HOW SHE LOST 60 LBS.
THE ACTRESS’ PATIENT AND MINDFUL APPROACH TO WEIGHT LOSS GAVE HER BACK HER LIFE
Movie fans standing outside Craig’s Restaurant in LA did double-takes as Kathy Bates walked up to the valet. With cropped dark hair, glasses and a slimmed-down look, the Oscar winner was hard to recognize. “I’ve lost a lot of weight, like 60 pounds,” she confesses. “I feel like a completely different person. I can move, I can walk. I just wish I had done it years ago.”
After surviving ovarian cancer in 2003 and breast cancer in 2012, Kathy, 70, began making a bigger effort to take better care of herself. She lost weight by eating smaller portions and avoiding empty calories. “My niece told me this little secret. It’s a biological thing, that at some point when you’re eating, you have this involuntary sigh and that’s really your brain and your stomach communicating that you’ve had enough,” she relates. “The trick is to pay attention to that and push your plate away.”
SLOW AND STEADY
Weight loss “took a few years” but Kathy realized that consistency was the key to success. “I would say you have to be really patient and obviously, don’t eat junk food or drink soda,” she says. “I don’t like the word willpower, but I like the word determination.”
Courage, patience and a positive attitude also helped the American Horror Story actress beat cancer twice. “I’m just grateful to have been born at a time when the research made it possible for me to survive,” says Kathy, who opted against reconstructive surgery following her double mastectomy. “I’ve joined the ranks of women who are going flat, as they say. I don’t have breasts — so why do I have to pretend like I do? That stuff isn’t important.”
What is important is that she’s healthy today and proof that it’s never too late to take charge and change the path of your life. “I have never been in such good health,” Kathy admits. “I just had a physical. I’m doing great.”
— Louise A. Barile