Sherri Shepherd is feeling better than ever and she’s letting the world know it on the cover of the health and wellness issue from PEOPLE magazine.
The comedian, who motivated more than 2,000 people to join her weight-loss challenge with Healthy Wage, has been using her platform to inspire people after losing 20 pounds this year alone and previously beating her Type 2 diabetes. She says that 2007 diagnosis “saved” her life.
“I don’t look at it like dying, I look at it like it gave me life, because it made me educate myself about food choices,” she told the publication. “It made me educate myself about exercise and how exercise relates to my brain and the endorphins. I saw the mind/body connection from exercise.”
Also inspiring her to make changes was her son Jeffrey. The thought of dying from diabetes (her mother passed from complications related to the disease) and leaving him alone set a fire in her. These days, she has enough energy to keep up with the now 16-year-old.
“He always encourages me. And I’m encouraged also because I get to do more things with him, and I have more energy,” she said. “At 16, you need your brain. It’s a whole different thing dealing with a teenager. You’ve got to be two steps ahead of them, and you can’t do it when you’re in a fog. And so, just keeping up with him, I have to have energy, and that motivates me as well.”
If you follow the star on social media, you’ll see her engaging in all sorts of activities, including her recent efforts to take up roller skating, boxing and doing all sorts of exercises that she shares with her followers. Not only does she feel amazing, but she also looks that way, too. Still, the biggest win in her journey is being able to be present for her son and to feel like she’s turned back the clock physically, “peaking,” as she told the magazine, at 54.
“This is literally the best I’ve ever felt,” she said. “I feel better now than I did in my 20s, I really do.”
