Anthony Anderson appeared on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” on Jan. 31, and the actor spoke about his fight with diabetes. Anderson has partnered with the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk for their campaign “Get Real About Diabetes.”
Anderson said he partnered with the company to raise awareness about diabetes. The 52-year-old actor was diagnosed with Type II diabetes 21 years ago.
“I partnered with Novo Nordisk, uh, a little more than five years ago to bring awareness to people with Type II diabetes,” he said. “As a diabetic, it’s more than just, you know, monitoring your glucose and your blood sugar levels. It’s also, uh, worrying and being conscious of the other things that happen, which is cardiovascular disease,” said Anderson. “And, unfortunately, I lost my father to cardiovascular disease, from complications of being a diabetic. So, it’s about me just giving my testimonial out there to people and driving them to my website.”
Anderson went on to say that he is four times as likely than the average person to have a stroke, cardiovascular disease, or a heart attack because he is a type II diabetic. Anderson also said that his transformation was because of diabetes awareness.
“It’s because of that,” he said, adding that losing his father was the motivation for him to make a change. Anderson also said that his mother being diagnosed with type II diabetes helped to motivate him to live a more healthy lifestyle. “I was the first person in my family diagnosed with it and just learning to live with the disease and not die from it.”
Anderson also noted that information about diabetes is available on the “Get Real About Diabetes” website. The “Black-ish” actor also said that February is American Heart Month, and he wanted to bring more awareness to diabetes and cardiovascular disease to help others.
On the “Get Real About Diabetes” website, Anderson revealed that he began eating healthier and exercising with the help of a nutritionist recommended by weatherman Al Roker.
“I started with my diet. Al Roker is a good friend of mine, and he recommended his nutritionist to me. She helped me cut out unnecessary carbs and gave me an action plan to eat healthier and cleaner,” he said.
Anderson said that he began riding a bike and walking around Manhattan for exercise and lost a lot of weight. “It made a huge difference. I lost a bunch of weight. So much that I had to get a whole new wardrobe. I felt so much better, and the eating healthy and being active got easier over time. It all just became routine.”
Anderson said that once his blood sugar was under control for the first time since being diagnosed, he realized that getting healthy wasn’t as difficult as he’d thought it would be.
“For the first time, I really felt like, ‘I can do this.’ It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be to change my lifestyle how I did.”
