Ben Napier is opening up about his weight loss. ET’s Rachel Smith spoke with the HGTV star and his wife, Erin Napier, and they dished on why and how Ben dropped 95 pounds.
“We’re all trying to be healthier and trying to live better and trying to live longer,” Ben told ET. “I started just [because I knew] I needed to take some weight off. And then we did an interview… and my shirt wouldn’t stay buttoned and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s a bad look. That is a bad thing.’ I was already working [on my weight] and then that jumpstarted it.”
After the holidays came and went, Ben decided to start the next year with a “new year, new me” mentality. Ben’s healthy journey continued when he went in for shoulder surgery, and was pushed forward again when his doctor wanted to put him on blood pressure medication.
“I was like, ‘I’m too young.’ At the time I wasn’t even 40,” Ben said. “So I said, ‘Let me see if we can drop it by losing weight.'”
Ben did just that, and now, Erin boasted, “His blood pressure is perfect! It is the sexiest thing.”
As for how Ben dropped the weight, Erin revealed that her husband and Home Town co-star set up a home gym and changed his eating habits.
“I like only eat ‘girl dinner,’ which is basically crackers for two meals a day. I just crave crackers and maybe a little cheese, charcuterie, a little fruit, maybe a crunchy carrot. Ben just basically adopted eating the way I was eating,” Erin said. “He has one big meal. He eats a good, healthy, big lunch… Last night for supper he ate some dates. He’s obsessed with dates!”
Erin couldn’t be more proud of her husband, telling ET, “I want him to live forever. That’s what I care about.”
The couple shares two daughters, Helen, 5, and Mae, 2, both of whom are “so good,” Erin said.
“Helen is in kindergarten. We are reading, which has been the most amazing thing,” Ben said of his eldest, before Erin noted of the youngest Napier, “Baby Mae is just becoming such a lovebug. She’s getting very articulate now.”
While Ben and Erin are thrilled to gush about their daughters, they’ve made the decision to keep their girls off social media until they graduate high school.
“We have a group of about five families who have all banded together. We all have kids that are in the same age range — from like 2 to 10 — and we’re all in it together,” Ben said. “We’re like, ‘Hey, we are not doing this. Pinky promise.’ In doing that we are working together… We’re not anti social media. It’s a tool. It’s a thing that you use. It’s not a toy, it’s a responsibility.”
As the Napiers navigate their life in the spotlight, they’re thankful to have some famous friends to get advice from, including Chris Stapleton and Drew Barrymore.
“We met their family and became friends right at the beginning of this,” Ben said of Chris and his wife, Morgane. “It was impeccable timing for us, because we had never been in front of the camera or out in the public eye. We learned a lot from them.”
“They keep their family first before anything else… Sometimes when I think, ‘I don’t know how to handle this.’ I think, ‘I know what Chris and Morgane would do. I know how they would handle it,'” Erin added. “Having people who are so many steps ahead of you in the public spotlight when you don’t know how to handle a certain situation or what to do, they’ve been there. It’s so nice.”
When it comes down to it, Ben said, their hit HGTV show is “an incredible opportunity, and it’s changed our life, but, at the end of the day, it’s a job.”
“My very favorite thing about what we’ve gotten to do over the last seven years is that our girls will always have this,” Erin said. “Someday we won’t be here, but they’ll have this. They’ll get to be with us, and hear us, and learn our story and why we love this town so much. They’ll have that and I feel so lucky that they’ll have that.”
Home Town starring Ben and Erin Napier returns with a new season Sunday, Jan. 7 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on HGTV.
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