My wife and I had never seen his comedy, but we just saw him on Fool Us(Penn and Teller magic show) about a week ago.
We were both commenting that he looked tremendously overweight. I told her about John Pinette, another very famous fat comedian. He also died young.
I ended up watching part of a comedy show of Ralphie May’s on Netflix about 4 days ago. Not my style of comedy, but I could not help but hope he’d lose weight. He looked too fat for his own body, even.
Aww man, this sucks. I’ve been a fan of his for a while. It isn’t too surprising, though, considering his weight issues. Hopefully he’s in mullet heaven.
“If you can take a dick in the ass you sure as hell can take a joke.”
RIP.
I never liked his act - I didn’t find him funny at all - but it’s sad when someone so young dies. And how sad for his family.
Sad but unsurprising. He was over 800 lbs at one point. I doubt he’d ever had a BMI within sniffing distance of 50 since he was a little kid, and he didn’t exactly live a clean life.
I was sadder when poor John Pinette died. He worked clean and really tried to bring down his weight. With Pinette, and I wonder about May, he was afraid to lose too much weight since being heavy was part of his act.
I don’t know much about Gabriel Iglesias, but I hope he thing way down if he hasn’t already.
I think Gabriel has lost 100 pounds.
Whether he can keep it off, who knows. Keeping it off is the hard part.
There’s an article here from his ex-wife* that suggests this may have been inevitable.
*who is disturbingly hot
John Pinnette, Luther Vandross, Barry White and Heavy D all had lost a significant amount of weight before dying soon after. You can’t win for losing-- literally! I think the secret is to do it as you gained it— slowly.
We still have John Goodman thank god.
Don’t forget Louie Anderson!!
Just about everyone else has, except that he’s Zach Galifianakis’ mother.
That’s a loss. Ralphie May was rude, crude, incredible and socially unacceptable…and funnier than hell. His routine on 'Cuba Diving makes me laugh out loud no matter how many times I hear it.
Wouldn’t it be great if he were smoking weed with Jesus right now?
yep, he even worked in a bit about it in one of his recent performances. Apparently he was on a high-speed train towards Diabetes town. Apparently he did one of the low-carb things, and on stage he said “people were like, ‘aren’t you worried about your cholesterol?’ Look, cholesterol might kill me in 10 years. Diabetes will do it in two.”
Has he stopped gaining weight? He looked amazing when he lost all that weight but I saw him later and he started gaining again, I have not seen him lately
Sometimes the body gets into “revolt” when something “drastic” happens like sudden withdrawal from anything, like alcohol or cigarettes cold turkey. Course losing weight isnt cold turkey but its still a disturbance in life after its been the same way for years. I have no idea if this is the case or even true.
You’re right, losing weight as slow as you gained it is the way to go, in a way, one pound a year is not the example! 
and it is not easy for some of us!
I think mine is behavioral. Habit! :smack::smack:
Ralphie was a funny guy, but it was always sad watching his act because it was obvious he wasn’t going to grow old. Good night Ralphie, thanks for the laughs.
I’ve been really surprised by how little I’ve read seen about it. I loved his specials and he seemed to have a huge twitter fanbase.
I saw the news on Jim Gaffigan’s twitter. I thought it was a joke. Comedians are assholes; I thought it was like the aristocrats or something. Then I was like “Yeah, but Gaffigan doesn’t roll like that…” and that was true.
I’m surprised and really, really sad, but not exactly shocked. He talked about being sick a lot and one assumed there were other, chronic conditions on top of the pneumonia.
He had pulmonary blood vessel blockages a couple years ago. His tremendous obesity could not have made it easy for his heart to continue working.
I seem to recall reading that in his youth and young adulthood he was actually normal sized and the he had a terrible life-changing car wreck that almost killed him. I’m not sure psychologically speaking why that would happen.
I mean I think he was bedridden for a while but you would think he would lose the weight after, unless maybe it caused some kind of brain damage where he never felt satiated or something. He was a funny guy I’ll miss him. I’m sure the divorce didn’t help his mental well-being whether he initiated it or not.
John Pinnette had a severe opioid addiction (is there a minor one?). Apparently he had gotten clean recently but years of drug abuse as well as the weight took a toll on his body.