Eminem weighed close to 230 pounds at the height of his addiction to drugs in 2007, and in a new interview, Em told Men’s Journal he has a good idea of how he got there.
“The coating on the Vicodin and the Valium I’d been taking for years leaves a hole in your stomach, so to avoid a stomachache, I was constantly eating — and eating badly,” he said.
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Eventually, the “Phenomenal” rapper learned how to function sober with the help of running, even to the point where he began to injure himself.
“I got an addict’s brain, and when it came to running, I think I got a little carried away,” Eminem said. “I became a f—ing hamster. Seventeen miles a day on a treadmill. I would get up in the morning, and before I went to the studio, I would run eight and a half miles in about an hour. Then I’d come home and run another eight and a half.”
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Now, the rapper has a routine with at-home workout DVDs. He started with Shaun T’s Insanity videos, switched to P90x and then moved to Body Beast videos. When he first started the at-home routines, Eminem said he couldn’t move for two days. But now the 149-pound musician can finally do the videos without pausing.
“I guess I’m pretty compulsive working out. I feel like if I step away from it for too long, if I have a crazy week and take a five-day break, it’ll be like starting over. I’m afraid that if it goes beyond that, I might lose the motivation,” Eminem said. “Once you’re at a place where you’ve made progress and you’ve got some time invested in it, you don’t wanna quit and give up what you started.”