COVID hit, in the words of Richard Pryor, I went in the house. I had a lot of the dangerous [conditions]. When they made that list of, you know, overweight. Type 2 diabetes. Smoker. Asthma. I’m like, ‘Check! Check! Bingo!’” he said.
“I said to my wife, ‘If they just find some medicine where this thing won’t kill us, I’m going to change everything.’ And as soon as they did, I went and got that bariatric surgery and then I just follow a routine every day and I got free,” Billy added.
Billy continued, “When I was big, I think you could see me from the space shuttle.”
Kelly Ripa asked if the surgery was hard to recover from. Billy said, “Well you wake up from the surgery and you’re like, ‘Oh God, what have I done?’ But then you start see the progress and you start to see your body change and and get healthier. Your blood numbers come down. I’m not on any medicine. My diabetes is gone, so it’s all good stuff. Now I get to annoy my wife for a little longer.”
Mark Consuelos asked if he still has any guilty pleasures.
“The Hulk is still in there. I’ve got to keep him at bay,” he said. “I’m constantly a hostage negotiator between my brain and my stomach because my brain’s like, ‘Uh, you can’t eat that, you can’t eat that! You’re full!’ My stomach’s, like ‘That’s never stopped us before.’ So I have to balance it, but I work on it every day. I’m just so grateful. It’s nice to not have to take a deep breath before I tie my shoes.”
Here’s everything that Billy previously said about his weight loss.