SLIM KATHY BATES: NO MORE MISERY!
Sheds 60 lbs. and gets new look after cancer fight
TWO-TIME cancer survivor Kathy Bates has dropped 60 pounds, colored her hair — and gotten a new lease on
life!
“I feel like a completely different person!” gushes the 70-year-old Oscar winner, who slammed James Caan’s ankles with a sledgehammer in the 1990 horror flick Misery.
Kathy was diagnosed with stage 1 ovarian cancer in 2003. In 2012, she underwent a double mastectomy to treat breast cancer.
She’s now battling lymphedema, which she developed after undergoing lymph node surgery and which causes painful swelling in her limbs.
But Kathy says her weight loss has “really helped with my symptoms” — adding that she’s learned when to stop eating.
“Mindfulness, just knowing when to push my plate away,” she says, adding that her niece taught her a “little secret.”
The secret?
“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,” explains the American Horror Story star.
But she confesses it took “a few years” to shed the weight.
“I would say you have to be really patient,” she reveals. “I don’t like the word ‘willpower,’ but I like the word ‘determination.’ ”
Now she says: “I have never been in such good health. I can move. I can walk. I just wish I had done it years ago.”
Today, Kathy’s a national spokesperson for the Lymphatic Education & Research Network, but says she kept her ovarian cancer diagnosis secret for fear it would kill her career.
“I didn’t tell anybody,” recalls Kathy, who had surgery followed by nine months of chemotherapy.
“My agent at the time didn’t want me to be the poster child for ovarian cancer. I didn’t want anyone to know, but it really took a lot out of me.”
After beating cancer twice, her advice to women is to get regular checkups.
“Quit taking the damn selfies and worrying about what you look like,” she says. “Instead, keep everything working and in good order.”