Mike Pompeo
Mike PompeoMarc Israel Sellem

Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has lost 90 pounds since leaving the post of Secretary of State and, in an interview with The New York Post, he revealed how he did it and why.

It all started on June 14, 2021, when Pompeo stepped on the scale and saw he was just pounds away from 300 for the first time in his life.

The next morning, he recalled, he woke up and told his wife, Susan, “Today is the day.”

“I started exercising, not every day, but nearly every day, and eating right and the weight just started to come off,” Pompeo told The New York Post.

He said he invested in a home gym in his basement with some dumbbells and an elliptical machine. “I tried to get down there five, six times a week and stay at it for a half-hour or so. And that was nothing scientific. There was no trainer, there was no dietician. It was just me.”

Pompeo now tries to exercise “nearly every day” using an elliptical machine and weights.

To finally get healthy, he told The Post, he had to be in the right frame of mind.

“For me it’s about getting it right and being sufficiently disciplined,” he said, a process he applied to all of the high-pressure positions he’s held in government but not to his own health until this year.

The former Secretary of State has gotten rid of carbs and sugary treats, though he said the change in diet hasn’t changed family restaurant traditions. While IHOP is still the Pompeos’ favorite, rather than ordering stacks of pumpkin pancakes smothered in syrup, he now chooses much healthier fare.

“For our family, food is where we gather. We are Italian and we like to get together around a good meal of pasta and bread and cheeses and dessert. We are still going to enjoy these big meals with family and friends except I am going to be the guy that says, ‘Yeah, I’ll have a salad,’” he added, laughing.

Pompeo told The Post he used an old foot ailment as an excuse for not being able to lose weight in the past.

“I put on almost a hundred pounds over the course of 10, 11 years — years that coincided with my foot injury — so I told myself that was the reason I gained so much weight,” he said, adding that nothing specific happened to his foot. “The joint just wore out.”

He recalled how his weight loss came with plenty of social media speculation, and said none of the comments were particularly complimentary.

“The posts were pretty nasty or just inaccurate, speculating that I had health issues with my neck, or that I had cancer,” he said. “Nobody ever called me and really asked, ‘Hey, what happened?’”

Since leaving the administration, Pompeo has joined Fox News as a contributor, serves as a senior counsel for global affairs at the American Center for Law and Justice, and chairs the Calvary PAC, an organization dedicated to electing conservative candidates to the US House and Senate.

The former Secretary of State said he hopes his journey will inspire others struggling with obesity to lose weight.

“It is hard, and it’s not permanent. There’s no guarantees that I’ll still be at whatever I weigh now, but if you realize that good things can happen if you keep at it, you can do it as well,” he told The Post, adding, “The biggest benefit I had in this journey was an enormously supportive wife and family. Everybody supported my effort to get healthy, which was the real focus.”