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Unlike many of my fried chicken loving kin, Anthony Anderson has learned from the health mistakes of older relatives. Speaking with The Shadow League, the veteran actor explains what prompted him to finally take control of his health in light of his diabetes. Look and learn peop e, especially if you’re planning to cut up next week at Thanksgiving.

I’m sorry to hear about your father …

Thank you. It was a matter of living with the disease and overcoming it or dying from it, and I chose to live with it and to overcome it. It’s not like he passed on a Tuesday and Wednesday morning I was like, ‘OK, let me get in the gym, let me do this!’ I’ve been diagnosed as a type-2 diabetic for almost 12 years now. About four years ago … it was like, ‘You know what? I need to change this. I need to get control over this before it really takes control over me and my life.’ And that was the choice that I made, to eat healthier, to get a nutritionist, to eat less, to get in the gym, to get a trainer, to get a bike and ride around New York while I was living in New York filming Law & Order.

Starting is the most difficult part. Where did you start?

Nutritionist first. I didn’t really get in the gym until I left New York and came back home to LA after Law & Order. So it was just a nutritionist. I went on this paleo program, eating clean and no meat. Well, actually, the only meat that I ate was fish and chicken, but just eating…and the meat had no hormones and all of my vegetables were organic, no pesticides or anything like that. So I did that for 30 days, and never really got in the gym with that. But what I found at the end of my 30-day period, I transformed three pounds of fat into three pounds of muscle just by eating clean and eating healthier. I didn’t lift a weight, didn’t do anything. If this transformation is happening just by eating properly, what would happen if I incorporated just a little bit of exercise? And so that’s when the exercise came in; and the exercise came in the form of me just walking past the bike shop one day and I was like…I actually woke up one morning, on a Sunday morning…Saturday morning, I went walking and I was like, I want a bike. And I was actually gonna buy a piece of furniture and I was gonna walk up about 60 blocks and I walked about 10 and I was like, You know what, there has to be a bike shop around here. Let me go get a bike. And so I did. I just, I literally walked into a bike shop and bought a bike, rode down to the furniture store…actually it was the furniture store, I was going to Best Buy to get something for my internet connection, so I was like…I rode down to Best Buy on my bike, the 60 blocks, and it felt good and then I just continued to ride around the city. Whenever I needed something, I was like, Oh, let me go get on my bike and do it.

You can read the rest of Anthony’s interview over at The Shadow League.

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Anthony Anderson On Getting Healthier  was originally published on theurbandaily.com