Eminem Says He Once Weighed 230 Pounds

Eminem is opening up about reaching his heaviest weight and how he lost over 80 pounds to become a healthier person.

“In 2007, I overdosed on pills, and I went into the hospital. I was close to 230 pounds,” the 42-year-old rapper said in a new Men’s Journal interview. “I’m not sure how I got so big, but I have ideas. The coating on the Vicodin and the Valium I’d been taking for years leaves a hole in your stomach, so to avoid a stomachache, I was constantly eating – and eating badly.”

“When I got out of rehab, I needed to lose weight, but I also needed to figure out a way to function sober. Unless I was blitzed out of my mind, I had trouble sleeping. So I started running,” Eminem continued. “It gave me a natural endorphin high, but it also helped me sleep, so it was perfect. It’s easy to understand how people replace addiction with exercise. One addiction for another but one that’s good for them. I got an addict’s brain, and when it came to running, I think I got a little carried away.”

“I became a f–king hamster. Seventeen miles a day on a treadmill,” Em added. “I would get up in the morning, and before I went to the studio, I would run eight and a half miles in about an hour. Then I’d come home and run another eight and a half. I started getting OCD about the calories, making sure I burned 2,000 every day. In the end I got down to about 149 pounds. I ran to the point where I started to get injured. All the constant pounding from the running began to tear up my hip flexors.”