After several months of speculation, AEW star Chris Jericho has opened up about the health issues that he was suffering from in late 2021, revealing he was ailing from a Pulmonary Embolism. The incident inspired Jericho to take a long look at his health, and since his return to AEW competition in early 2022, fans have noticed a leaner-looking Jericho.
In the latest “Talk is Jericho”, he explained everything he went through regarding his Pulmonary Embolism. Jericho also discussed how he decided to lose some weight.
“You go for every exam,” Jericho said. “Heart, lungs, blood, you name it and I was going through everything. They send you to everything. You talk about a hematologist, a colonoscopy — every single thing that you don’t do because, ‘Oh, I’ll just do it later,’ I did. Every health procedure that you need to do, I did. And one of the things was I went on this intricate scale and the scale kind of measures everything. One of the things it measured is your visceral fat. Well, what’s visceral fat? Visceral fat is the fat that surrounds your organs, and the doctor said, ‘You need to lose some visceral fat.’ ‘Well, how do you lose visceral fat?’ ‘You lose weight.’”
“Go back to New Year’s Eve, I was with my wife at the Don Cesar in Tampa … We met a couple there, where the guy had just opened a medical weight loss clinic in Tampa. Fate, hello! So I said, ‘Well, I’m going to go to this medical weight loss clinic because I have to lose this visceral fat. Let me see how this works.’”
Jericho also explained why he had gained so much more weight than usual leading to his health scare.
“I went in there and I was 241 lbs.,” Jericho said. “Looking back, was I too big? Absolutely. Overweight? I guess. Ever out of shape cardio-wise? No. I never was blowing up or anything like that, but I gained some weight after I worked with Kenny Omega at the Tokyo Dome. I was going through a Bruiser Brody phase and I thought, ‘Well, I’m not tall like Brody, but I can be bigger than all these Japanese guys.’ Just because the way things are now, I’m one of the taller guys. Everyone’s a little bit smaller and Japanese appreciate the bulkier physiques, so let me get a little bit bigger and beat the crap out of everybody’, which is what I did. I worked out to the point where I had three Tokyo Dome main events. I just never lost the weight. Then the pandemic comes and you just don’t even realize it.
“So I went to the medical weight loss clinic and followed the diet. The place is called Options. I wanted to lose 10 lbs.; I lost 11 lbs. in the first week and I thought, ‘Well, let me stick with it and see how it goes.’ I currently weigh 209 lbs., so I lost 32 lbs. since January, and that was by about April that I was down to that. That’s when the big weight loss happened when everyone was like, ‘Oh my god, Jericho’s in great shape.’ I never posted pictures and said, ‘I lost 10 lbs.’ I just didn’t do anything. I just was suddenly, ‘Wala, here it is!’ And once again, I wasn’t able to wrestle because I was on the blood thinners.”
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Talk Is Jericho and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription
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