Life At Slow-Mo

To get broader information, I follow major news channels on social media. I enjoy learning about trivial things, which I sometimes repost on. For example, did you know that Turkey changed its international name to Türkiye? They thought the name better represent the cultural heritage of the country. But some think it’s just to distance themselves from turkey the bird.

This morning while browsing my Facebook timeline, I stumbled on a post from BBC that shared clips from an interview with Rebel Wilson where she opened up about her weight loss. I could not believe my eyes when I saw the person talking in that video. She was very different from the personality we often saw in such movies as Pitch Perfect or Bridesmaid.

This piqued my curiosity. I decided to look up the dramatic weight loss stories of hers, Adele‘s and Jonah Hill‘s. Here is the skinny of what I learned from reading articles and watching videos of interviews about the subject.

What, Why, How	Adele	Rebel Wilson	Jonah Hill
Total Weight Loss	100 lbs (45.35 kg)	80 lbs (36.28 kg)	40 lbs (18.14 kg)
Cause of Weight Gain		“I think it was dealing with not being a natural performer and having to perform almost every day and just things that I hadn’t kind of processed or dealt with in my life that was manifesting as emotional eating.”	“All my friends were in college… I was living like a frat guy like everyone drinking beer and eating pizza.“
Reason to Lose Weight	“It was about my anxiety mainly. I had the most terrifying anxiety attacks after I left my marriage. They’d paralyze me completely and made me so confused because I wouldn’t be able to have any control over my body.”	“Even though I was still very confident being bigger… But I knew deep inside some of the emotional eating behavior I was doing was not healthy. Like I did not need a tub of ice cream every night. That was me, kind of numbing emotions using food. Which was not the healthiest thing.”	“As I mature and growing up… At a certain time, you go ‘alright it’s time to be responsible… You’ve got to be stopping the kid at some point.”
How they did it	“I work out two or three times a day… So I do my weights in the morning, then I normally hike or I box in the afternoon, and then I go and do my cardio at night. I was basically unemployed when I was doing it. And I do it with trainers.”	“I feel like I’m turning 40 and I’m going to concentrate on my health… [2020] is gonna be my year of health. I’m gonna put it out publicly on Instagram and stuff for accountability.” She walked consistently and also took to understand her motivation for eating.	“I went to a nutritionist, and I started physically running instead of emotionally running… I started like 10 and now I do a hundred [push-ups] every day.” “This doctor was like, ‘do me a favor and write down everything you eat.’”

Learning about their journeys is like finding kindred spirits. They struggled with losing and gaining back weight. They had emotional-related issues with eating. They decided to take responsibility and face the problems, although some did it privately (to the surprise of their fans), and some purposefully made it public for accountability. They changed their attitude about eating and their lifestyles and made a huge difference in their lives, both health and career-wise. If you watch the videos, both Rebel and Jonah said having a new appearance opened new opportunities for movie roles that used to be impossible for them.

What about you? Do you have someone, either you know personally or not, that inspires you to take charge and make changes in your life?