If you live in the L.A. area, then you’ve probably woken up, driven to work, or just chilled out to the sounds of Big Boy‘s Neighborhood at least once early in the morning on Power 106.
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Big Boy has interviewed and become friends with just about everyone in the industry, as well as some surprising others.
The 36-year-old radio host has battled homelessness throughout his life, as well as his own weight!
Through a duodensal switch to his gastric bypass surgery, Big Boy has managed to go from over 500 pounds, to weighing in at 195 pounds today.
He’s just released his book, An XL Life: Staying Big At Half The Size, where he shares his experiences through surgery and handling his weight loss.
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We caught up with the famous and humble host to talk about his new book, his battles with his health, as well as some of his keys to his media success.
Check out the interview below!
GlobalGrind: The first few pages of your book are just so intense! What made you decide to write this book?
Big Boy: I never thought that I would write a book. It wasn’t every day or throughout my life I thought that. I never kept a journal or diary, so it wasn’t documented. People always hit me up about my career, asking how I got into radio and if I enjoy it. Then once I got the gastric bypass, aside from everyone asking about my career, they were asking me what procedure I got, how I felt, and so on and so forth. So I became sort of like this ambassador for it. I would run into people and talk to them and whatnot. When I got asked to do a book, I would be like “Ah, I’m not really thinking about doing a book,” but then I thought this could put me in a position to speak to more people. I can’t write to everybody in the market, or at the movies, so I just thought I should do the book. Making the decision to write the book and actually doing the book is a totally different world, because you go in thinking that you’ll touch on certain things, but it turns out there were a lot of layers I had to pull off. I’ve been on air Power 106 in L.A. for 10 years, but there are stories of people you don’t let in like that. Letting them in was something that was totally different.
You had a very troubled life, you were homeless… How was it dealing with that and making your entrance into the game?
Even at some of our so-called “brokest” times, we are always happy. I was always happy, so as far as things like graduation, I just stepped into certain things. I’ve always been the entertainer in the family. We didn’t have 400 channels of TV, or all these things that kept us occupied inside, so I tried to entertain the family. We always just had fun. So going from that, into early ‘Love And Hip Hop,’ and DJing, it just took a course for me. Did I think I was going to get into radio? Not at all, but I knew I was going to do something around music. I always kind of aspired to be that guy. I used to practice writing signatures, autographs, and everything because I knew something was going to pop off, I just didn’t know what.
You were also a bodyguard for the Pharcyde, What was one of the wildest things you saw while being their bodyguard?
There was never a moment where the group was in danger, because they just didn’t have that kind of aura. The craziest thing was probably Fat Lip going through a phase where he doesn’t shower. We would have to beg him to put on drawers sometimes. He would be out there rapping with his pants saggin’, and he’d be in front of all these kids and his ass was showing. But the craziest moment was when we were in Ohio, and being from L.A., you don’t get a lot of racism in L.A., especially somebody walking up to you and saying something crazy to you. We were in a small little area of Ohio, where the sheriff and his wife rolled out in one car, and there was some racism that hit us while we were at Denny’s. Some n-word stuff. That was the craziest thing because we really dealt with it by L.A. standards. I don’t know what the cats in that area do, but the way we were coming, that wasn’t going to happen. I mean, we went back to our room, still-toed, came back, and beat the sh*t out of them. They remember us!
What do you find has been the biggest difference since you lost the weight, compared to when you were bigger?
There are so many things that are different. People could go into stores and just buy clothes off the rack, and I couldn’t do that. I had to use a specialty store. Things like sitting down in one plane seat on an airplane and getting on a rollercoaster. I would host events at Disneyland Parks, open up the ride, and not be able to get on. Just things like that, what my body feels like. It feels like the amount of air I can take in now versus what I did yesterday is better. Even today, right now, there is a reflection of the image as I walk by a mirror or a glass window, I’m looking at myself because I’ve been obese my whole life. So this is new to me. Even though I’m 8 years post with the surgery, it’s still a small part of my life. There are a lot of new things that I’m still experiencing and I’m still trying to get used to it.
The part that we read, you go into how you weren’t really scared of it. Can you just bring us into your mindset of how it happened?
When I got the duodenal switch to the gastric bypass, that went well. About two weeks to a month later, I started to dwindle down with my health. I went from severe obesity to malnourishment. From there it’s like I would black out, faint everyday, have muscle cramps in my hand, locked jaw, be lethargic. It was like I was walking around in a coma, and I still worked too. I could hear you talking, but I couldn’t answer you. There were days that I felt so bad that I would do my show from the floor. I dealt with that for a year, a year and a half. What I wrote in the prologue is when I went to get this simple cosmetic surgery. The cosmetic surgery was where you go to a Beverly Hills clinic, it’s easy, then you don’t go to a hospital, you go to a hotel step-down unit. All the Beverly Hills housewives do this. So I go and get the skin removal surgery, and that’s what you read in the prologue. I remember them waking me up telling me the surgery is over. They took me to the hotel where I could relax, recuperate, and heal up. The next thing I know, I start having these blackout moments, spazzing out, and getting hit with smelling salt. Literally fighting for my life. The procedure was 8 hours, no protein, no nutrients, and I was already dealing with my health being kind of wishy-washy anyway, so that kind of just pushed me over. My body couldn’t handle all of the surgery I was taking in that amount of time. So it was a fight.
Now, you originally got the surgery off a bet with Will Smith?
Will and I did a celebrity weight loss challenge. He paid me $1000 for every pound that I lost for charity. So, that lasted about 6 months. When I finished that it was about $111,000 for 111 pounds, and I went straight from our final weigh-in, to this Mexican restaurant, and got chicken nachos. That was the main thing I was thinking about even when I was weighing in. I wanted to continue to lose the weight, but I said that I was going to treat myself. And once you treat yourself, it’s like a crackhead can’t just smoke a little crack, not that it’s that severe, but I was back. And I still was trying to fight it, but I couldn’t help it. I started to put a little weight on, and once the weight was coming on, that’s when I felt heavy. I could feel the weight. I was about 500 pounds. I’m about 195 now. If you were to give me 300 pounds right now, I couldn’t carry that. But I could when it was gradual.
So when that weight came back onto the 111 that I lost, it was kind of fast. That’s when I started to get the lower back pain. That’s when I would walk through the airport and have to stop and catch my breath. That’s when is started to feel like it wasn’t good. For some reason, at that moment, things started to feel really out of control. I noticed I was eating more, treating myself more, even driving home and thinking that I wanted to stop at KFC and get that 14-piece, and it started to feel like it was really getting out of hand.
How are your eating habits now?
I eat better now. I eat better now, because even with the gastric bypass, they rearrange your insides, but they don’t bypass your mind, body addictions, and all the cravings and stuff like that. It’s a constant fight. Do I want that cookie versus do I need that cookie? It’s always something. With my procedure, as opposed to a regular gastric bypass, there are times where I can eat like a regular man. I could go eat a meal with you and you could be like “oh man, you had a gastric bypass?” Sometimes I can tap out a little faster. Majority of the time I could sit down and have a plate of food and drink be just fine. You’d be surprised.
You interviewed Michael Jackson a year before he passed, how was that experience for you?
That was crazy. I mean for one, Michael was laughing off the stuff I didn’t think he should be laughing at. Very cool. I mean we were with Mike for like hours, like 3 hours, and he never looked at his watch. He never said he had to go. He asked us stuff like, “can you go out and stuff like that?” I would say “who do you think I am, Michael Jackson?” He was rolling! It wasn’t a lot of people around. It was probably about 6 of us, if that, in the studio, leaving out thinking “damn, that was Michael Jackson.” I never thought that in a year he wouldn’t be there with us. I’m there thinking I’m solidifying a relationship, but he ended up passing. That was a moment where I knew it was crazy. Speaking to Barack Obama on the air is crazy. T.I. called me when he was on the bus getting out. Those kind of moments, no matter how big or small to another person, trip me the hell out.
