Fans must surely remember that, a little over a year ago, rapper Eminem had reached a very low point in his life, where his career had arrived at a standstill, he had suffered personal loss and his weight had gone to become an issue. Much has happened in the meantime, including Em losing the extra pounds, and, at least for this last change, he credits running, as Runner’s World informs.

Em was on Jonathan Ross’ show just recently and, as expected, the question of how he managed to get back in shape was inevitably asked, Runner’s World confirms. The rapper, however, was not even remotely ashamed of talking about how he piled on the pounds, since it was all part of his problem of being addicted to pills of which he spoke before. It was pills that got him fat, Eminem says, so he turned to running to get back in shape – only to turn this into yet another addiction once he was clean of drugs.

The rapper admits that, back in his fat days, as he calls them, he tipped the scales at over 200 pounds. “It was eating, it was taking pills that I had no business taking. You know what I mean? Doing things that – I just wasn’t taking care of myself, I wasn’t taking care of my body. I kind of felt like – there were times I wanted to just give it up, you know what I mean? I was in a pretty dark place.” Eminem explains, saying that it was not just binge eating or letting go that got him to pile the pounds at an alarming pace.

When he finally acknowledged he had a problem, Em reveals, he started to run to stay healthy and be the Slim Shady his fans knew and loved. As luck would have it, the star reveals, he went from bad to worse since, in almost no time, he was clean of substances but had become addicted to running, up to the point of putting himself through hell for a more serious workout.

“Yeah, I run a lot. I run quite a bit. I get up in the morning, I run.” Eminem says of his current routine that helps him stay in shape. It wasn’t always this way, though. “I was running twice a day for a little while. I was running, I was – there was one point where I was running, like, it was a little too much, it was a little extreme. It was a total of 17 miles. Yeah, it’s like, you kind of go from one addiction to the next. And I’m an addict.” the rapper admits to Jonathan Ross.