Rapper Fat Joe describes how he battled depression, lost 200 pounds

LONDON: Fat Joe, also known as Joseph Antonio Cartagena, is an American rapper who lost 200 pounds, PEOPLE reported.

In a recent interview with Men's Health for the magazine's "Hip Hop Health" series to commemorate hip-hop's 50th anniversary, the "Lean Back" rapper, 52, spoke up about his health. Joe described weighing 470 pounds at his heaviest and how shedding 200 pounds saved his life. Joe suffered from despair after his best buddy Big Pun died abruptly of a heart attack in his twenties. He realised he needed to modify his behaviours after attending his friend's funeral, as per PEOPLE. Joe recalled, “I went to his funeral and I felt like Ebenezer Scrooge. Like, I saw 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." During the sadness that followed the deaths of Big Pun and other friends and relatives, Joe characterised his thinking as " the most complex Rubik's Cube you could ever, ever, ever, ever try to figure out."

He compared his state of mind to a moment in The Matrix Resurrections in which Keanu Reeves' Neo sits in a bathtub with a rubber duck on his head. "That’s what depression was like to me," Fat Joe 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 the minute you think about it, your brain sends you a message saying, ‘We’re not supposed to be happy.’ And then you fall right back into depression." The singer stated that he must "push forward" since he cannot "sit there and dwell" after losing so many people in his life. He also altered his behaviours, which aided him in overcoming his melancholy.

"Once you come to, you should know what brought you there and run the other way." "The moment I feel unhappy, I gravitate towards happiness," he said to Men's Health. Even though he has all he could want at home, he feels greater satisfaction when he visits his mother. "When I pull up to my mother’s home that I bought for her, that's a modest home, it puts the biggest smile on my face," Fat Joe said. "And when I go inside, she’s happy and my father’s happy and everybody’s happy. I never told my daughter ‘no’ one time in her life for anything. It’s always been ‘yes.’ That makes me happy. I’m a big movie guy. John Wick 4. Air. That makes me happy. CNN makes me happy. When you’re on the road so much, you feel so happy to sleep in your bed.”

Fat Joe is now on a health adventure that began when he discovered the science behind healthy habits. "Your body's just a computer. It reads stuff you eat in different ways," , he explained. He also checks his blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar levels every three months because he understands how frightening it can be to believe you're doing everything correctly, only to discover that "your numbers are higher than you want." He recognises the need to "try new ways to figure out how to keep your stuff under control" because he is not embarking on this trip as a younger guy.