Shaquille O’Neal is down 40 pounds — and looking to lose 20 more.
The ex NBA player spoke to Entertainment Tonight on Monday about his diet and exercise plan, saying the weight “just fell off” after he instituted certain lifestyle changes.
“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,” the retired athlete recalled. “He was saying, ‘You can do this, you can’t do that, [eat] more vegetables, [your] iron’s low.’
“Once I just started changing those certain things, it dropped,” the 50-year-old continued. “It’s all about eating right.”
O’Neal noted that he wasn’t “a salad eater” before but now takes supplements, drinks shakes and avoids soda.
He noted his plans to also eliminate bread from his routine, explaining, “I think I could get the Marky Wahlberg look. I want to be known as the Black Mark Wahlberg.”
The interview comes two months after O’Neal’s “Impaulsive” appearance, during which he told Logan Paul that he had dropped from 401 pounds to 365.
The Olympian shaded fellow sports analyst Charles Barkley at the time, saying the 59-year-old was his “motivation” to have a different “retirement body.”
O’Neal, who wants to “become a sex symbol,” added, “I didn’t want my stomach to be over the belt anymore. So I was just like, ‘Let me go ahead and get slim.’”
In September, the rapper wowed his Instagram followers with a now-viral shirtless video taken mid-workout.
“Do I see a 6 pack?” one social media user asked in the comments, while another joked, “Shaq with the ab implants.”
The “Shaq’s Big Challenge” star previously played for the Orlando Magic, Los Angeles Lakers, Miami Heat, Phoenix Suns, Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics teams from 1992 to 2011.
When O’Neal spoke to Men’s Journal about his weight loss in November 2021, he joked that he hadn’t seen his abs since his pro basketball days.
Since he was “was starting to look old and didn’t want to,” O’Neal hit the gym and cut out late-night Oreos and Entenmann’s cakes for his desired results.
This content was originally published here.
