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After airing the pilot last month, the rebooted Matlock is actually starting, for realsies this time, next week on October 17. While I had mixed feelings about the first episode, I’m still enthusiastically on board because of my love and admiration for Kathy Bates. Even though Kathy scared us by telling the NY Times that she would retire after Matlock, she heard our cries of despair and walked back that statement. Well, now Kathy has given another deeply personal interview, this time with People Mag, in which she speaks candidly about the weight loss journey she’s been on for the past seven years. It started in 2017 when she was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, a disease that’s prevalent in her family. Then after losing 80 pounds through lifestyle changes and what she calls “hard work,” and given her diabetes, Kathy consulted with her doctor and started using Ozempic to lose the final 20 pounds. Unsurprisingly, the weight loss has affected every aspect of her life.

80% hard work, 20% Ozempic to lose the last 20 pounds: In this week’s issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, the Oscar-winning actress, 76, clarifies that she lost 80 lbs. over the past seven years through changes to her lifestyle and diet. She then lost another 20 lbs. on Ozempic. “There’s been a lot of talk that I just was able to do this because of Ozempic,” Bates says. “But I have to impress upon people out there that this was hard work for me, especially during the pandemic. It’s very hard to say you’ve had enough.”

She began making changes after her diabetes diagnosis in 2017: “I ate because I was afraid, and I ate because it was a FU to my self-esteem,” she says. “[Diabetes] runs in my family, and I’d seen what my father had gone through. He had had a leg amputation. One of my sisters is dealing with it very seriously, and it terrified me. It scared me straight.” The first change Bates made to her lifestyle was taking a piece of advice her niece had given her about listening to her body. “When we’re full, we experience an involuntary sigh,” she explains. “I just pushed the plate away.” She also changed her diet — “I used to eat terribly: burgers and Cokes and pizza,” she admits — and stopped eating after 8 p.m.

Working out now that she’s out of work: Bates says her next challenge is figuring out a workout routine now that she’s wrapped the first season of Matlock. “That’s going to be my next thing that I’m worried about because I won’t be on set running back and forth,” she says. “I have a treadmill here at the house, and I might try Pilates. … It’s just very important to me to keep this going. I don’t want to slip.” Her weight loss, she says, “coincided beautifully” with the timing of Matlock. “Physically, I’m capable of doing this show,” she says. “I don’t have to sit down. I can stand up all day long and walk and move and breathe and do so many things that I couldn’t before.”

Her lymphedema has noticeably improved, too: She was diagnosed with the condition — which causes swelling due to a buildup of lymph fluid in the body — after undergoing a double mastectomy following her breast cancer diagnosis in 2012. (She previously had ovarian cancer in 2003.) “It’s been a tremendous benefit for me,” she says. “I’m lucky that I don’t have to wear my compression sleeves every day. It’s such a thrill to be able to put my arm into a jacket and it fits.” … This period of her life “is just so exciting,” she continues, tears welling up in her eyes. “It’s emotional.”

[From People]

If you have 12 minutes to spare, I highly recommend watching the video People Mag released of this interview. You get to see Kathy’s giddiness when she talks about fitting into clothes differently, and she tells a sweet story about finding her (stunning!) Armani Emmys dress with a friend. I was relieved to see the joy in Kathy. Back in September when the NY Times article came out, the one where she said Matlock would be her last acting gig, I was a bit startled with how despondent she seemed. But watching the video shifted my sense of that. I no longer think she’s despondent, I think she’s done a lot of hard work and unloaded a lot, and that can naturally make you feel more open and vulnerable. As she says, she is clearly excited and emotional with where she is right now, having stayed the course in losing a substantial amount of weight, and working on what she feels is a dream role. That is exciting and emotional! And inspiring to someone like me on the other side of that health journey. But please do me a favor and wait seven years before asking me how it’s going…


photos credit: Nicky Nelson/Wenn/Avalon, Ryan Hartford/INSTARimages.com, Getty and via Twitter/People