Adam Carolla Show
Billy Gardell on His 173LB Weight Loss Journey + Trump’s New Immigration Freeze
04 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
Well, this episode for Mike and Molly and a great standup comedian, Billy Gardell joins us. Also, Rudy Povich is going to do the news and hang in as well. And we'll do all that right after this.
It's time to celebrate Christmas with the Ace Man. In Santa Barbara Friday night at the Santa Barbara Comedy Club, Adam Carolla live. Saturday, December 6th in Corona, California. At Dos Lagos Amphitheater. Write it down!
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Chapter 2: What are the key details of Billy Gardell's weight loss journey?
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Chapter 3: How did Billy Gardell's health changes affect his comedy?
Got it on Wayfair. Trees, lights, and ornaments? Wayfair. Hosting must-haves like dining sets, beds, sheets, and towels? Wayfair. For everything in your style delivered with fast and free shipping, visit Wayfair.com or the Wayfair app to win the season. But again, it's not a competition.
Did your stepdad hang around long enough to see your success, Mike and Molly and all that stuff? No. The guy that was the worst died. He actually died. And I really didn't care. After that guy was out of my life, I didn't really care. How old were you when he died? I think I was probably about 22 when I got that news. Were you doing stand-up then? Yeah.
I had started stand-up at 17 in 1987, and by then I was out on the road, and just a friend of the family had called and said he had passed away, and I was like, okay. He must have been pretty young. Me or the guy?
Him. Well, you were 22. Yeah.
At that time, I think when he came into our lives, he was probably in his late 40s, and I was probably middle teens, somewhere in there. Yeah. So he went – He didn't see 60. No, I think his heart popped because he was walking around with rage and anger and all that stuff that kills you, man.
Well, good.
So he's gone. And what about the other guy? The other guy eventually passed away too. And I think he had heart problems. But did he... I guess what I'm saying is I talked to a lot of athletes and a lot of people that didn't... Dad was estranged. But I was curious, later on, they get on TV or they win the Super Bowl or something.
They show back up, yeah.
Yeah, did the guy circle around? No, no, nobody did. But he was around for Mike and Molly. I don't know. I guess he was alive, but I didn't know. Yeah, I mean, it was alive. No, no, because, no, he was gone at 20. I didn't get Mike and Molly until I was 35. Well, no, but there's two guys. One guy's gone at 22 and the other guy's gone at- A little bit later, maybe 27. Oh, okay.
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Chapter 4: What insights does Billy Gardell share about overcoming challenges?
He goes, nobody gets mad at old people. You can have fun. Just act confused if you get caught. I was like, this guy's a genius. But the most powerful thing he did was he always taught me that. You know, he was going to keep his sense of humor until he passed away. And I actually watched him do it. He died of lung cancer, but he kept his sense of humor to the last moment.
And that was the most powerful thing he showed me because it reiterated what he'd been telling me my whole life, which is the only choice you have is how you show up for people. That's it. How you react, how you approach and how much you approach. That's it. Everything else is out of your hands. So that I always try to carry with me. Melissa McCarthy. Love her. Don't know her.
Exquisitely talented. You know, I think there's a lot. There's people, sometimes more women, where you have to kind of pretend how much you love them, but you don't really love them that much. But, you know, Jane Fonda, everyone has to pretend like she's some sort of sage and she seems like a dope. But anyway, but Melissa McCarthy, you watch her and you go, that bitch is funny. She's amazing.
Man, is she funny. She's amazing, and she's that kind of person, too. She's a genuinely good soul. And one of the things with that show was – the magic of that cast because they helped me more than I can ever explain. They really, they took me, cause you know, I came out of a comedy club kitchen like we do, you know, most of them are formally trained. Katie Mixon was Carnegie Mellon.
Reno went to the school of fame, Lou and Swoozie Broadway, Rondi come out of Steppenwolf. So I had this amazing, you know, Melissa had already had the Gilmore girls and she's the groundlings in Southern Illinois. And, So the way we kind of stuck together on that show was so great. But it all stemmed with the first time me and her read.
It was one of those moments in Hollywood where you go, oh, that's different than anybody else I've read with. And there was just a connection there from the beginning that was – it carried through the show.
Yeah.
And she got super popular in the middle, early parts of the show, right? Huge, with Bridesmaids. Yeah, third year, Bridesmaids. The third summer, the summer before the third season, Bridesmaids came out and shot her into the stratosphere. Yeah. Which has got to be difficult, you know, can be for partners, you. No. I always say this. Everybody loves to ask me this too.
They're like, how did you feel when she became a – I was in a place where I was newly sober. I had just stopped drinking. I was repairing my marriage and I had this beautiful gift happen to me. And I was lucky enough to be at that moment in my life where I had that perspective where So I – the reason I was never jealous of any of that and I could root her on genuinely from my heart.
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Chapter 5: What challenges does Billy Gardell face after weight loss surgery?
This is before they knew it was a weight loss drug. Oh, before they knew it was weight loss.
Yeah, they didn't know it was weight loss. Oh, yeah, because you do the commercials in the park.
Yeah, but I was just doing, yeah, which was ridiculous. I wasn't running. Right. But I was taking that for type 2 to try to manage that and it did work that way. But they didn't know yet that it was a weight loss drug. If I had known that, I may have gone that way. I don't know. I just knew that I was in a place where I had to do something to change because medically I was in trouble.
Chapter 6: What are the key components of Billy's current diet regimen?
So I got that surgery. But like I said, I always tell people – If you're going to do it, make sure you know what's on the other side of it to maintain it because one in four go back to that weight and it causes all sorts of bad problems if you get heavy again after having the surgery. There's esophageal problems, stomach problems, digestive problems. And so it's not free. I mean it costs you.
You're going to have extra skin.
Chapter 7: How does Billy maintain his weight loss and what role does exercise play?
You're going to have – You're going to have absorption with your vitamins that you have to overcompensate for and there's a psychological – like I always say the fat hulk is still in there. Like I'll be cutting that carrot in here. Pizza! Like we're not doing that. Shut up. Hey, Kool-Aid. Yeah, he's in there, man. So you have to really – Understand what you're embracing.
It's a window of opportunity just like any of these other things, whether it's a weight loss drug, whether it's going to the gym every single day and not eating carbs. Whatever you're doing, that's a window to get better. But what comes after that is you have to be steady in treating it every day. Like I put food on the same shelf as booze for me. It's dangerous.
I can't – I was – like I hear people all the time go, well, just take a walk and eat some fish. Like, well, if it was that easy, man, every heavy person would do that.
Chapter 8: What is Billy's perspective on societal changes regarding masculinity and health?
But it's your relationship with food. It's how you drink or you use or you eat after a big emotion, right? It was a good emotion. We need to enhance it, get more. It was a bad emotion. We need to comfort it so we don't feel the uncomfortable. So it's about reconfiguring your relationship with that thing. And if you can get that, then you can get to it.
And the other thing I always messed up was I always would say I was always quitting shit on like the first or Monday.
Those are my two days, the first or Monday.
This is it. And then trying to wake up and go, oh, I'm going to be disciplined. Well, no, you're not. That's not real. So the food nutritionist slash therapist that I have, Terry Hublik, who's amazing, she said to me, you don't just get to decide your discipline. And you fought for a while, right? You're a boxer, right? You know discipline comes from consistency.
You get consistent and the reward is discipline. But to wake up and think, I'm just going to be disciplined today, that doesn't get it. You have to put the time in, consistent, consistent, not going to do it perfect, consistent, consistent. Then before you know it, it's a habit. And once it's a habit, you're disciplined. Did you try it many different times?
Oh, dude, I gained the same 35 goddamn pounds and lost it every single year. Yeah. Every single year. It was awful. So what's the regimen now? I've always talked to people that have been through this. What's breakfast? What's lunch? What's dinner? What's the exercise? It's Groundhog's Day is what it is. And you have to be able to commit to that too.
But I'm okay with repetitive because that, again, helps me stay. It helps me not think about the choice. I get up. I have like a little egg white breakfast sandwich that's very small. I never eat more than 12 ounces at a time. And then it's cottage cheese and berries and it's – I got to get 75 ounces of water every day, my vitamins every day.
Every two weeks, I'm lucky enough that I can afford to go get like one of those hydration IVs, the Myers cocktail. Because one of the side effects of this surgery is after a couple of years, you don't absorb your vitamins as well because your stomach goes from being normal size with three blood sources to – Like that with one blood source. So you're not digesting and separating like you should.
So you have to kind of overcompensate these things.
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