How Did Billy Gardell Lose Weight? Inside His Stunning Transformation

Billy Gardell has been a mainstay on CBS for over a decade, starring in "Mike & Molly" and "Bob Hearts Abishola" a few years later. You may not recognize the name, but you'll surely recognize the face — though it may take a moment, as he's certainly changed due to a stunning transformation, just like his co-star Melissa McCarthy. Gardell weighed over 370 pounds during the early part of "Mike & Molly," but has since lost over 150 pounds. "I'm fighting middleweight these days, I'm down to 212! [It's been] a long journey," he told Entertainment Tonight in 2022.

"Self-care is important, and I think I finally got there," he told Entertainment Tonight a few months later in 2023. While he lost some weight after being put on medication for Type 2 diabetes, Gardell's weight loss journey was really kicked into overdrive due to the frightening risk COVID-19 posed. "When they punched up all the markings that made you 'at risk,' I had all of them except over 65. I had a full bingo card," he told ET in 2022. Gardell attributes his weight loss both to undergoing bariatric weight loss surgery in July 2022 and to a change in his mindset. "You have a small window to change the way you live, the way you eat, the way you exercise, and so far I've been able to do that."

Losing weight is a challenge for anybody, whether it's 15 pounds or 150, and Gardell has opened up about his struggles with his relationship with food and difficulties maintaining his weight loss. He had an unhealthy relationship with food stemming from his childhood, as he told Entertainment Tonight, "You grow up in a house where it's like, 'We had a bad day, let's eat! We had a good day? Let's eat!' So I had to learn that food is fuel and it's not comfort and it's not celebration. And I work on that daily."

Gardell found motivation in his family to change his lifestyle and change the way he talked about food. "The idea of not being here for my wife or my kid motivated my change, motivated me into I will commit to whatever it takes to get healthy," he said to People in 2024. Once committed, he struggled to consistently lose weight. "My cycle was lose 30 pounds, gain 35 pounds, lose 30 pounds, gain 35 pounds, which is a yo-yo," he described, and that journey ultimately influenced his decision to get bariatric surgery. Still, the surgery was just the start and maintaining the weight loss requires a great resiliency. "I'm constantly a hostage negotiator between my brain and my stomach," Gardell said to People later in 2024. "I have to balance it, but I work on it every day."