Mike & Molly alum Billy Gardell made major life changes after a health scare in 2020.
“Every year, I’d say I’d start on Monday. Or the first of the month. Or New Year’s Eve. That was always my routine,” Gardell, 56, told People in an interview published on Tuesday, December 9.
The actor said he dropped and gained dozens of pounds at a time for years. However, things changed in 2020 when he developed type 2 diabetes. At the time, he weighed around 370 to 380 lbs.
The real eye-opener for Gardell was the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When the first wave hit, and they punched up that list of high-risk conditions, I had all of them,” he told the outlet. “Overweight, sleep apnea, smoker, type 2 diabetes, asthma … It was really the perfect storm. Between my blood numbers not coming back good, my blood pressure going up, type 2 diabetes and COVID — it was enough stuff to scare me to say, ‘Come hell or high water, I’ve got to make a change.’”
Gardell ultimately underwent bariatric surgery in July 2021, which was the first step in his transformation.
“It really came down to a shift in everything I think about food,” he said. “Food is fuel. It’s not reward, it’s not soothing, it’s not medication. I had to get beyond my emotional relationship with food.”
Gardell changed his diet and began working out regularly to lose 170 lbs.
“I fluctuate between 210 and 215,” he said of his current weight. “And that’s comfortable for me. My diabetes is gone. I feel strong. I have energy. Losing weight saved my life.”
Gardell previously opened up about his weight loss journey in a 2023 interview with Entertainment Tonight. At the time, he had lost 150 lbs and said he was “walking around pretty healthy these days.”
“I think you got to find peace with yourself and at some point, look in the mirror and go, ‘You know, it’s probably time to take care of you.’ And I didn’t get that note early on,” he told the outlet. “But I’m a big believer that when you get it, you get it. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as you get it.”
Despite the change in his physical appearance and the improvement in his mental health, Gardell said he still faced criticism from trolls online.
“There’s always people online that, you know, when I was heavy, they were like ‘You’re too heavy!’ And now it’s like, ‘Are you sick?’” he explained. “Can I just walk the earth, please?!”
Gardell starred alongside Melissa McCarthy on Mike & Molly from 2010 to 2016. The show followed a couple who met at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting and fell in love. Like Gardell, McCarthy, 55, has been open about her weight loss journey.
“I’ve been every size in the world. Parts of my 20s, I was in great shape, but I didn’t appreciate it. If I was a 6 or an 8, I thought, ‘Why aren’t I a 2 or a 4?’” she exclusively told Us Weekly in 2013. “Now I feel like I have two great kids and the dreamiest husband [Ben Falcone] on the planet, and everything else is just a work in progress.”
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