This may not be a big story for most of you this story but I got quite inspired by Kevin Smith’s Instagram post over the weekend so I want to talk about it. Six months ago, director Kevin suffered a near-fatal heart attack. Fortunately, Kevin took the scare as a wakeup call to look after his health. After he was released from the hospital, doctors advised Kevin that should lose 50 pounds for his health. And by gum, that is exactly what Kevin did – 51 to be exact. According to his post, Kevin is following three diets/lifestyles to achieve his weight loss. The first is the plant-based diet that Penn Jillette suggested, which allowed Kevin to shed 17 pounds in just two weeks. Layered on that is the fact that daughter, Harley Quinn, is a vegan so she was able to help him modify his diet to cut out animal products. And thirdly, Kevin was brought on as a Weight Watchers Ambassador and has been following their program through their mobile app. With 51 pounds gone and potentially 10 more to go, it sounds like he’s found a winning formula.
I am still not a believer in the plant-based diet that Jillette follows but if it’s working for Kevin, all power to him. I put more weight (no pun intended) in Harley Quinn’s influence with her knowledge of a balanced vegan diet, though. I, personally, have benefitted from the Weight Watchers program. The apps (I use Livestrong now because it’s free) really help me stay on top of it – when I use them. As I said, this post inspired me. I’ve mentioned a few times that perimenopause has really kicked my a$$ in more ways than one and my weight is a big part of it. Just this weekend I promised myself I would take control of the situation. Basically, my energy has been depleted so I am exercising less. Not so much doing it less, but not being able to exert the same level as before. So I need to adjust my diet because I’m burning fewer calories. I don’t need to go back to pre-peri weight, but 10 pounds would be nice. Maybe Kevin and I could be weight loss buddies for that last 10, sending each other inspirational messages and new recipes for zucchini.
Also purely coincidental: I have finally gotten around to watching Veronica Mars and I just watched the episode that Kevin was in, in which he made fun of his weight. Oh how times have changed.
Photo credit: Instagram, Getty Images and WENN Photos
OMG pleeeeeasse lose the giant jorts and oversized jerseys! You weigh like 98 pounds now, no need to hide under tent clothes… someone get this man a style makeover.
I don’t think Kevin smith cares much about style, and I don’t think anyone is expecting him to dress different
Lol, those cracked me up, too. He looked like a jumbo version of Jesse on Breaking Bad.
I’m sure he’d look amazing dressed up a bit but I’m here for how healthy and youthful he looks. Good for him.
@Chaine
ITA
Maybe these clothes are his trademark, but he would look so much better if he wore more fitted clothes, shaved his facial hair and lost the cap.
Maybe he still sees himself as a heavy person or maybe he just really likes this style.
More power to him for taking care of himself and loosing the weight.
The fact that he made an oversized jersey specific to Mr Toad’s Wild Ride has earned him my eternal love and respect.
That was a great ride.
LOL. I don’t think I’d recognize him without the jorts. They’ve become his trademark.
Should he ever be nominated for an Oscar, I would expect him to show up to the ceremony in jorts and a bow tie with his hockey jersey. 🙂
Congratulations! SilentBob- live many healthy years!
I ❤️ Dogma, and it inspired me to watch other movies of his as well. Silent Bob cracks me up.
I’m on my own wellness journey after getting very sedentary from 2011-2017. I’ve been working out hard for over a year, cut way back on alcohol (used to have a drink or few every night), increased water and sleep. Next up: cutting out processed foods!
I’m in the same boat! Too much wine, too much crappy food and not enough exercise and now I’m here, trying to lose 100 lbs. I’ve lost 20, with 80 to go! It’s tough but worth it and I hope you are finding happiness on your journey.
Congratulations to Kevin and to LizLemon and Lobstah!I too am wanting to cut out processed foods,but I love my McDonald’s fries 🍟 I have noticed that I have lost muscle/strength over the last 10-12 years,my goal is to get back to heavier cardio and consistent weight lifting again.May we all be blessed with health!
I’ve been on the keto diet and started intermittent fasting for not quite 2 mos now and I’m finally dropping the 10-15 pounds I gained due to a hormonal health issue 3 yrs ago. Suddenly I just couldn’t lose the weight, and although I did a more traditional diet/broth fasts, and got half-way last year, it still was different than how easily I could lose before. In less than 4 weeks I already beat my lowest that I struggled to get past for these years. Just posting here in case this helps anyone else. It wasn’t easy to start as it’s so different and does require lots of reading up, but it’s very easy once you get going, and feel very full all the time.
Thanks I am going to look into the keto diet and just by habit I regularly do intermittent fasting (Crohn’s disease,so I only eat once a day usually),hope you keep having success!
Good job! I stopped eating meat and dairy two years ago, for animal-loving reasons, and while I didn’t lose alot of weight i feel so much better. Cutting out dairy I think was the key for me, it’s not as hard as people think!
I haven’t eaten meat or eggs in 15 years or had milk for over 20 years. But I still eat some cheese and yogurt. I cannot find alternatives that I love and I just crave cheese especially sometimes.
I had a hard time replacing the melty stretchy cheese goodness, until I found this recipe: https://itdoesnttastelikechicken.com/melty-stretchy-gooey-vegan-mozarella/
it’s honnest to god, melty and stretchy vegan mozza. blows my mind every time.
Thanks so much for this! I have made cashew cheeses but not this version. For me the issue, I think, is that the sweetness of the cashews was overpowering. I wonder if it would work with a less sweet nut?
I hope you like the recipe! it’s really easy to make and it’s amazing. I got my mom, who is lactose intolerant, hooked on it when I made the spinach & artichoke dish from the same blog for her. She gobbled it all up!
I am truly grateful to have found this recipe OriginalLala!👏👏👏👏👏
I had to give up most dairy products for lactose intolerance reasons by my mid-20s. I admit I really miss cheese (I can still eat hard cheeses but in smaller quantities), but yeah, you can do it if you really want to.
Serious question, what to do if you’re an already lifelong plant based fat person? He’s lucky this worked for him but what do I do?!
I think the perception that all plant-based folks are thin is problematic because all bodies are different. I have vegan friends who are fat, and vegan friends who are super tiny. I’m in the middle, not thin but not fat. For me anyway, I lose weight when I control my portions of pasta, because I’m Italian and I can eat pasta like nobody’s business if left to my own devices 🙂
You go to your doctor and ask for allergy tests, full thyroid testing, adrenal testing, and whatever else can test for inflammation.
If all of your testing comes out fine, then you look at the calories that you’re consuming with beverages first. Make changes if you can – especially changing to drinking water if you’re not. (I drink filtered, though, due to all of the communities with tainted water these days. Berkey sports bottle for me.) If you’re drinking cow’s milk, you might want to change it to goat’s milk or water.
Then you’d look at the calories of the food you’re eating. Some really great foods like avacado – so good for our brains – can have a ton of calories, so just adjust and eat more, smaller meals if you can.
I love the book “Potatoes, Not Prozac,” which isn’t a book about being vegetarian, but it does teach how to stabilize blood sugar and it helped me lose weight a long time ago. Best wishes!
JAG, I hope more people listen to your advice. First I found out I had a serious thyroid deficiency, and later, found I had food allergies. I’d tried dieting for 6 months and gotten nowhere. Now I’m half way to goal!
Honestly I think cutting calories, sometimes drastically, is the only way to lose weight. I exercise hard five days a week but the only time my weight drops is when I make a conscious effort to eat less. Best of luck to you.
It’s TRUE that plant based does NOT equal skinny. I know. I’m plant based. Theres lots of fries and vegan ice cream so…
I suggest following a plan for plant based weight loss. It worked for me. 5 lbs off my.goal weight now, the lowest I’ve weighed in 8 years. A good one to look for is the Forks Over Knives plan or online support like Happy Herbivore. Good luck! And the animals and planet thank you for being plant based! So does your heart.
Honestly, I think it’s easier in some ways to get fat on a vegetarian diet because you’re moving almost entirely to carb-based products. Unless you’re doing it very clean – like all fresh fruits and veggies, legumes, etc. – it’s not that much healthier. You still have to watch out for the starches that do people in weight-wise like potatoes, wheat, etc. The only real benefit with giving up meat is with fattier red meats because some of the sugars in them can act as carcinogens in large quantities, but if you’re eating lean meats in moderate quantities, the diets are roughly the same in terms of overall health benefits.
I don’t know. Cholesterol went down dramatically on a plant-based diet, although I’m trying to do it mainly for ethical reasons. I did find it hard though for exactly the reason you’re mentioning – if you go plant-based, you naturally have to consume more carbs. But I’ve found if I stick to whole grains, I do well (quinoa, steel cut oats, sweet potatoes, whole grain bread, etc.) I mean, carbs themselves don’t make people fat. It’s the sugar spikes created by refined carbs in particular that cause people to overeat.
Thanks for all your advice guys!
Oh heck yeah! Major props to him. My husband did the same with a (non-junk food) vegan diet. Went from 260 to 195 from Jan-June of this year. He hadn’t had a heart attack, but his cholesterol and blood pressure were way too high. Now they are perfect. And I won’t lie, it’s nice seeing his 6 pack again.
So shallow of me.
But the energy led to major happiness and it’s awesome to see people reaching their goals.
Penn Jillette followed an all potato diet. Hmm, sounds appealing to me.
Sounds a-peeling to me!
Womp womp!
I’ve been following his journey as well! I think he did the potato thing first, then a vegan stint, but I’m pretty sure he’s back to eating meat on the weight watchers plan.
At any rate – what he’s done is monumentally difficult and props to him for buckling down!
I remember hearing a heart surgeon once say that almost every patient he’d operated on had put themselves there. It was really eye opening. My own husband had a scare just with high cholesterol and uncontrollable blood pressure. He’s pretty fit by had put on about 15 lbs. The doctor told him he was going to have to go on meds – instead he lost the 15 lbs and his numbers regulated. The doctor was actually shocked. She said she could count on one hand the number of times in her career a patient had followed her directives and avoided medication!
Sounds very similar to my husband. He was also able to drop his cholesterol back into the healthy range within six months by cutting out red meat and his daily ice cream treat.
Which Livestrong App is it? Is it called a Livestrong – the only one in the Apple App Store is the one for quitting smoking😳 I wonder if it has regional restrictions? Got it! My Plate Calorie Counter – yay!
Sorry – I should have specified that. Yes, the app is MyPlate, which also corresponds to the My Plate tab on the livestrong.com website. I just have the free membership, I really don’t know what the paid upgrade memberships offer.
I don’t know if it is better or worse than other apps out there but it has been effective for us (when we use it. Strangely, it doesn’t help me lose weight if I ignore it and eat whatever I want for three months)
Hey Hecate, can I ask another quick Q about you rather than Kevin, for whom I’m very pleased – if that’s ok re being peri… Can I ask how old you are? I’m 39- is this kinda young…? I’m noticing issues with energy levels and being unable to ever get back to the weight I used to be, other signs. Are you managing, is it ok etc?
Wow congrats to him! He looks great.
He’s lost weight before so he’s a bit of a yo yo dieter. I do hope he keeps the weight off for health reasons but I know it can’t be easy. Now if only he’d get rid of those awful wide leg sorts and hockey jerseys. I don’t expect him to turn into some fashionista but the way he dresses (and he’s always dressed like this no matter what he has weighed) is so tragic.
I try to eat a fairly low carb Keto style diet. I lost 45 lbs and have kept it off 2 years but I’ve been stuck at the same weight for almost a year. I wanted to lose 10 more but I’m absolutely not budging, it’s driving me crazy!! Good for Kevin!
Hecate, I know just what you mean about the peri-menopausal struggle. I’m definitely finding it harder to keep the weight off and my energy level has flagged. But running is frustrating me sometimes because I’m slower than I used to be. I tried mixing it up for a while with weight training but that didn’t help at all. Now, I’m trying to cut sugar (except for fresh fruit) out of my diet to see if that works.
Losing weight is the easy part. Keeping it off is the hard part I lost 80 pounds 10 years ago and its still off but its a one day at a time for me just like an addiction . I yo yo dieted for many years but now at 63 yo I hope I have figured out what to do
This is awesome! I’m so proud of him. He seems like such a genuine dude. I wish him the best always. <3
He needs to be cautious in the next few years because rapid weight loss of that nature can easily creep back on because it’s not typically sustainable in the long term, but I suspect he’s got enough of a scare to keep himself somewhat regulated.
My downfall isn’t fats, it’s carbs. I got that sweet teeth and a fondness for snacking. Moving to a more protein heavy diet is more what I need to do. Sadly, I could never do a vegetarian diet at this point in my life because a lot of the typical protein replacements – legumes and the like – trigger symptoms of my GI disorder.
My husband was telling my daughter and me last night about this guy and his weight loss,good for him and all that.Well my husband also was convinced this guy was *Kevin James *He shows us the pics and we were like whaaat? No way is this Kevin James-Thanks for running this story I’m glad for this guy and now I know who my husband was talking about 🤣
Not sure I believe his diets. That face looks like a gastric surgery face to me.
Nah, he just has the face of someone who lost a lot of weight rather quickly and the skin/muscles and everything else didn’t have time to adjust and settle. Any form of weight loss will do that
The only “negative” thing I noticed with people who have lost a lot of weight is that they seem to look older after. Like their faces use to be all smooth and young-looking, but once they’ve lost weight, it’s like their skin gets all saggy and you now see the wrinkles and the eyebags become more prominent (there are like hollows beneath the eyes). This is more noticeable in contestants I have seen from the TV show “The Biggest Loser”. But then again, more often than not, these people dropped the pounds at a really rapid rate. Maybe their skin didn’t have the time to adjust from the sudden weight loss? Still, I know that the health benefits one gets from losing all that extra weight is more important than looking youthful.
@Hecate, friends tried the 10 Day Bone Broth Belly slim down. It wasn’t easy but lost 6-7 pounds of belly fat in 10 days. Also look at the Prevention Magazine website section on walking off weight with interval walking. Simple, cheap, effective.
Our food system ensures a lot of us too way more than we need. I do 18/6 fasting / delay don’t deny / one meal a day on most days. I start snacking on fruit, nuts, and small handfuls of chopped raw greens and high-water-content veg from 2 or 3. Just water, black/green tea, herbal teas, or black coffee before that. No sugar.
Eat one main meal of dense foods at night: protein, veg, carbs. Brisk walking for exercise, no crazy workouts. I might have one or two lunches a week for social purposes, but keep these light and you’ll still lose weight. Can lose 0.5 to 1 KG a week on this diet and it’s great for your skin, immune system, etc.
If you want to maintain weight eating like this, eat a really big meal as your main meal and have dessert if you’re a dessert person. If you prefer lunch as your main meal but are tempted to eat something at dinnertime, have some light soup.
Just remember if you don’t wake up your stomach, it’ll get used to it during the fasting hours and won’t constantly beg you for more dense (calorific) foods. But if you start eating, you’ll need more and more food throughout the day. It might not be doable for everyone but this is a permanent thing for me as I love how it gives me more energy, how it gives my system a big rest, and how I don’t have to worry too much about food during the day.
Boy howdy, if I had his money I’d never pump my own gas again, nor squeegee my own windshield.
I’m so happy for him! He’s battled his weight for years! I’m also glad that his heart attack woke him up and he did something about it! It’s so easy to lose focus and give up, but he did it! Now if we can just get him a makeover…