Kathy Bates Shares Her Wellness and Weight Loss Secrets: ‘I Do It For Me' (EXCLUSIVE)
Kathy Bates, 76, has played some fierce characters over the course of her career, and it turns out, the actress is no slouch herself! In addition to taking home an Oscar, two Emmys, a Tony, and other honors, this warrior has battled ovarian cancer, breast cancer, lymphedema, and like most of us, a lifelong struggle with weight loss.
As we approach Breast Cancer Awareness month, Kathy takes a break from shooting her new series Matlock to get candid about all of it with Woman’s World in an intimate sit-down interview for our cover on sale now (Get your copy here).
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Here, the star of Misery, Fried Green Tomatoes, the American Horror Story franchise and so many more shares how she overcame health challenges like cancer and lymphedema, her weight loss secrets and what excites her about her role on the new CBS procedural, Matlock.
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Kathy reflects on her cancer and lymphedema journeys
This Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Kathy Bates has a lot to celebrate. Having faced cancer in 2003 and 2012, she’s now fit, fabulous and stronger than ever at 76.
“I don’t know if there’s any easy way to get through it,” Kathy says of surviving chemotherapy for ovarian cancer and a double mastectomy for breast cancer, but she got through both…only to be hit by lymphedema.
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The chronic condition caused by the removal of lymph nodes, which leads to swelling in the body due to a buildup of lymph fluid, affects 30 percent of breast cancer survivors.
“They removed a lot of lymph nodes when I had my mastectomy, and my arms swelled pretty quickly after surgery,” Kathy shares. “I didn’t know where to go for help. I could only wear men's shirts and remember feeling that my career was over. It was a dark time. I was enraged.”
Then Kathy found a lymphatic physician, Dr. Emily Iker, and got involved with the Lymphatic Education & Research Network.
“The more I got involved, the better I felt,” Kathy recalls. “I was at least doing something to help other people and using my celebrity for something meaningful. What we're going through, what we share with each other or with Congress to try to change the laws, is our power. I turned my pain and rage into something useful so I didn't feel that way anymore.”
Kathy shares the secret to her weight loss
“There’s a hormone that’s released when we’re hungry, and another when we’re satisfied,” Kathy notes. “The way I recognize that second hormone is I have an involuntary sigh. It may not feel like you’ve had enough, so the trick is, you have to push your plate away! It’s hard, but I got excited about the results I was seeing. It took a long time, but I eventually went from a 3X to a size 10.”
Kathy has grappled with her weight throughout her life, but she embraced this mindful eating practice after she became pre-diabetic and lacked the stamina to do her job.
“The idea of ‘willpower’ has become a weapon we use against ourselves—we think we have it or we don’t. So I changed that word to ‘determination,’ which is something I choose to fight for,” says Kathy. “You have to have a life, so there are moments when I’ll overeat. Then I’ll realize my costumes are getting a little tight, so I knuckle down and get determined to be healthy again. I’m not doing this to fit into a dress or for a boyfriend. I do it for me.”
Amy Sussman/Getty Images
Kathy jump-starts her energy
“A couple of years ago, my doctor gave me an amazing vitamin blend called MitoCORE, which boosts energy production in your cells,” Kathy says. “You’re supposed to take three a day, but geez, I get such great energy out of one. They keep my mood steady, and they're not these thick, heavy pills that are hard to eat.”
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That said, she reminds us that a supplement can only, well, supplement the fuel we are already feeding our bodies.
“I also have to eat right,” she explains. “If I don’t, my energy goes down and my sugar goes haywire!”
Kathy shares her wellness secrets
While Kathy won’t go so far as to say she has a green thumb, she has found joy in becoming an indoor gardener.
“During the pandemic, my niece turned me on to miniature violets,” she recounts. “Every morning, I would go down and see these tiny bulbs going up, and I’d get so excited. Once, I was at Lowe’s and there were these violets that were dying, and I brought them back to life. Reviving and caring for a violet and seeing it grow is similar to reviving my own growth as a healthy, vigorous creature.”
She has also found a positive use for all those screens we surround ourselves with.
“It sounds so childish, but I love my adult coloring book app on my phone,” Kathy confides. “It has beautiful oil paintings, and there are colors that are numbered underneath. I’ll have the TV on with either a nature show or a murder trial. I know it’s strange, but I get addicted to murder cases, so I’ll listen to that and do my painting. It’s so relaxing.”
Kathy talks about her joy squad
“I’ve got a few really close friends that I depend on who get me through life. One friend and I just celebrated our 42nd anniversary as friends,” Kathy says with a smile. “I miss them and often bemoan the fact that here we are spending time—the most valuable asset we have—doing work and not being with the people we love. I get jealous of the time I spend working and when I get into work, I may be cranky...but then I get into a character and feel relaxed and like I’m home. I don’t know what’s going to happen to this new role I’m playing, and it’s been magical.”
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Kathy talks legal drama TV series, Matlock
Brooke Palmer/CBS
The role she’s referring to is the lead on Matlock, and Kathy recently made news for revealing it might be her last. She tells Woman’s World she’d been ready to retire before the Matlock script came across her desk, but then just couldn’t walk away from this role.
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“What drew me to Matlock is that there is a serial story embedded in the episodic stories – and that serial deals very acutely with older women and how we are invisible,” Kathy teases of her new CBS legal drama, airing Thursdays at 9 pm beginning on October 17 on CBS and Paramount+. “My character can go places and disarm people. There’s also a wisdom that helps her relate to people. She gets into where they live, their strengths, their joys – and she screws up!
“There’s a maze full of obstacles she didn't anticipate,” she adds. “We joke ‘This is not your grandmother's Matlock, but your grandmother will love it,’ because it's complex. It's a mystery, and I love how we go back at the end of episodes and see how she did everything and how it moved her to the next step.”
To read Kathy’s full interview pick up the latest issue of Woman’s World, on sale now!
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