Caroline Manzo, 57, is 20 pounds less and feeling better than ever! The former Real Housewives of New Jersey star just finished filming the celebrity edition of Lifetime’s The Balancing Act, which will air in May 2019, and the gorgeous mom-of-three EXCLUSIVELY talked to HollywoodLife about how she obtained her new look, which includes her weight loss and a face lift, and why she took the steps to get there.
“I was 139 lbs and I got down to 118 and then I went to Florida to film The Balancing Act and I gained three pounds back but my goal is to get to 115,” Caroline told us in her Apr. 19 interview. “That’s been a challenge. I woke up shortly after New Years and I was the heaviest I’ve ever been. After filming Manzo’d with Children, you’re going a thousand miles an hour with everything you’re doing and it just stops. You kind of hit a wall. Along with that, I am the primary caretaker for my granddaughter. I have her at least three days a week and my world got smaller. I was home every day with a baby and having a million things to do. I just fell apart physically and I started eating a lot.”
She then went on to explain that her weight gain brought her to a depressed state of mind. “It was, ‘I don’t want to go out because my clothes don’t fit me. I don’t want to buy new clothes because I’m too heavy to buy new clothes. I’m not going to get my haircut because what’s the use?’ It just became a snowball. I became, in my mind, in a really bad place because I didn’t want to do anything. One day I woke up in the middle of January and was like, ‘This is not who you are. This is someone who you cannot be.’
It was then that she got the incentive to put in major effort to start losing the weight and becoming a healthier person. “I realized I was in a very, very bad head space for myself and my family and everyone around me,” she said. “I started with walking. From there, I said, ‘You’re not going to drink soda anymore.’ Then it was no bread and pasta and slowly but surely I started eliminating things from my diet. I’m going to eliminate processed foods and I’m going to eliminate meat and I’m going to eliminate dairy and this is over the course of a few months. I would say I’m 99% vegetarian now. I can’t pass up a meatball. I can’t pass up meatloaf or prosciutto or mortadella -things on Sunday that I love – but I’ll just have one meatball, one slice of mortadella, one slice of prosciutto. I don’t touch bread anymore, I don’t touch pasta anymore, no dairy, basically just fruits and vegetables. I get my protein through beans and I take a ton of vitamins everyday and I walk about 10 miles a day. I literally walk around my kitchen island and my foyer. Instead of sitting, I walk. The downtime that I have, I don’t sit and waste it. I walk!”