(HMG) – We had mentioned recently how The Price Is Right frontman Drew Carey, has lost 70 pounds over the past year. In a new interview, the Cleveland native who was hugely popular in his self-disparaging sitcom, The Drew Carey Show, tells what motivated him to make a dramatic life style change to turn around his health. Not wanting to fall victim to the heart disease that runs in his family, Carey traded his “daily hamburger” for a healthy lifestyle of good nutrition, daily exercise and willpower. “I always thought I was going to die before I was 60,” the comedian, 52, tells Parade Magazine this week. “My father died of a heart attack in his 40s. I’m not an idiot. The writing was on the wall.”
A further wake up call was the death of his brother, Neal, who suffered a fatal heart attack this past summer.”I felt like I could have been attending my own funeral,” Carey told Parade, adding that he subsequently made a pact with his surviving brother Roger, 58, to get healthy and remain that way.Â
Carey said it was fiancée Nicole Jaracz’s son, Connor, who motivated him to get fit, after he couldn’t keep up with the toddler during playtime.”I’d be like, ‘Connor, I can’t,’ and he’d say, ‘C’mon, Dad!’ That was a terrible feeling,” Carey admitted. “I thought, I’m never going to see him graduate high school.”
Thanks to a rigorous workout regime, Carey can now keep up with Connor, and has now reversed his type-2 diabetes and rekindled his love of life.
“When I was working out, instead of being like, ‘I’m so tired,’ I thought, I’m going to do a 10K run, and this is how I’m going to feel at mile three and mile four,” Carey told the mag. “I could see myself in the clothes; I could feel the breeze. That way, I wasn’t just on a treadmill going nowhere. I had a goal in mind.”
The final result? He’s fit, happy and feels like the writing’s off the wall for good.
“I feel like I have my whole life back,” he said. “I could live to be 100 now.”
