Last year, Kevin James had an unexpected surge in cultural relevance when an old promo picture of him from his The King of Queens days suddenly blew up as a meme. Even though it was the first time that most people had thought of Kevin outside of reruns on CBS/Peacock, he’s actually been steadily working for two decades. Well, for some reason that I don’t really want to know about, Kevin appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast a couple of weeks ago. During the interview, he talked about his career, including some of his weight struggles. Kevin shared that while he was recently filming a horror movie, he lost about 50lbs. When the movie was over, he gained all of the weight back. After gaining it back, he found out he needed to do reshoots and had to lose the weight all over again. So, he ended up losing 60lbs by “fasting,” which entailed sustaining on some salt and water over the course of 41 days. Holy yo-yo dieting, Batman.
The King of Queens star Kevin James recently stopped by The Joe Rogan Experience for a wide-ranging interview covering everything from his career to his own body. At one point in the conversation, he explained that while filming a new movie, he underwent a dramatic weight loss, then weight gain, then an even bigger rapid loss. But the extreme method he described is far from a healthy approach to achieve his desired result. The actor explained to Rogan that he lost weight to play a priest in an unnamed upcoming horror movie, getting down to 230 pounds. After shooting had wrapped, he packed on 50 pounds and got back up to 280. When he learned he had to do reshoots later, he had to lose all the weight again.
“I can lose it really quick, I can fast and lose it,” he said of his yo-yo dieting tactics. “Seriously, I can lose it quick… I can do it in a month. Less than a month.”
He went on to explain how he fasted for multiple weeks—”41 and a half” days to be exact—to drop the weight for the reshoots quickly. But it wasn’t intermittent fasting, an approach where you restrict the number of hours per day you can eat food which has gained popularity in some health circles in recent years and has been proven in studies to be safe and effective. Instead, he claims he survived only on “water and a little salt” for approximately six weeks.
“When I lock on, I can do something,” he stated plainly. “I started fasting, I didn’t say ‘I’m going to do 40 days,’ I just said ‘I’m going to do whatever I can.’”
That doesn’t mean it was a smooth ride the whole time. “I felt pretty good for a while, and then I’d have these dips, like wow, I feel pretty miserable,” he confessed.
In the end, he dropped all the weight he initially lost for the movie and then some. “I lost, I think, like 60 pounds,” he said. “I didn’t even take vitamins… It cleansed everything out of me.” In the interview, however, James acknowledged that this wasn’t the best advice for others. “I’m not saying it’s the way to go for everybody, I don’t know,” he said.
James himself acknowledged that he didn’t go about losing weight in the healthiest way, and that he gained much of the weight back afterwards. Looking ahead, he wants to focus on his diet and establish a sustainable routine to stay in good shape for years to come.
Oh man, that sounds miserable. While different bodies respond to different types of diets and exercise, that’s not what Kevin did here. It’s absolutely worth pointing out that what he did wasn’t fasting or intermittent fasting or however he wants to present it so that it’s less jarring. He was starving himself. I would have been so hangry after about 12 hours of that method. I wish that Kevin had worked with a dietician or nutritionist to lose the weight safely. If he really did sustain on nothing but salt and water for 41 days without taking any vitamins, then that is crazy. All of that drastic weight loss and gain cannot be healthy for him. He has so many resources available to him, too. I hope he’s serious about focusing on a better diet and exercise routine to live a healthier life in the future.
Screenshots from YouTube and Instagram