Kathy Bates continues to celebrate her impressive 60-pound weight loss and improved health.
At the SXSW premiere for her new Netflix series The Highwaymen, Bates looked happy and healthy in slim black pants, a silky blue v-neck shirt and a fitted leather motorcycle jacket.
The Misery star, 70, told Us Weekly exclusively in January that she’d never felt better. “My health is great! Actually I have never been in such good health. I just had a physical,” she gushed. “I’m doing great. I’ve lost a lot of weight.” And recently, the Tennessee native continued to open up about various health scares she has faced over the years, including an ovarian cancer diagnosis in 2003, a breast cancer diagnosis and the limb-swelling disease lymphedema that arose from her cancer treatment.
“I had a double mastectomy seven years ago,” the actress told Extra on March 4, “and I developed a disease called lymphedema after that.” The Oscar winner went on to explain the condition: “We have a lymphatic system in our body and that’s how cancer cells travel… and that’s why surgeons remove lymph nodes… because they are afraid of the cancer spreading to other parts of your body.” Now a spokesperson for the Lymphatic Education & Research Network (LE&RN), she also noted that “people can swell horribly from this” — and her slim down has helped alleviate some of her symptoms.
Part of her reason for losing the weight now, she revealed on Extra, was impending diabetes. “I was facing diabetes — it runs in my family — and I really didn’t want to live with that,” she said.
As for how she dropped the weight, the American Horror Story: Apocalypse and Big Bang Theory alum told Us she did it “slowly” after dedicating herself to lifestyle changes over a number of years. “Mindfulness, just knowing when to push my plate away,” she shared. “My niece told me this little secret, I guess it’s no secret, it’s a biological thing, that 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, so the trick is to pay attention to that and push your plate away.”
The results were worth it. “I feel like a completely different person,” she gushed. “I can move, I can walk. I just wish I had done it years ago, but at least it’s done.”
With reporting by Nicki Gostin
