When the host of the Jay Shetty Podcast brings up Fat Joe's "whole weight loss journey," the Bronx rapper doesn't start with a diet or a gym. He starts with the deaths of two friends.
Clip: Viral Podcast Shorts YouTube Short from the full source linked below.
This article sticks to what Fat Joe says in the Short, in his own words. It adds no health advice and no claims beyond his story.
"The first thing was Big Pun died"
Asked what made his health the first thing, Fat Joe goes straight to his friend. "Big Pun died," he says, "from a heart attack," in his 20s.
He explains why that hit so hard. Until then, he says, the people he knew who had died "were like murdered." A friend dying in his 20s, in Joe's telling because of his weight, was something different.
Then he connects it to himself. He says he was "480 pounds at one time." That loss, he says, was "like half the journey."
The second funeral
The other half came later. Fat Joe says another friend, also "20 something years old," died of a heart attack too. He doesn't name this friend in the Short.
He went to the funeral, and he noticed the parallels. "He had a daughter like me," he says. "He was funnier than me."
Sitting there, he says, it felt "almost like an episode of Ebenezer Scrooge," the story where you're taken back to look at your life. He looked, and he didn't like what he saw coming. "Oh this is me next," he remembers thinking.
From there, he says, he "had no choice." He describes what followed in plain terms: work out, eat right and "stay off the carbs."
"I just want to live"
The host points out that changes like this are hard and that people struggle with them. Fat Joe's answer keeps coming back to one sentence.
People tell him all the time that he's "not so fat" anymore, he says. His reply is always the same: "I just want to live." He says it again and again, as if it is the whole explanation, and for him it seems to be.
He adds that "this world is so beautiful" and describes a small daily ritual. Every morning, he says, he calls some of his friends to ask, "you believe we got another day?" He sums it up with a phrase: "health is wealth."
"Years, bro"
Asked how long the process took, he doesn't pretend it was quick. "Years bro this was years," he says.
At one point, when he was "really on it," he says, he worked out "three times a day." He admits he was "like addicted." If he flew to Vegas to do a show, he says, he would go straight to the gym.
He doesn't give his current weight or a total number lost in the Short, and he doesn't present his routine as advice for anyone else. It is simply what he says he did after realizing that he could be next. The motivation, in his telling, never changed. It was those two losses, and the plain wish to keep waking up to another day.
Big Pun and Fat Joe
Big Pun, born Christopher Rios, was a Bronx rapper, and Rolling Stone called Fat Joe his mentor when it reported his death. The Los Angeles Times reported that the rapper died in White Plains, New York, in February 2000, at 28.
The show's own episode recap tells it the same way the Short does. Losing friends young was the wake-up call, and Fat Joe understood he might be next if he didn't change.
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FAQ
What started Fat Joe's weight-loss journey?
He says it began when his friend Big Pun died in his 20s. Then another friend in his 20s died of a heart attack, and at that funeral he thought, "this is me next."
How much did Fat Joe weigh at his heaviest?
In the Short, he says he was 480 pounds at one time.
What does Fat Joe mean by "I just want to live"?
It's his reply when people say he isn't so fat anymore. He says the world is beautiful and he wants more days in it.
How long did his weight loss take?
He says it took years. At one point, he says, he worked out three times a day.