Shaquille O’Neal Says He Couldn’t Even Walk Up Flight Of Stairs Before Dropping Over 50 Pounds

At one point in time, Shaquille O’Neal was running (or at least jogging) up and down the basketball court at a professional level. He was in the best shape of his life as he grew into one of the most dominating centers to ever play the game.

But after he retired from the NBA, he let his body go a little bit, ballooning to over 400 pounds. Of course, the dude stands at 7’1, so 400 pounds looks a little different on him, but still… that’s a lot of weight to be carrying around.

And during a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, the 51-year-old star admitted he was getting too chubby and couldn’t even walk up a flight of stairs.

I was getting chubby and couldn’t even walk up the stairs. I didn’t like the way I looked in the mirror. I was like, ‘I’m gonna lose 20’ and then I was trying to lose 20.

In total, he’s dropped around 55 pounds, bringing his weight down to 351, and he wants to get down to 315 or 330 in the near future. According to those trusty BMI calculators, 315 would just barely take him out of the obese range, but those don’t take muscle weight into account, so they’re hard to trust.

This isn’t the first time the big man has talked about his weight loss journey. Back in December, he talked about how he changed his eating habits after a trusted friend called him out…

A friend of mine called me and said, ‘You’re fat,’ and she gave me this guy’s name, and he did some blood work. He was saying, ‘You can do this, you can’t do that, [eat] more vegetables, [your] iron’s low.’

Keep it up!