Pump It Up: Joe Budden Shows Off New Fitness Journey In Gym Video
Whenever you see Joe Budden nowadays, he’s traded in the grueling, constant tour schedule of a rapper for the podcast life.
Budden’s got no issue preaching how much he’s made since retiring, but it’s come with a more sedentary lifestyle, so the New Jersey native has vowed to get in shape. So, he started hitting the gym, and a video of him working out recently went viral.
The video shows him sitting on a gym machine, working his arms. As he yanks the bars, which confusingly have a resistance band added to it, you can hear him groaning as he agonizes over trying to finish his set.
The 45-year-old’s gym session has been matched with his admission that he’s been using the weight-loss drug Zepbound. He admitted on a recent episode of Shannon Sharpe’s Club Shay Shay that he gave himself the jab and that he’s finally under 220 pounds.
“But my weight loss started before I started taking the Zep. I did some dietary changes. I added some things to my workout routine. For December, I was like, ‘You know what? We’re going to rock and roll!’ So, I was losing weight already. This was just supposed to be like an extra oomph. That’s all it was supposed to be, and I’m probably under 220 right now. I was over 240.”
As he’s getting older, he even adds that he’s “the healthiest right this second that I’ve probably ever been lifestyle-wise.”
Despite the internet jokes about him looking exasperated and miserable at the gym, he’s preaching that everyone should take their health seriously.
“Listen, man, we have lost too many people,” Budden said. “I encourage the people listening: go get all of that shit done—all of it. It’s annoying, I know. I almost stopped the full body MRI right at the tail end of it, ‘Let me out this little tight ass machine!’ But no, you got to do it. Get the heart scan.”
He adds that he “doesn’t want to sound like I’m preaching, but it’s just that important. There’s too many people dropping dead.”
In the interview, Budden also spoke about another way he’s improved his health, which was a past struggle with pill addiction, something he’s extensively rapped about.
He tells Sharpe that at one point, he’d have dozens on him.
“I was addicted to Percocet and OxyContin and was able to get them on the street level in bulk,” he said. “I didn’t leave home with less than 40 pills on me. I was killing myself slowly but surely. I thank God every day that I experienced that at the time that I did because that was before fentanyl.”
See social media’s reaction to Budden taking his health journey seriously and pumping iron below.
