Famous Hollywood Director Posts Photo of Dramatic Weight Loss 6 Months After Heart Attack
Gaining weight is an insidious process. After all, no one sets out to become obese.
Rather pressures start to mount in your personal and professional life. You slack off on exercise.
And, of course, you indulge in your favorite fatty and sugary foods a little too often. Before you know it, you’re overweight — perhaps dangerously so.
That seems to be exactly what happened with famous movie director Kevin Smith. He broke into Hollywood with 1994’s “Clerks,” an irreverent, behind-the-scenes look at what happens in a convenience store.
His hits piled up with films such as “Chasing Amy,” “Dogma,” and “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.” But even as Smith enjoyed celluloid success, his weight fluctuated dangerously.
In 2010, he got so large he was kicked off of a Southwest Airlines flight, although he disputed the claim that his size was the reason for his ejection. “Dude, I know I’m fat,” he told CNN.
“That’s not why I was truly thrown off that plane because I fit perfectly in the seat. “I am not fat enough to eject off a Southwest flight.”
However, that wasn’t enough for Smith to enact a major life change. The incident that would cause him to truly reassess how he was living occurred on Feb. 28, 2018.
He’d been filming a comedy special in Glendale, California, when he suddenly started feeling odd. Little did he know that he was having a heart attack.
“I started feeling pressure on my chest,” he told the New York Daily News. “Honestly, I was never in pain.
“I didn’t piece together I was having a heart attack … even though my chest was heavy and even though my father died of age of 67 died of a massive heart attack.” Yet he was, and it was so serious that, statistically speaking, he should’ve died.
“The doctor who saved my life told me I had 100 percent blockage of my LAD artery (aka ‘the Widow-Maker’),” Smith said. “If I hadn’t canceled [my] show to go to the hospital, I would’ve died.”
Yet Smith survived, and after the proverbial smoke cleared, he decided it was time to make a change. According to Fox News, he became a Weight Watchers ambassador and set out to do one thing: lose weight.
“Six months ago from right now, I was in the hospital recovering from a heart attack I’d had the night before,” he said. “When I went to my doctor a week later, she told me ‘The best thing you can do for yourself now is to lose 50 pounds.’
“Half a year later, I can report that I followed Doctor’s orders. I started at 256 and now I weigh 205.
“This is the lightest I’ve been since high school!” Smith released pictures of his new physique on Instagram, and the change was dramatic.
The director looked slim, trim, healthy, and (perhaps most importantly) happy. Here’s to hoping his example encourages others fighting the same battle.
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